Newt: No Japanese monuments near Pearl Harbor. Christian churches are not allowed there?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.martinrothonline.com/Christians&War/Christian_suicide_bomber.htm

The Christian Suicide Bomber


What does a devout Christian do when his country’s authorities force him to become a suicide bomber?

If you’re World War II kamikaze pilot Ichizo Hayashi you write a final letter to your mother stating that “for to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” and you vow to “be sure to sink an enemy vessel.” Then you fly off on your deadly mission with your Bible and hymn book.

Hayashi’s tale is recounted in a remarkable book, Kamikaze Diaries by Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It tells the stories of seven young men who were compelled to become kamikaze pilots – essentially airborne suicide bombers, flying into Allied warships (the Wikipedia entry on kamikaze is here) – by the Japanese military. Most of the seven had been students at elite universities, and they kept diaries, which form the basis of the book.

It’s an invaluable study. It makes clear that high levels of coercion were used to compel the students to “volunteer” for their assignments. And it shows that these were no grinning fanatics – the image that many in the West have of the kamikaze pilots. (An image I vaguely held myself, despite having lived in Japan. It’s not a topic that the Japanese discuss much with Westerners.)

[county worker]

1. I don't know why we keep making the false point that the mosque builders and the 9/11

terrorists share some kind of religious hatred of America.


The Mosque is being built by Americans. The terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.


Japan and Japanese memorials at Pearl Harbor are not comparisons to 9/11 but only red meat for haters.

[JHB]

2. For Japan comparisons in the mosque debate, there's a more apt example...

...look to the Immigration Act of 1924, particularly the Asian Exclusion Act and its effect on Japanese politics.

Unrestricted bigotry against Japanese, especially on the West Coast, had been a source of friction for years. Of course, the Japanese weren't alone on the receiving end of this, but it coincided with Japan's rise to industrialization and status as an international power. This prompted claims by the usual suspects that Japanese immigrants were actually an advance force to attempt to take over here (the forerunner of the "fifth column" line during WW2, and echoed today by that "Aztlan" business about Mexicans).

The act came at what proved to be a critical time in Japanese history, before the militarist forces that launched the invasion of China and started the Pacific war took power. I'm simplifying, of course. This can and has filled books. There were a lot of forces at work within Japan at this time, but it's worth noting...

Passage of the Act was taken as a tremendous insult in Japan, and was demagogued still further. It undercut the more internationalist and (in general) more liberal elements in its politics, and strengthened the notion that it was nationalism and military strength that was needed to be taken seriously by the West.

So thanks to demagogues (and a culture that took white supremacy as given) over here, people and organizations that could have acted as a counterforce to the rise of the WW2 militarists was lost.

And now we have a case where internationalist-minded Muslims(the point man from a sect that has been persecuted by the same groups that call the US "the Great Satan") are being rejected out of hand by the same sort of forces that were all up in arms over the "yellow peril" back then.


..."doomed to repeat it."