This week’s anniversary of the bombing of Darwin offers pause to consider how far we’ve come.

I really appreciated the nuanced and appropriate commemoration events held in 2011. We’d just bet our economy on the massive Inpex project, to supply LNG to Japan. I was proud that our city welcomed the consulate General of Japan to the commemoration events, and moved by his solemn contribution, silently laying a wreath on behalf of the people of Japan.

Decades on, while still holding fiercely to local knowledge of the extent of the assault on our city, we had developed a mature relationship with modern Japan.

So I’m disappointed that serious questions about USA war bases in the NT can sometimes be dismissed with glib reference to our shared WWII history.

If we can move forward with a mature relationship with modern Japan, why should our important relationship with the USA be mired in a dated blood-debt narrative?

Our future should be informed by history, not dictated.