Many years ago, the Summer of 1975 to be exact, I was drinking in the Cardinal Room of the Richelieu Hotel in San Francisco, as was my practice at that time.
I was imbibing with a businessman whom I had shared many a drink over the years with. He was from Japan and stayed at the Jack Tar Hotel across the street.
Surprisingly over several years of casual conversations, as his business brought him to San Francisco often and I resides there, nothing seemed to be off the table. And we were pretty open until that fateful night.
We we’re approaching the 30th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He stated that he felt that the United States should apologize for dropping atomic bombs on Japan.
This is one time I kept my cool and was equally thankful I was not in my cups. I said that I would ask my country to apologize for those two attacks and would personally apologize for them provided the following:
The Japanese government apologized, and accepted responsibility, for 1) Pearl Harbor, 2) the takeover of the Philippines, 3) the Bataan Death March, and 4) the 1/3 off the American POW’s who died in custody by the Japanese authorities. (You will note, I kept it focused specifically to American issues on purpose and did not speak of atrocities in China and other places in Asia).
Sadly that was the end of a friendship, casual though it was. The owners of the bar at the time, WWII vets, bought me a drink.
