Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The rape of history

Back on March second, I wrote about Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe and his attempt to undo the apology his country had formerly made to Korea for its crime of forcing thousands of Korean women into brothels for the use of Japanese officers. His claim that it never happened and that the women volunteered to be raped continuously until dead sickened me and infuriated most of Asia which still remembers the widespread atrocities and genocide. Most Americans seem to have forgotten and many aren't sure what the war in the pacific was about other than that it had something to do with Hawaii. There wasn't much of a reaction therefore here in the only country that really could influence the continuing right wing rewrite of history in Japan.

The time therefore is ripe for Abe to further remove himself from consideration as a human being by denying the events that rival and surpass Hitler's holocaust. He claims that the Rape of Nanking never happened. Just like his western counterparts, the professors, the actors, the vermin who tell us Auschwitz was a fat farm, Abe pretends that the photos, the reports, the eyewitness accounts of slaughter so massively repulsive that Hitler's observers were sickened, never happened.

I'm really too emotional to expatiate, and I'm aware that nothing I can do can prevent the memory of so many ruined and destroyed lives from being erased, but I will never buy a Japanese product again and will try as hard as I can to make sure that nothing I ever do will benefit that country until Abe and his neo-fascist supporters meet with the fate too many of his predecessors avoided. I would like to see him hanged or perhaps buried alive like thousands were in Nanjing.

9 comments:

expatbrian said...

Living in Singapore, I have read up on Japanese atrocities during the war and have also read Rape of Nanking. They of course slaughtered, tortured, imprisoned, starved, murdered, raped and even mutilated at least tens if not hundreds of thousands across Asia and the pacific.
Their crimes and style of warfare were so horrendous that the west had to resort to a nuclear weapon to stop it.
By discounting the horrors of the comfort women and other war crimes, Abe has lost what most Japanese treasure most - his HONOR. He has become a dishonorable liar and history will treat him as such. In the past, Japanese men who behaved in a disgraceful manner as Abe has would do the one honorable thing left to them. They would commit suicide to rid the world of their disgrace. Perhaps Abe should consider it.

d nova said...

i'd rather see him enlightened than disemboweled.

btw, has japan apologized for the 1592-98 n 1904 invasions and 1910-1945 annexation of korea yet?

but who are we americans 2 demand apologies? we owe more than a few.

also, i heard teddy roosevelt made a deal w/ japan 2 ignore their actions in korea in return 4 their ignoring ours in philippines.

mrsleep said...

Wow.

Capt. Fogg said...

I know the memory is still very fresh in China - I've had conversations over there in which you'd think the Opium Wars were last week. I don't think China is going to forget, nor any other victims of the Empire of Japan.

Everyone in the US was born yesterday however.

Yes, I know we owe some apologies - to Viet Nam, for instance - and our shady deals could fill an encyclopedia. Like Japan we love to praise ourselves and call it patriotism no matter how much we have to ignore and lie about in the process.

mrsleep said...

China will get even economically, and let's hope they don't get even militarily.

Intellectual Insurgent said...

Is it just me, does it seem there is a pattern of right-wing nuts "winning" elections and re-writing national history to sanitize and glorify the past? We should be hearing from Sarkozy's historical revisionists soon about the benevolence of France's colonial expeditions.

mrsleep said...

no it's not just you

Capt. Fogg said...

Sanitizing the past may be as old as history. I could point out the different views about biblical accounts of history, but I wont.

d.K. said...

Well, I count myself among those woefully ignorant about Eastern history. It isn't taught in the U.S. education curriculum, and to learn, one has to actively pursue it, and I haven't, to my regret.

I remember reading your post in March, and doing some superficial research, and I was shocked. Much of this is RECENT history, so there is no explanation to me as to why it is actively ignored. It doesn't make sense. Nazi Germany and Fascistic Italy are not ignored. Weird.