The Japanese Ambassador proposed to the First United Nations (UN) Special Session on Disarmament in May and June 1978 that there should be a World Peace Day commemorating the anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. On the face of it such a proposal made a good deal of sense. The immediate effects of the attack in terms of dead, maimed and dying were nightmarish and that event and the explosion over Nagasaki 3 days later are seen in Japan and amongst many elsewhere as uniquely dreadful. No wonder that they are lodged in memories, the image of the ‘mushroom cloud’ is ever present. The 1978 session was largely devoted to the threat posed by nuclear weapons and so the focus on Hiroshima was hardly out of place. But emphasis on victimhood divides people into victims and victimisers, and, in this case, ignored the context of the nuclear attacks. The explosions ended years of repression by the Japanese army in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese had died. In the rest of East Asia they ended a conflict that had killed thousands and reduced much of the region to a subsistence economy. For the United States and the other English-speaking countries they ended 4 years of brutal struggle.¹

Pew, the respected US polling organisation exposed the continuing, though diminishing, nature of the disagreement in April 2015 when it asked Americans and Japanese about their attitudes towards the nuclear attacks. Of Americans polled, 56 % apparently believed that the attacks were justified compared with only 14 % of Japanese.² Pew pointed out that American support had declined from some 85 % in 1945 and that it was highest at 70 % amongst the over 65s against only 47 % of 18–29 year olds. The optimistic view is that this was because the taboo on the employment of nuclear weapons had grown stronger with the years as they have not been used in any subsequent conflict even when a country armed with such weapons was losing. An alternative explanation is that younger people are less familiar with the arguments for and against the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 and most particularly on whether or not Japan would have surrendered in any case and so whether or not the attacks saved lives. Fortunately, such controversies did not stop the two nations trusting each other in 2015 with 68 % of Americans trusting Japan and 75 % of Japanese trusting the United States. They had put the memories to one side so that normal life could continue.

The Japanese proposal at the UN in 1978 reflected wider issues than those involving nuclear weapons alone. It showed how modern societies were trying to come to terms with their memories. They had moved from a heroic to a victim culture, from one where ‘great’ men and women who protected their people or changed the world through war and the ‘pursuit of glory’ were the focus of admiration and commemoration to one where the emphasis was on sympathy for the ordinary men and women caught up in conflict and for youthful celebrities who died suddenly and unexpectedly. Some Western states, such as Britain and France, largely made this transition after the First World War but Japan preserved much of its ancient Samurai culture.³ It raised an army of warriors to conquer China, drive the colonial powers out of East Asia and establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Its troops endured immense hardships in the Second World War and fought and died where they were ordered to stand.⁴ As warriors they were beyond praise, as rulers they were abhorrent because they had been taught that human life was of little value and that their Emperor and nation were everything. In the Japanese religion of Shintoism or Emperor-worship they were the heroes of the hour yet, by 1978, many Japanese saw their predecessors, both uniformed and civilian, as the victims of that contest just as China, Malaya, the former Dutch East Indies and the Western allies regarded themselves as the victims of Japan’s former heroes.

This book looks at the Japanese initiative and the other protests about historical victimisation which are so much a part of the contemporary international scene and which are unique in their prevalence and intensity to the modern world. Governments in the satisfied powers have often responded by making official apologies which try to reduce anger about the past. National leaders in the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, Germany, Japan and elsewhere have all made such apologies as have leaders of some religious bodies including the Pope and the Methodist Church in Britain. This represents one of the most striking innovations in diplomatic practice over the last half century.

The book does not try to distinguish systematically between the ostensible motive for a policy and the ‘actual’ motive or the balance between the two. It assumes that states and their leaders act out of self-interest as well as emotion but that they stress national victimisation because they find it popular. Motives fluctuate from time to time and decision makers themselves may be unsure where the balance lies. No doubt Adolf Hitler felt that Germany had been badly treated by the Allies after the First World War but he also saw that complaints about such alleged victimisation were a popular cry that would help him to power.

Past events shape all our memories and in the modern world great numbers are for the first time aware of their country’s history but have fitted only a fraction of it into their memory, a fraction chosen because it fits into their view of the world. Thanks to the media they are often also aware of recent wars however far away such wars may have been from their homeland. Many empathise with historic suffering as well as contemporary victims in other states. The first part of this book examines the origins of the ‘age of victimhood’ and the use which restless governments and movements make of this otherwise benevolent change to unite their people, denigrate other nations and justify their assertive foreign policy. The second part looks at national apologies, at the teaching of history and at the difficulties of making restitution to those peoples who were devastated in the past without creating yet further injustice and suffering.

The third part analyses the forceful response that powerful Western nations have made to what they see as victimisation in foreign countries. Governments intervene in foreign disputes to reduce the suffering and serve their national interests but national leaders, senior officers and journalists often know little of the history or culture of the disputants or the reasons for the conflict. These interventions have frequently ended in disasters with the interveners being blamed for increasing the numbers of victims. Past experience has to be used by all governments to guide their policies but it is their country’s most recent and thus most vivid experiences that are lodged in memories rather than more distant events or the experience and culture of others. In any case each event is unique and historic analogies have to be used with great caution. Playing heroes or ‘knights in shining armour’ in an age of victimhood is inevitably a controversial exercise.

The last chapter brings the various themes together with an assessment of the impact they appear to be having on the world at the time of writing. In 2016 the victor in the US presidential elections appealed to the voters by presenting his country as the victim of recent history while the leaders of two other great powers, Russia and China have long described their countries as the victims of the Western powers or the Japanese. The fact that there are now three restless, great powers which favour changes in the status quo shows the power of cries of victimisation. It also raises serious concerns about international stability.

It would be a lucky nation indeed that had never had to struggle to survive in the face of genocidal attacks from other groups. Warriors were the great heroes because they alone stood between a people and massacre or a lifetime of slavery. Fortunately, most of their battles have been forgotten or have disappeared into the relatively unemotional pages of the history books. One historian employing genetic data has suggested that Viking raiders obliterated the Picts living in the Scottish Western isles and that there are now more descendants of the Picts living in Scandanavia than Scotland suggesting the people were either killed or carried away as slaves.¹ The land now occupied by the English was overrun in turn by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans. The indigenous people were killed, absorbed by the invading culture or driven into the hills of Wales. The residue was dominated for centuries by the Norman elite. However, these disasters have long since been overtaken by later events that have made the English a satisfied nation generally happy with the aspects of their history which are most firmly lodged in their memories.

Elsewhere the suffering has been much more recent or has left enduring scars. The Old Testament is quite largely a recital of the Jewish people’s struggle against enslavement, brutality and destruction. The experience has been cemented in the national memory both by these sacred books and by the Jews’ experience of persecution over the centuries. On other continents nomadic peoples, including the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, New Zealand and the Americas were simply overwhelmed by foreign intruders who settled on their lands. The native North Americans, Australians and others are only gradually finding their voices and struggling to make their sufferings understood.² Similarly, the scars of the Atlantic slave trade have been kept alive by the intensity of the trauma that has been passed down from generation to generation amongst the slaves’ descendants.

Many peoples have been victim and victimiser at different periods. Thus, great civilisations such as Mesopotamia, India, Egypt, China or Iran, which once ruled vast empires, were later dominated by European intruders. When they recovered their strength their publics show the extent of their resentment over the past, and their governments and opinion formers often encourage ...