Ronald Reagan felt a bit of heat through his Teflon coating when he visited a German cemetery where lie the remains of Waffen SS officers, yet it was nothing compared to the rumblings created underground when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi paid homage to Japan’s WWII war dead Monday at Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals convicted by an Allied tribunal are honored.
Americans of a certain age have long forgotten and little note the actions of the Japanese military in a war against such countries as China and Korea that killed untold tens of millions of civilians and brought the world into another age of unrestrained terrorism and massive atrocities. Not so in Asia where the conflict known as the Japanese War has not become as irrelevant as anything happening before last Wednesday tends to become in the US. The memories of events that make Hitler’s atrocities pale in comparison are still strong and far more so by the unwillingness of the Japanese Government to admit their enormities or to teach the history of their imperial aggression as a subject in school.
South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon swiftly summoned Japanese ambassador Shotaro Oshima to complain. According to Xinhua, Ban stated: "We strongly protest the visit to Yasukuni shrine despite our request and strongly urge that it is not repeated,"
Japan’s assault on Korea began in 1910 and the brutal occupation of that country lasted until Japan’s defeat in 1945. China has not forgotten the terror bombings, the mass beheadings and the live burials of hundreds of thousands of civilians by Japanese forces. The Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement which included : “Japanese militarism hurt the Chinese people most in the modern history. Japan, as the party causing the sufferings, has every reason to correctly treat the tragic history and respect the painful feeling and emotions of the victims"
Japan has long sought to emulate the West. Here’s one place they have succeeded.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey man, nice post. Let's not forget the attempted cultural genocide of Korea which included the changing of everyones name from a Korean name to a Japanese Name, the invention of the Rape Camp in China and even, in some cases, cannibalism of captured POWs.
War attrocities happened on all sides, but it's the bizarre unwillingness to say, "We fucked up" that makes this all really disturbing.
I don't blame them for what was really their grandparent's war, but there is simply no reason, except for their religion, that they cannot accept blame as the Germans have done.
Post a Comment