Last year I proposed (here) that we should devote each day from August 1st through August 5th to some Japanese atrocity in World War II. The point here is to counter the poisonous rhetoric that makes it seem as though America is a uniquely villainous country. This may have made sense forty years ago when our schools fostered patriotism and Americans were in denial about awful (or allegedly awful) things we had done, but today the situation is reversed, it seems, with schools dispensing information on nothing but the villainous things we’ve done while mentioning none of the bad things others have done. So, to restore some balance, here is my proposed lineup:
August 1: Bataan Death March Day
August 2: Rape of Nanking Day
August 3: Manila Massacre Day
August 4: Korean Comfort Women Day
August 5: Experiments on Live Prisoners Day
The next day, of course, everyone will make a big deal out of our dropping an atom bomb on Japan, but they can have the 6th, so long as we can emphasize Japanese atrocities on the five preceding days. For obvious reasons we can’t include Pearl Harbor in this lineup since it has its own day in December. Still, there are plenty of other atrocities to list. I realize that some of them happened in other months and so have no connection with the month of August, but I hope no one will be bothered by this.
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07/27/2011
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This is an outstanding idea.
Posted by: Borepatch | 07/29/2011 at 03:25 PM
Thank you for posting this.
Posted by: Borepatch | 08/06/2011 at 08:57 AM
And thanks for noticing. Yours was the only comment.
Posted by: John Pepple | 08/07/2011 at 11:30 AM