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I'm on another site that posts pictures of various warships, and recently this picture came up:
The picture shows the JDS (Japan Defense Ship) Haruna entering Pearl Harbor in 2004 to participate in joint exercises with the U.S. Navy. Among the posters on that site, there were some strong reactions to this picture; some said that it's disrespectful or offensive for a Japanese military vessel to enter Pearl Harbor (due, obviously, to what the Imperial Japanese Navy did there back on December 7, 1941), while others said that it's fine for a JMSDF (Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force) ship to be there, because Japan is America's ally now.
When you see a picture like this, what is your gut reaction?
My reaction?
Nice looking boat. Good to use as a screening vessel for one of our Carrier Groups. ASW helicopters can launch and recover aft.
By 1960, personnel of the newly-reconstituted Luftwaffe were training at of bases in the United Kingdom. That was a lot closer in time to the events of World War II - which included the Luftwaffe raining ruin on British cities, to the tune of tens of thousands of civilians dead. Undoubtedly, some of those training personnel were involved in the then-recent war. Conversely, no Japanese sailors in the 21st century had anything whatsoever to do with the Pacific War.
If our British friends could suck it up and recognize the merits and necessities of a military alliance under those circumstances, surely we Americans can as well under these circumstances.
On a more technical note, allies train together for very good reasons. Conflict never goes as planned, but training, training, and training some more correlates with better performance when the balloon goes up. And training is all the more critical when differences in nationality, culture, language, and just systems in general inhibit cooperation.
Finally, consider the potential messages being sent. Suppose a Japanese warship never sailed into Pearl Harbor. Think China and North Korea wouldn't notice? It's a safe bet that they most certainly notice Japanese ships training at Pearl. Now imagine the signal that sends, one of a close alliance free of recriminations of the past.
Thus, it's clear that such visits not only work to advance the effectiveness of coalition warfare should things ever go hot in the western Pacific, such shows of unity also decrease the chances of that happening.
So basically the only "outrage" is the outrage that someone would have a negative reaction to this...
Same old attempt to provoke evil thoughts with this pic...
The original poster must be feeling them.
Living in the past is not the way to live your life.
You have to forgive and accept and forget to move on, folks. Japan is an ally now. Germany is too. And slavery was abolished over 100 years ago... Just saying...
What's there to really feel about? Yeah, a couple of people died, but you won the war. You firebombed and nuked the Japanese cities into oblivion, killing hundreds of thousands of women and children. And now they are your allies.
I could understand a kind of discomfort among Hungarians if Russian tanks would roll into Budapest or something.
I don't care but next time maybe you could mention the site so we can go look at the ships.
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