Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/09

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Japs stole designs: Offensive and disparging
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 1999 13:04:19 -0500

At 11:29 AM 1999-01-09 -0600, Walter S Delesandri wrote:
>
>I'll ask my uncle or father-in-law what they think and get back 
>to the group...they spent considerable time in the pacific a 
>few years back on an all-expenses paid trip (I believe it was 
>a raffle or something).  

My uncles all fought in Europe, and I haven't a father-in-law, though a
former father-in-law was with the MARS Task Force in Burma.  But both he,
and my father, were volunteers.  No draft for them:  my father, in fact,
served a hitch in the old brownshoe Army before the War, and retired as a
Captain, AUS, in the now, alas!, forgotten Coast Artillery Corps.

And I have another good friend, Alan Nomano (the "god-father" of the Contax
SLR), who WAS drafted, and ended up as a sergeant in the Japanese Army,
first in Manchuria, then in Burma and Singapore.  Although he was a
Cambridge graduate, he missed being commissioned, as his command of the
Japanese language wasn't that good:  he had been raised in the English
language in Ceylon.  But the stories he can tell!

Neither Walter S Delesandri, a bete noire of mine whom I would find
delectations of joy in disparaging, nor I have used the eponym "Jap" to
designate the subjects of the Tenro.  These are decent folks, all in all,
who have occasionally embarked in dishonourable acts, a description which
certainly fits well the citizenry of the US and the subjects of the
Hohenzollerns, though they don't seem to be acknowledging this reality, at
the nonce!

My distaste is for Canon and Nikon et alios, NOT for the Japanese
citizenry.  I have similar distaste for FED and I.G. Farbenindustrie, for
similar reasons.

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!