[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
NEWS Comments to the BKK:
May 29, 1998
Postbag
We have not taken responsibility
I strongly disagree with the Bangkok Post
editorial ("Sins of the past visit the
emperor",
May 28) that suggests former British
prisoners of war are instruments of a
jingoistic tabloid press and that "even if the
war is long over, nobody appears to have
told them". To me, the soldiers' message
rings clear. We as Japanese have not taken
enough responsibility for our past.
In schools, heavily censored textbooks gloss
over the part about the rise of imperial
Japan.
National discourse about World War Two is
largely limited to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
being nuked by the Americans, a valid but
incomplete discussion. And getting the
Japanese government to even talk about
addressing their dark past is the political
equivalent of pulling teeth.
A public revolving fund sponsored by the
Japanese government, voluntarily supported
by Japanese corporations, organisations and
everyday citizens, with the specific goal of
raising money to compensate those who
suffered under the Japanese during WWII
would be a politically symbolic gesture and a
concrete way Japan could begin to address
the past. Perhaps there are too many people
to compensate every individual who suffered,
but I am inclined to think that it is not what
the Japanese government gives, as much as
how and why.
The point is that any action on the part of
the
Japanese must be accompanied by genuine
sincerity and a renewed commitment for
peace, not reluctance. No amount of money
can make up for the anguish, the agony and
the grief these soldiers and other have
suffered. If we as Japanese do not
understand that, we understand nothing.
Ehito Kimura