Disney apologizes for tweet on Nagasaki bombing anniversary

On August 6th 1995 starting at 12 midday I ran from the Atomic Dome in Hiroshima to the ruins of the Urakami cathedral in Nagasaki arriving 3 minutes to midnight on August 8th. As August 9th started I went over to my girlfriend who was waiting nearby and proposed to her. Wonderland and Horrorland can't help but share dates.

Damage has been done. No excuse for idiot tweeter.

seriously since everybody has 355 unbirthdays every year. it would be impossible for Disney to know when every person or country is having a rememberance day, death in the family etc. comon people time to grow a thicker skin and not flinch when somebody says something bad, intentional or not!

WOW. Maybe they should have a Japanese proof-reading these tweets.

Well it says their Japanese unit wrote it. Not sure if that is true or not.

Japan Inc in USA --- employ Americans, don't send Japanese who studied in USA

USA Inc in Japan --- employ Americans who claim they are experts of Japanese culture

Result ..... Japanese bland products dominate USA

Isn't DisneyLand American company? Why apologizing?

Read not the words but the sentiment for that was how it was meant. An un-birthday is just as difficult to translate into Japanese as Mokusatsu is into English and with less disastrous results.

The atomic bombings are not laughing matter. All that radiation could've caused mental disability, which pretty much explains why this country is so fascinated with amusement parks run by gigantic rodents.

How does that explain the same situation in America? Or France? Same amusement parks run by same gigantic rodents ;)

Yeah, that's not really the right use of the word ayamachi. Stick with the English, we all speak it.

Not intentional. An "ayamachi" as they say in Japanese. A mistake , an error.

GIve me a break! As if they actualy MEANT to do it? It was a slip up and not intended to offend anyone. Seems like people just run around looking for something to be ofended over. The timing was wrong. Okay, but it was not interntional.

Do they tweet this every day?

No they don't. Their tweets are generally ads. I would think it does not matter of the translation. The Japan Unit says something like this on 8/9 is not pleasing at all. If this tweet was made by like the US Disney, no one cares so much about it. But Japan Disney did this? it was very poor decision to say the least.

The wording of

was forced to apologize

seems inappropriate to me.

Maybe "had to apologize".

Did they receive so many complaints? It was after all only an unintentional misjudgement to use the phrase from the Japanese sub-titles.

That is not an auto-translation. There is no way an auto-translator would come up with that.

There are auto-translation apps (e.g. Trados or Wordfast) that allow you to pre-register set phrases, very useful for people who translate variations of the same thing over again, and for companies who have different people translating stuff that needs to have standardised phrasing. It could well be that the translation software Disney uses has 'unbirthday' pre-registered as '何でもない日'.

Solution - use a proper flesh-and-blood translator instead of a machine. And watch the calendar.

A Japanese company owns Tokyo Disneyland, they only pay for the name and themes, so I very much doubt that the tweeter was a foreigner as is implied by some posters here.

Chinami ni, Tora Tora Tora was only a box office hit right here in Japan, so they must have really liked it.

I hope nobody here claiming this isn't a big deal is someone who also went into outrage over other PR missteps by Japanese companies, such as the ANA commercials with pilots in whiteface.

The fact is in this era of international communication companies are going to make big mistakes and unintentionally offend huge chunks of their customer base if they aren't meticulously careful about how their messages are tailored to local audiences. Those audiences have a right to complain. The correct response is for the company that made the screw-up to apologize and correct their behavior. If the news thinks it's important enough to report on, they should.

That's exactly what happened here. Disney screwed up, people told them, they fixed it, and the news reported it. Don't be mad because in this one case, the system worked.

what you have to realize is there have been literally thousands and thousands of nuclear tests

How about a little bit of empathy? Just imagine if Sony posted "a day of no importance" on 9/11. Maybe you would be pissed, if there was time in your schedule for something besides boycotting vaccines.

I suppose you wouldn't say "stop with the victim mentality".

Do they tweet this every day? If not, than I would say it was rather poor planning to tweet it that day. If they tweet it regularly then it seems to me someone was foolish enough to tweet it without too much thought, but I doubt they did it of any ill will. Either way Disney is drawing flak for it, apologizing, and I have no doubt from here on in will be a littler stricter about it.

That is not an auto-translation. There is no way an auto-translator would come up with that. I suspect if you watch Alice in Wonderland, you'll find that is the translation they use for happy unbirthday.

hmm - if we need to be correct with the way we treat communication and advertising with minorities, LGBT, religion and such- why not just go the extra mile and look what the auto translator pushed out on the anniversary of one of the only two A bombs of human beings.

easy to stop a mistaken message from ever getting out

if you get upset over "victim" mentality - well having a relative being a-bombed might give you that right- just saying.

as always- war might bring the end to a current aggression- but does not bring peace- only breaking down barriers, fostering understanding between peoples brings peace

think about that

Simple unintentional linguistic goof up. Nothing to see here.

For once I completely agree with Ossan. This is just way too much political-correctness to not offend Japan's victim mentality. Simply ask yourself, do you think the millions of Japanese people who were out on Sunday enjoying lunch or dinner or maybe even a few drinks were giving the day the "importance" it deserves? Come on.

I bet someone at Disney did it on purpose.

Maybe that's just a unintentional mistake, but they could have been more careful.

Twitter is so conducive to this type of thing. Just about anything said in 140 characters will be taken as offensive by someone.

Wait, so it was the Japanese unit who translated it like that? That sounds like one major screw up..

Pearl HarBOR, not HarBOUR. Can you imagine a Japanese company tweeting, in English, the same message on that anniversary?

なんでもない日おめでとう

WOW. Maybe they should have a Japanese proof-reading these tweets.

Perhaps in our social-media-led-politically-correct era we should start prison camps that hold anyone who is unable to guess how words or ideas will be interpreted.

While I generally would agree, anyone who can understand that tweet, and knows the significance of the day on which it was posted, can understand why it caused issue.

Tempest in a teapot.

Perhaps in our social-media-led-politically-correct era we should start prison camps that hold anyone who is unable to guess how words or ideas will be interpreted. All those in the gulag should be sentenced to mandatory lobotomy and have their lips sewn shut for life.

We human beings are flawed and the social media witch hunts of our times are unfortunately controlling the free flow of information and understanding.

Disney is a microcosm of our new group-think at work.

Oops my bad, Pearl Harbour. Anyways, I sure remember japanese folks making a big stink about Disney releasing that kind of film.

Really? I thought that movie did pretty good in Japan.

Pretty poor Disney but I'm sure you have enough money to keep you warm at night

people actually pay attention to tweets? come on...

It was a long time ago and I think the name of movie was Tora Tora Tora.

Oops my bad, Pearl Harbour. Anyways, I sure remember japanese folks making a big stink about Disney releasing that kind of film.

(Not that any of this has to do with the tweet)

Sure it does (especially here in JT). Both incidents drew criticism @ Disney and are WW2 related.

I had to look it up, as the article didn't give the translation. The tweet was: なんでもない日おめでとう. I can see how that would come across as insensitive on the anniversary of the bombings.

clamenzaAUG. 11, 2015 - 08:07AM JST Wc626 - I think you mean "Pearl Harbour". Tora Tora Tora was a 1970's film.

And I think you need to turn your snark receptors on.

Wc626 - I think you mean "Pearl Harbour". Tora Tora Tora was a 1970's film. (Not that any of this has to do with the tweet)

@BosauL Are you referring Micky and Minny???

Disney quickly deleted the tweet on Sunday, following a string of online criticism.

Years ago, Disney outraged japan by releasing, "Tora, Tora, Tora". Featuring a young Ben Afleck.

Ossan,

It was a skrew up. Companies are good at controlling their image and messaging and all, right? So they are supposed to be on top of things of things like that. So, it wasn't merely linguistic, because Disney should have ensured that such linguisitc mistakes don't happen. And they did not, because, and lets be honest, Americans don't really think all that much about the begining of August being, well, y'know, Nuke Japan Day.

And, in truth, most Japanese don't think much about it either.

But many in Japan like to promote the idea that the first part of August, 1945, was the most importnat thing about WWII because, y'know, baptismal fire's of Hiroshima bla bla bla.

So, yeah, Disney should know better.

The atomic bombings are not laughing matter. All that radiation could've caused mental disability, which pretty much explains why this country is so fascinated with amusement parks run by gigantic rodents.

The company’s Japanese unit, referencing the animated film

What? No one in the "Japanese unit" speaks Japanese? It's unclear from this article as to whether the Tweet was generated in the U.S. or in Japan. Of course, it also remains unclear as to what purpose Twitter serves in the first place.

Simple unintentional linguistic goof up. Nothing to see here.