History Student
Occupation: Financial Services
Location: West Coast, USA
Married: Yes
Kids: Yes
Hobbies: Outdoorsman, reading history, debate, technology, collecting edged weapons
Japanese Experience: 18+ years
Favorite Places: Cordova, Alaska & Miyajima, Japan
Pet Peeve: Lack of clean socks
Second Pet Peeve: Japanese-American Reperations Movement and their cronies (They're American, not Japanese - trust me.)
Favorite Quote:
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."
Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) Address at Harrow School, October 29, 1941
Second Favorite Quote:
"Don't be stupid. You are not Japanese. You are American. So don't lecture me about what it means to be Japanese and how I should react to the word 'Jap'. Modern Japanese don't care about WWII and do not associate the word with racism and war atrocities such as the Nanking Massacre, which makes your little historical anecdote about American internment camps sound like a Sunday picnic.
For we Japanese, it's just a short form of 'Japan' and 'Japanese' equivalent to 'Brit'. If that's a problem for you, if you want to live in the past, if you want to cultivate some kind of a victim complex, if you want to get overly excited about a mere word, regardless of how it's actually used in 2004, we Japanese don't care. The war has been over for 60 years and we Japanese have moved on.
For my part, the discussion is closed. I've got better things to do than entertain a dumb retro-Yank on a bad Jap trip.
Peace and love from a modern Jap journalist in modern Japan."
Satoru "Stanford" Suzuki, Editor-in-Chief, Cyber Diver News Network in response to a Japanese-American who sent an irate letter condemning his use of the word "Jap" on his website.