Japan’s Denial
Japan’s refusal to acknowledge and apologize for the atrocities it committed during the second world war only incite anger, boycotts and riots across the countries that were brutalized by Japan, most vocally and destructively, in China and Korea. China estimates that 35 million Chinese were killed or wounded during the Japanese occupation from 1931 to 1945. Japan’s revisionist history textbooks refer to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre – in which at least 300,000 civilians were slaughtered by Japanese troops – as an “incident” in which “many” Chinese were killed. Whitewashing history and refusing to sincerely apologize provokes boycotts of Japanese goods, destructive protest marches, riots and attacks on Japanese people and property in China and Korea. “A nation that forgets its past has no future” said Winston Churchill.
Unclassified U.S. documents reveal former Japanese leaders wanted atomic weapons as early as the 1960’s. The repeated demand of Japan’s nationalists to amend the Peace Constitution so that Japan can retool its formidable industrial base into a weapons industry threatening its neighbors and possibly triggering an unprecedented arms race and another war is of legitimate concern to its neighbors.
A hospital in Haikou, China has hung a sign outside its entrance forbidding Japanese from entering unless they apologize for the Japanese army’s treatment of “comfort women” during World War II. Historians said at least 200,000 women, mostly Korean but also from China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels. A petition with 550,000 signatures was handed to the Japanese government by four former sex slaves in 2005. Violence Against Women in War Network Japan, was set up in Japan in 1998 by Japanese women. It’s head, Rumiko Nishino, cannot sleep in her own home because of the threats she constantly receives. The organization opened a single room museum with partitions bearing the tales of comfort women.
The annual visits by Japanese prime ministers and parliamentarians to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor Japan’s 2.5 million war dead – including 1,068 war criminals from World War II who were secretly enshrined there in 1978 – must stop. Gen. Tojo Hideki – Japan’s war-time leader and its most notorious war criminal – is among 14 Class-A Japanese war criminals that were also enshrined on parchments at Yasukuni in 1978. The visits are in defiance of a Japanese court ruling that declares the visits unconstitutional. “I will continue to visit,” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said shortly after the Fukuoka District Court handed down its ruling. Alternatively, remove the war criminals and return them to their original resting ground. The visits merely rekindle memories of the horrors of Japanese atrocities during the war.
Germany has acknowledged and apologized for the Holocaust and the pain and suffering it caused during World War II. America, at the dawn of the new millennium apologized to African-Americans for the institution of slavery and the practice of lynching blacks. And Pope John Paul II apologized for the misdeeds of the Catholic Church over the previous 2,000 years. Why can’t Japan apologize?
America’s decision to back Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council in 2005, is just another example of America’s immature and unrealistic foreign policy. Millions across Asia oppose Tokyo’s pursuit of the seat and are at a loss as to why America does.
If Japan wants to be part of an integrated world community in the international arena, it can no longer play by its own solitary rules. It has to stop acting like “a divine nation with the emperor at its core” -- or maybe it will return to that.
Japan’s bid for a seat on the decision-making body of any international organization has to be rejected until Japan first acknowledge its World War II crimes and rethinks its infrastructure and overall global trading strategies. Only then can it become a true global partner. In the words of Richard Nixon, “If they want to be taken seriously in the world and share fully in the fruits of global stability, they must use their vast power to promote the interests of other countries as well as their own.”
Unclassified U.S. documents reveal former Japanese leaders wanted atomic weapons as early as the 1960’s. The repeated demand of Japan’s nationalists to amend the Peace Constitution so that Japan can retool its formidable industrial base into a weapons industry threatening its neighbors and possibly triggering an unprecedented arms race and another war is of legitimate concern to its neighbors.
A hospital in Haikou, China has hung a sign outside its entrance forbidding Japanese from entering unless they apologize for the Japanese army’s treatment of “comfort women” during World War II. Historians said at least 200,000 women, mostly Korean but also from China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels. A petition with 550,000 signatures was handed to the Japanese government by four former sex slaves in 2005. Violence Against Women in War Network Japan, was set up in Japan in 1998 by Japanese women. It’s head, Rumiko Nishino, cannot sleep in her own home because of the threats she constantly receives. The organization opened a single room museum with partitions bearing the tales of comfort women.
The annual visits by Japanese prime ministers and parliamentarians to the Yasukuni Shrine to honor Japan’s 2.5 million war dead – including 1,068 war criminals from World War II who were secretly enshrined there in 1978 – must stop. Gen. Tojo Hideki – Japan’s war-time leader and its most notorious war criminal – is among 14 Class-A Japanese war criminals that were also enshrined on parchments at Yasukuni in 1978. The visits are in defiance of a Japanese court ruling that declares the visits unconstitutional. “I will continue to visit,” Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said shortly after the Fukuoka District Court handed down its ruling. Alternatively, remove the war criminals and return them to their original resting ground. The visits merely rekindle memories of the horrors of Japanese atrocities during the war.
Germany has acknowledged and apologized for the Holocaust and the pain and suffering it caused during World War II. America, at the dawn of the new millennium apologized to African-Americans for the institution of slavery and the practice of lynching blacks. And Pope John Paul II apologized for the misdeeds of the Catholic Church over the previous 2,000 years. Why can’t Japan apologize?
America’s decision to back Japan’s bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council in 2005, is just another example of America’s immature and unrealistic foreign policy. Millions across Asia oppose Tokyo’s pursuit of the seat and are at a loss as to why America does.
If Japan wants to be part of an integrated world community in the international arena, it can no longer play by its own solitary rules. It has to stop acting like “a divine nation with the emperor at its core” -- or maybe it will return to that.
Japan’s bid for a seat on the decision-making body of any international organization has to be rejected until Japan first acknowledge its World War II crimes and rethinks its infrastructure and overall global trading strategies. Only then can it become a true global partner. In the words of Richard Nixon, “If they want to be taken seriously in the world and share fully in the fruits of global stability, they must use their vast power to promote the interests of other countries as well as their own.”
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 9:24 PM
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