VJ Day 70

[Highlander]

I watched some of this on the BBC today and thought the coverage was excellent.

What the BBC do best.  

[Jacqui Harvey]

Agree and it is hard for us and the younger generation to understand how  these prisoners of War coped so bravely with the terrible conditons they lived in.   
I was speaking to my son about it yesterday and encouraging him to watch and learn, he could not comprehend a man leaving the U.K. weighing 12 stone and coming back weighing just 4 stones. 
I always remember my Father (who was in the R.A.F.) telling me how he saw and spoke to some of these prisoners of War and it really affected him when he saw their condition.

[JohnF]

My old man spent his early war years in Burma.  His opinion of the Japanese never changed from then - he refused to (knowingly) buy anything that originated from Japan, was sold by a Japanese company or had any component made in Japan.  Fortunately, after the war he did not enter the Diplomatic Service or communications industry.

Interestingly, his younger brother entered the war late and was one of the first allied soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen - he had an everlasting hatred of Germany, Germans and all things German.  The reaction when my aunt (his wife) bought a Volkswagen camper van was interesting to say the least.  It was sold less than 24hrs from purchase.

Both are long dead now, but neither lost their prejudices with both nations - in my uncles case, his will stipulated that the undertakers were not allowed to use German vehicles!

Given what they saw and had to do as young men, I think they earned the right to be prejudicial. 

JF

[KKOB]

My Uncle Harry was taken prisoner a few weeks after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in February '42. He spent 3 years on the Burma Railway. And, exactly the same as JohnF's old man, for his remaining lifetime he refused to buy, or have anything to do with products produced in Japan.

[marina]

Sadly I think this is a common theme with people of that generation and who had first, or second hand, experience of the Japanese during the war.  A lady I used to work with, who would be about 90 now if she was still alive, had a cousin who was captured and spent time in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. She always said she would never, ever forgive the Japanese people, even long after the war was over, for what they did. 

[Jacqui Harvey]

Looking at it from another point of view.  We had a Japanese girl come and stay with us in 2000 she wanted to learn about Antiques.  She was very quiet, very polite with wonderful manners and a lovely person.  However, she had no knowledge of what had happened with the Japanese side of WW2 as, she had never learned about it.  The schools did not teach it and people in Japan did not speak of it.
One day she said she did not want to watch a programme about Elizabeth I.  I asked her why and she said in those days long ago, they cut off peoples heads!!!!   I said to her, Miwako ,they did this in recent history. She replied  that was not true and she never heard of that happening.
She loved nature and animals and particularly Dolphins when I told her that Japanese people killed dolphins and ate them, again she would not believe me and was horrified that I though  that. 
So, it seems that the younger generation in Japan have been kept away from the unpleasant things in Japanese history and life.