With my WWII history blogs, some feel I am sympathetic towards the Japanese offensive military actions of that time. To the contrary, I am but presenting facts from buried history. Certainly, propaganda from both sides of the Pacific and family losses understandably have a tremendous influence on individuals.
We all know what today is – December 7th… a day which will live in infamy as FDR said. Yet, there are many forgotten or unknown behind the scenes history.
Masako and Spam Musubi 
The notion is that history is written by the victors flavors how people perceive events. In your instance, where family were on both sides, the history becomes very personal and confused. Fortunately, your blogs, because of the family situation, help add a useful, human perspective, a point of view usually missing from the broader history most people know. No apologies needed! I think it is important to understand different perceptions of events. Wars rarely are as black and white as they are presented in histories.
You and I have compared notes for years and feel the same on most everything, my friend!! But I’m afraid I’m here to ask a big favor. I stumbled onto this as I perused the Reader page, but I need a translator. It’s 4 minutes long, but if you just summarize…. I’d be even more in debt to you than I already am!!
https://nasukojapan.photo.blog/2019/12/08/early-christmas-present-to-deargp-cox/
G, I cannot open it!!!! 😢
It’s Nasuko. Did she go private?
I found the video on Youtube
She mentions you and has a picture of your father on the post as well.
I had to request following her to watch it…
Its about a 1944 Cinderella production put on by soldiers… What in particular are you seeking, G? 🙂
Nasuko put it in her post as an early Christmas present to GP Cox, then she has pictures from my posts of my father, etc that she colorized and pictures of your Dad. I was trying to get the gist of what she was trying to say to me.
I went back and checked. Yes she is a private blog now. I’m sorry to bother you. Hope your Christmas shopping is going well!!
I’ve always appreciated your balance on presenting facts, on both sides Koji. If someone is thinking ill of your posts, they are not reading them all the way through or with an interest to learn.
I agree with others that your approach to discussing complex history has always been objective and balanced. I appreciate your efforts and hope they will continue. We are at a point now, or at least we should be, where we can look at these events rationally, and appreciate the fact that it was a time of great human tragedy at a deeply personal level. We can never look into the hearts of men to see what lives there, but we can view history in terms of what happened, and why. We can see that our leaders then, on both sides, wanted a war in the worst way and did all that they could have done to produce one. We can also see, in terms of current events, that we (our national leadership) haven’t learned much from past events … and so we will continue to repeat these mistakes until one day, a light bulb comes on. In any case, well done, Koji-san. Continue the march ….