Just got done watching The Price Is Right game show on TV and a trip to Vietnam was one of the prizes; to Ho Chi Minh City no less which is in North Vietnam. I could almost hear thousands of old vets' jaws drop at once. Seems like the country's collective memory is very short.
I remember my dad's fury over "Made in Japan" stuff in the 1960's. He didn't get over WWII that quickly.
Uh…Ho Chi Minh City is the old Saigon. (South Vietnam) But yeah, I can’t envision myself getting such a vacation since the U.S. already gave me an all expenses paid vacation to Vietnam in ‘68. I’m sure the Price is Right vacation doesn’t provide free ammo, an M-16 and all that good stuff.
It seems that hatred for Russia and China are the only ones that span generations, even though North Vietnam is still heavily influenced by Russia. Leave it to a game show to tell us who our enemies and our allies are. "If they were bad people, Drew Carey wouldn't..."
Yup. "Jap Copy" was a derisive statement, and was the first wave of cheaply made (and inexpensive to buy) foreign goods. My dad also had words I shall not repeat. And as I pointed out in another thread, at one point some Japanese were buying a lot of land & businesses here. I wonder why we never heard a similar backlash over Volkswagens...it was founded by the German Labour Front under the Nazi Party, and used slave labor from the concentration camps. Their first year in the states (1949) saw sales of 2 cars. Only six years later sales topped one million, just 10 years after the end of WWII. I guess that's a way shorter memory here on U.S. soil over [arguably] a more universally hated enemy than Ed's understandable concern over a 50 year old war. I had never thought of it before, but it's actually kind of shocking...and a little disappointing.
IMO, and I have heard said ... One of the biggest differences between Jap & German products , was simpily the fact that many of [us] and many of our [Gi's] looked like the german solider. {or at the very least] we/they looked European. Very few of us then looked Japanese. Not sure how the numbers have changed since ? My dad even said at somepoint , it was like aiming his gun at a neighbor ... he fought in Europe. And he was of German / Austrian descent. Back in the day [as they say] I worked with guys that were in both theaters ... The ones that fought the Jap's in the Pacific .... just plain hated them. I worked with one that was a prisoner in/on the Bataan death march. Don't even mention a Toyoto to him. And last but not least IMO, Japan launched an unprovoked attack on us at Pearl Harbor, killing some 2000+ people. Some civilians. Germany did no such thing.
Oops! I stand corrected. While getting discharged from the Air Force in 1968, I was offered a re-enlistment bonus and re-assignment to the "tropics".
I agree with the "looks like us" factor to a nation full of European immigrants, or even the "grandpa/grandma/aunt/uncle/cousin" affiliation. I mentioned that my father's parents were German immigrants, so I'm fully aware of the "point a gun at one of me" issue. I had not considered that as being a factor in the equation, and yo have a good point regarding Pearl Harbor, which made the Japanese a direct enemy and not just the enemy of an ally.
Vietnam is actually a beautiful country and Vung Tao was the in-country R&R center with a fantastic beach which is a major tourist attraction now. That said, I know a few vets (mostly Remington Rangers I think) who have gone back to view what the country has become which I think is along the same lines as those who go back to visit D-Day sites but….. Not me.
My dad fought in the Pacific, and he didn't like Japanese people. He didn't spend time talking badly about them, perhaps because there wasn't any in the area we lived. The feeling I got was that, while he rarely talked about it, he knew that it was unreasonable to hate all Japanese because of what he experienced during the war, but he still couldn't bring himself to like them. When he said something about how hateful the Japanese were, I commented that they probably didn't like Americans very much either, and that earned me a look that I didn't want to see again. Although his brother was killed in Europe during World War II, he said once that the Germans treated prisoners of war well, as compared to the Japanese. He was a prisoner of the Japanese, and I know that it was a horrible experience. He never forgave the Red Cross because after US troops retook the island he was on, they fed the Japanese, supplied them with candy, and coffee, and charged US troops for a cup of coffee. Since the Japanese had taken any cash that they had on them, the Red Cross had no coffee or anything for US troops. He said they were seemingly there for the Japanese.
Yeah my father in law-in service WW2 , he did not like Red Cross either, but main reason was after natural disasters, people would get billed from RC for helping them.