Although, I’ve never met with him (I’m a 37 years old male), I thank him and feel sorry for him dying for the country while visiting the very place where he must have believed to be visited by me when he had died in the battle. He left nothing besides my mother, but I shall visit the shrine to remember him until I die.

It doesn’t matter whether or not the shrine was built to praise the nationalistic Shinto-ism, but it does matter what my grand father once told my grand mother “meet there if I shall die in the war” like many Japanese soldiers just ( blindedly?) believed so.

The Japanese goverment are ought to pray for the soldiers who died for the country forever, even if the war purpose was sentenced evil in the controversy “Tokyo Court”.

I do not know if Koreans and Chineses have this kind of place for the pacification of war-deads spirits, we Japanese do. If you have such, you can visit yours.

How are the Chineses and Koreans authorized to take away from the Japaneses this natural emotion?

Thanks much for that, and also for what looks like an excellent book recommendation.

Also, I seem to have gotten one of your initial statements backwards, sorry about that.

I was really curious and did find this link which sorta says what you’ve said, though without the “not want to admit” tone and all and at least at that link no mention of any attempt to “imply” that Koreans did it themselves.

Given what the Kwangbok-gun had been up to and given how the new ROK government wanted to claim itself the rightful child of the provisional gov’t in China and associate itself with the fight against Japan, I suspect that had something to do with the change. And like I said there is evidence of the word Kwangbok being used early on in official ROK publications.

Thanks for the edu.

I got my information from a book entitled, “????? ?????????????? ???????.” If you go to a book store, find the book, and turn to page 524, you can read it for yourself and not have to take my word for it.

The book says that Koreans used the expression, 8.15?????, until the mid-eighties, when the growing “democratic movement” spurred people to start using 8.15???. The passage also says that ???? was preferred because it made it sound like Koreans worked for and achieved their own independence instead of the world powers (???????) giving it to them.

If there is a request for the Korean by anyone other than you, Orankcay, I will type it out and save you a trip to the book store. But then you would still probably have to go to the book store and confirm it youself before you would believe me, wouldn’t you?

Admittedly I’ve only seen the word Kwangbok on official gov’t documents 10 years or more after Liberation (like stamps that say ‘????10?????????’ and such), but I still doubt a change from ‘???????’ to ‘??????’ was made and even if it was I doubt that (1) a change was made for the reasons GBevers states and that even if it was (2) that we would really know that the change was made for that reason given that there was never any open public debate about how “we don’t want to remind ourselves about how we didn’t liberate ourselves” and so on during the oh so very pro-American years.

It should be noted that “student radicals” also use the term “haebangjeol” and that the Korean military organization, the “KWANGBOK-gun,” the one that among other things fought with the British against the Japanese in Burma, used the term “Kwangbok” in a way that would actually contradict what GBevers is saying; it was composed of Koreans fighting for their own freedom and it’s not like they knew the US was going to nuke Japan when they chose that name.

It does seem a possibility that the name of the anniversary/holiday wasn’t ‘???????’ from the start so please GBevers if you’ve got some info on that kindly enlighten us.

Now I’m basing all this on what KCNA writes, but in North Korea ???? seems to be common term. Today’s top news:

?????????? ??????? 60??? ?????
(????? 8?? 15???? ??????????????)??????? ????????????????? ??????? 60?????? ??????????? ????????? ????????????? ???????????????? ???????? ??????? ???????? ??????????????????? ??????? ???????? ???????.So it’s mostly “???XX???”; on the other hand ??????? at KCNA seems to be mostly in association with the South.

????? is reserved mostly for the Korean War - “Fatherland Liberation War” (??????????????). KCNA uses ???????? only for other countries like Kuwait (yes, liberation from Saddam!) and Congo. DPRK is good friends with Kuwait, it seems.

Koreans used to call August 15, ??????? (Liberation Day), but sometime in the mid 1980s, during the early stages of a growing anti-American movement, many South Koreans decided that the word “liberation” sent the wrong message. They felt that “liberation” implied that Korea was liberated by a third party (i.e. the United States), which they did not like to admit, so they started using the name, ??????? (Return-to-the-Light Day), which was more ambitiguous and could imply that Koreans achieved independence on their own. Now, the word, ????????, is not even listed in South Korean dictionaries. However, strangely enough, I think the North Koreans still call August 15, ???????.