If remembrance is the key to redemption, the Japanese people are unredeemed
By: George Noga – August 9, 2016
This post is on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bomb. It is a post I never should have to write and one in which I take absolutely no satisfaction. But it must be written and presented to a candid world. A former German president (Richard von Weizsacker) speaking of German war crimes said, “The secret of redemption lies in remembrance“. By that standard, Japan has failed utterly and abjectly and deserves no redemption.
It was only a few months ago (75 years after the fact) and following several decades of legal effort that Japan apologized for and settled its WWII slave labor claims. Only in late 2015 did Japan come to grips with its sexual slavery of young Korean girls; they had to be dragged kicking and screaming and settled only under duress. Japan has yet to accept responsibility for the Rape of Nanjing in which its troops, in a frenzy of racial hatred, slaughtered 300,000 Chinese civilians in a gruesome depraved manner.
Nanjing was but one episode in a long train of Japanese atrocities. Other Japanese holocausts include the Bataan Death March, subhuman POW treatment, massacres in Shanghai and Hong Kong and the Yellow River flood when Japan destroyed dikes and murdered 1 million civilians. During Japan’s occupation of the Philippines, there were 72 documented massacres leaving over 120,000 dead. The list goes on and on; it includes Laha Airfield, Bangka Island, Parit, Sulong, Tol Plantation, Balikapan, Chekiang, Sandakan Death March, Truk, Manchuria, Pingfan and 40 more wretched massacres, holocausts, ethnic cleansings and atrocities by the Empire of Japan.
In willful and flagrant disregard of the unambiguous historical record of the past 75 years, the Japanese people remain in denial. They refuse to teach in their schools about the Rape of Nanjing and exclude it from their history books. They persist in ignoring, downplaying and obfuscating their atrocious record of racism and terror. Japanese children are not told the ugly truth about their fathers’ and grandfathers’ actions.
To anyone who now wants to give Japan a pass on its WWII atrocities, my response is straightforward: Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember the Bataan Death March! Remember Nanjing! Remember the POW camps! Remember all the other horrors Japan promulgated and about which it has national amnesia! Above all, never grant the Japanese people redemption until their collective memory improves and all their children learn the truth about their ancestors. Finally, on this 71st anniversary of Nagasaki, let’s pledge to remember the 3 million lives saved by the atomic bombs.
The next post August 14 addresses Obama’s overtime and payday loan rules.