Whether or not the attack on Pearl Harbor was treachery or straight-up war, or whether our dropping nuclear bombs on Japan at the other end of that war was butchery or straight-up war, it’s more than three generations ago; the folks responsible are mostly gone.

No apology needed, said 96-year-old Alfred Rodrigues, a US Navy veteran who survived what President Franklin D Roosevelt called a “date which will live in infamy.”

“War is war,” Rodrigues said as he looked at old photos of his military service. “They were doing what they were supposed to do, and we were doing what we were supposed to do.”

This sailor who was there understands the thing.

It’s past time to move on, especially for the press, whose interns seem to have been having trouble—ever since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Pearl was set up—finding things for their scribes to write about.