But in this day and age with info at our fingertips, they can no longer hide under rugs.
True, but in Japan I don't think they even talk about it at school. We had a Japanese officer on our ship for half of our last deployment and he didn't seem to have a great deal of knowledge - even as an officer in the JGSDF (Japanese Ground Self Defense Force). The internet is only there for those who actually want to look for the knowledge. The Japanese do, however, like their WWII models. Not sure how much the Japanese modeling community gets into the history behind the giant Yamato battleship model they are building.
But here I read so often that also for example the VI corps combat engineer veterans did not like to talk about their active time.
That seems to be true for most people who have been through a long tough war like that. I was dating a girl in college whose father had been in Vietnam. When I went to their house over Christmas he asked me about what I did in the Marines (I was in the reserves at the time) and then he started talking to me about what he did in the Army in Vietnam. Later, my girlfriend said with great amazement she had never heard those stories before. I would imagine that tendency to not talk is even truer when a) your side loses or b ) you've done something that you are ashamed of (or at least is considered by many to be wrong). The only "safe" place a lot of soldiers feel comfortable talking is around others who have gone through the same thing. That's why veterans’ organizations are so popular.
Speaking of soldiers talking amongst themselves, I am reading a new book called "Soldaten". It is an analysis of the secret recordings made of German POWs. It promises to be interesting, but I am not making a lot of headway in the book so I can't give my own review at the moment. (Perhaps on my next deployment I will get it done.) If you look at the Amazon reviews, it seems it is almost a perfect bell curve of opinion. There are 7, 4, 2, 3, and 7 votes for 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 stars, respectively.