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Except the Germans have properly apologized for their wartime atrocities.

The Japanese have not.

Don't ask, me, ask the primary victims of Japanese aggression,

Korea and China.

   

This is true. My father was one of those very rare Canadians who fought against the Japanese and he never forgave them, either.

BTW,SOME Germans were apologetic ... the German Reich was officially apologetic but I have met all sorts of Germans (even shared a small office with a Prussian son of an SS Major) who were definitely NOT apologetic.

   

Winnipeg Grenadier or Royal Rifle ?

   

RCAF Squadron 413 and , later, RAF Squadron 205.

http://www.allwxfighters.ca/413squadron.htm

BTW, one of his fellow pilots 413 Sqdn. was the senior commander of the Canadian POWs in Japan. His name is S/L Birchill and he survived the war ... barely ... like the rest of them.

   

That's a nice bit of reading; Easter Sunday raid on Ceylon and Birchill's
POW time.

Thanks.

   

visited all of the sites in HKG relevant to Canada a few times. The older Chinese remember

   

The ChiComs killed about three times as many of their own people than the Japanese did. And America's buddy Chiang KaiShek wasn't a piker when it came to piling the bodies up either. Given the abyssmal attitude the entire region's had towards human life since forever, and this doesn't excuse what Japan did there BTW, playing hurt feelings over an apology that's never going to come seems kind of pointless. The Holocaust was fairly unique to German and European behaviour. Japan's activities in China and other places wasn't all that unusual for the region. Bigger body count than previous imperial wars, but not very different in motive and intent.

   

This is what he finished the war flying in the Indian Ocean... The Short Sunderland:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di-tShoowGo

It was the largest aircraft that the Commonwealth forces flew in that war ... the "heavy bomber" of antisubmarine warfare with a combined air/ground crew of 22. They were so heavily armed that they were nicknamed "The Flying Hedgehog"

... just a little bit of Canadian Military History that is not widely known. Our Canadian forces used to patrol from places like Diego Garcia, The Maldives.

   

A nice write up on Leonard Birchall And The Japanese Raid On Colombo

is here:


http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo7/no4/stuart-eng.asp

   

It might have been a pivotal moment in the war against the Japanese. A lone Canadian patrol may have literally turned the course of the war by disrupting a seaborne Japanese invasion of India in it's tracks. It was probably extremely important, what Birchall achieved but since the Japanese never made land fall in India, we'll never really know.

... forgotten Canadians in a forgotten corner of the world who may have actually changed the course of human history.

BTW, My father and his crew picked up a shiny new lend-lease Catalina at the Consolidated factory in Lakefield New Jersey and flew it half way around the world to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). It took twelve legs including an Atlantic transit via the Azores starting from Gander. This plane flies at 140 knots. There are 1300 operational hours logged in my Dad's book ... an unheard of amount for a WWII pilot.

   

Looks like China is trying to slide their wang into the South China Sea.

   

No it isn't. The swastika has been a symbol used by many cultures not the least of which are Native Americans, Hindus, Balinese, Buddhists, and etc.

The Hindus revere the swastika so much that girls are often named 'Swasitka' and they get treated quite rudely and insensitively when they come to North America.

The Nazis also used red and white in their national colors.

And that hasn't stopped Canada from using those colors, right? So why is the whole world supposed to stop using the swastika just because some jerks once appropriated it as a symbol for their movement?

   

I think we were talking about its specific use by the German military, not its general use around the world

   

I know. But it's good to remember that the Nazis appropriated the swastika and that the symbol itself actually has nothing to do with national socialism and it in fact predates national socialism by at least ten millenia.

   

no more so than the hammer, sickle and compass have anything to do with Marxism, but due to history they are now linked

   

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