LONDON — Elderly residents in a British town are opposing plans to set up links with a community in Japan, claiming that memories of World War II are still too raw.
Barbara Pagett, a member of the local council in Lytham St. Annes, which lies in northwest England near Blackpool, has written to newspapers saying those behind the scheme should consider the suffering that was meted out to Allied prisoners of war by the Japanese.
She says her claims that it is "not yet long enough" to forget Japanese atrocities have struck a chord with the town's pensioners, many of whom can vividly recall the war.