In this column last month, I wrote that I hoped President Barack Obama, in his upcoming speech in Hiroshima, Japan, would not apologize for the United States’ dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the waning days of World War II.
Fortunately, Obama did not make an apology when he made that speech at the Hiroshima Peace Park and Memorial in late May. Instead, he emphasized his commitment to security, peace and a “moral revolution” to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
But although he didn’t apologize, many critics in this country and abroad continue to voice objections to the president’s Hiroshima speech, stating that even his appearance alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, particularly during the Memorial Day weekend, was inappropriate, insensitive and could be considered an implied apology.
The 75th anniversary of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 American service members and civilians sank most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and plunged this nation into WW II will be commemorated in less than six months, and I am certain that millions of Americans and their wartime allies are wondering, “Now that Obama has spoken at Hiroshima, will Prime Minister Abe speak at Pearl Harbor?”
Well, he won’t. Abe has said publicly that he will not go to Pearl Harbor and will not atone for his nation’s legacy of cruelty and aggression during WW II. This is unacceptable to many Americans, our wartime allies and myself.
Abe, obviously, cannot be faulted for participating in Japan’s WW II war crimes. He is 62 years old and was born nine years after the war ended. But he can be censored for both his refusal to apologize for Japan’s inhumanity during the war and for his appearances at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine and Yushukan Military Museum in Tokyo which glorify his nation’s aggression and ruthlessness during the war.
Two years ago, my wife and I flew to Tokyo, and during our week there we spent a morning at the shrine and museum. Both of us were sickened at what we saw.
Set in a beautiful tree-lined park amidst lush gardens, both the shrine and museum glorify Japan’s role during the 1941-1945 war.
The shrine contains the cremated remains of thousands of Japanese military personnel killed during the war. This, in itself, is not necessarily offensive. We honor our war dead at public ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery and many other military cemeteries around the world. At the Nevada state military cemetery in Fernley, ceremonies are held throughout the year to honor our dead veterans.
But at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, among the dead are more than a dozen Japanese military “Class A” war criminals who were convicted of war crimes by an international tribunal at the end of WW II. Prime Minister Abe and his wife on several occasions have glorified these criminals by their laying of wreaths at their graves. One of those buried whom Abe has honored is the notorious Army Gen. Hideo Tojo, who was convicted during the war crimes trials for his approval of the torture, starvation, rapes and executions of U.S. and Allied male and female military personnel and civilians captured by the Japanese during WW II. Hundreds of Japanese legislators, mayors and other high officials also have paid homage to the war criminals whose remains are buried at the shrine.
The displays we saw at the Yushukan Military Museum, which included Japanese newspapers glorifying the Pearl Harbor attack, a garden honoring Japanese “kamikaze” suicide pilots, a large statue of a Japanese solider in battle gear brandishing a rifle with fixed bayonet, a restored WW II Japanese Navy “zero” fighter plane and a “Kaitan” human torpedo kamikaze submarine, left us angered.
Equally disturbing was the display of a locomotive that pulled railroad cars containing Japanese troops and their equipment on the Thailand-Burma railway which was known as the “Death Railway” because an estimated 13,000 U.S. and Allied prisoners of war and 100,000 native laborers died of disease, starvation, torture and execution while building the railroad.
The Oscar-winning 1957 motion picture “Bridge on the River Kwai” that starred Alec Guinness, William Holden and Jack Hawkins was loosely patterned on the construction of the Death Railway by U.S. and British prisoners.
The museum’s displays also fail to mention the atrocities committed by Japan against prisoners of war and the tortures and executions committed by Japanese troops during Japan’s military campaigns in China, Korea and other Asian nations such as the Philippines, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. The museum’s sole purpose is propaganda ... to deny or whitewash the nation’s frightful history of murder and abuse during the war and, at the same time, to portray the Japanese wartime military as a heroic, brave and strong force against the West.
In five-and-a-half months, we will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack and the beginning of WW II. Japan is our friend and ally today, but we must never forget the havoc it caused during that terrible war.
David C. Henley is Publisher Emeritus and may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com.