Grob 2.0

This is going to be quite long, so I hope X’s translate feature does it justice. My great grandfather fought in the Pacific front during World War II and witnessed much of this firsthand. He was at Iwo Jima and only spoke about it a few times with my family. He viewed the Japanese, and in particular the Kamikaze pilots, as suicidal, crazy, and lacking in humanity. I won’t lie. Over the course of the war he came to hate them and could not understand why they refused to surrender. At sea, the Kamikaze pilots would sacrifice themselves just for the slimmest of chances of striking an American ship, while on land they’d launch banzai charges when it became clear that a battle had been lost. As a result, Americans almost never took a Japanese soldiers prisoner, which meant they never got the chance to really speak with them or know them personally. Usually in a war, receiving prisoners from the other side humanizes them over time. You get to talk to them, exchange things like cigarettes or alcohol, and recognize that the man you’ve taken as a POW is still a person like yourself, just wearing a different uniform and coming from a different country. He is an enemy, yes, but even the enemy is still human. That shared humanity motivates you to treat the vanquished with a degree of mercy, just as you hope they’d do the same with you. But like I said, Americans by and large did not get the chance to talk to many Japanese soldiers throughout the war because they’d chose death over surrender, so as the war progressed, my country’s animosity towards the Japanese only grew over time. By the end, the average American soldier viewed the Japanese as little more than monsters who would throw their own lives away if it meant they could take an American life with them, even if that act of suicide didn’t actually change the overall strategic picture of the war. But it’s important to note that these negative feelings did not last forever precisely because our two people began to talk to one another after the war. The overwhelming majority of Americans today, including myself, have a very positive view of Japan. We love visiting your beautiful country, we enjoy your food, we watch your anime, and we admire your orderly, clean, and safe cities. The average American, including those whose direct descendants fought in World War II, view your country today as a close friend and ally. We wish to remain friends forever, and hope that our two countries will never again fight a war.