Misremembering History

We often misremember history.

Sometimes it's funny:

 

You can find Bluto's entire rant which inspired a memorable but "useless and futile gesture" here.

Sometimes it's not so funny.  Here's the same topic as Bluto's rant.  It's taken from Guests of The Ayatollah, Mark Bowden's 2006 book on the 1979-80 Iranian hostage crisis (Bowden also wrote Blackhawk Down and both books are worth reading).  After the American hostages were taken in Tehran by the radical Iranian students, they were subjected to lectures about American history and imperialism (many of them were also beaten, but that's another story).  One of the students most despised by the hostages was a young woman named Nilufar Ebtekar who spoke excellent English acquired when she lived in Philadelphia while her father was working on a Doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.

At one point Ebtekar was lecturing hostage Tom Schaefer on evils of America including the "racist" decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki when Schaefer responded.

"The Japanese started the war, and we ended it," Schaefer said.
"What do you mean, the Japanese started the war?" Ebtekar asked.
"The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so we bombed Hiroshima."
"Pearl Harbor?  Where's Pearl Harbor?"
"Hawaii"
After a moment of silence Ebtekar asked "The Japanese bombed Hawaii?"
"Yep" said Schaefer.  "They started it, and we ended it."

I'm sure you will all be happy to know that the learned Ms. Ebtekar changed her first name to Masoumeh, founded an Iranian Women's NGO Network, became the first female Vice-President of Iran and in 2006 was named by the United Nations Environmental Program as a "Champion of the Earth" (your tax dollars at work!).