Japan Right mobilizes for Yasukuni

James Heartfield Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Aug 9 00:24:24 PDT 2001


I'm not sure that the desire to commemorate Japanese losses on Hiroshima day can be dismissed as 'rightism'. Perhaps if there was more awareness in the US of the race-chauvinism that prepared American public opinion for the use of the A Bomb, the right would not be able to get this foothold on Japanese public opinion.

In message <4.3.2.7.2.20010807080717.00c2a8a0 at hsoak01a.ebay.sun.com>, Brad Mayer <bradley.mayer at ebay.sun.com> writes
>Pardon for the appearance of self-indulgence in "responding" to my own
>post, but a key element was neglected in this highly significant symbolic
>event planned for August 15th (the date of Imperial Japan's WW2 surrender).
>
>Which is, that it is no accident that the Japanese Right chose August 6th,
>the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to post their Yasukuni
>"unity" advertisement. The Right has always shamelessly exploited a
>dangerously exclusive sense of victimhood as cover for it's own
>responsibility for the atrocities, both incendiary and atomic, actually
>committed by the US, due to its needless prolongation of a hopelessly lost
>war. It would seem that holocausts of all sorts are a last refuge for
>righists.
>
>-Brad Mayer
>

-- James Heartfield



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