I’m not exactly sure how to read this, but there are *Confederate *memorials in many states that were neither part of the 'Fed nor, in some cases, even in existence at the time. Thank the various powerful Confederate societies of ca. 1900 for that.
That’s not quite an accurate description. There was no ceremony in this case; it was nominally a private visit made by Abe in an unofficial capacity.
I think this will likely briefly boost his popularity (which has been declining recently). Not so much because people necessarily share Abe’s revisionist sentiments but because it will be seen as standing up to Chinese pressure.
The Germans have long acknowledged that the Nazis were a criminal organisation, with criminal objectives, led by criminals and supported by other criminals, whose actions were carried out by criminals on the ground carrying weapons.
The Japanese may indeed ‘regret’ their crimes, just as the criminals I supervise in prison also ‘regret’ their crimes - but only in the sense they were caught.
The Japanese have never been properly held to account for their crimes, and they have never expressed enough ‘regret’ to seek their criminals out.
The war memorial is held up as being for all Japanese war dead, in which case it simply is not just for 14 war criminals, its pretty much a memorial to all those criminals who behaved absolutely appallingly from 1931 right the way through to 1945.
Whilst many in the West do not seem to place it all that high in their national consciousness, other Asian nations certainly do, and the Japanese know it - which makes a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister rather controversial - something he is well aware of, thus there is some other purpose behind it.
How about this statement by the Prime Ministerial scumbag?
This is the context of this arsehole’s visit to this war memorial, he is seeking to diminish the suffering that was imposed upon other countries, and its not much more of a step to justify it.
Now look at how many Chinese civilian deaths, and while you are at it, maybe just take a look at Korea, or maybe a few other South East Asian nations, and then get back to me about why those nations might just feel somewhat aggrieved by this visit to a bunch of dead war criminals.
Giving out money in compensation is only one aspect of accepting culpability, and perhaps its not even the main one - their ‘regrets’ are half hearted - when I see a few of the other military commanders named and condemned and perhaps Japanese politicians not using this for their own propaganda purposes, then perhaps we might start to believe them.
Read this, then tell me about it,
Bonzo goes to Bitburg then goes out for a cup of tea
As I watched it on TV somehow it really bothered me
So in one sentence there aren’t apologies, but two sentences later, there are apologies.
I’m honestly curious as to what would constitute a sufficient “apology” from a Japanese leader at this point (I mean, remember that we’re no longer even talking about the people who were around at the time.) Contrary to popular belief, many of the apologies were not backhanded “it’s too bad that stuff happened,” but were open, abject, clear apologies. And not just in the last four or five years.
At the time, it was noted that the Bitburg cemetary contained almost entirely ordinary soldiers, with the exception of a couple of war criminals. I always figured that Reagan and other dignitaries should have had their ceremony honoring the German war dead – and then gone over to the graves of the war criminals and relieved themselves thereupon.
On November 8th, 2013, President Obama made a speech in which he said, in part:
I for one am shocked that President Obama would make such a statement of support specifically for the individuals who massacred Korean civilians at No Gun Ri, and Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.
Oh, I know, defenders of the President will say, “Oh, he’s not doing that.”, but if you read the speech, he didn’t say, “We stand behind our veterans except for the ones that commit massacres.”, did he? And that’s pretty much the same thing as celebrating the massacres.
And he did so at the very cemetery that Samuel Whiteside is buried. . .the same Samuel Whiteside who was responsible for the massacre of 300 Sioux at the Wounded Knee Massacre. Clearly this so called “Arlington National Cemetery” is nothing more than a war crimes monument.
Indeed, how many soldiers there served in the Philippine-America War, a disgraceful crime against humanity that most Americans don’t even know about? Guess they just don’t teach American kids about that stuff. Fill the textbooks with balderdash and skip over the crimes. huh?
That’s really a bit of goalpost shifting.
I’ve no problem with the idea that several Japanese officials have apologized and done so a number of times.
I do have a problem with pointing at the list of Japanese apologies on Wikipedia of all places as being some kind of definitive list of acceptable apologies. They’re not. They’re not even all actual apologies. That’s my point. Sure, some of the things on the list are fine but not all of them count nor is that really an acceptable way of handling it. Just count up the number of apologies and if they cross a threshold, we let it slide? That’s a rather strange argument.
Sure…
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence he was the first sitting PM to make such a visit in nearly a decade. And that he ran as an ultranationlist who sought to expand Japan’s military capabilities.
That might be a decent argument if there Filipinos who lived through atrocities but decided to forgive and forget.
I realize it’s not entirely an argument based on reason, but when little old ladies who were forced into prostitution were protesting not 5 years ago over the lackluster Japanese response, it’s going to be personal. Or when there’s still systematic and ongoing racism and discrimination against those ethnic minorities in Japan itself.
How so? How is that Japan has not “fully apologized”? What, in your opinion, would constitute a full apology?
Agreed. There’s no hatred toward England and we fought two wars against that country. We were allied with Japan in one war, enemies in another, and we are now allies again. I don’t think it takes much to figure out the real reason for the hatred so long afterwards.
What would be proper, besides adhering to the surrender treaty which they presumably did?
Why is your description of what’s proper better than the act of following the surrender treaty?
What would be “enough regret,” realistically?
When Japan was the second richest country in the free world, there weren’t that many complaints, and Japan can re-write here own version of the war. Now that Japan is just a minor player in world trade, newly-rich countries like China can start hollering.
So to answer the (implied) question, neighbors shouldn’t get over it (they’re really just starting to holler.) But Japan shouldn’t budge either.
“Just look at that bitch eating crackers, like she owns the place”
The sneak attack thing probably still resonates with some people. 
I guess you missed my “nominally” in that sentence. It would obviously be crazy to pretend that it was actually an entirely private event. But it was not “deliberately having a public ceremony”, either.
And while Abe is a nationalist who wants to expand Japan’s military capabilities, that’s not what he ran as. He actually tried to downplay that aspect of himself and focused on the economy instead.
It sure is a strange argument, but you’re the one making it, not me. I did not ask how many apologies were enough, did I? I asked what a SUFFICIENT apology would be.
Well, what would it be? What is this threshold?
Speaking as a young person living in a country which was pretty well screwed over by the Japanese during WWII (Singapore), I don’t see any reaction here to the visit to Yasakuni. Nothing, pretty much.
Personally, the actions taken by Japan since (basically, not having an army and the emphasis on trade rather than imperialistic or colonial overtures) appears to be good enough for us. Basically, leave us alone and give us your money, we’re good. Nobody seems to care if they said or didn’t say sorry or visited or didn’t visit a shrine.
Just yesterday I helped my wife prepare this material for her high school history class. A year ago, I had originally posted a response to why the Japanese didn’t apologize like Germany did, so I dug the post out and rewrote it for her use in clas.
This is the edited version.
There is no doubt that the acts of the Japanese during the war were despicable. One searches in vain for words to adequately describe the unspeakable horrors.
The question is then why the Japanese didn’t develop the same sense of collective guilt which the Germans did after WWII. Many people point to this and try to make comparison, but there were large, material differences between the situations concerning the two Axis nations.
More German people were more involved in the rise of Nazism, a political party that received a plurality of votes, and did enjoy the support of sizable percentage of the people. Hitler’s ascension to power in the early 30s and his diatribes against Jews and Slaves were famously cheered on by large crowds of tens or hundreds of thousands. More Germans were active participants in the anti-Jewish laws and agreed with the Nazis that the Jews were a major problem which needed to be solved (although fewer knew about the death camps).
There were many other differences. Kristallnacht was not done by just a few hard core party supporters. The 1,000 plus anti-Jewish laws were seen by everyone and approved by many. Many more German army individuals were involved in atrocities than Japanese soldiers.
The brutality occurred not in some far distant land but its own neighborhoods and its victim included its own citizens.
In contrast, in Japan the militarism was centered on the army and members of the non-elected ruling oligarchy. The atrocities occurred overseas, mostly out of view and knowledge of the average civilian. No one was rounded in the streets of Tokyo and political parties were suppressed rather than serve as an instrument of gathering public support. Political leaders did not spew hate-filled diatribes to cheering crowds.
The average Japanese citizen was not responsible for the Japanese government which took Japan into the war.
Japanese militarism became increasingly strong through the 1920s and then into the 30s and then the war. Bushido has a little to do with it as Christianity does to the Westboro folks, it was hijacked to service a more evil purpose. This is evidenced by the normal treatment of POWs by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war. It was only in the 30s that the army became so cruel. With universal conscription, the army drilled compliance into a populous which wasn’t that long out of a feudal system.
The structure of the Meiji Constitution created a structure which allowed militarism to develop unchecked by the civilian government. The Ministers of War (Army) and Navy had to be active duty officers, and the prime minister had to resign if he could not fill a cabinet, so he was at the mercy of the armed forces. The general staffs of the army and navy were independent of the respective ministries, and like the ministers, they reported not to the Prime Minister but directly to the emperor.
The ultra-nationalists attempted a number of coups, assassinated many government leaders and even threatened admirals who opposed them, ultimately unilaterally starting the war in China which led to war with the Allies.
There were major differences between how the wars ended and the timing and most importantly of how the Allies approached the issue. The land war on the European continent exposed the worst of Germany’s secrets to the world. The camps still stood and evidence of the massacres were there for all to see. Not only were they visible, but the Allies had enacted a wide-spread denazification campaign of to rid Germany of Nazis and their sympathizers, forcibly bringing the atrocities to everyone’s attention. They took German citizens to the sites of mass graves and brought the corpses to the people.
It was Allied pressure which was the impetuous for the laws which ultimately banned the denial of the Holocaust.
In Japan, however, the war took several months longer, and the Japanese army was not overrun in areas where they had committed many of their atrocities. Even by then, there were concerns over the Soviet Union, and at least partly due to this the US Army participated in the cover-up of Unit 731 in order to keep the “results” secret from the Soviets. China’s attention was immediately distracted by its civil war.
Another critical part of the puzzle is that the US cooped the emperor in changing the nation, and was complicit in the cover-up of his responsibility. With the vast majority of the problem stemming from the then disbanded military, GHQ did not conduct an extensive propaganda campaign to impose a collective guilt on the Japanese population, but rather placed the blame on the former military.
Timing is everything. With the successful cover-up of the worst of the civilian atrocities, including the Rape of Nanking, the Comfort Women and Unit 731 until decades later, when the news did come out, the shock value was considerably less. Less people could directly relate.
The relationship and history between the two countries and their neighbors makes another difference. Germany and France had fought too many wars and they both realized they needed to get along, especially in the face of the perceived threat from the East. This was not the case with Japan and her surrounding countries.
China makes a huge deal about this for political reasons, to divert attention from the shortcomings of its government. I’ve read that young Chinese now are angrier against the Japanese than the people were at the time, although that was certainly a case where those people were facing an ongoing civil war. Certainly, the greatest killer of Chinese citizens during the 20th century did not live in Tokyo.
This is not an apology for the actions of the Japanese. Note my repeated use of words such as “atrocities.” Nor it is an excuse for the lack of earlier, clearer apologies and an honest approach to history.
It is, however, my opinion on why comparisons to Germany are not as black and white as some would think or claim.
Yasukuni is the Japanese equivalent of Arlington though, being the enshrinement place for most war dead in the service of Japan since (and including) the Meiji Restoration- 1868-present.
It’s not just a WWII shrine, and that’s the thing that people don’t realize, even if the vast majority of enshrinements are WWII deaths.