THE OLIVE BRANCH

Louise Steinman’s “War, Remembrance and a Flag” (Aug. 6) was so deeply moving that it brought me to tears. Returning that flag to Japan was a beautiful gesture of peace. The gracious response of the people of Suibara was touching.

Thank you for publishing this heartwarming story.

Mary Drenick

Playa del Rey

Steinman’s article had me, a combat veteran of World War II, an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, reading with tears in my eyes.

I was similarly moved when our division visited England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands last year for the D-Day anniversary ceremony at Normandy. We lived with a host family in each country. It was a beautiful experience. I have never kissed, hugged or cried so much in all my life. These people still appreciate 50 years of peace.

Now I’m looking forward to visiting Germany and Austria to shake hands or hug my former enemies.

Charles A. Powell

La Mirada

I, too, landed at Lingayen Gulf and worked as a Japanese interrogator with the 25th Division. While in combat, I acquired an old sword that had belonged to a high-ranking Japanese officer. I removed its handle and determined that it was made in the Muromachi Period (1333-1575).

Through the Tokyo police, I arranged to meet slain officer’s older brother. I expressed regret for the loss of his brother and, bowing, presented him with the sword. He thanked me in polite and formal Japanese. He examined the sword closely, removed the handle and examined the writing on the blade. “This sword is ours,” he said, and tenderly reassembled it and mounted it on the rack in the tokomoma , an alcove for valued articles.

Suddenly, he said, “Wait!” He turned, took the sword off the rack and said he wanted me to have it. The reason, he told me, was that the Japanese government had just issued an order that all swords be turned in for demolition. And as a man of honor, he would have felt obliged to do so.

“It will be in safekeeping,” I said, “until the climate between our two countries improves, at which time I will without fail return it to you”--which I did, when the Japanese government once again allowed heirloom swords to be kept in homes.

Baldwin T. Eckel

Upland

Revisionist history can appear in many forms. One of the more subtle examples was Steinman’s line about Japanese veterans: “I look at these aging men. I wonder what horrors they endured or even perhaps, on the Emperor’s orders, may have inflicted.”

The implication, of course, is once again that the Japanese were the real victims, and if they happened to have committed any of those well-documented atrocities and rampant acts of butchery, it was only because they were forced to do so.

Bull!

Barry Cook

Newhall

By refusing to demonize the Japanese as wartime propaganda encouraged most Americans to do, Steinman risked reviving, rather than laying to rest, her uneasiness over her late father’s lingering hostility toward things “Oriental.” But her personal act of courage didn’t not go unrewarded, for by returning the flag to the soldier’s family and being ceremonially honored by the town of Suibara, she experienced a rare moment of human fellowship, one that crosses cultural lines while continuing to respect them.

As a Japanese American, I am particularly gratified that Steinman offered a balanced, timely corrective to the numbing patriotic cant that has marked so much of the 50th anniversary commemorations of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Those who continue to speak in support of the bombing should be required to confront, as Steinman managed to do, the actual human faces of all who suffer in war.

George Uba

South Pasadena

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Steinman’s article implied that when war ends, the nations of the world hae to get on with life. But that’s not a suggestion that history should be ignored or its less pleasant features be covered up.

Young Japanese should be taught the truth about how their country behaved during World War II, just as Germans are being told the ugly truths about the Nazi regime-- and as young Americans are, belatedly, being informed about their country’s mistreatment of Native Americans and African Americans.

But while it is one thing to learn about the past, it is another to wallow in it. That, too, can produce tragic consequences. Past hurts, some of them dating back several centuries, are the stuff that unending vendettas are made of. The former Yugoslavia is our current example.

Abraham Lincoln asked his countrymen to bind the nation’s wounds. Sometimes. that means not looking back.

CLARENCE B. SANTOS

Cerritos