Japanese people ??? thoughts and feelings ?

Read "FlyBoys" by James Bradley. Chapter 2 was one of the most eye-opening 19 pages I've ever read about WWII. It allowed me to appreciate that both sides were barbaric ... both sides bear a great deal of guilt ... but that our actions and attitudes were the product of hundreds of years of history. In Japan's case, you have to factor in the teachings of Shinto, the revulsion the people had for Christian missionaries insulting their religion, years of isolation from the world (on purpose), the heritage of the samurai, the ambitions of the emperors and, as in Germany, a government that used all of this heady stuff to brainwash its young people into thinking they were elite superhuman warriors fighting a horde of subhuman beasts. We all tend to embrace what we're taught until our beliefs are challenged by outside ideas ... and in Japan at that time, there were no outside ideas. Chances are, if you and I had grown up there and then, we would have been hating the barbarian enemy and laying down our lives for the emperor just like everybody else. Seek understanding ... anger doesn't do us any good.