boy this is turning into a history lesson for all of us. I bet if you ask any person of Chinese heritage whos family went thru the war....The rising sun means just about the same thing as teh swastika. WW2 was a war with rascist s overtones as we are seeing here. That goes for both the Americans and the Asians. Symbols will always be with us and will have different meanings thru out time. The christian cross sure was not a symbol of christianity up until hundreds of yrs later. I bet if we could travel back in time with the cross around our necks, we would probably offend Peter Paul and Mary. Now as a African American myself who has never been to Africa......so you can just say I have a "better American tan" than most. I try not to pass judgement, I want to know how and why....although I might get pissed or laugh my Butt off, I wont shy away from ignorance besides there is probably a lesson somewhere in there. This exchange of ideas has been good for all of us and should make all of our modeling projects just that more interesting for allof us. I hear and see those Civil War re-enactments and I think they are neat but just think that I could not truelly be an reenactor for obvious reasons because that was history. But do you think people truelly undersatnd that...thats the beauty of what we do...we get to showcase our love and our talents and teach at the same time. I like what Spitfire Mk1 does , models his planes after a pilot who has made the ultimate sacrifice.