The following is a collection of articles and comments regarding the postwar position of the Japanese government and also those of the various allied governments in the aftermath of World War II. Some of these facts will be shocking to readers, but they are included here so that all may know of the corruption and collaboration that has gone on in the 75 years since the end of the world’s greatest conflict.
* The United States granted immunity to Emperor Hirohito and Prince Asaka - who ordered the Rape of Nanking and also the massacre of doctors, nurses and patients in the hospitals in Hong Kong. Evidence shows that General Douglas MacArthur and his senior aides and Japanese high court officials schemed to fix testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials so as not to implicate Hirohito and other members of the Imperial Family.
* MacArthur also managed to have Generals Homma and Yamashita captured and brought to mock trials very soon after the Japanese surrendered - even before the war crimes trials were properly set up and convened. This was because Gen. Homma had defeated him in the battle for the Philippines and Gen. Yamashita - also known as the ‘Tiger of Malaya’ for his victory there and in Singapore, had opposed his return to the islands in 1945. He orchestrated the trials, thus denying real justice to both men and, in a clear act of revenge, carried out his vendetta against them. Both men were hastily tried and executed on MacArthur’s orders.
* After the war, the US and the Allies conducted a half-hearted show trial - The Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Most historians agree that it was a flawed trial which focused mainly on the maltreatment of POWs while ignoring all the other unspeakable brutalities (e.g. Unit 731) committed against the Asian people by the Japanese. The US granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the Japanese doctors of Unit 731 and Unit 100 in exchange for their data, and helped cover up Japanese war crimes so that the US could gain advantages in the field of chemical and biological weapons - utterly ignoring international laws.
* In 1951, the US feared that a possible Dutch refusal to sign the San Francisco Peace Treaty might lead to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand dropping out as well. As a result, on the day before and the morning of the treaty’s signing ceremony, US principal negotiator, John Foster Dulles, orchestrated a ‘secret deal’ involving the exchange of confidential letters between the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Dirk Stikker, and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.
Declassified documents have surfaced to argue that Yoshida also told the Dutch government that the 1951 treaty did not mean that the allied powers were forfeiting the right of their citizens to sue Japan for wartime damages.
The deal with the Dutch and the letters had to be kept secret because Article 26 of the treaty states that, "Should Japan make a peace settlement or war claims settlement with any State granting that State greater advantages than those provided by the present Treaty, those same advantages shall be extended to all parties to the present Treaty."
In 1956, the Dutch did successfully pursue a claim against Japan on behalf of private citizens. Japan paid $10 million as a way of "expressing sympathy and regret." A year before, the British noted two other instances in which governments made deals with Japan for reparations:
1.) A settlement with Burma that provided reparations, services and investments amounting, over 10 years, to $250 million; and 2.) an agreement with Switzerland that provided "compensation for maltreatment, personal injury and loss arising from acts illegal under the rules of war." Japan subsequently signed treaties with other states, including war claims settlements.
The POWs point out that since Japan made payments to the Netherlands and Switzerland after the treaty was signed - money that was used by those governments to compensate POWs - Article 26 obliges Japan to give the same advantages to all the other nations. After the San Francisco Peace Treaty, better terms were in fact reached with several individual nations.
These letters were finally declassified in April 2000, by which time most potential claimants were probably dead. With the ‘secret deal’ and by withholding documents, the US has significantly contributed to and played a major role in Japan's historical amnesia.
Both the US and Japan purposely ignored the treaty by failing to honour the provision of Article 26 and continue to this day to deny their bonded responsibility to compensate the wartime victims.
Later in 2000, the same Article 26 declassified document was found in the UK by a POW researcher at the National Archives, but the British government suppressed it and maintained its position that the POWs’ claim issue was settled at the San Francisco Peace Treaty.
* In 1978, with the surreptitious acceptance of the US, Japan shamelessly moved 1,068 war criminals' memorials into Yasukuni Shinto Shrine to be worshipped as national heroes.
In July 1996, on Japan's day of cease-fire, known as the "Day of Surrender", the Japanese Royal Family and Prime Minister Hashimoto went to the Yasukuni Shrine to pay official tribute there. In doing so, they once again, effectively bestowed the status of national heroes upon more than 1,000 convicted war criminals.
* The Japanese "Peace Constitution Article 9" prohibits Japan from having an army. So instead of an army, Japan created a ‘Self-Defense Force’ (SDF). It was at first called an "emasculated" military force since it was forbidden to resort to military action unless attacked. However, since 2003, the US has actively encouraged Japan to move away from its constitutional restrictions and re-arm itself. Encouraged by the US, Japan has re-armed its SDF into Asia’s best equipped and most modern military army. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Japan’s military spending in 2002 was US$46 billion, the second largest in the world, even out-stripping Britain.
In 2016, the right wing LDP government of Shinzo Abe pushed through a revision to the Japanese constitution, bypassing all democratic policies, principles and procedures to make it possible for Japan to wage war again. Article 9 has now been amended in the constitution to allow Japan to go to war if they feel their sovereignity is threatened and to help defend and protect their neighbours in the region. This move was against the wishes of most of the Japanese people, but met with the express delight and approval of the United States.
* Japan has successfully brainwashed its own people by glorifying the convicted Class A war criminals as national heroes and publicly denied the atrocities carried out, such as the Nanjing Massacre, and those committed by Unit 731, Unit 100 and Unit 516. “With censored textbooks to conceal atrocities, 80% of Japanese people do not know that Japan had ever invaded another country”, said former Japanese soldier Takashi Nagase. "They only know the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima and we lost the war." Mr. Nagase believed Japan deserved the atomic bombs because they immediately ended the war, saving the lives of many Japanese, POWs and civilians in Asian countries.
* There are several ways in which you can say sorry in Japanese without in any way really apologizing. “If it is not the form of Japanese that says, 'We sincerely apologize' - i.e. use ‘shazai’ ( シャザイ 謝罪 ), I say so what?" said Roger Cyr, Chairman of the ABCIFER civilian internees association in the UK.
"They were waiting for us to die then and they are waiting for us to die now", added former Taiwan POW Arthur Titherington before his death in 2010. Unless Japan sincerely apologizes (i.e. " shazai" 謝罪) for its crimes, and takes full responsibility, the Japanese people’s cry for ‘No More Hiroshimas’ is actually a slap in their own government's face. This is because Japanese A-bomb victims were all direct victims of their own country’s militarism.
* Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks Nazi war criminals, likened Japanese revisionists to those who say that accounts of the Nazi Holocaust were fictionalized or exaggerated. "Japan cannot be trusted as a member of the community of nations until it once and for all, sincerely and genuinely, apologizes for its deeds during World War II - beginning with Nanking", Cooper said.
* On August 9th 1999, Japan's parliament voted 166 to 71 in bitterly contested legislation to enshrine as national symbols the rising sun flag and the imperial hymn ‘Kimigayo’, which became the national anthem. Because of their connection with Japan's militarist and imperial past, the adoption of these symbols was condemned by thousands of protesters who demonstrated outside the Diet building.
Since 1999, the playing of the Imperial Japanese anthem ‘Kimigayo’ (‘His Majesty's Reign’) and the flying of the Hinomaru (Rising Sun) flag, have been compulsory at Japanese school ceremonies. Many teachers refuse to toe the line, however. Kazuhisa Suzuki, who teaches civics at a high school in Kanagawa Prefecture, said: "It is as if Germany brought back the Nazi swastika and forced teachers to stand for it. If teachers don't fight it, who will?"
* In September 2000, Herbert P. Bix, a Boston-born historian who teaches at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, challenged the official history of the Japanese emperor's wartime role in his acclaimed work Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Bix revealed new information on the degree to which the US government systematically deceived the whole world. As the Cold War developed, the US needed Japan as an anti-communist bulwark in Asia.
Bix, using official records that will be difficult for the emperor's apologists to refute, shows that Hirohito knew all about the war crimes in China, was involved deeply in early strategic decisions as Japan's army marched through China, approved an alliance with Hitler and Mussolini, and the plan to attack Pearl Harbor. In Japan, some politicians are now joining scholars in calling for a reassessment of the emperor's roles. "The Hirohito Diaries should be made public," says Diet member Taro Kono.
* The modern world and the current allied governments do not seem to want to recognize, remember or acknowledge the sacrifices that were made by their many citizens who fought and suffered and died for the good life enjoyed in these countries today. The neglect of their veterans, the lack of support for their claims against Japan and their wanting to revise the history of the war so as not to offend the Japanese for reasons of alliance and / or business and economic gain, are things for which they should be ashamed.
* May 24, 2001 - After 60 years, US POW slaves were still seeking justice. Their efforts ran into opposition from an unexpected source - the US State Department. The department filed papers in federal court in California stating that the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty prevented the courts from hearing the lawsuits. "The government has betrayed us. They will probably stall the lawsuit until we are all dead and gone", said POW Henry Cornellisson, a Sgt. in the 19th Bomb Group Army Air Corps.
* July 18, 2001 - the US House of Representatives voted 395-33 to amend an appropriations bill in such a way that it that would prohibit the departments of justice and state from using money to prevent former POWs from seeking a fair hearing against Japanese companies. A House bill designed to help the veterans in court sponsored by Rep. Mike Honda, would let federal courts ignore a key section of the 1951 controversial San Francisco Peace Treaty that waived all claims against Japanese nationals for crimes committed during the war. "If the bill passes, it will open up the process and remove the roadblock the State Department has put up," said Linda Goetz Holmes author of the book ‘Unjust Enrichment: How Japan's Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs’. There were at the time 35 separate civil suits that cited as defendants some of the world's largest corporations, including Nippon Steel, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsui Mining, USA. Sadly, the bill never passed!
* Jan 22, 2003 - the Federal Appeals Court, San Francisco, struck down a 1999 law enacted by the California Legislature allowing slave laborers of Japanese and German corporations in WWII to sue for wages and injuries. It found that the law was an impermissible intrusion on the federal government's exclusive power to make and resolve war. It also dismissed claims by slave laborers using other reasons, saying the statute of limitations bars them and they may not sue for wages and injuries even though Germany had already paid more than US$60 billion in reparations since WWII.
Further investigation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty reveals that the reparations matter was actually merely postponed until Japan had the financial means to pay. The issue was never resolved, and it is most likely that it never will be.
Noted California Superior Court Judge Peter D. Lichtman said he was struck by the DOUBLE STANDARD in the US government's position concerning slave labour, in that the US government had not objected to suits seeking compensation for Nazi slave-labour victims, but did so in the suits against the Japanese companies.
* “The entire Japanese government, not just the military, was involved in the decision to provide sex slaves”, Japanese researchers said at an international conference in Los Angeles on Japan's war crimes. After Japan invaded Manchuria, China in 1931, the Japanese government created the Imperial Conference, composed of the emperor, the military and the leading cabinet ministers. “This body made all the important decisions including approving the comfort women", according to historian Hirofumi Hayashi of Kanto-Gakuin University in Yokohama.
* Of all the countries on earth, Japan is the ONLY nation that used BOTH biological weapons and chemical weapons of mass destruction, and also addictive drugs in war. This was in addition to other atrocities such as the Nanjing Massacre, slave labourers, sex slaves and persecution of other groups. All of these actions utterly ignored international law and the Geneva Protocol. It was a total war - a war without mercy against humanity!
* Every year on August 15th at noon, Japan's official National Day of Mourning, the Japanese government calls for a minute of silence ‘in memory of the more than three million who perished in WWII’. However, that figure is only the Japanese casualties. The rest of Asia's 36 million war casualties are totally ignored in Japan’s historical amnesia.
* Imagine if the German government publicly denied the Nazi war crimes and flatly refused to offer a true apology and compensation to the victims. Imagine if the chancellor of Germany went to a Nazi shrine and paid tribute to Hitler and Goebbels. Do you think the US, Britain and other western Allies would remain silent?
* Japan is responsible for more than 30 million casualties in Asia, including allied POWs and Western civilians. The Japanese government thumbs its nose at the survivors by denying its responsibility, and then honours the perpetrators. The US, Britain and other western countries still just remain silent - is it a double standard, an evil cover-up?
* Denial will not make the past go away. Only by facing the truth of history with courage as Germany has done, can Japan bring the wounds of war to a final closure.
* It is said that he who has the courage to remember the past, shall find an honourable future. Therefore, until Japan undertakes a truly sincere soul-searching, it still remains as a dishonourable country without a soul!
From a student in Japan in 2016 – “History can’t be changed and future generations should not be reluctant to take it in. We can’t change the past. We can’t, but what we can do now is to know the history. We should be open. That’s one of the things our generation can do to not repeat tragedy anymore.”
* Dr. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa [Noted WWII Historian]: “Since I am both Japanese and American, I would like to make clear which voice I use to make the following points. As an American citizen, I believe that the use of atomic bombs should be recognized as a war crime to help prevent the Americans from committing the same mistake in future.
As a Japanese, I would like to stress that when we talk about Japan as a victim, we also have to recall that Japan was also a perpetrator of war. Japan colonized Korea and Taiwan, invaded China, attacked Pearl Harbor, and committed numerous atrocities during the war. Countless numbers of people suffered at the hands of the Japanese. We must acknowledge that Japan must also take responsibility for war crimes, recognizing that our hands were also soaked with blood.
There is also the issue of political responsibility for prolonging the war. If Japan had terminated the war earlier, there would not have been the atomic bombings or Soviet entry into the war. Very few Japanese will voice their opinion on this issue, including the responsibility of the Japanese emperor. He could have more decisively intervened earlier to terminate the war and save many Japanese, Asian and American lives. He could have abdicated from the throne after the war to accept his responsibility for supporting the war. That’s taboo, and few Japanese historians touch upon it.
We cannot only protest that we are innocent victims of the bomb, without atoning for the crimes that Japan committed. Tears that pour out for the victims of the atomic bombs must also be accompanied by prayers for those who fell victim to Japan’s criminal acts during the war.”
* Former US POW slave labourer Dr. Lester Tenney, author of My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March wrote the following: "I have learned to forgive, but I will never forget, and through forgiveness I have found freedom. By my forgiving those who have wronged me, I have recovered my dignity, my honor and my self-esteem. By forgiving I have found inner peace - by my forgiving I am now free.”