CARLSBAD, Calif. — As a survivor of Imperial Japan's infamous prisoner-of-war camps, forced labor at a Mitsui coal mine in Fukuoka and the horrors of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, I know anti-Americanism when I see it. Some say the ruling Democratic Party of Japan is anti-American. I know that it is not.
A recent Washington Post editorial identified a DPJ member of the Upper House as a denier of 9/11 facts, and thus came to the grand conclusion that he and the DPJ are anti-American and untrustworthy allies. Although the lawmaker's view of 9/11 is troubling, it is a minor one and is not shared by other DPJ members I have met.
More important, neither this lawmaker nor any of the DPJ's actions show contempt for, or distrust of, Americans. Indeed, it is through the DPJ that justice for Americans brutalized as POWs and ignored as survivors will soon be attained. This was impossible through decades of Liberal Democratic Party rule.
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