Kurosawa on War
The words of director Akira Kurosawa indicting America for using the atomic bomb against Japan could easily refer to a well-documented but seldom-mentioned act of genocide by the Japanese army at Nanking, China (“The Conversation--Kurosawa and Garcia Marquez,” June 23).
He had the chutzpah to declare: “At the very least, the country that dropped the bomb should apologize to the Japanese people.” As a Chinese-American born in Nanking, permit me to respond: “At the very least, the country that massacred a quarter of a million civilians should apologize to the Chinese people.”
Kurosawa could launch this enterprise by directing a trilogy acknowledging Japan’s culpability in World War II, starting with “Nanking,” followed by “Pearl Harbor” and concluding with “Bataan.”
BEVIN CHU
Santa Monica
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