ullangoo wrote on Aug 21
Different shrines sound absurd to me. It could perhaps be argued that war criminals shouldn't be respected at all - in my opinion a rather arrogant attitude. The alternative is to say: they were punished, they paid for their crimes, now they are like every other soul. I believe we all get the chance to learn what we didn't learn in this life, as "spirits" and/or in our next incarnation. Judging those we don't understand and accept gets us nowhere whether they are alive or dead.

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briangriffith wrote on Aug 21
In WWII, all the beligerants engaged in a race to eliminate their enemies' civilian populations. Those with insufficient air power tried to do this extermination directly on the ground, as in the Japanese army order to shoot all Chinese on sight. The Western allies were able to do this from the air, with their thousand-bomber raids or fire-bombing of German or Japanese cities. Several fire bombing raids on Japanese cities managed to kill more people than the atomic bombs did. The only thing superior about this, compared to what the Japanese did in China, was simply a matter of taste -- that it seems more civilized to slaughter civilians from a distance, with high-tech impersonal devices of mass murder, rather than with guns and swords at close quarters.At present we have the USA and Israel trying to make the same distinction between their own killing and that of their enemies. Terrorists, they say, directly intend to target civilians, while the civilized nations only accidently kill civilians in the crossfire, while trying to kill only the enemy. In my opinion the distinction is totally imaginary. We have already seen the firepower which the Western nations bring to bear on any community which may "harbour" their enemies.