Comment by James

October 8, 2006 @ 8:21 pm

Abe’s refusal to consider the class A war criminals as criminals under Japanese domestic law is similar to President Bush’s handling of the geneva convention? Give me a break.

What domestic laws were the class A war criminals tried under? Could you please find a Japanese domestic law that made waging war punishable by the death penalty? Japan was tried for violating international laws set out in treaties it did not sign, Kellogg-Briand Pact and the Geneva conventions. The victorious allied nations, most of which had signed those documents, ignored their own war crimes.

When is the world going to realize this Japanese war crime stuff is the pot calling the kettle black? The Americans burned hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to death, yet the pilots who flew those bombers and the generals responsible for the strategy are still regarded as war heroes by large portion of the population. Chairman Mao, whose policies killed far more Chinese people than the war with Japan, is still a national hero of China. South Korea has built its national identity around resentment towards Japanese war crimes while ignoring the brutality of their own troops in the Vietnam War.
Get over it.

Comment by ken

October 8, 2006 @ 9:03 pm

Thanks for your comment James; you raise some good points. My own comment on Bush and the Geneva convention did not take into account whether Japan had been a signatory to the relevant accords or whether the US had been a signatory to the Geneva accords.

I’m looking at it from a foreign policy point of view: it seems like a foolish thing to say in a diet session just days before visiting the leaders of China and South Korea. Obviously, they’re not going to like it and it’s going to push Yasukuni up on the agenda, when there are more important things to worry about and disucss.

So, in that sense, I agree with your final comment of, “Get over it.” Unfortunately, Abe has played directly into China’s hands and made it an issue.

Who’s a war criminal and who’s not is an issue to get played out by historians for decades to come. You’re right - the perpective is skewed and the winners get to ignore their own war crimes, which go much further than what you’ve mentioned. But what I’m looking at is the practicality and nuts and bolts of political and/or diplomatic dialogue. Japan is giving China and others the fuel to continue being the pot that calls the kettle black, as you put it.

So, it looks like Japan, by forcing the issue into public and diplomatic dialogue, is also having some trouble getting over it.

Comment by DeOrio

October 9, 2006 @ 12:27 am

Ken, I agree. James, I didn\’t mean to imply any sort of deeper meaning as to what did or did not happen during the war. However, I do think there is a difference between the responsibility of pilots on bombing runs (Japanese and German soldiers, sailors, and pilots were not tried as individuals) and the responsibility of the military and, especially, civilian leaders who made the decisions as to what was to be done.
In the Pacific Theater of WWII and the occupation of Japan thereafter, American, and, to a lesser extent, British and Australian troops comported themselves in way that, at the time, was considered largely exemplary. This is not to say that no American soldier committed a deplorable act, but that the American policy and the overall discipline and, more important, intent of the plans implemented was remarkably benign.
By some estimates, hundreds of thousands were killed in the American bombing of Japan, especially the fire bombing of Tokyo. Even by conservative estimates, tens of thousands were killed and upwards of 50% of Tokyo\’s residential areas were destroyed. But, if that\’s the comparison you want to make, compare civilian casualties to civilian casualties. Even by the most conservative estimates, the Imperial Army was directly responsible for the deaths of hundereds of thousands, if not millions of civilians in the areas it occupied. The most notorious of these was Nanking and, even there, conservative estimates put the direct death toll at at least 160,000. (The figure of 26,000 proposed in the Diet int he early 1990s was, byt he admission of those who put it forward, pulled out of thin air. In Nanjing, there are traceable and foreign-verified death records accompanying at least 180,000 recovered corpses from the period in which the Nanking massacre was supposed to have occurred.)
As far as the trying war criminals is concerned, as I said in Seijigiri #7, the whole point of the tribunals established in Nuremberg and Tokyo was that Germany and Japan\’s domestic laws didn\’t recognize any possibility in which the countries\’ respective leaderships could be considered in error, much less criminally repsonsible or even negligent. The breakthrough made by war tribunals and, later, the establishment of the UN was the idea of a higher law. The argument that domestic law under an aggressive military dictatorship is at all relevant is absurd. By that standard, what Mao did within China, Stalin did within the USSR, or Hitler did within Germany is perfectly acceptable because each autocrat was smart enough to rewrite or alter his country\’s constitution and laws at minimum or, as in the case of Mao and, now, Kim Jong Il, make himself the law. When trying the leadership of a country in which the leaders were able to alter laws to suit their ends in the commission of whatever acts they saw fit, consideration of concurrent domestic law is at best foolish and, at worst, an active justification of acts considered intolerable byt he preonderance of the rest of the world or the parties involved.
In short, it\’s true that the Tokyo Tribunal was not established or convened according to then-current Japanese law and this ignoring of such was one of the Tribunal\’s groundbreaking, trendsetting, and laudable actions.
As for Mao, it\’s an irrelevant comparison. The PRC still pays him lip-service, even if the current leadership and an increasingly relevant percentage of the country\’s populace, in action if not word, works to undo what he did. While other countries, including the US have recognized the CCP, none of the countries involved in the prosecution of the Tokyo Tribunal, a responsibility of the US, has lauded or explicitly condoned any of Mao\’s actions. You may recall that most foreign countries, including the US and USSR decried Mao\’s actions and policies during the Great Leap forward and the early years of the Cultural Revolution (although Nixon did visit China and break the ice in 1972, before the Cultural Revolution had even clearly entered it\’s winding-down phase.)
South Korean troops in Vietnam did nothing on the scale of Japanese troops in Korea or China or Burma or the Phillippines or Taiwhan or. . .
That aside, the idea that anything South Korean troops in Vietnam or Mao in China may have done in any way mitigates anything Japanese troops did during WWII any more than the actions of Japanese troops would warrant Chinese destruction of Japanese facilities or even a foreign attack on Japan today is, frankly, repugnant. That logic is along the lines of saying it would be OK for the US to invade the UK now because British troops burned Washington in 1812 or that the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington were justified becasue the US funded the Shah of Iran or the Contras in Nicaragua. It makes sense only if you\’re trying to justify further warfare and think revenge for all slights is the optimal foreign-policy path.
The Republic of Korea has many things going for it right now and, in my humble opinion, is currently worthy of the highest praise on humanitarian and achievement grounds. To say that the country\’s entire national identity is based on resentment of Japanese actions in entirely unfair. Is Japanese national identity based on a fear of China or a reaction the the American post-War occupation? Of course, South Koreans will be aware of their history and, considering that people who lived through the colonial period are still alive, of course issues related to it will come up, but anti-Japanese sentiment is hardly the defining characteristic of South Korea today.

James, I agree with, on principle, on some points. It is disingenuous of any government to focus on the splinter in another\’s eye while ignoring the log in its own. Having a log in one\’s eye, though, doesn\’t mean that the splinter in the other\’s is not there.

Finally, thank you, sincerely and copiously, for commenting, arguing with us and taking enough interest in Seijigiri to comment on a point we made. I really do appreciate it.