Sure sure, no one minded any of the racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual slurs tossed about in your youth. Everyone was perfectly happy being insulted by anyone at any time, everyone just looked at it as a joke and laughed.
Yep. Because no one was offended, it wasn't like we ran up to japanese and yelled Hey Jap! Hey Gook! This was just slang used in personal conversation. What one might call colloquialisms. There was no hate, no offense intended, it was just part of the parlance of the times.
Just yesterday I was watching a rerun of the old 1975 game show "The Match Game" where the host Gene Rayburn and all six Hollywood panelists were doing "Japanese" imitations "taking like Japs" doing the stereotypical "Jap talk" anyone would recognize as a Jap where you substitute L's for all of your R's, in regards to one of the game questions being asked.
This went on for several minutes, everyone on stage was laughing and the whole studio audience was howling. There were no boos, no tears, no one walked out or filed a lawsuit.
Because back then, people knew how to laugh at themselves. No one took things so serious. The problem isn't familiar slang being taken as a "racial slur," the problem is idiots like you making it such an issue.
Did the term Jap begin as a common term, or was it used as a racial slur and became a common term? How about Gook? Or ***, which is what the thread began with?
Jap was used as a slur during WWII. I don't know if gook has ever been anything but a derogatory word. *** has certainly been used as a slur for a long time in this country.
Maybe "back then" you were in a position to use ethnic or racial slurs without repercussion, so it seemed to you as if everyone was OK with it. Maybe you didn't see or notice people who were offended by the terms. Maybe those people hid the offense they felt. I have no idea. On the other hand, I feel pretty confident that the people those various terms were created to insult didn't all feel happy about their common usage.
Sure, some people might get overly offended. Some people look for offense in everything. But you know, some people are happy to offend and/or remain willfully oblivious to when they give offense.
I wonder what other insults and slurs you think ought to still be used commonly?
You seem to miss the point that originally, slang such as Japs used to be used to UNITE our country against a common enemy, us against them. It helped forge this nation into the strongest nation on the planet. Today, there is no such illusion of unity. Instead, slang is still used, but to divide us. We are divided easily by simply using different standards for different groups, by banning the word n*gg*r (see, I bet I can't even use that here and would be loathe to try) EVEN THOUGH BLACKS ROUTINELY USE IT THEMSELVES, OPENLY, and why? Because they protested that it offended them, yet I see a thousand hateful offensive things thrown about everyday, derisions of Trump, Trump supporters, anyone even remotely thought to be a Trump supporter, etc., republicans, gun owners, religious people, traditional values, yet despite the outcry of protests against such hateful and offensive language, a DIFFERENT STANDARD is used and not another word is thought about it.
Right now, millions and millions of ordinary people are being offended by slang, derision and offensive language, all in the name of protecting another group from offensive language. And we are not even allowed to talk about or debate it.
There is no uniting this country against a common enemy any more. This nation can't even agree who their enemy is. Many of the people in this country think AMERICA is the enemy, its own people, is fighting against itself, and that is why this country is falling.
We pay far more attention to words today than we do our real, concrete, actual problems. And you are the living proof.
www.nytimes.com
You are doing the same thing, so I guess you, too, are living proof of that concept. 
