Quote:

 A week or more of celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944, with royals and presidents hob-nobbing in northern France on the big day. This time left and right are united: this was a Good War. The US and the British were definitely the Goodies, and the Germans were the Baddies. The Goodness of the war is proved by the fact that it made the world safe for Democracy.

This is excellent stuff Amos and well said.  But nobody  seems to be talking much about the "other" war...I mean with Japan.  Or is this being saved up for next year when we can celebrate the wonderful dropping of the Atomic  Bombs which saved so many  lives which  would have been lost needlessly had they not been dropped and the war had just dragged on and on, as bourgeois apologists constantly tell us? 

Or doesn't the war in the East count for much?  Possibly not. After  all  it was mainly colored people involved, "coolies" so to speak, and it was they who suffered the most.  American soldiers suffered too of course,  don't forget that, but then they were facing a merciless enemy who wouldn't or daren't surrender, terrified of the Emperor,  and who utilized disgusting and very foreign and far-eastern systems of  torture  and out-and-out exploitation of slave labour in its appalling prison camps, the like of which had never been seen before.  

That the Japanese finally lost the war was another good thing for democracy like beating  Hitler, because the  triumphant US  was able to forcefully impose democracy on the Japs like it or not.  And how clever the yanks  were in keeping on the Emperor and his "Holy Family" as figure heads of the new Democratic government, despite the Emperor's support and leadership of their power hungry war effort, pillaging China non-stop  in the thirties and their disgusting out-and-out imperialism the like of which took the world by surprise; not to mention the cowardly attack on Pearl Harbour.  Such lying deceit!   Still they learned their lesson.   In fact they learned it too well, becoming our  business rivals  so to speak, with all their new technological gadgets and  their oriental cunning for stealing other people's innovative and commercial ideas and cornering the market first. But that's another story. 

But perhaps after all this is a good reason for not remembering "the war in the East" for it appears as if the conquered came out best in some ways, though of course their economy is struggling now.  But then so is ours.  And then of course there's India and Burma and the Great British Raj: Land of Hope and  Glory, Mother of the Free and so on. All lost now though. All just a memory.  Is this why we aren't talking so much about our glorious victories in the Far  East?  Or are we just saving it up for next year?