Japan Pm Shinzo Abe Offers Pearl Harbor Condolences

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-38438714

Condolences but still no apology apparently !

Is sorry such a difficult thing to say ?

[naomi24]

An apology from people who weren’t culpable serves only to assuage the outrage of other people who also weren’t involved. It's nonsense.

[youngmafbog]

I have to go with the majority on here. I just dont understand this constant need to either find offence on bejalf of someone else or appologise on behalf of them (Lilly allen style). When the people you are appologising for are all dead then it is totally pointless.

There is however no harm in remembering, if only to ensure history does nto repeat itself.

[TWR]

Mikey, what's happened has happened and can not be reversed, a lot of people died on each side, forgiveness is hard to say, but to learn from their errors, the Japan PM had the guts to go & pass on his condolences.

[mikey4444]

Murdo.....I think Trump has his head so far up Putin's behind, he probably hasn't even noticed. It must be very dark up there.

[youngmafbog]

Good job he has, your mate Hillary would have been lining up Nukes against Russia.

[mikey4444]

Instead we are going to have a President that thinks Putin is wonderful, despite all the evidence that he is a yet to be convicted war criminal.

Its a good job Trump wasn't around during the Cuban Missile crisis, instead of Kennedy.

[naomi24]

Mikey, //Instead we are going to have a President that thinks Putin is wonderful//

Would you prefer the alternative suggested by youngmafbog?

[Peter Pedant]

// You CANNOT apologise for something someone else did; it's meaningless.//

hmm you cant apologise on someones behalf....OK
I have done that by the way ( apologise for someone absent)

Have we ( er they ) apologised for flattening Tokyo in 1945 ?
rendering the poopulation homeless ( 'deroofing houses') well OK only 80% were homeless and internally displaced
apologised for flattening a bit more of the flat bit ( yes more on Tokyo) AFTER Nagasaki ?

[plans were to massacre the POWs in Sep 1945 because the Imperial High COmmand couldnt understand how the americans seemed to know so much about internal events. Since code breaking was unthinkable - no one in America knew Japanese for a start - it MUST be spy networks amongst the POWs- answer kill them all]

[mikey4444]

Peter....you are correct about the murdering of allied prisoners.

And lets not forget.....Japan was in the wrong here, not the Allies.

The same argument is sometimes trotted out about the bombing of Dresden. While we were bombing the poor citizens of Dresden, the Nazis were calmly sending millions of people to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, just a few miles away.

[youngmafbog]

Well that's exactly the problem when you start getting into apology territory.

So the best thing now we are so far down the line and most, if not all, perpetrators are dead or senile is exactly what happened here. Condolences, learn a lesson and move forward.

[Peter Pedant]

500 - 600 km

Oh the Japanese couldnt understand how the Americans had sunk 80-90% of everything that floated by early 1945 - naval forces and merchant marine

the fella who had engineered this
( bombs away with Curtis E LeMay ) ran with George Wallace for president in the sixties

[Peter Pedant]

// / You CANNOT apologise for something someone else did; it's meaningless.//

no or yes you can

I regularly apologise for the betrayal of Yalta
( Churchill giving away eastern europe to stalin in the 'naughty document')

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_betrayal

and your blood will run cooooold

[Yalta is famous on AB for roars of "Whatta?" - and even one " I put Yalta foo de goggle translator and it didnt fink narfin" by an army vet no less]

Poles and Polkas get a regular apology from me for Yalta as they fought so bravely "for King George".....NOT churchill you will note and then endured 50y slavery under Stalin et al

anyone mention Putin ?

[andy-hughes]

I think the difference between offering condolences and apologising is a fine, but important one.

To offer condolences is to say that you understand and empathise with the situation, and the losses that resulted. To apologise, is to say that you realise and admit that you were responsible, and that you are sorry for what has happened.

I think it is right to offer condolences, a reference to the passage of time, and to the fact that our two nations no longer share the hostilities that led to the deaths and destruction referred to.

But to offer an apology is to say that you think you are at fault for what happened, and that may not be behind the thinking that led to the condolence offer.

So the two approaches are different, and should be appreciated as such.

The British are a national of apologisers and thankers - think of that next time someone holds a door for you, and as you say thank-you, they say it as well (!).

So no, 'sorry' is not a difficult thing to say - but it must be appropriate to the situation, and be offered by the person(s) who has committed the act - and that criteria is not met here.

[vulcan42]

mikey, if you are not sure about a difference between condolence and sorry why do you still want "sorry" when the man has already offered his Condelences?

[ToraToraTora]

Mikey: All this running around trying to get someone to apologise for something that happened many decades ago is pointless. He is correct to offer condolences only, how can anyone apologise with any sincerity for something than happened when they where not even alive. I am writing this before I read the thread.

[ichkeria]

He would of course be apologising on behalf of the Japanese state, not himself.

[youngmafbog]

Maybe but most of the Japanese State was not alive either. So still pointless.

At least we know the condolences were sincere. An apology would probably not be.

[ichkeria]

I don't have an opinion on it one way or the other but I fail to see how an apology would not be sincere. Everyone knows that there are probably people in a Japan who would not support an apology but then there are also presumably those who don't support condolences either.
If an apology was offered I think it would have to be taken at face value. It it wasn't offered and so that is basically that

[TTG]

"sincere and everlasting condolence" sounds better than a casual "sorry". Even more so as was not part of the regime at that time.