V-J Day, 60 years ago
Today's the 60th anniversary of V-J Day, which ended the war in the Pacific during World War II.
It's remembered for a great many things, not the least of which is that famous kiss!
For today's remembrances and ceremonies around the world, there are plenty of goings-on (including more protests aginst Japan). There is also all the predictable Monday-morning quarterbacking from revisionist historians and people with ideological axes to grind, but I'll leave you wtih Aussie PM John Howard's take:
"Freedom's torch was preserved not just here in Australia, but in the Pacific and in Europe. This was a war of liberation which in a real sense liberated the people of our once bitter enemies," Mr Howard said. |
Well said.
Taiwan digression: Obviously I wasn't alive during those momentous days, but my parents were children in Taiwan at the time -- they remember the food shortages and air raids (Taiwan was occupied by Japan at the time) and, later, seeing American GIs there (probably the first Americans they'd ever seen -- my dad recalls how odd it seemed to him to see those guys eating their rations out of cans). There was apparently a sense of relief with the defeat of Japan and the hope of the island finally seeing the end of the Japanese colonization/occupation. (Too bad nobody knew of the mess coming in 1949.)
As for me, after making the usual rounds at Nerdworld and the Library of Doom, I might head off to see "The Great Raid" (and Metrolingua's got a nice writeup).