CA BAKEWELL (Letters, April 22) has let sentiment and anti-royalism cloud his logic.
Emperor Akihito of Japan is a head of state whose country over the last 50 years has been a leading industrial power and a good employer of British people.
Whatever the murky past of that nation, this is an essential fact and one that both the present government and the monarchy have understood.
As Shakespeare said in Julius Ceasar: "Let the dead bury the dead." Life has to carry on.
I do sympathise greatly with the former Far East prisoners of war in their fight for compensation, but the moving finger of time has written and has moved on.
Japan has been a major player in South East Asia and without its influence and persuasion, Britain would have found it hard to trade with the 'tiger economies.'
DUNCAN McVEE, Robin Bank Road, Darwen.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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