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Pear Harbor Vets Reconcile in Hawaii
Not all veterans can bring themselves put the past behind them. For some, the memories are too painful and their loyalty to fallen comrades too strong for them to reach out.
Don Stratton, a USS Arizona sailor who suffered burns over 60 to 70 percent of his body, said embracing the Japanese who carried out the attack is out of the question.
  Pearl Harbor survivor John A. Rauschkolb, 85, right, meets for the first time former Japanese Navy aviator Takeshi Maeda, 85, during the opening ceremony for Pearl Harbor's 65th anniversary symposium at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort, Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006 in Honolulu. Maeda's torpedo plane bombed the USS West Virginia which Rauschkolb was aboard on on Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia) (Marco Garcia - AP) 
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"I don't stand beside them. I don't sit beside them. I don't shake hands with them," Stratton said. "There's a thousand men out there on that ship that lost 65 years of their life and I'm sure they would not shake hands with them."
Over 1,100 died aboard the Arizona, accounting for almost half of the 2,390 Americans killed that day.
Maeda has been trying to make amends since 1991, when he and a few other Japanese Pearl Harbor veterans flew to Hawaii for the 50th anniversary of the attack.
He's since become friends with dozens of Pearl Harbor survivors, including many who have visited him in Japan. When in Honolulu, Maeda always pays his respects at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, where his friend Richard Fiske, another USS West Virginia survivor, was buried after his death two years ago.
"War is between countries. It has nothing to do with us as individuals. We have no quarrel," Maeda said. "So when the war ends, of course you should make up."
Japanese dive bomber pilot Zenji Abe, 90, led the push for reconciliation when he visited Hawaii with Maeda and other Japanese veterans in 1991. He said he wanted to apologize for bombing Oahu before the Japanese government declared war.
Japan's aviators took off from their aircraft carriers that morning believing their government had already delivered the declaration, Abe said. Striking before doing so was dishonorable and went against Japanese traditions of "bushido" or the way of the samurai, Abe said.
"Even if you are executing an early morning attack, you may not hurt your opponent if he is sleeping. You must make him stand and then go at him with your sword. This is bushido," Abe said. The assault "violated our nation's ideals. I felt bad," he said.
To atone, Abe asked Fiske _ the West Virginia survivor who also became Maeda's friend _ to place two roses on the USS Arizona Memorial on his behalf each month.
Fiske continued the ritual for 12 years until he died.
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