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Care to speak plainly? The rhetorical questions are getting tired.
It's pretty obvious what he's saying. Japanese-American soldiers fought for the United States in WW2 under a state that was persecuting them to a degree far in excess of what white Britons 'face', and no-one would deny that they were doing the right thing. If people who were being routinely interned can set that grievance aside, I think white Britons can set aside the grievance of a diversity drive in the RAF.
Thank you. I would argue that they would have been fully justified in not fighting for a state that had been actively persecuting them. In hindsight they seem virtuous and heroic because public opinion ended up reversing course on Japanese internment, but they couldn't be sure that that would happen two decades before the Civil Rights Act. They would have seemed foolish in a different timeline where the U.S. had remained a country where Japanese were seen as un-American and alien.
Same goes for black soldiers in WW2. Why volunteer to fight for a country that sees you as a subhuman? I think black draft dodgers during WW2 would also have been on solid moral ground.
I'm not denying that they were courageous, optimistic, and virtuous, but simply that their virtue was beyond what could be reasonably demanded in the circumstances. And so I think a young white British man would be perfectly justified in giving the finger to a system that apparently actively dislikes and seeks to diminish his kind. Pinging @Gdanning.
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I think I would deny they were doing the right thing.
In fact I think it's pretty easy to establish, according to the American civic religion, that such a conduct isn't in fact, loyal, but traitorous and that they had a firm duty to rebel against tyranny. Especially when the full horror of Imperial Japanese rule was unknown to them.
If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.
With what end? All that would achieve is assisting an unambiguously far, far worse 'tyranny' in the war.
The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation. And it's only unambiguous to you in retrospect.
It must have seemed fairly unambiguous to the Japanese-American soldiers at the time given that they were willing to risk their lives.
I am glad that he managed to rise above man's baser instincts.
I'm not. On account of his sacred duty to his family that supercedes the one to the State.
He did not rise above anything. He took the path of least resistance.
I respect the idea of this sacrifice. But is is still a moral error.
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