Ed Bardoe's Dec. 8 letter, "Japanese disclosure too, please", was not only crass; it also showed a surprisingly limited understanding of people who had the misfortune to be subject to an atomic bomb attack, or to be descended from those who were.
The fact of the matter is that Bardoe's beef actually lies with the Japanese government's inability, and even downright refusal, to show real remorse for what it did during its colonization of Asia in the early 20th century. The blame for this does not lie with the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and his lambasting those people as "complainers" is particularly tasteless.
I would venture to suggest that, if anyone, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are more than qualified to criticize the U.S. National Park Service's bid to pay homage to America's production and deployment of what would now be conveniently referred to as WMDs (weapons we all know that the U.S. government detests unless they sport a "Made in the U.S.A." tag).
I wonder if Bardoe has a similarly disparaging view of people around the globe who have had the misfortune to find themselves at the business end of America's ever-reaching military might.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.