Japanese War Crimes

Peter Li, Peter Li

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351511087
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Geschichte
• Categoría: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

The question of national responsibility for crimes against humanity became an urgent topic due to the charge of ethnic cleansing against the previous Yugoslav government. But that was not the first such urging of legal and moral responsibility for war crimes. While the Nazi German regime has been prototypical, the actions of the Japanese military regime have been receiving increasing prominence and attention. Indeed, Peter Li's volume examines the phenomenon of denial as well as the deeds of destruction.

Certainly one of the most troublesome unresolved problems facing many Asian and Western countries after the Asia Pacific war (1931u1945) is the question of the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army throughout Asia and the Japanese government's repeated attempts to whitewash their wartime responsibilities. The psychological and physical wounds suffered by victims, their families, and relations remain unhealed after more than half a century, and the issue is now pressing. This collection undertakes the critical task of addressing some of the multifaceted and complex issues of Japanese war crimes and redress.

This collection is divided into five themes. In "It's Never Too Late to Seek Justice, " the issues of reconciliation, accountability, and Emperor Hirohito's responsibility for war crimes are explored. "The American POW Experience Remembered" includes a moving account of the Bataan Death March by an American ex-soldier. "Psychological Responses" discusses the socio-psychological affects of the Nanjing Massacre and Japanese vivisection on Chinese subjects. The way in which Japanese war atrocities have been dealt with in the theater and cinema is the focus of "Artistic Responses." And central to "History Must not Forget" are the questions of memory, trauma, biological warfare, and redress. Included in this volume are samples of the many presentations given at the International Citizens' Forum on War Crimes and Redress held in Tokyo in Decem

1

An Overview: Japan’s War Responsibility and the Pan-Asian Movement for Redress and Compensation

Paul Schalow

The genesis for this volume, Japanese War Crimes: The Search for Justice, began with the International Citizens’ Forum on War Crimes and Redress conference held in Tokyo on December 10-12, 1999. The Forum was co-sponsored by the Global Alliance for Preservation of the History of World War II in Asia, from the United States, and the Japanese Organizing Committee, in Japan. This conference was historic in that the three-day conference was attended by over three thousand people, and the participants were international in nature and included many Japanese scholars, historians, former veterans, and lawyers who were representing Asian victims in the Japanese courts. Participants came from China, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Hong Kong, the United States, and Canada. Lester I. Tenney represented the American POWs of the Japanese, and Mark Weintraub represented the Canadian Jewish Congress. Some of the articles included in this volume originated at that conference; others originated at a later date.

Judging from the number of works that has appeared and conferences held in the past ten years, it should be noted that the pursuit of justice for the victims of Japanese war crimes in World War II has grown more vigorous rather than weakening. There is a greater sense of urgency as more and more of the victims are suffering from ill health, old age, and death—justice delayed becomes justice denied.

The Nanjing Massacre and the sexual slavery of “Comfort Women” (ianfu) have received extensive coverage in both the academic and popular press in recent years, but the actual scope of the movement for redress and compensation is growing bigger and more complex with every passing year. Besides the Nanjing Massacre and sexual slavery, Asian victims are suing for justice for: the forced relocation to Japan of Chinese and Korean slave laborers who toiled under brutal conditions in civil engineering, mining, and heavy industry; indiscriminate machine-gunning, incendiary shelling, and bombing of civilian targets in China; the extermination of villages in Manchuria by murder, pillage, and burning; the illegal use of biological and chemical weapons in warfare and of human subjects for biological and chemical weapons research; the vivisection and murder of human subjects for purposes of medical education and experimentation; ongoing and often fatal environmental degradation caused by poison gas and bombs abandoned by the Japanese military after the defeat; the systematic looting of hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable books from Chinese libraries; and the plundering of Asia’s wealth, including gold, cash, and art objects that were removed to Japan.

At issue is Japan’s “war responsibility” (senso sekinin), broadly defined as the criminal acts of war for which Japan should be held legally and morally accountable. The daunting complexity of the issue was made clear in the many writings that have appeared in recent years. Our purpose is to familiarize readers with the bitter legacy shadowing Japan’s relationship with its Asian neighbors at the dawn of a new century and new millennium.

One of the central themes of the Forum was “justice.” Speaker after speaker testified, however, that true justice was impossible for either the dead or the survivors who suffered at the hands of the Japanese during the Pacific War. Given Japan’s brutal wartime actions in Asia and the impossibility of true justice, what sort of “redress and compensation” were Asian victims seeking from the Japanese government? Was it money they wanted? It became clear in the course of the Forum that monetary compensation was not the primary issue. First and foremost, victims and their families wished for symbolic justice in the form of an official statement of apology by the Japanese government and sincere efforts to compensate them for their suffering. Unfortunately, the Japanese government has been very reluctant to take responsibility in any concrete way for the suffering of fellow Asians at the hands of the Japanese imperial armies during the Pacific War. Historians have proved that this state of affairs is a result of post-war American policies that, by emphasizing Japan’s economic recovery and American political interests over the interests of justice in Asia, left the pre-war Japanese ruling elite virtually intact.

In the course of the Forum, it became clear that the Japanese government’s decades-long refusal to accept responsibility and apologize for war crimes in Asia has infuriated and insulted not just survivors but many Asian people and their governments as well. This anger now serves to fuel the flames of the redress and compensation movement against Japan.

Very much on the minds of the audience and speakers at the Forum was the example of Nazi Germany. Here was a state that between 1939-45 slaughtered approximately 11 million or more people belonging to groups deemed “inferior” according to Nazi ideology: Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, the physically handicapped, and the mentally ill. Immediately after the war Germany’s new government had been held accountable by the world for Nazi crimes against humanity, for which there was a genuine sense of revulsion among Germans and non-Germans alike. Nazi leaders were tried and imprisoned or executed, a system of compensation for survivors was implemented, government leaders made sincere public apologies, and by the 1980s justice was felt to have been served. The question was raised repeatedly at the Forum, “Why cannot Japan respond to Asia similarly?” For the Asian victims of Japanese war crimes, Germany represented the “model” of what a state ought to do in compensating its victims in war. Although it could be argued that this is an idealized view of Germany’s response to its Nazi past, the existence of the German model seems to serve, in its own way, as a catalyst for the Asian movement that now demands redress and compensation from Japan.

The sad fact is that the majority of Japanese born after the war are incapable of comprehending the issue of “war responsibility” in all of its ramifications. This is because the postwar generation has not been educated accurately about Japan’s wartime role and has come to perceive Japan primarily as a victim of the Pacific War, not a perpetrator. Those who experienced the war firsthand knew the truth about Japan’s aggression and destruction outside Japan, but the history they have passed on is one-dimensional. The war undeniably brought death and suffering to Japanese soldiers and citizens on a scale never seen before or since, but the destruction, death, and suffering endured by other Asians at the hands of the Japanese during the war years has been conveniently forgotten. The younger generation is thus largely ignorant of the facts and perceives Japan only as a victim of war, not as a perpetrator or aggressor. It is fair to say that few are capable of assessing adequately whether Asian victims’ demands for redress and compensation are reasonable or unreasonable.

Unfortunately, Japanese ignorance about Japan’s role in the war is more a product of deliberate miseducation than of oversight. School textbooks, which in Japan must pass the scrutiny of the government’s Ministry of Education (Monbusho), convey to Japan’s children a carefully controlled image of wartime Japan. Until lawsuits in the 1980s challenged the Ministry of Education’s whitewashing policies, textbooks were not allowed to say that Japan had invaded China, only that Japan “entered” China; the Nanjing massacre (when acknowledged at all) was nothing more than a small-scale military “incident” resulting from an unfortunate breakdown in military discipline; the annexation and occupation of Korea and the increasingly draconian policies towards Koreans were barely touched upon. In short, any actions that might place the emperor, the state, or the ruling elite in a bad light were excised from the history books. When the truth about Japan’s wartime aggression started to appear in children’s textbooks, belatedly and in small increments, in the 1990s, it led to a conservative political backlash that included calls by prominent educators to “teach our children a history of Japan that they can be proud of.” According to this way of thinking, a shameful past is not something to be acknowledged, reflected upon, and overcome, but to be ignored or whitewashed, and forgotten.

In a sense, the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of the war have provided the Japanese with justification for devising a cultural discourse in which Japan is the innocent victim, rather than the guilty perpetrator, of the Pacific War. Americans, to be sure, have had their own difficulties acknowledging their feelings of guilt about the production and deployment of the atomic bomb, but for Japan the atomic bombings serve as undeniable proof of Japan’s victimhood. The post-war literature of Hiroshima and Nagasaki appears to provide convincing testimony that no one was made to suffer more terribly in the war than the Japanese themselves. Next to the horrors of the atomic bombings, some would argue, what do the sufferings of Nanjing, the comfort women, and the slave laborers amount to? Because the annual August ritual of “remembering Hiroshima” and “remembering Nagasaki” is divorced from any other contexts, such as “remembering Nanjing” or “remembering Pearl Harbor,” the atomic bombings have sometimes functioned to absolve Japan of blame in the war and have relieved its citizens from the necessity of reflecting upon their wartime role. Memory is an integral part of social and cultural cohesiveness, but incomplete or selective memory is a dangerous thing.

Japan’s propensity to position itself as a victim, coupled with the post-war generation’s lack of education about the facts of Japan’s wartime atrocities in Asia, means that many Japanese people find it psychologically disorienting to be asked to recognize the victimhood of others, especially when it involves admitting the unfamiliar possibility of Japan as victimizer and perpetrator. The former mayor of Nagasaki, Motoshima Hitoshi, was one of several speakers at the Forum who addressed the Japanese reluctance to admit that Japan had committed evil acts in the Pacific War. He described denial as a cultural mechanism whose purpose was to preserve the sanctity of Japan’s imperial system. Motoshima publicly stated on the occasion of the anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing in 1988 that the Showa Emperor, Hirohito, bore some responsibility for the war but had been exonerated by General MacArthur’s Occupation policies in order to ensure the well-being of the Japanese people. To political conservatives, this statement was tantamount to treason. On January 18, 1990, one year after Hirohito’s death, Motoshima was shot in an assassination attempt by a right-wing extremist. The bullet struck just above the heart, and he was fortunate to survive.

If Asian demands for justice continue to grow in ferocity, fueled by frustration in the face of Japanese denial, the Japanese government may find itself increasingly isolated from its Asian neighbors. More than once at the Forum speakers and members of the audience raised the disturbing possibility that Japan will respond to that sense of isolation by renouncing its peace constitution and trying to reassert itself militarily in East Asia. In fact, a proposal to delete Article 9 (renouncing war as a method of resolving international conflict) from the Occupation-era Japanese constitution was under consideration in the Japanese Diet during its 145th ordinary session in 1999, shortly before the Forum met. The argument used in the Diet debates was that Japan ought to have the right to be a “normal” (futsu) nation, legally capable—like any other nation—of waging war. To Asian ears, especially in the light of Japan’s intransigence regarding redress of Pacific War atrocities, the prospect of a Japan with military capabilities sounds nightmarish.

More than one speaker at the Forum suggested that Japan has already begun to reassert itself as a military power, partially in response to United States military policy encouraging Japan to play a larger role in its national defense. As Nishikawa Shigenori expressed it, “We are on the brink of a new era of war. Even though we haven’t accepted our postwar responsibilities, we are again already in the midst of a new pre-war era.” It would be the ultimate irony if Asian demands for justice from Japan were to produce the opposite result, bringing about Japan’s isolation and remilitarization instead of apology and redress.

Japanese speakers and members of the audience at the Forum showed that there are numerous individual Japanese who are willing to face Japan’s unpleasant wartime record and enter into a dialogue with their Asian compatriots about Japan’s war responsibility. Some are academicians and activists who have struggled with the issue of war responsibility as an educational or political issue. Some are lawyers who have recognized the validity of Asian calls for justice and attempted, often at great personal risk, to bring their cases for judgment before the Japanese court system. Others are everyday people whose first-hand knowledge of the truth, as imperial soldiers or the children of soldiers, has led them to come forward and acknowledge publicly Japan’s, and their own, war responsibility.

The mood at the end of the Forum was hopeful but realistic, showing that participants understood well the nature of the obstacles that stand in the way of the movement for redress and compensation. The possibility of a broad-ranging reassessment by the Japanese people regarding Japan’s wartime atrocities may seem less likely with each passing year, but, even so, individuals of conscience must continue to confront Japan’s wartime legacy in the classrooms and courtrooms of Japan. If the Forum accomplished anything, it was to illustrate that justice is not governed by a statute of limitations. It is not too late for the Japanese government to respond with compassion and justice and set the record straight.

It is our hope that this book will help clarify for our readers the moral grounds of Asian demands for redress and compensation from Japan. Our purpose is to encourage constructive dialogue among Asians, non-Asians, and Japanese concerning the problem of Japan’s war responsibility. In that sense, our book echoes the “Tokyo Appeal” adopted by the Forum on December 12, 1999, which concluded with this statement: “We solemnly declare that by boldly confronting the historical truth of the 20th century, we will seek and ensure reconciliation and peace in the 21st century.”

Part I

It’s Never Too Late to Seek Justice

2

Japan’s War Crimes: Has Justice Been Served?

Michael M. Honda

I am here today to address the issue of Japan’s war crimes. I was invited to speak primarily because I authored an Assembly Joint Resolution in the 1999 session of the California State Legislature calling on Japan to formally apologize for war crimes and to pay reparations to the victims of those war crimes. I am a teacher by training, but want to be clear that I am not an expert on the issue of war and the atrocities that inevitably appear to accompany war.

What I want to share with you is my point of view on this issue and why I think it is important to pay attention to an issue that took place more than 50 years ago. It is a view that is personal, stemming from something uniquely American. It is a view that reflects the “new” Asian Pacific American or APA community. Finally, it is a view that is based on and supported by established legal and moral precedent.

Why Me, a Japanese-American?

The foundation for my work on this issue began long before I introduced the resolution. Though the war crimes of Japan were largely unknown to me at the time, my involvement in the Redress issue begins with the internment of my family and relatives in 1942. Let me briefly touch on how the Japanese American Redress Movement influenced my involvement in Assembly Joint Resolution 27, or what my staff and I call “AJR 27.”

As I became involved in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s it was clear to me and to many other activists that the Japanese-American community was wounded. One would only have to talk to a fellow Japanese-American from Hawaii to see the difference. Japanese-Americans from Hawaii saw mainland Japanese-Americans as different from them—they considered us bitter, maladjusted, and dysfunctional—because we never recovered from the impact of the internment. The Japanese-Americans in Hawaii avoided the mass relocation that took place on the mainland and the calamity that came with it. Of course, as a community we on the mainland lost millions in assets, families were torn apart, and communities were forever lost. However, the greatest damage that was done was to our dignity as human beings and as Americans—we lost self-respect as a community; a loss that was not suffered by fellow Japanese-Americans in Hawaii.

I became a leader in a movement to call for an apology and reparations. It was not a call for money—though the payment of reparations retains symbolic significance. It was not a call to embarrass the government or punish those that conspired to rob us of our dignity. It was a request to acknowledge the truth and to allow us to begin the process of healing our communal wounds.

The impact of the apology and reparations is far reaching. As a community, Japanese-Americans still harbor bitterness and many remain forever scarred. However, the apology and reparations have allowed many of us to put aside our bitterness and constructively look back at our responses to the internment. Since the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, our community has delved deeper into the issues that divided our community during our internment.

One of the issues now being unearthed is the victimization of those interned in the camps that refused to be drafted until their civil rights were restored. There is much pain surrounding this issue and many are critical of the role of the Japanese-Americans Citizens League. As many in our community are—like myself—approaching the qualifying age for the senior discount, it is important to deal with these issues while folks are still alive.

The apology by the U.S. Government to the Japanese American community did not “make us whole” and it did not please everyone. However, it did succeed in bringing closure in two infinitely critical ways: (1) It stipulated the truth—establishing once and for all that our community was innocent and the internment was not justified; ...