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China-Japan-Koreas

Japan PM Apologizes for WWII Aggression

2005-04-23

Japan's prime minister apologized Friday for his country's World War II aggression in Asia in a bid to defuse tensions with regional rival China, but a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said the apology needed to be backed up with action after Japanese lawmakers made a controversial visit to a war shrine. Just hours before Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized, a Cabinet minister and more than 80 Japanese lawmakers visited a Tokyo shrine to Japan's war dead. China's Foreign Ministry expressed "strong dissatisfaction over the negative actions of some Japanese politicians" in visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which also honor's Japan's executed war criminals.

"That President Koizumi expressed this attitude in this arena is welcome. We welcome it," ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters at a summit of Asian and African leaders. "But to express it is one aspect. What's of much more importance is the action. You have to make it a reality." He said "60 years of history has caused great harm to China and Asia." Koizumi's expression of "deep remorse" at a summit of Asian and African leaders in Jakarta did not go beyond what Japanese leaders previously have said.

Posted by:Fred

#21 David Warren above reveals the real reason the issue is still raised - the Chicoms need to focus criticism and anger on an external enemy.

Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-23 4:05:32 PM

#20 (Ironically enough, the father of arch-traitor Ramsey Clark, future Supreme Court justice Tom Clark, was the US attorney in charge of rounding up Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.)

Poor choice of words AC, shit breeding true is not irony.

Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-23 3:06:46 PM

#19 On this issue, we have a potentially serious ideological split between the Chicoms and their western comrades, multi-cult educators and the institutional media.
The latter support the Japanese position, perhaps without realizing that it is such, because it advances their rigid policy of demonizing the United States.
The Chinese Reds would probably like to help them but even they do not have the power to erase the collective Chinese memory of Japanese brutality and aggression.
For many years, in fact, the Chinese overlords have done a lot to encourage such memories. They could not have anticipated that American leftists would be so depraved in their ethics, or so convoluted in their thinking, or so ardent in their treason, as to retro-actively white-wash the Japanese militarists of the 1940s.

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-04-23 11:33:13 AM

#18 Apologies are one thing, concealing the events from their own children quite another. Japanese obfuscation blends nicely into the western multi-cult's campaign to portray the Pacific War as yet another example of EVIL AMERICAN aggression, motivated by racism and grasping commercial greed.
If this is not so, how do so many American young people get the idea that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were direct, literal and immediate (and therefore massively disproportionate) retaliation for Pearl Harbor? This figurative statement of justification, "it was revenge for Pearl Harbor",is repeated ad nauseum, and without background, precisely in order to invite that conclusion.

I had a student a few years ago who believed this and included it in a letter to the editor of the Dallas paper, "when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman didn't mess around, he nuked them." In this particular case, the bogus conclusion had backfired on the multi-cult histori-liars, since this student actually approved of the alleged sequence of events. I asked the letter-writer about this after the letter came out. He had no idea that the Pearl Harbor attack and the atomic bombings happened 3 years and 9 months apart, that Truman was not President at the time, or that a great deal else had happened in the meantime. How common is this belief? I have no idea, but there is no doubt that multi-cultists encourage it, just as they encourage a belief in the equivalence of the Holocaust and the detention of Japanese-Americans.
The more the Japanese are required to acknowledge reality (and remember that the facts are not disputed), the more difficult it will be for revisionists to present the US as the aggressor, something they are hell-bent on doing.

(Ironically enough, the father of arch-traitor Ramsey Clark, future Supreme Court justice Tom Clark, was the US attorney in charge of rounding up Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.)

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-04-23 11:14:01 AM

#17 dcreeper, your comment seems more pertinent to GS than me, so I'll let him or her respond.

Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-04-23 11:10:32 AM

#16 Mr Davis, that's because slavery had nothing to do with the civil war, had slaves been 'low paid workers'... the result would have been the same

the north and the south had seperated politically and culturally, both viewed the other poorly.

the great emancipator is on the record as stating that he if he could save the union without freeing slaves he would.. (thus the only reason he did it was to force the issue before the south was ready to win)

Posted by: dcreeper 2005-04-23 10:49:54 AM

#15 look in Arab textbooks for slavery....might find it in the Koran under "permissible"

Posted by: Frank G 2005-04-23 10:44:15 AM

#14 GS, I had not noticed that Ameicans have kept discussions of slavery out of textbook discusions of the Civil War. When this starts to happen, I will be equally concerned for the U. S.

:) ima say nothing, nothing!

Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-23 10:17:21 AM

#13 phil_b, Japan is less being asked to apologize than to acknowledge. Japan has "apologized" many times. It has also dropped any mention of these incidents into its collective memory hole.

That is why the text book issue is being brought up. They don't have "holocaust" deniers in Japan because few there who acknowledge it happened except as necessary for foreign apologies. The only atrocities that occurred in WWII as far as Japan seems to be concerned were at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Can you name any comparable memorials the Japanese have established for the millions they butchered? Do you really mean to suggest that Japan has internalized what they did the way Germany has?

The problem is we want them to be involved in regional defence in East Asia. Until the Japanese deal openly in their own society with these matters, every country in the region will have second thoughts about inviting the Japanes to help with their defence. It has noting to do with apologies, per se, but with building confidence with neighbors that there will not be a repetition of these events.

GS, I had not noticed that Ameicans have kept discussions of slavery out of textbook discusions of the Civil War. When this starts to happen, I will be equally concerned for the U. S.

Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-04-23 10:08:07 AM

#12 Buried in our own history media hole is the butchery that was Manila.
While the post war academics decried the dropping of the bombs, they all ignored that in the American territory that was then the Phillipines, the Japanese killed as many civilians by bullet, bayonet, and barbed wire as died in either bombings.
On the other hand [here's where the granade pin is pulled], even here in America, over a hundred and forty years after the ACW, people keep rationalizing 'states rights' for the rebellion, even though the conflict saw the resolution of the slavery issue and the enactment of the 13th Admendment. If 140 years later we can not resolve the past, why should the Japanese do so only 60 years later?

Posted by: Grising Shereling2932 2005-04-23 9:16:11 AM

#11 Mrs D, I am aware of what happened in the Rape of Nanking, I am also well aware what happened in Pakistan during the partition, the Cultural Revolution, PolPot's return to year zero, the Ukrainian Famine, Rwanda and of course what is happening in Darfur today. All of which have body counts higher than Nanking. In the ninteenth century Nanking was the centre of the largest slaughter the world has ever seen. Perhaps fifty million died. Nobody is being asked to apologize for these, so why Japan?

Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-23 8:06:22 AM

#10 The Japanese do not refer to the Rape of Nanking, an event that is in a class with or beyond anything the Nazis did. Nor the medical experiments done on civilians and allied POWs, unanesthesized. They have put their WWII atrocities in the memory hole. Their effort is nothing compared to the Germans', who have dealt with reality responsibly.

China is not the only country the Japanese brutalized. As long as they pursued isolationism, it didn't make much difference what they did in their schools. But their unacknowledged atrocities will prove an impediment in their ability to work effectively with other east Asian countries in developing security arrangements to contain China.

Having failed to remember the past, they certainly cannot learn from it.

Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-04-23 7:07:53 AM

#9 I know Chinese text books don't refer to the 20 million? dead in the Great Leap Forward or the still continuining persecution of Tibetans. Shit, most Chinese even educated ones don't even know China invaded 50 years ago. They are taught it has always been a part of China.

Enough with Japan having to abase itself over WW2. Japan has been an explempary world citizen since unlike China.

Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-23 5:39:58 AM

#8 TW, sure, no rush.

Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-04-23 5:16:19 AM

#7 Sobiesky, I've got two Seders to prepare for. My comment was based on general info in my head, but I'll try to pull something together for you on Monday, ok?

Posted by: trailing wife 2005-04-23 5:04:18 AM

#6 TW, please elaborate and provide some background/sources.

Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-04-23 4:24:12 AM

#5 actually, someone in japan made a macromedia file explaining the japanese view point.
I've uploaded it to my webspace at drexel university

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~mjk52/Textbook_of_Japan.swf

check it out

(found the file at adorablebunnies.com in the user uploads.. it is _NOT_ a work safe site)
(if anyone here can read japanese.. verification on it's authenticity would be great)

Posted by: dcreeper 2005-04-23 3:59:32 AM

#4 it's the 34th.

Posted by: dcreeper 2005-04-23 3:51:43 AM

#3 It would help if the Japanese would modify their textbooks as well. Else the many apologies are merely diplomatic words.

Posted by: trailing wife 2005-04-23 3:22:12 AM

#2 This must be the 10th apology they've made. Now that the Chinese have been given an inch, they're asking for a yard. Still, the Koizumi move may have been the right one - it divides China from the rest of East Asia. As an issue, Japan's WWII military expeditions will now be separated from China's territorial demands.

Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-04-23 2:50:05 AM

#1 Did not just tons of hired hands demonstrated with "Kill Japs" in China, Kong?

Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-04-23 1:01:31 AM

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