Forgotten Holocaust

From the American perspective, when one mentions atrocities committed during the Second World War, the mind jumps to Nazi Germany and their attempted extermination of Jews and all other groups that threatened to disturb their ethnic purity and destiny of domination.  Next, the mind may land on the Soviets under Stalin, who killed around 40 million of their own people during their numerous Pogroms, purges and five year plans; though such information was lost or overlooked until fairly recently.  Many more groups may be named for their atrocities before the mind may land on Imperial Japan, yet as Iris Chang wrote in The Rape of Nanking, the atrocities committed upon the people of Nanking, and many others across the parts of Asia the Japan occupied, were far more cruel than any others that took place during the Second World War.  Along with the cruelty came the sheer number of civilians who were massacred;  at least 260,000 civilians are thought to have been murdered at the hands of the Japanese at Nanking, and though such numbers may be similar to the civilian casualty counts of other countries during the war, the massacre at Nanking took place over several weeks, not years. (Chang, p.4-6)  And what is perhaps worse, is that while we can take solace in the fact that Germany, by its guilt, will likely never raise armies for wars of aggression ever again, the Japanese have not taken on a similar mentality.  In recent years, while being spurred on by deniers of massacres, such as the one at Nanking, the Japanese government, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have been moving ever closer to attempts of re-militarization and away from pacifism.

It is true that in many schools across the world, atrocities such as the one’s committed by the Japanese during the Second World War are not discussed with or taught to students, but without discussion, understanding, and remembrance, a door is opened for such events to occur again.  That is why in Kristen Ghodsee’s article A Tale of “Two Totalitarianisms”: The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism, she emphasizes the importance of remembering all of the atrocities committed during the Second World War, not just the largely German perpetrated Holocaust. (Ghodsee, p.1-3)  In the article, she largely focuses of the importance of remembering atrocities committed by the Soviet Union and by extension, Communism.  This largely due to the fact that the Soviet Union was able to emerge from the Second World War as a triumphant hero and not as the war criminal that it may have actually been.  This argument for remembrance of previously overlooked atrocities also applies to those committed by the Japanese upon countries who voices were too small to be heard on the international stage following the end of the war.  And though these numerous countries and their people will forever bear their scars and harbor their resentment, some in Japan continue to deny the actuality of such atrocities and war crimes committed in war time.  Historians such as Tanaka Masaaki, in his book What Really Happened in Nanking, refutes such atrocities as the “Nanking Massacre” as a conspiracy spun up by the Allied Nations and their allies in China as a way to justify punishing Japan at the conclusion of the Second World War. (Masaaki, p.vii-3)  I understand that he feels the work of Iris Chang in particular to be nothing more than a collection of anti-Japanese propaganda, but what punishment (besides defeat) did the Japanese receive?  The United States and the Allies rebuilt Japan just as they did their defeated foes in Europe and by comparison, the Japanese got off easy as they did not have to feel the internationally sanctioned shame and guilt placed upon them that Germany did.  In fact, many in Japan felt that they were completely justified in their actions during the war, to the point that as recently as 1990, the mayor of Nagasaki, Japan was shot for suggesting that the Emperor Hirohito of Japan was at least partially responsible for the war. (Chang, p. 12)  This in itself suggests that for a significant portion of the Japanese population, there does not exist any sentiment of regret, guilt, or recompense for what their nation did during the Second World War.

I argue that such a fundamental and nationwide understanding of the  atrocities committed by the Japanese upon their Asian neighbors during the Second World War is beyond dangerous, as it opens the door to similar events to occur in the future.  Not to hover on Germany, but it is true that they were shamed thoroughly for their part in the war and the Holocaust that it hid, and though the German people carry a vestige of that shame even today, they are the better for it.  Today they are a economic, artistic and technological leader the world over and though they retain a military, it is solely for self-defense and peace-keeping and their distaste for war has been well-documented over the past  decade of conflict in the Middle East.  On the other hand, while Japan is a similar leader in Asia, they have of late been attempting to expand their military capacity under the administration of Prime Minster Shinzo Abe.  Though Article 9 of the Japanese constitution limits Japan to a Self-Defense Force and forbids such a force from setting foot on foreign soil, Abe and his administration are challenging the clause in hopes of expanding the military.  Not to say that the people of Japan must be shamed for the actions of their ancestors, as such an action would be over 70 years too late, but people, all people, must be educated about the truth of such horrors so that they may never be repeated.