Militarist former PM Junichiro Koizumi annual visit to the Yasakuni shrine to Japan's war dead (including Class A War Criminals) that so upset Japans neighbours
Photo: Reuters
JAPAN STILL CAN NOT FACE UP TO ITS WAR CRIMES
Japan still does not understand that human rights do not cease to exist during war (whether between states or as a civil war).
Whilst Japan had been a party to all the successive conventions about the conduct of war from 1856 to the 1930s it still refuses to concede that it broke all of them during its invasion of China in the 30ies and during the World War 2.
It signed the following conventions 1856-1929:
Declaration Respecting Maritime Law (Certain Regulations for Sea Warfare), 1856
Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, 1864
Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles Under 400 Gram's Weight, 1868
International Convention for Adapting to Maritime Warfare the Principles of The Geneva Convention of 1864, 1899
International Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes [Hague I], 1899
International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and the Sick in Armies in the Field [The Red Cross Convention], 1906
Declaration Prohibiting the Discharge of Projectiles and Explosives from Balloons [Hague XIV], 1907
International Convention Concerning the Law and Customs of War on Land [Hague IV], 1907
International Convention Relative to Certain Restrictions on the Exercise of the Right of Capture in Maritime War [Hague XI], 1907
International Convention Relative to the Conversion of Merchant-Ships into War-Ships [Hague VII], 1907
International Convention Relative to the Opening of Hostilities [Hague III], 1907
International Convention Respecting Bombardments by Naval Forces in Time of War [Hague IX], 1907
Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare [Gas Protocol], 1925
International Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and the Sick in Armies in the Field, 1929
International Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1929
It respected none of them. In particular the key Geneva Convention that provided that prisoners of war -
must be treated humanely: must not be subject to torture or to medical or scientific experiments,
must be protected against violence, intimidation, insults and public curiosity/display.
when questioned - in the prisoner's native language -
must only give their names, ranks, birth dates and serial numbers.
Those who refuse to answer may not be threatened or mistreated.
must be immediately evacuated from a combat zone, must not be unnecessarily exposed to danger and must not be used as human shields.
must not be punished for acts committed during fighting unless the opposing side would have punished its own forces for those acts as well.
Japan did none of these things!
Japan’s War Guilt Revisited
"It is our obligation as Japan’s most influential newspaper to tell our readers who was responsible for starting the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War."
So writes Tsuneo Watanabe, Editor-in-Chief of Japan’s (and the world’s) most widely circulated newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, in the introduction to the book From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible.
Watanabe, who is now in his eighties and served in the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII, was bothered by the way unfinished business concerning the war continued to hinder Japan’s progress. As a remedy, he set up a War Responsibility Re-Examination Committee at his newspaper to undertake a 14-month investigation into the causes of Japan’s Pacific War.
Watanabe tells us that the Committee concluded that, "not only high-ranking government leaders, general, and admirals should shoulder the blame." According to the Committee, "field officers were often more influential than even the Emperor, war ministers, and chiefs-of-staffs in making decisions to go to and escalate the wars, and were responsible for many atrocities."
Watanabe laments the fact that after Japanese war criminals were tried by the Tokyo Tribunal of 1951, "No efforts were made in the name of Japan or the Japanese people to look into where responsibility for the war rested." As a result, "there can be no genuinely honest and friendly dialogue with those countries that suffered considerable damage and casualties in the wars with Japan."
But does the Yomiuri study go far enough? While it assigns responsibility to Japan for WWII, and even unflinchingly names the political and military leaders who bear responsibility, one can still detect a whiff of reluctance in its failure to fully describe some of Japan’s war-time actions. For example, the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, when Japanese soldiers killed 250,000 Chinese – many of whom were civilians – are given little more than a brief mention.
"If things are left as they are," writes Watanabe, "a skewed perception of history – without knowledge of the horrors of the war – will be handed down to future generations."
Truth: last casualty of Japan's war
April 25, 2005
Japan is still struggling to face up to the truth and consequences of its brutal role in World War II, writes Tony Parkinson.
I remember visiting Berlin's Reichstag in the days when the city was still divided. Back then, 20 years ago, one floor of the building served as a Holocaust museum. The people of West Germany could make no more evocative statement than to turn over this edifice of Prussian power to a commemorative for the millions who died in concentration camps. Even so, it was awkward and uncomfortable to watch a middle-aged German woman collapse in tears as she confronted some of history's most gruesome images. She couldn't have been more than a child when these atrocities happened. Was it her burden to carry?
Yet school group after school group was escorted by teachers through these bleak galleries. They were expected to know what happened, and to attempt to understand how it could have happened in a society such as their own.
Japan, like Germany, has emerged 60 years after war as one of the world's most successful and significant nations. But why won't - why can't - Japan reach the same pact with history and come up with a more convincing way of demonstrating its contrition for the crimes against humanity carried out in its name back in those barbarous years?
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi issued a public apology for the pain his country inflicted on neighbouring Asian nations before and during World War II. "Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations," he said. "Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility."
His words were an attempt to ease the recent alarming inflammation in relations with China, in particular. More broadly, though, they were symbolic of an important and praiseworthy effort to make amends as the 60th anniversary of the end of war in the Pacific approaches.
Perhaps the more enduring question is this: will anyone be persuaded as long as Japan's education system continues to shield the young from the unexpurgated truth about the war? Shouldn't they have all the facts so they might better understand why China, and others, have trouble forgetting, much less forgiving, what happened all those decades ago?
Sixty years on, it is a hangover of history that won't go away. This is one of the themes explored in great depth in Hellfire, Cameron Forbes' epic history of the murder and mistreatment of prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma railway.
Forbes' narrative brings all his elegance as a wordsmith, his many years as a war correspondent and his extensive insights into the cultures, history and topography of Asia to the task of documenting one of the more shameful episodes of 20th century inhumanity.
No fewer than 8000 Australians died on the railway. This was more than a third of all those taken captive as Japanese forces swept south in 1941-42 to conquer Singapore, Malaya, Java, Borneo and Timor - a gruesome rate of attrition by any measure.
What dark spirits, what perversion of the warrior's code, drove the Imperial Japanese Army to enslave tens of thousands of Allied soldiers, many diseased and starving, and force them on pain of death to pile-drive through rock and dense jungle to build a land bridge to Burma? How could they stand and watch men die like flies as they pushed deadlines set by the 9th Railway Regiment in Tokyo? How could they maul and monster those too weak to work?
Perhaps just as troubling, how could some in modern Japan seek to banish the memory, hit the erase button - as if to pretend it never really happened at all?
Forbes' study of this latter point singles out the Yasukuni Shrine, the most important, if most controversial, testimonial to Japan's war dead. In the museum adjacent to this Shinto temple, there is a display of the first engine to travel the infamous Thai-Burma railway.
But there is not a single mention of the savage sacrifice involved in the rail project which, as Forbes puts it, was very much "built on the bones of the dead".
The whitewashing of Japan's war record at places such as Yasukuni Shrine lingers as a permanent provocation to many in the region, Australians included. Yes, it is a bit much for China to argue Japan's refusal to grapple properly with this dark episode of its past serves to disqualify it "morally" from a global leadership role. China, too, can be highly selective about its past. Its history books by no means dwell on the horrific purges and bloodshed of Mao's Cultural Revolution, nor mention the death of 250,000 Tibetans in China's ruthless subjugation of the mountain province in 1959, nor the brutal crackdown on students in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
Japan today is a strong and stable democracy, the world's second-largest economy, and a consistent and generous aid donor, especially in South-East Asia and the Pacific islands.
I can see why two generations of Japanese not born at the time of that war might wonder why the world, 60 years on, cannot let rest the ghosts of the past. Like that woman in Berlin, can they really be faulted for crimes they did not commit, nor would ever contemplate?
Yet I can also see compelling reasons why young Japanese should be expected to confront the ugly, unadorned truth squarely and honestly.
It is almost certainly a forlorn hope. But Hellfire, faithfully translated, would be a perfect addition to the reading list in Japanese schools. It might open hearts as well as eyes.
Tony Parkinson is international editor. Hellfire: The Story of Australia, Japan and the Prisoners of War by Cameron Forbes (Macmillan).
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