Please read my website: http://www.dutch-east-indies.com

It was long after the war that I learned that quite some camp-guards were Koreans and not Japanese. But I do know that the guards were under the order of the Kempeitai.
I was with my mother and two sisters in a prison Banyu Biru 10 in Central Java near the town Ambarawa.
My father was killed by the Kempeitai in Malang, East Java.

The Kempeitai has been extremely cruel towards all of us in Indonesia during WWII, to Indonesian, to Chinese, to Dutch to Australians a.s.o.

I reckon one who seeks to master such a craft should be careful not to get too wrapped up in his own love of intricacy, lest he end up creating an unrecognizable form. Of what use can such a thing be?

Two quotes from the wisdom of Chairman Origami:

1) “…Truth and reality as is mainly depends on your perspective. Such ideas maybe unsettling to simplistic moralistic view that Americans have in general, but America is not going to be the center of the Universe forever.”

2) “As a Great Coach once said, Coach Ditka: “Those who live in the past are coward and losers,” and so it seems we have lot of those here and there.”

I guess I should now slink away shame-faced — but that’s hard to do when trying to suppress intense laughter. The sayings of a florid-faced American football coach are quoted in order to help lead us all into the brave new “non-America centric” universe?

Ah, these infuriating Americans! Even when the world is “in their face”, ostensibly trying to push them away, nevertheless said world is extremely careful to keep a good hard grip on the American lapels — lest they really do “go”.

Well, I’m sure ready for a fresh new “non-American centric” “departure” when it comes to US-Korea relations, and I plan on using “real” (not “relativistic”) knowledge of the past as a guide to judging the possible outcomes of our “many possible futures”.

The issues of war and peace, life and death, have a way of reducing fanciful debate about relativism into very simple moralisms, and it’s damn sure past time for the US to remove itself from the center of the Korean universe, to help “clarify” the future (ie what shall “one Korea” become?)

We in fact have a few simple choices Origami. We (meaning the ROK (not “Korea”), and the US) can:
1) go left
2) or go right
3) or go up the middle;
4) or we can stand in place (keep on doing the same old thing), but our opponents aren’t necessarily going to let us “keep on keeping on” with that option anymore.

And of course “opponents” don’t mean the same thing “relatively” to the US and the ROK anymore (that’s one lick I’ll grant you, Origami).

5) Or we can fall back (my choice), see what happens!

There will be a result of whichever one of the 5 actions we pick and it will become eventually and “simply” clear to the cold-eyed gaze of HG Wells’ Martians. Perhaps you remember them, if you like that story of his as much as I do — recall that they stared at the earth through their telescopes prior to launching their invasion.

I like to think of them up there even now, looking down at us, though of course now we have 100 additional years of real scientific knowledge about Mars under our belt, thanks to American scientific advanc….oops, I’m being America centric again).

6) There’s one more choice, I suppose (makes a grand total of six). We can “go over” (the analogy is that helicopters bring a new “third dimension” to warfare). You are free to use your creative imagination to decide what this might turn out to be, in the “political dimension”.

Perhaps a grand bargain–US suddenly signing a peace treaty with DPRK, followed by a US withdrawal from the peninsula (as opposed to US just leaving unconditionally). Many things will indeed be possible in our new “relativistic” universe.

pitiful… please go to youtube and type pitiful koreans.

koreans need to lcean up their country. it is dirty.

that should be “not new”.

Look at American and European historians today and the last few decades. I would say it is a strong section of Western intelligencia that has been (re)defining Dresdin as a war crime. It is a segment of Western intelligencia that is saying the atomic bombs were unnecessary and even a war crime.

If you are educated in university in the US (and I’d guess Europe as well), you are given a very hefty dose of “what WE did”.

If you go look at some American high school history books, you can find more pages and time devoted to the internment of Japanese-Americans and the use of the atomic bomb than you can about the tenacious fighting or major campaigns of the war or things like the rape of Nanking or the Batan death march and so on.

In reality, most of these arguments are not old. There were some people of influence arguing against allied bombing, unconditional surrender, or use of the atom bomb at the time, but their voice was not heard as much as the others. But slowly, they have been heard more and more —

I would say more and more to the point that generations in schools today in the US aren’t learning the main positive points about the WWII experience.

I would also like to ask — can we picture a Japan of 1940 or a Germany of 1939 ending up like the American and Western European societies of today?

Do you think a victorious Japan and a victorious Nazi Germany would be as good at De-Constructing themselves as we are hell bent on doing in the Western democracies????

Food for thought….

Fact is, History is written by ‘winners’ rather than ‘losers’. One can argue the merits of this care, i.e If Korea was never invaded in the first place this would have never taken place. What has take place afterwards is nothing but conjecture and fanciful retelling of a sad chapter in human history that should be better left untold.

If Japan had won the War, as strange as it may sound, arguments would be made on the cruelty and the destructiveness of the use of the atomic bombs. That Americans only dropped it on Japan simply because they were racist, and they would have no problem with rewriting such history.

Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why Historians in general are skeptical of history books. They tend to read between the lines rather than the lines themselves.

In the Universe we live in, the idea of “pure truth” simply may not exist. As Einstein speculated, life itself is relative. Truth and reality as is mainly depends on your perspective. Such ideas maybe unsettling to simplistic moralistic view that Americans have in general, but America is not going to be the center of the Universe forever.