re: Did our grandparents think the Germans and Japanese deserved forgiveness?

I have watched many WWI And WWII movies. I watched german and Japanese and almost every countries version. I would read the close captions and I genuinely felt sad for the soldiers dying. All were men fighting for their countries. most were young and had a family back home.

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Did our grandparents think the Germans and Japanese deserved forgiveness?

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After they were mentored, in the case of the Japanese by multiple fission bombs and innumerable fire bombings that killed more than both nuclear weapons.

My grandfathers and most all of my friends grandfathers hated the "Japs" with a white hot passion until the day they died.

First of all, forgiveness is not about who deserves it. No one does. But as to your specific question, my grandparents never talked about that with me. It just didn't come up. I'll just speak for myself. When the Word of God says to love our enemies, I think it's pretty clear what our grandparents, and ourselves, should believe about forgiving the people you mentioned. That doesn't mean we sit back and accept what they did and not seek justice, and do what is necessary to protect our freedom from our enemies, in any situation where we are attacked, or under the threat of attack.

But when all is said and done, we have to forgive what has been done. Forgiveness is not condoning the acts. I think sometimes people (not necessarily yourself) confuse forgiveness with acceptance of one's sins. But that isn't the case. Earthly justice is still in order, but praying for the souls of our enemies and letting go of hatred is necessary for the well-being of our own souls.

My Pop was in the Philippines, Okinawa, and among First Boots in Japan. He would never talk about it with me, but he did tell my niece that Okinawa was brutal and beyond understanding when interviewed for her high school report project. In his last few months of Dementia, he was obviously haunted about something on Okinawa as a 17 year old, but would clam up. I heard from an uncle it may have involved some of the items mentioned in posts above.

He did business with many Japanese from the 1950s to retirement; he never spoke ill of them.

As an aside: Army (Recruiters?) came to my 6th grade assembly and handed out various stickers. I thought the Air Cav sticker was cool so I got a few. My mom told me years later my Dad did not sleep a wink for a few days after.

I realized in my teens that it was likely the only reason I was even here was because of The Manhattan Project.