Obama’s Hiroshima visit stirs differing views across Pacific
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Arthur Ishimoto, 93, a Japanese-American and U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service veteran, poses with archival photographs of himself as he is interviewed in Honolulu. Collectively, they help explain the differing reactions to President Barack Obama’s decision to become the first sitting American president to visit the memorial to atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima later this week. Ishimoto said it’s good for Obama to visit Hiroshima to “bury the hatchet,” but there’s nothing to apologize for.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Michiko Kodama, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, speaks during an interview at an office of a survivors’ organization in Tokyo. Kodama saw a flash in the sky from her elementary school classroom on Aug. 6, 1945, before the ceiling fell and shards of glass from blown-out windows slashed her. Now 78, she has never forgotten the living hell she saw from the back of her father, who dug her out after a U.S. military plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
World War II veteran Lester Tenney, 95, holds a bamboo stick that he said Japanese soldiers used to beat him while he was held as a prisoner of war, at his home in Carlsbad, Calif. Collectively, they help explain the differing reactions to President Barack Obama’s decision to become the first sitting American president to visit the memorial to atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima later this week.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Terumi Tanaka, Secretary General of Japan Confederation of A & H Bombs Sufferers Organizations, speaks during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo. Tanaka, an 84-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, said of President Obama’s planned visit to Hiroshima: “I hope he will give an apology to the atomic bomb survivors, not necessarily to the general public. There are many who are still suffering. I would like him to meet them and tell them that he is sorry about the past action, and that he will do the best for them.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Earl Wineck, 88, poses for a photo at the Alaska Veterans Museum in Anchorage, Alaska. Wineck, who scanned the skies over Alaska for Japanese warplanes during World War II, supports President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima later this week.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
High school student Mayu Uchida speaks during an interview at her school in Tokyo. Uchida, who said she cried when she heard survivors recount their memories on a school trip to Hiroshima, wants U.S. President Barack Obama, who plans a visit to Hiroshima on May 27 to bring home what he learns and tell any supporters of nuclear weapons how horrifying they are.
TOKYO » Two very different visions of the hell that is war are seared into the minds of World War II survivors on opposite sides of the Pacific.
Michiko Kodama saw a flash in the sky from her elementary school classroom on Aug. 6, 1945, before the ceiling fell and shards of glass from blown-out windows slashed her. Now 78, she has never forgotten the living hell she saw from the back of her father, who dug her out after a U.S. military plane dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan.
People were walking like zombies, with their flesh scraped and severely burned, asking for help, for water. A little girl looked up, straight into Michiko’s eyes, and collapsed.
Lester Tenney saw Japanese soldiers killing fellow American captives on the infamous Bataan Death March in the Philippines in 1942. “If you didn’t walk fast enough, you were killed. If you didn’t say the right words you were killed, and if you were killed, you were either shot to death, bayonetted, or decapitated,” the 95-year-old veteran said. He still has the bamboo stick Japanese soldiers used to beat him across the face.
Different experiences, different memories are handed down, spread by the media and taught in school. Collectively, they shape the differing reactions in the United States and Japan to Barack Obama’s decision to become the first sitting American president to visit the memorial to atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima later this week.
The U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, and Japan surrendered six days later, bringing to an end a bloody conflict that the U.S. was drawn into after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
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Japan identifies mostly as “a victim rather than a victimizer,” Stephen Nagy, an international relations professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said. “I think that represents Japan’s regional role and its regional identity, whereas the United States has a global identity, a global agenda and global presence. So when it views the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, it’s in the terms of a global narrative, a global conflict the United States was fighting for freedom or to liberate countries from fascism or imperialism. To make these ends meet is very difficult.”
A poll last year by the Pew Research Center found that 56 percent of Americans believe the use of nuclear weapons was justified, while 34 percent do not. In Japan, 79 percent said the bombs were unjustified, and only 14 percent said they were.
Terumi Tanaka, an 84-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, said of Obama: “I hope he will give an apology to the atomic bomb survivors, not necessarily to the general public. There are many who are still suffering. I would like him to meet them and tell them that he is sorry about the past action, and that he will do the best for them.”
The White House has clearly ruled out an apology, which would inflame many U.S. veterans and others, and said that Obama would not revisit the decision to drop the bombs.
“A lot of these people are telling us we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb — hey, what they talking about?” said Arthur Ishimoto, a veteran of the Military Intelligence Service, a U.S. Army unit made up of mostly Japanese-Americans who interrogated prisoners, translated intercepted messages and went behind enemy lines to gather intelligence.
Now 93, he said it’s good for Obama to visit Hiroshima to “bury the hatchet,” but there’s nothing to apologize for. Ishimoto, who was born in Honolulu and rose to be an Air Force major general and commander of the Hawaii National Guard, believes he would have been killed in an invasion of Japan if Japan had not surrendered.
“It would have been terrible,” he said. “There is going to be controversy about apologizing. I don’t think there should be any apology. … We helped that country. We helped them out of the pits all the way back to one of the most economically advanced. There’s no apology required.”
Beyond the deaths — the atomic bombs killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 73,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 — the effects of radiation have lingered with survivors, both physically and mentally.
Kodama, the Hiroshima schoolgirl, faced discrimination in employment and marriage. After her first love failed because her boyfriend’s family said they didn’t want “radiated people’s blood in their family,” she married into a more understanding one.
The younger of her two daughters died of cancer in 2011. Some say she shouldn’t have given birth, even though multi-generational radiation effects have not been proven.
Obama doesn’t have to apologize, Kodama said, but he should take concrete actions to keep his promise to seek a nuclear-free world.
“For me, the war is not over until the day I see a world without nuclear weapons.” she said. “Mr. Obama’s Hiroshima visit is only a step in the process.”
Nagasaki survivor Tanaka views the atomic bombings as a crime against humanity. A promise by Obama to survivors to do all he can for nuclear disarmament “would mean an apology to us,” he said.
He added that his own government also should take some of the blame for the suffering of atomic bomb victims. “It was the Japanese government that started the war to begin with, and delayed the surrender,” he said, adding that Japan has not fully faced up to its role in the war.
Japan did issue apologies in various forms in the 1980s and 1990s, but some conservative politicians in recent years have raised questions about them, said Sven Saaler, a historian at Sophia University in Tokyo.
“In particular right now when Japan has a government that is … backpedaling in terms of apologizing for the war, if now the U.S. apologized, that also would be, I think, a weird signal in this current situation,” Saaler said.
Tenney, one of only three remaining POWs from the Bataan Death March, wants Obama in Hiroshima to remember all those who suffered in the war, not just the atomic bomb victims.
“From my point of view, the fact that the war ended when it did and the way it did, it saved my life and it saved the life of those Americans and other allied POWs that were in Japan at the time,” he said at his home in in Carlsbad, California. “I was in Japan, shoveling coal in a coal mine. No one ever apologized for that. … I end up with black lung disease because they didn’t take care of me in the coal mine, and yet there is no apology, no words of wisdom, no nothing.”
Obama’s visit is firmly supported by Earl Wineck, who scanned the skies over Alaska for Japanese warplanes during World War II.
“He’s not going there like some of them might, and keep reminding them of all their transgressions,” the 88-year-old veteran of the Alaska Territorial Guard said. “That should have ended after the war, and I think a lot of it did, but of course, there’s always people who feel resentment.”
Japan occupied two Alaskan islands during the war. The battle to retake one of them, Attu Island, cost about 3,000 lives on both sides.
“We hated them,” Wineck said “But things change, people change, and I think people in the world should be closer together.”
How so?
One Tokyo high school student has a suggestion. Mayu Uchida, who said she cried when she heard survivors recount their memories on a school trip to Hiroshima, wants Obama to bring home what he learns and tell any supporters of nuclear weapons how horrifying they are.
“He could also suggest, promoting opportunities for more Americans to visit Hiroshima, or to hear the story of Hiroshima,” the 18-year-old said. “It will be even better if those opportunities are available for younger generations like us.”
Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, and Ken Moritsugu in Tokyo also contributed to this report.
This story has been corrected to show that Ishimoto rose to be an Air Force major general, not Army.
85 responses to “Obama’s Hiroshima visit stirs differing views across Pacific”
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I don’t feel that Japan has ever atoned for the horror and brutality it’s military visited upon innocent civilians and allied military personnel. Good for those who have forgiven their tormentors. But for me, with close ties to people who suffered because of their aggressions, I can’t and I WON’T forget. There is a special place in Hell reserved for those men who raped, tortured, and murdered with unrestrained savagery with absolutely no pity or remorse for their helpless victims. Damm them all to that special place.
What are you talking about. Both sides are one and the same. Dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Micronesia, Nevada?
I agree. No one is innocent in war. People are murdered on both sides.
Women and children included? There are always victims be it the result of atrocities or bombing. Civilians are not actively engaged but they are subjected to the horrors because they have no alternative. War is never fair to the losers. Although much ado has been directed to the nuclear bombings, what about the “carpet bombing” of Germany where bombs were dropped specifically to destroy whole cities. Many innocent children and women were killed needlessly. Historian always cite the barbarisms committed by the Huns or the era of the “warring Popes” where the Religious head of the Holy Roman Church led the troops into battle! No side wins!
You also forget the deliberate fire bombing of Tokyo which killed over 80,000 civilians. Yep war is hell.
FYI, the Micronesian and Nevada activities were not bombings but land/sea based testing with all people evacuated except some brave servicemen who stayed exposed to the bomb tests for scientific research (although I doubt they or the U.S. knew the risks). Marshallese that suffered from fallout received compensation and medical assistance but may require more. Other Micronesians weren’t affected.
I don’t know about “both side” being the same, but humans are all the same, and every country has its own cruel history. Japan did horrible things, and people who remember are still mad at them. The southerners in the USA murdered many black slaves, and yet some feel they should be able to fly the confederate flag with pride. The Chinese suffered millions of deaths from imperial Japan — and then after the war, killed 30 million of their own people when the communists took over. Every country has some evil in its past — at what point in time do we believe we can move on? With Japan, I think the time is now. China’s maneuvering in the South China Sea means the USA needs allies in Asia, and Japan has (throughout the past few decades) been our biggest ally. I don’t think anyone has to personally forgive or forget WWII, but I think it’s a mistake to let WWII affect how we deal with the world today and address our present concerns.
Agree with Ryan. My Mandan people have our dark sides and Hawaiians, who invaded Hawaii from Tahiti and butchered and enslaved the indigenous Marquesans who were here first, have their own guilt and depravity to renounce. None of us are free of original sin and our own individual and collective guilt.
Carpet bombing innocents, friendly fire on Honolulu, internment camps, My Lai, .Like I said somethings are better forgotten.
Maybe not necessarily forgotten…but time to move on and bury the hatchet and stop reopening old wounds…..
Obama does a great job of dividing the country. He should go check out Benghazi. He is just diverting attention from where the real action is.
sarge22: Agree 100% Obama should end his presidency without causing even MORE problems. Today Japan and the US are close allies fighting a NEW enemy of N Korea and Iran and their development of nuclear weapons that they will most likely sell or in Irans case, secretly give nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb to Muslim extremists who want to use it against the US and all non-Muslim countiries. Obama’s visit to Hiroshima ONLY opens old wounds and is such a devisive move to two current close allies, is nothing but selfish and inconsiderate on his part. The US should NEVER apologize for the use of nuclear weapons in WW2 and if any Japanese national or US citizen wants to blame someone, blame the imperial Japanese government and their emperor who felt they had brutally exterminate millions of people in Asia so they could expand their country they way Hitler amd Germany tried to do the same thing in Europe.
Like your comments.
Unsurprisingly, again, polls confirm that most Americans have bought into the Time-Life version of history spoon-fed to them in school. It is a major reason America has such problems in the world today- its citizens do not have a realistic view of history- just an America-centric narrative in which America has always worn the white hat- and thus its citizens just can’t understand why everyone is so mad at us. Case in point: it is common knowledge among historians- documented- that Truman was aware of Japanese peace overtures via the Russians. He knew they wanted to surrender. The old “we would have lost 1 million in an invasion” saw is a load of shibai- Japan was starving and being bombed at will- there was absolutely no need to invade. It was a racist, genocidal decision to use the atomic bombs- consciously designed to send a message to the Russians at the expense of Japanese civilians. At least Pearl Harbor was an attack on a military facility- and the fable that it was a “sneak attack” is also shibai and fodder for a whole different discussion. .
IRT kolohepalu: “…Japanese peace overtures…” Well if the Japanese imperial government was indeed truly serious about suing for peace, then why didn’t they just outright issue a declaration of unconditional surrender? Instead, they kept on fighting, more soldiers and civilians kept dying, and we had the capability and means to hasten an end to the war. I’m not saying we (U.S.) have a white hat; no one has a white hat when it comes to war; but ending (a) war stops the slaughter of combatants and civilians.
In the end they were defending their homeland.
Although they were completely defecated- because they weren’t ready to surrender unconditionally at first- bomb their wives, mothers, and children? Only because America was the victor was this not judged a war crime.
Freudian slip- defeated- or defecated on
I like “defecated” better. No correction necessary.
Another voice from the extreme left trying to re-shape history. Give us a break already.
The Japanese military wanted to fight to the last man.
“He knew they wanted to surrender.” Complete trash. Truman knew no such thing. I’ve done a good bit of digging regarding the “peace overture” and have found nothing along the lines of your post. If you have facts to back up your statement, provide the references.
Pearl Harbor not a sneak attack? Same response.
You need a better shovel.
You are either unable to read objectively or still have not mastered the mysteries of Google
It’s your life and you can live it how you want. It must really irk you when you see Japanese tourists in Hawaii.
I hope you haven’t lived your entire life as an angry bitter person.
Nanking + Bataan Death March + Pearl Harbor + Pacific Expansion = 20 Million Lives Lost
Hiroshima (Little Boy) + Nagasaki (Fat Man) = 240,000 Lives Lost
No Comparison!!!
I doubt that your numbers are right. Even if they are, killing the elderly, women, and children is not what most good people would think should be done even during war.
Read the story about Sadako Sasaki.
Yes- the numbers are demonstrably wrong- “Pacific Expansion” means whatever whoever wants it to mean. And meeting atrocity with atrocity leaves no moral high ground to stand on.
The war ended 70 years ago. If there’s a special place in hell most of them are there already. You’re right, they should be doing a slow turn over a low fire.
But, I don’t believe that their grandchildren inherited guilt in the way you’ve apparently inherited your hate.
Wouldn’t it be great if all races shared a similar perspective with regard to inheriting guilt?
Yes.
Agree but we must find a way to forgive if not forget. That said, you are right. Japan has never truly apologized to China, USA, Russia and other areas through the Pacific for their aggression. The USA never felt the onslaught of Japan’s vicious aggression as much as the Chinese did.
Obama is not apologizing at all. He is talking about the need to curtail nukes and to find a path to peace. But Israel is armed to the teeth and they will give up nothing. Hard to take Obama seriously until our allies and the uSA give up the bombs.
Thank you!
🙂
I guess you’ve no idea what Japan did in China during WWII. Read the book, “The rape of Nanking.”
Obama is the worst President. His ego is stuck so far up his. Somethings are better forgotten. Hillary is the same. Pandering to the disadvantaged to get elected.
He’s in Vietnam trying to build a nation? You know what happened the last time. What’s he and Hillary smoking. Look at Libya, Syria, Croatia, America.
Omg if we get 4 more years.
He is a spineless, s@ckless P O S!
Says who exactly? Right. Nobody.
Obama should visit the Bataan Death March then go to Viet Nam with Hanoi Jane Fonda. Better yet he should stay home and do his job. He is a spineless.
Better yet he should resign.
I’m sure that Osama Bin Laden and Taliban head Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour would have a different opinion. Go ask them, oh yeah they are both dead, killed on Obama’s order.
HCB, WRONG. There was a standing order from GWB to the Pentagon to take out OBL at the 1st opportunity. Jarret and Obama had numerous opportunities to take out OBL prior to the SEALS getting him in Pakistan. Obozo didn’t even know it was going down because the CIA and SecDef made the decision for the SEALS to go in, then informed OBOZO. Your Dear Leader is the worst POTUS in History and will be remembered as such. No amount of lipstick will work.
Wrong CWO4usa, GWB was out of office. Under th new Obama administration the President had to authorize such hits.
HCB- little point in reasoning with kool-aid drinkers that need a fox-news talking head to tell them what to think. Their whining only grows more shrill as they realize they are growing more and more irrelevant to the national discourse- no one listens to them but each other.
Thumbs up.
I agree with you Hillary as President will give Obama 4 more years, unfortunately Trump has a selfish personality like Obama and things won’t be much different in terms of improving race relations. Trump’s promise of a US -Mexico wall paid by Mexico will never materialize and Muslim extemists will continue to attack and kill US citizens in the US and around the world. However many in the US will psychologically feel better that white is back in the Whitehous, given what Obama has done to further dividing is country by race. However might be good if Trump uses executive order to get rid of Obamacare and allowing interstate purchase of insurance so Hawaii residents can stop being a slave to HSMA and Kaiser. Maybe Trump can permanently stop all federal payments to the Oahu rail project after performing a detailed audit, although to the FTA’ s credit, they seem to be doing just that under the current Obama administrstion
Funny how this is about a Goodwill trip and the Obama followers are trolling full force. Yes, keep the name Obama alive with your rants.
Small people.
Millions of small people will “Make America Great Again” with President Donald Trump. Even some large folks are involved. Obama appears to be the one doing the trolling.
The war is long over and the world has moved on….retaining hate and anger serves no purpose …both countries committed appalling acts of atrocities during the war but the war has been over for 70 years and now both the US and Japan are now allies and dependent on each other to maintain peace and stability in the region…..it’s time to stop reopening old wounds…..
I agree completely.
Ditto. As an aside, the article should have stated more clearly the reason why Obama is visiting Hiroshima, e.g. to remember the past to improve relations [although Japan is already one of US’s strongest allies], to be the first president to visit to cement his legacy, blah, blah. Bottom line is that let’s hope no one uses nuclear weapons in the future.
If we are trying to forgive and forget and to stop.opening old wounds, why do we have a big hoopla every Dec.7 for the past 70 plus years?
It’s about honoring sacrifice. If you’d rather not, your choice.
No one said anything about forgiving or forgetting…..we don’t celebrate…we commemorate those lost at Pearl Harbor and its serves as a reminder that we must always be on guard as there are those who wish to destroy us…
I can’t believe all you “Americans” bad mouthing us winning the war. Go to Hel l. Yea I know you have freedom of speech and the freedom to be stup id as well. The real problem is you can VOTE.
There’s also freedom of learning how to read. Take advantage.
Because America benefits from citizens who think, and progress- not mindless lemmings that still wish it was the 1950s.
The fifties were good times. Really miss them. Mindless lemmings are the current Obama worshippers.
It’s hard not to sound condescending when addressing a hole in the ground. I would save my non-native name-calling for people who – for instance – call people “japs.”
Easy Dawg with the language. Some people might think you are racist.
Trump is riding on morons like this.
Clinton and Obama have been riding people like you for many, many years and still you have not learned.
The Japanese are the biggest racists around.
I work in Waikiki and I agree that many Japanese tourists are racists. But the Chinese I meet are not better. They seem to have a particular contempt for Hawaiians who they deem as intellectually and culturally inferior. I do think many Japanese admire some of Hawaiian culture.
Too bad the Chinese or japanese don’t visit N.Dakota reservations. They would really dismayed.
The past is history. Let’s move forward.
Japan is playing the victim and wants the U.S. to apologize. What a bunch of baloney! Japan secretly attacked the U.S. and committed a large number of war atrocities to U.S. POWs, the Chinese, the Filipinos, the Koreans, people in the Saipan and various Pacific Islands. They refuse to apologize for their war crimes and pay just compensation. Given the Japanese militaries refusal to end the war, the U.S. needed to act. The atomic bombs caused a lot of death and suffering, but far less than if conventional attacks on Japan occurred. The Japanese military even insisted Japan’s own people commit suicide rather than surrender! So calling themselves victims and expecting the U.S. to apologize is ludicrous but I’m sure Obama will do so as he has done in Iran, Vietnam, and other countries. He should apologize to the U.S. people instead because they sacrificed greatly during World War II. Because of Germany and Japan and then North Korea may family had to sacrifice for years — me and my siblings without a father and our family living on a meager budget, my mother building battleships, and other indignities. Doesn’t Obama have any understanding what Americans went through? P.S. I would prefer not to get into the internment issue.
Yeah, do you know what the American families went thru? Oh, but let’s not talk about the Japanese American internment camps and those AMERICANS whose lands were stolen. Oh and those Japanese Americans sons who went off to sacrifice their lives, while their families were barb wired in a remote windy cold barren land. These were true hero’s ,real Americans.
I acknowledged the internment issue but didn’t want to talk about it because it is a different subject and opens a whole new can of worms for Japanese-Americans. Also, Germans and other people that were interned. Some Japanese wanted to be repatriated to Japan and some actually fought for Japan, others did nothing, and many others fought for the U.S. Complicated!
really? What about the many Hawaiians here who fought bravely at pearl Harbor and in the Army and Navy. Talk to Uncle Herb, a wonderful Hawaiian man in his 90’s who gives presentations about his experiences at pearl Harbor. When I mentioned the sovereignty lies about America, he sadly shook his head and said how embarrassing they were.
He was being polite- he knew you don’t get it.
In 1978 I visited the Hiroshima memorial and museum. I was on my way back to the US after spending two years in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In the museum, the story told was only about the horror of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and yes, I agree, they created a horrible carnage and many innocent people died. However, in 1978 and still to this day, the Japanese public were, and still are, totally uninformed about the atrocities that the Japanese army had committed in the Pacific. No mention of Pearl Harbor, no mention of the more that 100,00 Filipinos slaughtered as the army retreated through Manila, no Bataan death march, no apologies for the rape of Filipino women, and on and on and on. And these atrocities were committed in every country they occupied. It’s no wonder that the Japanese still feel it was unjustified – they have no information to balance the horror of the bomb against the many more millions of people who died and suffered at their hands and in the name of their emperor. Until the Japanese aggressively tell the whole story to their citizens, their opinion doesn’t matter to me. And my message to Americans: Time for you to start studying the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo. We too have a lot to learn and our problem is that we’re just too lazy to investigate even if all the information is there.
Japan don’t have Goggle? Wifi? They don’t read American books?
This is a very well-written report with balanced views. History is history. If an apology is due to the A bomb victims, there are too many that are due by different governments to many other victims who are Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asians and Europeans.
“War is not the answer. Only love can conquer hate.”…
War is hell. We all agree. Here we are throwing out comments on who did the most hellish things in the war. Reading the stories of those who survived, those who lived through it and those who participated in it. I find that war is not the answer.
Should we forget? Why? We should remember and learn that this path doesn’t solve anything.
To those who participated, survived and lived through it wasn’t their decision to go down this path. It was the so called leaders of the countries, that for some idiotic reason, wanted to start this war….and it was the people who suffered the most.
My conclusion is the President Obama’s decision is a bold one. Not denying what has happened but at the same time not having to apologize for anything. The U S of A got punched first. We landed the last punch.
War is hell. “War is not the answer. Only love can conquer hate.” dang it I love that song..
It was war. It is a regrettable page of history. It was painful. Nevertheless, the world is a different place now. Let bygone be bygone and move on. Don’t spread the hatred and make the next generation hold a grudge against each other.
Ditto!
Dawg – does it bother you much when you see all the local Japanese around you and all the Japanese tourists?
Apologize for war? Do these folks know what war is and means? Apologize to NOBODY.
What about the slaughter of Chinese,Koreans,Filipinos,and Indo Asians that Japan caused. Japanese people have no right to complain about the dropping of the bombs.
Pandering at its worst.
Unfortunately you and Trump are part of the problem not the solution. The people you refer and even Dan Inouye used that term in an interview in describing Imperial Japan and the emperor, are long dead and the only ones reading your comments are distant descendants who had NOTHING to do with the bombing of Pearl Harbor or the millions they killed trying to conquer Asia in the 1940’s. Your comment just validates why so many minorities including Japanese Americans will never vote for Trump even if they would be economically better off with Trump or other Republican. If you truly wanted Trump president and prevent Hillary from taking the Whitehouse you would be mindful and not use racial slurs in a public forum. That’s okay, Trump doesn’t get it either and math obviously is his weak subject, cause there just are not enough white power Caucasians who don’t see anything wrong in posting racist comments and Tweets that are going vote for Trump to defeat Hillary. However, there is hope if Hillary gets indicted or if she does not get indicted but someone in the FBI leaks the most damaging evidence against Hillary, Trump might win.