It's Monday August 9, 2004, time for another summer holiday...but only here in Rhode Island.
We still "celebrate" VJ Day.
So nasty, evil, and politically incorrect.
We still memorialize when the rising sun over the Empire of the Rising Sun was in the form of a mushroom cloud.
I don't find that a bad thing. There's too much that needs to be remembered that would easily get forgotten entirely if we didn't have this annual controversy.
There are no winners in a war, especially nuclear war.
Japan attacked the US first...and out leadership let it happen, because otherwise there would be little domestic supprt for our troops to go fight in Europe and the Pacific and other places too far away "to matter."
The Japanese were interred in this country because their looks made them an easily identifiable enemy.
The Japanese practiced torture on POWS surpassed only by the German concentration camps.
If the A-bombs had not been dropped in Japan, they would have been dropped SOMEWHERE. Humans can't learn without such glaring example. Who might the victims had been then?
Does FDR burn in hell for giving the order?
It's a question of "what price victory?" not a question of rascism.
Rhode Island's the smallest state, and one of the most densely populated.
Next time you are tempted to complain about my accassional jokes here, remember the absolute political incorrectness of my background and environs, and the good that some of those aspects serves, no matter how much Draconian and Machavellian they may be.