Yes

by Mick Marten

Created on: March 18, 2008

As I've said many times before, the Japanese have a lot to apologize for; the 'comfort women' are certainly one group that is due this apology.

I mentioned the horrible and unconscionable treatment of the 'comfort women' in a past article on Helium regarding whether Japanese officials should continue to visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which is a shrine to honor Japanese war dead. Japanese politicians make very publicized visits to this shrine on a regular basis. These visits, while good P.R. to their Japanese constituents, are viewed as a slap in the face to groups like the comfort women, survivors of the Bataan death march, those civilians interred in the Philippines who were systematically starved to death, and many, many others. The Japanese created one of the worst human rights legacies in the world, surpassed at the time only by Nazi Germany.

Today Japan is viewed as a modern, technologically advanced, educated, prosperous country, and they are. All the more reason why their insistence on honoring war criminals in the Yasukuni shrine, and their failure to apologize to any of those whom they abused in such heinous and systematic ways is so unfathomable.

I have discussed this subject with many other people, and have frequently encountered those who believe that the U.S.A. was as guilty of human rights offenses in World War II as Japan was, due primarily to the dropping of the atomic bombs, and I dismiss that opinion. In simple numeric terms, the atomic bombs efficiently ended a war that had already cost exponentially more lives than were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and which promised to cost exponentially more again, if continued by conventional means. The atomic bombs were a means of breaking the fanatical will of the military commanders of Japan at the time, and it was highly effective.

The use of atomic weapons, though ground-breaking, and seemingly callous, only seem so to those who misunderstand the conflict. When put into perspective, the loss of life from these two bombs only stands out because they were are new type of bomb, and the deaths were caused by a single bomb. When compared to the death and damage caused by the continued fire-bombing campaigns on Japan, Fat man and Little boy can be viewed a little more circumspectly. Over one hundred thousand civilians died in a night in Tokyo due to the fire bombing of that city. Do you hear anyone talk about that? And that raid was merely one out of hundreds conducted to similar effect. Read up on it sometime, and you can't help but look at the atomic bombs a bit differently. More died in the fire-bombing of Dresden, in fact, than in both atomic bombs combined, a bombing raid immortalized for it's brutality by Kurt Vonnegut, who was a P.O.W. in Dresden during the raid, in his book "Slaughterhouse Five".

I reject the use of these two bombings and the damage and suffering they caused as an absolution to the Japanese for all of their wrong-doings. In fact, I reject the combined suffering of the Japanese for this purpose. Ones actions must be atoned for, regardless of the reprisals one suffers as a consequence. The atomic bombs did not and could not replace an apology to the Comfort Women, nor to any of the other groups I have mentioned, or those whom I have not.

The Germans, who suffered just as much, if not more than the Japanese during the war, still issued apologies for the actions of their government and their soldiers afterward.

The Japanese still have not. In fact it wasn't very long ago that a Japanese politician said that 'Comfort Women' did not exist. There was no outcry from Japanese citizens; there was no call for his ouster. So much for taking responsibility. If a German politician were to deny that the holocaust happened, he would be arrested; it is a violation of German law to deny the holocaust. The Germans, in retrospect, realize what was done on their behalf by a lunatic leader, and are appropriately disgusted and ashamed. That is the behavior of rational people; they have no shrines to those who ran the concentration camps. They have distanced themselves from these men, and their atrocious acts.

I am constantly shocked how little the world cares about the fact that no apology has been forthcoming from Japan. The U.S. apologized (belatedly) to those Japanese citizens that it interred during the war, and although many lost homes and businesses, and were deprived of their freedom for years, they weren't starved, beaten, or used as sex slaves, treatment that any prisoner of the Japanese could literally count on. Yet the U.S. government apologized and paid reparations to these people, and rightly so.

And the Japanese honor those who committed war crimes in a shrine.

So much for being contrite.

At the very least, those who committed these atrocities should be very publicly removed from this shrine, as a gesture to their victims, many of whom are still living, and their actions during the war publicly condemned by the Japanese government. They own this problem until they do, no matter how much time passes.

That would be a start.

The Comfort Women were raped, tortured, often killed, and dragged far from home, only to be abandoned there in many cases. This was done intentionally, and under orders of military commanders. This deserves an apology, as well as criminal hearings for those involved if they are still alive.

I recently heard a story about the dive bombing of the Japanese fleet in the decisive battle of the Pacific, where the Japanese Navy was battered beyond any ability to contest or hold their gains in the Pacific islands. One U.S. dive bombing crew was shot down, and recovered from the sea by the Japanese. They were brought aboard ship, where they were bound, and weights were tied around their feet, They were then tossed, alive, into the sea to drown.

As evil as many in the world today think the U.S. is, I don't believe this sort of treatment of Japanese prisoners was common, let alone sanctioned by the leadership, the way it was for the Japanese. When U.S. soldiers committed, and sometimes still commit, their crimes, they are prosecuted for them, not ordered to commit them. And an apology is offered to the victims, at least, if not some sort of amends. As pale as that seems, that is the minimum standard, if prevention isn't possible, and it must be done.

Apologies should be offered to all of the survivors of Japan's military viciousness. It is not only the least they should do, but it is the minimum required. Until the right thing is done by Japan on behalf of all those who were tortured, raped, starved, and executed at their hands, their blood remains on the hands of the Japanese people, who refuse to demand that their government apologize.

I wouldn't want to live with that.

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