Welcome Sylvaneous,
The x bolt is made in japan and those shrimps killed my uncle in WW 2 and started a world war.
That's why I will not buy a gun from them.
I understand that. But I haven't ever run into someone who said the same thing about Mausers or Sauer or Blaser. Merkel? I don't hear it. Never heard it and I grew up around guns and shooters and I'm 46 now. Maybe its because our family and a lot of our community is of German decent. Further, my sister is a Jew and she owns her SECOND Volkswagen. No internal conflicts.
The old neighbor who taught me how to fly fish had a son who was shot by 3 bullets from a Japanese machine gunner. Old Peck used, to the end of his deer hunting, a sporterized Arisaka 6.5, I crap you not. (Six point five Jap he called it )
My cousin cuts the hair of a WWII vet from the Pacific. From what he saw fighting the Japanese, he has no sympathy for what happens to anyone in or from that country. But why, when more people from my home town fought the Nazis, many bilingual Polish immigrants or their sons, isn't there the animosity for German weapons? Or German stuff. I don't hear it. H&K? Walther? Sig? Glock? (Hitler was Austrian) Mercedes? Porche? Audi? My Brother in law's father fought in Germany (he recently passed away) He had a Mercedes.
I challenged myself that if I had only admiration for all those products from German companies, I shouldn't feel any different with Japanese. That's how I dealt with it. I think it is a completely natural, human, racist impulse against the Japanese. That's what humans do reflexively. They are the 'other' but certainly with something behind it (aka World War freakin' TWO!) AND the japs haven't had their noses rubbed into it like the Germans or been as openly repentant as a people and government.
If this helps you understand what my process to 'reconciliation' is, I'm glad. I understand and honor your opinion.
I don't believe anyone who built my rifle or my citori had anymore animosity against Americans than any other of our allied democracies.
