Japan Stirs the Pot on the Second World War

I am not one for constant apologies. We have become a society of "OUTRAGE!" when it comes to slights real and imagined, big and small. We should be grateful we do not have duels at dawn whenever somebody feels offended by something a comedian has said, a silly celebrity has Tweeted, or some politician has joked. The sound and smell of gunfire and the clash of rapiers would have us all waking up very early.

I, for example, did not like, when President Clinton, President Obama, and Prime Minister Rudd went on their respective apology tours. I, furthermore, think that Germany has apologized sufficiently and made amends for its Nazi past. We should move on, and stop with the Nazi references, such as we see in Greece, when discussing Germany. Some years ago, I ran into a Mexican diplomat who wanted the US to apologize and compensate Mexico for having taken California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas from Mexico. I noted to him that my Spanish wife wanted compensation from Mexico and Latin America for having taken all those territories and more from Spain. There surely is some Aztec descendent who wants compensation from Spain for Cortez, and some Tlaxcala descendent who wants it from the Aztecs, and on and on. Perhaps British or Canadian readers still seek compensation for the brutal death of Charles Griffin's pig at the hands of Lyman Cutler in the earth-shaking and infamous "Pig War" of 1859. In my career, I encountered Germans who wanted the RAF's Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris declared a war criminal and an apology from Britain for its bombing campaign against Germany. Enough! History bursts with grievances. Depending on how far back one goes, one finds that every people on the planet has had experience as the victim of some other people. It's the nature of the human condition.

That said, however, Japan's attitude re its many, vast, and well-documented crimes during World War II seems particularly galling. As an outsider, and as a person who sees Japan as an extremely important ally and friend, I find troubling the insistence by Japanese politicians, including current Prime Minister Abe, on visiting the Yasukuni war shrine.  I know the Japanese position that the visits merely serve to honor and keep alive the memory of the millions of Japanese who died in the Second World War. I appreciate that most of those people had no real choice in the matter; their rulers sent them off to do horrible things and paid the price, or were sitting in their houses when retribution came in the form of a B-29 raid for the horrible things done by their rulers. Yes, yes. The problem remains that Japan has never come clean on what it did during the war--and, of course, the shrine also honors despicable characters such as General Tojo. Unlike with the Nazi Holocaust, there never has been the sort of condemnation and exploration of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in, for example, China, on the Pacific Islands, or against POWs. Japanese history books, unlike their German counterparts, essentially skip World War II, except for the atomic bombings. When I worked at the UN for the 40th Anniversary of the end of WWII, for example, Japanese speakers essentially made Japan a victim in the war, to wit, "Suddenly, an atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima." (In fairness, the Austrians did the same thing--and the Turks, of course, never have acknowledged the Armenian genocide.) Younger Japanese know essentially nothing about the Second World War.

It is one thing to demand an end to harping on past grievances over atrocities, it is another not even to acknowledge that those atrocities happened, or to engage in behavior that insults the memory of those who suffered.