Quote:
Originally Posted by macrusk
I'm quite a bit older than some of you  and going to school in the late 60s and 70s in Canada we were taught about WWII with varying degrees of detail as we got older.
Michelle |
And I'm older than you by a bit, I see
and the same is true of my educational experience. I took time off between high school and college to work full-time for several years, and by the time I got into college I was the oldest person in the day classes, except for some of the grad students. Imagine my amazement when, as a history prof approached the topic of "The 60s" and asked what it meant to everyone in class, I was the only one to respond. The prof then asked for a show of hands as he called out birth years, and I was the only one there born before 1960 -- and not by a little
Did I feel old! LOL!
Someone has now mentioned the differences in current attitude/response between younger generations of Japanese and Germans, i.e., that the younger Germans seem to be going out of their way to apologize for WWII while the younger Japanese seem to know little if anything about it. IMHO, there are at least a couple of big differences between the two countries -- first, the US occupied Japan for quite a while following their surrender, so there's probably a general feeling (among the people living at that time) that they paid their dues (as it were) by being the good occupied country. Also, avoiding unpleasantness is a big part of the Japanese culture -- and probably a welcome part to those who would prefer to forget about WWII altogether -- and get to decide what goes into history books and what does not. I have not met a Japanese person who would out-and-out say, "so-and-so was wrong" -- that kind of talk is reserved for very private conversation.
Germany was not occupied, post-war, by the victor(s) -- it didn't need to be. It is not, like Japan, physically isolated; the pressures to "keep their noses clean" this time came from very close quarters, all around. The Nurnberg Trials lasted for four years, so the German people were subjected to shame on a worldwide scale during that time. Second, culturally, Germany is much closer to other First World countries insofar as having the ability to look back and give voice to the opinion that what went before was wrong.