Japanese Royal Couple’s Visit

* In an article about the visit of the emperor and empress of Japan (“Royal Visit Gives Show of Respect,” June 23) an older Nisei expressed regret about the loss of allegiance to social values, once a part of Japanese culture. In particular, one Confucian teaching was cited: “Be dutiful to your parents, true to your friends, study hard, cultivate the arts and work for the public good.”

Restate that in the first person as a pledge of good citizenship and let it be used in place of the Pledge of Allegiance in school grades K though eight. Acknowledging that those who will wrap themselves in the flag, given any cause, will object, at least let it be used in grammar school whenever the pledge to the flag is recited.

I suppose I fantasize. Those phrases, “cultivate the arts” and “work for the public good” will be classified by some right-wing, self-anointed protectors of the American way as radical socialist notions that will threaten our God-given national character.

Too bad. For a minute I thought I was onto something.

JOHN M. FRETER

Yucca Valley

* To set the record straight in “Protests and Praise Greet Royal Visitors” (June 22), I would like to point out there was a similar protest when Hirohito visited here in 1975. I was one of the protesters taking the similar route to present a protest/demand to the Japanese Consulate in Little Tokyo. Japanese soldiers killed my grandmother, who was blind and fragile and was left behind when we were fleeing to the woods from them. They sprayed down the slopes with machine guns from above the mountains.

The same day, they burned down our house. Within a month thereafter my grandfather died because of the losses to the family. My grandfather was an American citizen who had returned to China to retire after an abdominal surgery. My father was in the United States at that time and I was born a U.S. citizen. I had witnessed the brutality of Japanese soldiers.

Japan still does not have the guts to admit the wrongs it has done to millions of people, and to make it worse, some Japanese officials have tried to distort history and lie.

JOHN W. WONG

Arcadia