The catastrophe in Japan is just that- a catastrophe. What's going on there is a disaster with a scale and scope I cannot even comprehend: thousands dead, millions homeless and without power, tsunami damage that will last into the foreseeable future, and a radiological disaster on par with Chernobyl that is getting worse everyday.
As an American airman, let me make it crystal fucking clear that no one in Japan deserved this, and no American should hold a grudge against the Japanese people for Pearl Harbor. The Japanese people are some of our strongest allies, and every single person I know, including two parts of my extended family, that have been stationed there absolutely adored the country and spoke with the utmost admiration of the people there.
We, the American military, work on a daily basis to relieve as much suffering as we can over there. If the cards had fallen differently, I would have been just arriving on station at Misawa just weeks before the earth shook, and would have been almost in the same situation- luckily, our air bases managed to survive the cataclysm relatively unscathed.
'Never forget' does not mean to embrace racial hatred and pursue endless conflict with and distrust of those whom we have already subjugated. It means to pursue justice to its rightful end: nothing less, and nothing further. That end was achieved around three of my lifetimes ago. If the God damned military can not only forgive and forget the strife of World War II but embrace the aid and support of our erstwhile opposing forces in their time of tragedy, then any American who embraces an ethos of contempt and sadism in their greatest time of need should themselves be alienated and held in contempt.
