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Originally Posted by Ronin4hire
Interesting... I've never actually discussed history with any of my Japanese friends... I wonder if they believe or are taught this crap?
Mind you, many Americans I've known believe that Japan provoked America into war. It's actually not entirely true. America slapped sanctions on Japan because of their invasion of China. Mind you Japan shouldn't have invaded China in the first place so they are still deserve their "bad guys" tag in history at that time.
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I didn't talk about it too often on JET... I didn't want to be too confrontational with the teachers in my school. But they did ask me about WW2 a few times, and I then tried to answer their questions as diplomatically as possible. One time, the school's History teacher asked me (through an English teacher acting as interpreter, since she didn't speak any English) about what we were taught in school about WW2. She didn't seem too happy about what I told her, and repeated some of the usual revisionist history, which she seemed to believe. However, after the History teacher left, the English teacher who had been translating for us told me she (the English teacher) knew that the version written in their textbooks wasn't how it all happened, as did many Japanese people.
The 2 main things I tended to be asked were "Do many Americans still hate us for Pearl Harbor?" and "What did you think of the atomic bombs being used?" (Answers: "Not many at all, only a few old folks who were alive in WW2 might still hold any real grudge about that" and "Unfortunate, devastating, but helped end the war faster and with fewer casualties on both sides than if we'd gone ahead with the planned invasion.")