Associated Press






Japanese and Chinese scholars published the results of a three-year joint history project the other day, and the international media has put is focus on the disagreement over the death toll of the Nanking Massacre.

Here’s an excerpt from the AP article by Mari Yamaguchi:

The massacre was one of the worst incidents during Japan’s invasion of China in the first half of the 20th century, with Beijing claiming as many as 300,000 people died, but Tokyo saying the toll was far less.

The report was written by Japanese and Chinese historians appointed by the two governments. In it, Japanese scholars confirmed Japan’s Imperial Army “massacred” war prisoners, soldiers and citizens in the city of Nanking, now called Nanjing, in the December 1937 attack, and committed repeated rapes of women, arson and looting.

But the two sides failed to agree on the death toll.

The Japanese listed figures ranging from 20,000 to 200,000, citing differences on the definition of “massacre,” the area and the span of the event. China, which compiled data from records of domestic and international tribunals, put the death toll at more than 300,000.

Absent from the article is a real evaluation of the views of the Japanese historians. The average international reader will be left with the impression that the Japanese are once again trying to “whitewash” history.

It is disappointing that the AP article and other English language articles about this story don’t go into detail and note that credible historians who are not right-wing nationalists do have widely differing views of the death toll. Few outside China take the 300,000 figure seriously, unless one greatly increases the time frame and area of land involved to a point beyond what anyone would reasonably consider a single massacre in a single city.

Japanese media reports have mentioned the Nanjing disagreement but have also touched a rather interesting thing about the report. Although it was meant to involve post war history, it is completely missing anything about the period after 1945. The Associated Press didn’t think it was worth including in their article, but the AFP actually bothered to mention it:

The report did not disclose the outcome of discussions on post-World War II history at the request of the Chinese side.

Japanese media attributed the exclusion to China’s caution on sensitive events including the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

In other words, China is fine with joint-history projects as long as they don’t include any period of history in which the People’s Republic of China existed. Reflection on past wrongdoing is something only other nations should engage in. The Japanese side, wanting to better relations with China, seems to have meekly agreed with this view and will not to make the post-1945 section public.















Chinese Trawler

I am an Angela Merkel fan, and have inclusive respect for Germany, in the way they have faced the atrocities committed by their

country's actions during WW11.

Recently 5 Australian ex-POWs journeyed to Japan to receive an apology for their treatment during their captivity by Japan.

A very junior minister gave a less than heart felt apology to these men, representing many the thousands of their mates that died as captives of

Japan.

Way too little, way too late.

Japan Apologizes to Australian POWs

March 4, 2011

Foreign minister Seiji Maehara met a group of former Australian POWs the other day, delivering an apology to them on behalf of the Japanese government.

From Australia’s ABC:

Aged between 85 and 94 years old, the five former POWs were flown to Japan as the government’s special guests.

At a meeting with the minister, they were offered an apology for their pain and suffering as prisoners of the Japanese during World War II.

Jack Simmonds, from the Australian state of Queensland, was sent to the Changi prison camp in eastern Singapore.

Mr Simmonds says he accepts the minister’s sincerity.

“He was honest and very thorough. Much appreciated,” he said.

And the Japan Times, pointing out how it was different from last year’s apology to American POWs:

His apology, however, was made behind closed doors with the media not allowed to observe, according to a ministry official. When his predecessor, Katsuya Okada, apologized to former American POWs last fall, he did so in front of the cameras.

During the meeting, Maehara “expressed deep remorse and his heartfelt apology over the great deal of suffering and hardships,” according to a statement issued by the Foreign Ministry.

“I hope that your visit will contribute to the reconciliation and friendship and further enhance cooperation” between the two countries, Maehara said at the beginning of the meeting, which was open to the media.

In response, Charles Richards, 94, an ex-Aussie POW, said he considered the invitation of POWs to Japan a “practical” form of apology.

“Many POWs, as you know, are looking for an official apology, but frankly, I feel that the important thing is for practical apology, which is represented by our visit here and being looked after,” Richards said.

The former POWs, who were invited to Japan by the government, also became the first Australians to receive copies of their prisoners’ identification cards recording their names, dates of incarceration and locations of camps. Maehara promised to start providing copies of name cards to other Australian POWs.

As I have mentioned in past postings, this is not the first time Japan has apologized to former POWs. This apology and the apology to the Americans are re-affirmations of Japan’s previous apologies, such as the 1995 apology that contained wording that was meant to acknowledge all victims of Japan’s actions: “through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.”

The apology has received a positive reaction from the Australian government:

“I welcome their offer which is made in the spirit of cooperation. These index cards were originally offered to Australia by the Japanese Government in 1953, but the Australian Government of the time chose not to take up the offer, believing that they would not contain any new information,” Mr Rudd said.

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a sudden surge in the number and size of protests in China against Japanese wartime aggression

As BBC and other western newsmedia have reported, there had scaresly been protests against Japan and Japanese people enough to occupy top stories prior to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (around 1989). China experienced two Tiananmen Square Massacres (1976 and 1989). CCP (China Communist Party) took those incidents seriously and were afraid if they took no measures, their regime might soon be overthrown. So what they launched was a series of programs that would boost people's nationalism, their love of CCP, and allowing capitalistic economic systems to enter into Chinese economy, slowly, so as not to make people known that communisum was a bad choice and the very source of people's misery. At the same time they needed a scape goat, or a rival country, which was marked by CCP's diversionary motives:to turn people's eye from the economic division between the rich and poor, between the rich coastal area and the poor inland China; to divert people's blame for failing communist economy away from CCP. They were desperate for a scapegoat. That's the prime reason why Japan was targeted as their archrival and scapegoat. They totally rewritten their textbooks and exaggerated the size and number of casualties in the war. Nanjing Massacre's death toll that China claims was unsubstantiated, exaggerated, inflated number that is ten times larger that western scholars reported.

Even though we Japanese feel guilty of such brutality having took place, but we cannot help sensing China's ulterior motives behind the number reported.

Source:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=179174&page=8

Romany, it does not sound as you say. It is a perceptive account of relationships between the peoples concerned.
3unorchid, there are still people who refute that the Holocaust happened. It is not surprising that a minority of Japanese will not admit to the Nanjing massacre.
Accept the mental abberation of these people, and move on. If you find this too difficult, try and acquaint yourself with the brutal training and brainwashing imposed on Japanese soldiers. It doesn't excuse what happened, but it does help to explain it.

I learned during my time in China that the Chinese consider the 10-year cultural revolution a mere 'mistake' in an otherwise glorious career.
Ask a Chinese student to select an important Chinaman, and at least half will pick Mao.

Many Finns, born after the WW2, still carry a trauma because of what happened between Finland and Soviet Union 1939-1944.
The official Soviet Union (200 million people and five million men army) history tells Finland (four million people and 200 000 men army) was the attacker. The fact that Soviet Union was expelled from League of Nations, the predecessor of UN, was explained to the Russians as a Western provocation.

Mihail Gorbatšov, the last Soviet leader, was the first Russian to apologize and admit the war was their (Stalin's) fault.

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I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Whether we Chinese recognize the "wickedness" of Chairman Mao or not, it is all about Chinese but not about any foreign individual or country.
If it is not Chairman Mao, we might not be what we are now. Death is not the worst thing if slavery by a foreign atrocious country is tolerated. Never will we forget what the pioneers did for us and we are ready do follow their suit if necessary though not necessarily in the same bloody way.

I agree with "The modern day Japanese are not responsible for their acts of their progenitors, but of course denying atrocities is not healing". This is also why I cannot what the Japanese even try to deny the fact.

Rommomy,
As to “the fostering of hate and racial violence towards the Japanese”，
I'm a college student and what I see and do is that we are friendly to the Japanese students. I definitely agree with you that "The modern day Japanese are not responsible for their acts of their progenitors," but scar will always be there if the wound is too deep. As you might have such experience that when the weather changes suddenly, the scar is often sensitive and can always foreseen that bad weather is coming , which often turns out to be true. It is also true of the scar of war. When the Nogaya Mayor and those on his side try to deny what their predescenders had done to our forefathers, we feel hurt. The old scar remind us that we did not come out from nowhere, and that we are all part of the history.

Perhaps the inhumane progenitors of the Japanese should have considered more for theie posterity. It is a pity they failed to and the consequence is that the mordern day Japanese can not but take over the heritage and not to shuffle off it to any other country.

p.s. I'm not trying to blame the modern day Japanese as a whole.

Just as I thought 3unorched... you have your head in the sand

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

Who is sniping? You call drawing attention to Mao's actions sniping, when it is the pot calling the kettle black in 3unorchids case in his complaint against the Japanese. I myself have said that all nations have their faults..did you not see the Redgriffin? I also said that it was not right of the Japanese to airbrush the past.


It comes to something when drawing attention to the horrors of Mao is termed sniping.

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

No I call this sniping When someone says something you disagree with try saying what do you mean by that? Or but aren't you forgetting...? Then you might get response in which you learn something you might not have known before. That was all I was saying.

Comfort Woman Statue Erected Outside of Japanese Embassy in Seoul

which happened to remind me of this thread:
http://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst22856_Unconscious-tastelessness-or-an-insulting-gesture-.aspx

http://en.wikipedia


What does "Kings or American?" mean?

No,I'm not.
What does "nomadwa" mean?

There is a hell of a lot of airbrushing going on here. Mao was a brute end of story, and to extoll him and look up to him while decrying the acts of the Japanese is at the very least blinkered.

No one is defending the Japanese acts referred to by unorchid. It is his somewhat twisted stance that I fail to understand.

He demands the apologies from this generation of Japanese for the past offences of others, but at the same time ignores the pain of millions of his own race at the hands of Mao, and the fact that the memory lives on in current Chinese families who have never been apologised to nor ever will be.

unorchid asks: why can't the Japanese face the history squarely?

My question is: Why can't the Chinese face their history squarely?

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle

No, we were not the perpetrators of these barbaric acts,

but our obligations are to learn from the mistakes of prior generations, and have our eyes wide open.

This is an excellent example of past sins being the responsibility of the current generation (even though we are off topic, but you have

raised this subject once before, so you obviously want to speak about it).

The indigenous people of Australia were treated dismally, and it was a classic clash of cultures.

They being Hunter Gathers and an anciant people, as well as being of a different skin colour, were looked down on by the British colonials.

The indigenous races, and there are many tribes with their own languages, did not build permanent dwellings or edifices. so it was assumed

there was no heritage, land managment or culture, a very wrong assumption.

The Aboriginals are a people that believed that all live stock was the same, kangaroo or cattle.

the aboriginals speared the sheep & cattle, the settlers shot the aboriginals, the Aboriginals killed the settlers and so on and so on.

In 2009 our Prime Minister officially said Sorry and we now have a National Sorry Day.

Huge tracts of Australia have been deeded over for Aboriginal ownership and managment, with Australians having to have official permission to

enter these areas.

Aboriginal people have free medical, dental, school fees, legal aide, social security, payments, housing and the list is endless.

I apologise for this breef overview of a very difficult and complicated subject, but I hope you understand almostfriendbird, the moral to the

story is, we try and make amends for the injustices that our forefathers committed.



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