I would like to add what I think is an important point to VL's letter, Japan must admit the blood on its hands , in which he states that Japan is 'now' attempting to whitewash its brutal past in its school textbooks.

In fact, this whitewash is nothing new. I taught English at two Japanese universities from 1988 to 1992 and in the early 1980s, knew a number of Japanese nationals in the US.

My university students and the Japanese friends I knew in the US all had one belief in common: that the war Japan had fought against the US from 1941 to 1945 was purely a result of Americans being evil racists. End of story.

They had never heard of the Nanking Massacre , in which tens of thousands of Japanese troops went on a rampage, raping and murdering every woman they could find and eventually slaughtering at least 100,000 civilians.

When confronted with the facts of the Bataan Death March and other prisoner-of-war atrocities, they would respond: 'But this was the Samurai/Bushido code . Japanese soldiers could not understand enemy troops who surrendered'!

Now and then, groups of Japanese socialists travel around the world demanding an apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They should humbly apologise to the world first.

Kindly also allow me to mention Dr Syed Alwi Ahmad's excellent letter What ails Muslims in Malaysia , the points of which are well-taken. But as an American with extensive ties to Malaysia, I would like to clear up one minor reference Syed Alwi made to the Supreme Court in the US.

There has never been any question of the legality of 'enforcing' religion in the US since it became a sovereign nation; such a notion has always clearly been outlawed by the US Constitution and has never been debated seriously.

What has been debated is the occasional tendency of states (eg, California or Florida) and local governments to step over the line in encouraging religion.

US authorities are not allowed to do that, as the First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion ..."

The Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, and especially Thomas Jefferson, made it clear that this phrase meant there must and always be a 'wall of separation between the church and state'.

It is this idea - and the first law of its kind 200 years ago - that has been consistently upheld by the US Supreme Court.