QUOTE(PurplePutt @ Apr 2 2010, 01:14 PM) [snapback]539760[/snapback]
Pretty sure I never said anything about hoping they all died? Did provide some references to reading material about Japanese war crimes, etc. I've been to Changi prison, Corregidor, Bataan, Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, etc. I understand the pain and suffering on both sides. Doesn't mean I can't see through shallow accusations of racism by uneducated idiots though or that I should allow those uneducated idiots to somehow suppress my right to express my opinion.
Amazing that America is allowing this to happen.
It's also amazing that America allowed American citizens of Japanese descent to be locked up in internment camps while asking their loved ones, also of Japanese descent, to fight and die in the War. Were I of Japanese descent, I'd probably be a bit sensitive to language invoking a time in which my family's rights as citizens in this country were stripped while equivalent second and third generation Americans of German and Italian descent had their rights defended. If you think about it, that might explain why Japanese-Americans are offended by it and not Japanese nationals. They were fighting and dying for their country too, but our ancestors didn't get shipped into God-forsaken gulags trapped by barbed-wire and armed guards.
So while you are claiming empathy for "both sides" I'm not sure your rebuttal here indicates that. The people offended by the term aren't the ones who raped Nanking or perpetrated the Bataan Death March. They are people who died fighting the Nazis ...