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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Thursday, April 29th, 2004 01:17 am

Remember the five Japanese volunteer aid workers taken hostage in Iraq and recently freed?  They're back home in Japan now, where the Japanese government has denounced them as "anti-government, anti-Japan," and they and their families are being deluged with hate mail.  Not only is the Japanese government taking credit for their release, the Japanese Foreign Office apparently plans to bill them ¥2.37 million "to cover expenses incurred in their release."

Presumably, their patriotic duty to Japan would have been to be killed by their captors (who had threatened to burn them alive if Japan did not withdraw its troops from Iraq).

Thursday, April 29th, 2004 06:18 am (UTC)
No, they were expected to avoid being in Iraq in the first place. They had been warned that Iraq was a dangerous place, and the fact they went there anyway is considered by other Japanese to have been very selfish, very inconsiderate to everyone else in their country.