Reminds me of the hue and cry back in the mid-late 80's about Japanese language courses- in colleges and universities. (back when I took my two years of Japanese at my local university) It was "OMG WWII, Pearl Harbor, etc...!!!" I just rolled my eyes and ignored all that whinging by WWII era adults and older people. (Strange how those same people weren't making a hue and cry about kids learning German- in high school even. No shouts about how that would turn kids into Nazis, etc... And yes I am implying there was some racism behind the non reaction to high school German language courses, college German and Italian language courses, but freaking out about college Japanese language courses.)
We had a discussion about that in my AP US History class because of the huge, HUGE propaganda depicting the Japanese as deformed individuals who would kill and kill, etc. during WWII. We discovered that unlike the Japanese, the Germans were still white, seeing as a lot of people came from Europe. Japan is different, different culture, different part of the world. Despite the fascist evil, Germans and Italians were seen as misguided and must be placed back on track, by force if necessary.
Edited by shadow_Uzumaki, 09 June 2010 - 09:48 PM.