SO 'The Progressive' has a problem with the British war veterans' attitude to Japan's Emperor Akihito, does he?

May I tentatively suggest that but for these same veterans fighting and winning a war to preserve the future and freedom of following generations, he would have an even bigger problem.

He would be ensconced in a prison camp, if he would have been allowed to have been born, made to do slave labour, and his wife (if he was allowed one) and family would be at the mercy of a brutal, murderous and inhumane regime, just like the Nazis. At the very least the Germans have apologised repeatedly for their past behaviour.

Get yourself educated on the subject of the war in the Far East, then you may understand our war veterans' attitude.

Suggested reading "Goodbye Darkness" by William Manchester, a former US Marine Corps Sergeant's personal account of his war in the Pacific and "The Knights of the Bushido" - an account of the horrors and barbarity of prison camp life under the Japs.

And our war veterans' attitude will not change until their Emperor, a mere mortal like the rest of us, apologises, and they are compensated. Why can't the Jap Government pay up? You never answered that one, Mr Progressive.

Besides, if you have a problem with being British, Mr Progressive, why don't you take your hook to Japan, with your £35K job, BMW and free health insurance, and then maybe you could come back here for your two free holidays a year.

I don't have a problem with being a Brit, or what my forebears have fought for and sacrificed for me. Neither am I prejudiced or blinkered against today's Japan or Germany.

But the fact remains that our war veterans never had an apology off Hirohito and have never been compensated. (Even if they were our own scrooge Government would slap a tax on it as earned income.

Oh, by the way, Mr Progressive, it was two atom bombs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not one as stated in your letter, which caused a 'load of old fools', your words not mine, to celebrate in 1995. And with good reason too, because but for those two atom bombs to bring the conflict in the Far East to a swift conclusion, Japan, with her then kamikaze like mentality, would have fought on, sustaining millions of more casualties, soldiers and civilians, before finally bowing to defeat.

Who was it who pumped millions in to the Jap economy to get it off its knees after the last war, Mr Progressive? It was the Americans, who you can ultimately thank for your present day good fortune, ironic isn't it?

Ex-Para

(Name and address supplied)

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.