Letter to the editor, the Sacramento Bee, January 21, 1996:

Re "Pearl Harbor Day," letters, January 7: Some responsibility for the bombing of Pearl Harbor must rest with the United States and Europe.

Japan was pretty much an isolationist country until the U.S. Navy forced open its borders in 1854. The Japanese knew how Asians were being exploited by their European colonial masters, and about the treatment of nonwhites in America. They reasoned that the best form of self-defense was to become like the Western powers. This brought about one of the most spectacular examples of modernization in history.

Japan also believed, based on European expansionism, that to be a modern Westernized culture with a thriving economy one must harshly exploit others. The Nazis provided an example of a group which considered itself victimized by the wealthier around them.... In the end, Pearl Harbor was bombed, not as a prelude to occupying America, but to get needed materials to overrun Asia.

I do not want to sound insensitive, but perhaps we should give Pearl Harbor a rest. This would give the rest of us, the living, a needed break.

—Steven Yoshida
Davis

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