For many Americans, Memorial Day is to remember those who have died to keep this nation free and democratic for more then two centuries. Some tend to limit the remembrance to those who died in our most recent wars, while Obama remembered those going back to the Civil War at Arlington. I try to at least remember those who fought before even that, including my ancestor who was in the revolution, or the later one who fought with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans.

But as we remember our dead, others remind us that the world is not at peace even after all these sacrifices. In North Korea, another missile test was done in violation of the UN. Russia this week also essentially threatened Poland and Romania because of the deployment of Anti-Ballistic Missiles. China is still moving forward in its base building in the South China Sea with many expecting it to ignor the UN if that body rules against its actions. The seizing of a chinese fishing boat by Indonesia Monday will not help in this matter. Why do I expect more sales of my old book on nuclear weapons by November.

Obama's visit to Hiroshima did what he wanted it to do, open old wounds and bigotry's. He went to Hiroshima as the inferior he is viewed as by elements in Japanese culture that still exist today to make a statement on how the bombing should not have been done. Obama then met with Hiroshima survivors and then talked about how they will soon be gone, and their memory of the event then lost.  The Story of Hiroshima he says must never be forgotten,

But everything else must to forgotten. Has Obama ever met jewish death camp survivors who are equally passing into history. Is not their memory of events equally worth remembering to prevent it happening again. One has to wonder how Obama truly feels about his White Great Uncle who liberated a death camp just months before Hiroshima. The man who Obama said in 2008 spent six months in the attic after he returned to the US, harmed by what he saw in that one camp. What about what he saw in comparison to the now all important memories of the Hiroshima survivors.

They say that in Japan Pearl Harbor is less important then Hiroshima because the Japanese took care to not bomb American civilians deliberately.  Is that also true of Nanking in China, or the brutality shown to the civilians in Manila where over 100,000 civilians died. Obama mentioned thousands of Koreans killed in Hiroshima. Surprisingly no one mentions that to the Japanese government there were no Korean survivors of Hiroshima. Why? Because the government doesn't want to pay any support or reparations to those who were forced to work in Japanese factories during the war. 

In 2007 ago President Abe formally apologized for the bombing of Nanking and other attacks made against Mainland China because it supposedly legitimized the later American bombings Japan. Not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki but Tokyo as well in which over 100,000 people died in one night. Obama said "Death Came From The Sky" at Hiroshima, a variation of "The Night Hell Fell from the Sky" used to describe the Tokyo raid of March 1945. No one wants to now remember how Abe then took it back in 2013 by stating the American bombing missions violated international norms, and then stated that the American raids may not have actually violated any international laws of the times. By doing so Abe took back his apology since Japan also didn't violate any international laws. But still Obama was expected to apologize. 

A single point needs to be made in all this: The second World War which Japan willingly helped ignite killed over 70 million people. The axis powers that Japan was aligned with killed the lion share at just over 60 million of which 45 million were civilians. In all the careless Allies, so cavalier in our bombing practices, only killed four million axis civilians.