Should we forget Unit 731 and Japan's actions during WWII?

[The Smoking Man]

TSM, Germany is a fully-functional member of the world community. Do you understand how that is possible? Tell me why it is possible for Germany and not possible for Japan.

http://www.german-embassy.org.uk/foundation__remembrance__respo.html[QUOTE]German payments have focussed both on restitution and on compensation for individual suffering, loss of life, health, and liberty. To date, Germany has made compensation payments totalling over € 58 billion (approx. £ 38 billion)

The compensation scheme for former forced labourers

In August 2000, the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future" was created by the German Government and German companies in recognition of Germany's moral responsibility towards those subjected to forced labour under the Nazi regime and during the Second World War. The Foundation was endowed with funds of 5.11 billion euros (about ₤3.38 billion), provided in equal parts by the German Government and about 6,000 German companies belonging to the Foundation Initiative of German Industry.[/QUOTE]There is also a Polish-German Reconciliation Fund for Poles who were used as guinea pigs in pseudomedical experiments by the Nazis.

"I pay tribute to all those who were subjected to slave and forced labor under German rule, and in the name of the German people beg forgiveness," said Johannes Rau, German president in 2000, "We will not forget their suffering."

To date, Over 1.63 Million Slave victims have received compensation from Germany. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1464704,00.html

Germany has also made generous acts of atonement and has paid 88 Billions Mark in compensation and reparations to Jewish Holocaust victims and will spend another 20 Billions Mark by 2005.

In 1963, president Charles de Gaulle of France and chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany signed a historic treaty which reconciled these historic enemies. Without this, it is doubtful whether the European Union (EU) could have been achieved.

On Jan. 21, 1997, a joint reconciliation treaty was signed that Germany apologized for Hitler's invasion of the former Czechoslovakia, and Czech expressed regrets for the postwar expulsion of 2.5 millions of Sudeten Germans.

Germany has also paid pensions to the Jews in Israel and U.S. who were living in Eastern Europe during WWII since 1995, and German-speaking Canadian Jews since 2003.

German has made January 27th a national Holocaust Remembrance Day for the victims of the Holocaust since 1996. The date was chosen to mark Jan. 27th, 1945, the day Soviet soldiers liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp.

On May 10, 2005 Germany opens a new Holocaust memorial south of the landmark Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, marking the 60th anniversary of the end of war. " Today we open a memorial that recalls Nazi Germany's worst, most terrible crime ..." said parliamentary president Wolfgang Thierse. He added Germany now "faces up to its history".

German students are also required to visit former concentration camps as part of their Holocaust studies.

German Government has bought a former labor camp near Berlin to open a memorial to commemorate Slave laborers in 2006.

German government has made displaying the Swastika and other Nazi symbols illegal in Germany. Now German politicians have called for Nazi symbols to be banned throughout Europe.

German government passed a bill to restrict rallies by neo-Nazis and allow courts to impose sentences of as much as 3 years in prison or a fine on anyone found guilty of approving, glorifying or justifying the Nazi regime in public.

German government has even offered its formal apology for the colonial-era massacre of Herero tribe in Namibia happened 100 years ago.

Oliver Raag is one of many Germans doing volunteer work in Israel to atone for the deeds of their parents and grandparents. She is a German geriatric nurse whose grandfather transported disabled Jews and other Germans to a gas chamber. "The more I learned about that period in German history, the more I wanted to come here to show that there are other Germans who are not like the Nazis,"

UN General Assembly held a special session marking 60th anniversary of liberation of Holocaust Nazi death camps for First Time. Kofi Annan said, "It is essential for all of us to remember, reflect on, and learn from what happened 60 years ago...".

"I express my shame over those who were murdered, and before those of you who have survived the hell of the concentration camps," said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, "The vast majority of Germans alive today are NOT to blame for the Holocaust, but they DO bear a "Special Responsibility".

German Chancellor paid tribute at the entrance to Auschwitzand and promised that Germany will fulfill its "Moral Obligation" to keep alive the memory of Nazi's crimes.

Germany led a commemoration of 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazis' Buchenwald Death Camp. "We cannot change History, but this country can learn a lot from the deepest shame of our History," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder urged the world never to forget the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, "I bow before you, the victims and their families."

On Mar 16, 2005 German Foreign Minister gave a speech for the "Remembering the Past, Shaping the Future" session and calls the Jerusalem's new Holocaust memorial "A place of 'Deep Shame' for every German, because the name of my country, Germany, is and will forever be inseparably linked to the Shoah, the ultimate crime against Humanity."

Speaking to a special joint sitting of parliament marking the 60 anniversary of the end of the war, Mr Köhler said: "We have the Responsibility to keep alive the memories of all the suffering ... We Germans look back with horror and shame ... "

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder implied: Japan Can Learn From Germany saying postwar Berlin had won the respect of its neighbors in how it contended with its Nazi past.

However, attending the 60th anniversary of End of War in stark contrast to an earnest apology by German leader Gerhard Schroeder, at a press conference in Moscow, Koizumi said : Japan has done enough "Self-Examination".

 

[The Smoking Man]

I was thinking about that, (and I've argued it in the past), but people who want to hate don't tend to accept that - they look for any connection to the previous entity. That's the entire basis for nationalistic/racist hatreds that exist in many places in the world, going back centuries. It doesn't matter that we deconstructed the country "Japan" and made an entirely new one from its ashes - people want to hate the new one for the crimes of the old one. That's the main reason WWII happened in the first place! TSM, your mindest is the reason why wars happen.

Posts like yours have not gone un-noticed in SE Asia:

http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/37736

Western apathy to Japanese WWII atrocities
K Temoc
Jul 8, 05 1:11pm


Last week, eight 15-year-old Singapore students at a school band leadership camp named their team ‘Hitler’ because they claimed they admired Adolf Hitler's leadership qualities. They considered him 'cool' and 'handsome' and a good leader of the German nation, even though he was evil.

Following the not-unexpected hue and cry from the Western press, they are now required by the Singapore education minister to research on what Hitler had done.

The minister stated that since they weren't thinking or aware of the dark aspects of World War II (WWII) history, rather than berate them, he prefers for them to present their research findings to their schools. I must congratulate said minister for a sensible and constructive approach.

One Western writer to the Singapore press bemoaned his disappointment with the teachers and students attending the camp. To him, they seemed either ignorant of or unconcerned about the evils of Hitler. He criticised the students' history teacher for limiting his only adverse comment on Hitler to the Nazi leader's military error in invading Russia.

He wondered why no mention was made of Hitler's responsibility for the millions of deaths in a world war, as well as the systematic murder of millions of innocent Jews. The answer - to Easterners (like us) - is quite plain and obvious to see, though of course one must not fail to recognise the evils of Hitler and Nazism.

The fact of those Singaporeans' ignorance, lack of concern or apathy towards Hitler and Nazism is no different to the majority of Westerners' ignorance, lack of concern or apathy towards Japanese WWII atrocities or the provocative visits by the Japanese prime minister (PM) to the Yasukuni shrine.

That shrine houses the remains of executed Japanese war criminals, war criminals not unlike the Nazi variety, who were responsible for the most barbaric atrocities against the Chinese, Korean and other Asian people during the last war. The visits to the shrine by the foremost Japanese politician have been tantamount to official acceptance of their evil war records. It could be likened to the German Chancellor laying a wreath at Hitler's tomb, if one exists.

From time to time, whenever the Chinese and Korean people raised Cain over such visits or Japanese rightwing attempts at historical revisionism of its army's wartime conduct in their school textbooks, Western bloggers would without fail criticize the Chinese for not letting go of the past, or for going over the top in their anger against what they see as harmless and legitimate visits to a war shrine by the Japanese PM.

Inexplicably, several even defended the Japanese PM's visits or the more sinister historical revisionism of the Japanese school textbooks, either through ignorance of what the Japanese had barbarically done during WWII or through a lack of empathy with the victims of Japanese atrocities.

So why should the Singapore students be different from those adult bloggers? Only the Dutch and some older Australians seem aware of the evils of the Japanese WWII army.

One Western blogger argumentatively asserted that only Chinese aged 80 and above may have genuine cause to be angry at the Japanese. Could anyone possibly beat this asinine comment? Unbelievable as it may be, the answer has in fact been yes, because another averred that the PM's visit to the Yasukuni shrine was a sincere demonstration of ‘peace’.

Then to finish off, many of those Western bloggers would attribute the whole uproar to either Chinese jealousy of the better-off Japanese – conveniently leaving the Koreans out, or the argument would have collapsed like a house of cards - or a Chinese government manipulating the Chinese people's outrage to divert attention from China's domestic problems – again, the Korean involvement was quietly tucked away out of sight.

There has been hardly any note of sympathy or understanding for the Chinese outrage, or revulsion and concern or anger at the Japanese PM's provocative visits or the attempts at historical revisionism to obscure Japan's evil past.

It has been precisely this Western apathy or lack of sympathy that explains why the East is not so different from the West. So, why should that Western writer be puzzled about Singaporeans, whose grandparents, relatives and family friends suffered untold miseries at the hands of the Japanese military, showing the same lack of concern towards Nazism as Westerners had shown towards the Japanese WWII evil?

 

[The Smoking Man]

Do you know if any of these people or their families still exist? Do you know if any individuals, or family members, have come forward with an apology on their own(without government endorsment)?

Sorry SA. I missed this earlier.

Yes, quite a few of the Japanese have come out and apologized and tried to become active in bringing the attrocities out in the open however, there seems to be a big impediment.

As soon as they make a public statement, they are added to the international list of War Criminals and are then denied the ability to travel internationally.

Yoshio Shinozuka, a former member of Unit 731, now 83, has devoted himself to making amends. In 1997 he testified on behalf of the 180 Chinese Biological victims suing Japan for compensation. however, The court denied them apology and compensation. The court again denied them compensation and apology in 2005. In 1998, he tried to speak at peace conferences in U.S. and Canada, but immigration turned him away as a war criminal. But Shinozuka argued that those like himself who want to tell the truth about war crimes should not be on the watch list.

"It took me a long time to get beyond the excuse that I was just following orders," he said. "I was doing what I was told. And I might very well have been killed had I disobeyed. But what we did was so terrible that I should have refused, even if that meant my own death. But I didn’t do that. And I will never be forgiven."

Though he often wanted to tell his story, "No one wanted to hear what I was saying," he said. "The Japanese prefer to think of themselves as victims in the war. Even the peace movement people told me that talking about Japan’s role as an aggressor wasn’t constructive. But I couldn’t let this piece of history remain in the dark."

Japanese war criminal denied forum
Knight Ridder Newspapers

YOKAICHIBA, Japan -- When Yoshio Shinozuka boarded a flight from Tokyo to Chicago last week, he was planning to tell Americans about "the inhuman acts" he helped carry out as a member of the Japanese Imperial Army's infamous Unit 731, which tried to infect Chinese civilians with typhus and bubonic plague and conducted biological experiments on Chinese prisoners of war.

But when Shinozuka, 74, shuffled to the head of the immigration line at O'Hare Airport and handed over his Japanese passport, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officers greeted him harshly.

"They scanned my passport on a computer," the 74-year-old, white-haired former soldier recalled yesterday. "There was a beep and they took me to another room." Within hours, he was back on a plane to Tokyo, the first Japanese to be barred from entering the United States for "crimes against humanity."

In an interview at the Buddhist temple he helps manage, the ex-soldier said the Justice Department's decision will obstruct efforts to reveal the full extent of Japanese brutality during World War II – brutality that official Japan still denies.

The Justice Department's "watch list," which identifies war criminals barred from entering the United States, "is a tool to distort and cover up the reality of what really happened," Shinozuka charged, as he sat on a straw mat on the floor of a rural temple about 60 miles west of Tokyo.

He said he suspects the Japanese and American governments made a deal to keep him out of America because high-ranking officers in his unit, including commanding officer Shiro Ishii, were never prosecuted after the war. In previous years, he said, prominent doctors and politicians who served with Unit 731 entered the United States regularly.

Saburo Ienaga, a professor of Japanese history who has battled with mixed success to get Japanese high school textbooks to include the facts of the country's conduct in World War II, said he suspects the U.S. government fears Shinozuka's testimony would embarrass American officials.

"The U.S. released members of Unit 731 after the war in order to get the know-how of biological weapons," Ienaga said in an interview. "Even General Ishii was not prosecuted at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. So it is possible that if the U.S. allows Shinozuka in and let's him speak, he will cause them problems, not because of what he did, but because of what he knows."
A Justice Department official, however, said the watch list is to keep war criminals out of the United States, not to prevent Americans from learning the truth about Japanese or German war crimes.

The Justice Department barred Shinozuka as a result of a 1996 decision to add 16 suspected Japanese war criminals to the list, which already contained names of more than 60,000 Nazi war criminals. The list was created by an act of Congress during the 1970s. Last year, 17 more Japanese were added.

But Shinozuka argued that those like himself who want to tell the truth about war crimes should not be on the watch list. He and 86-year-old Shiro Azuma, a witness to the Japanese Army's brutal 1937 occupation of the Chinese city of Nanking, had planned to discuss their wartime activities as part of an exhibit sponsored by the San Francisco-based Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II. But Azuma got a severe cold and abandoned his plan to go abroad. The exhibit leaves this week for New York; Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia; and San Francisco.

It was until Dec. 3, 1996, U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) which has focused almost exclusively on Nazi war criminals despite its mandate to pursue BOTH Nazis and their allies, finally took its FIRST STEP toward redressing this imbalance by adding the FIRST 16 Japanese war criminal names on the "Watch List" (Holtzman Amendment) since it was legislated in 1978 for denying more than 60,000 Nazi German, Austrian, and Italian war criminals entry to U.S.

However, Japan is blocking probe of War Criminals and refused to cooperate with the Justice Department to put the names of several hundred surviving criminals on the Watch List.

"Japan is the ONLY country in the world from whom we seek assistance that does not provide it." said Eli M. Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department’s office of Special Investigations. Rosenbaum said his office has been able to identify fewer than 100 Japanese suspects compare to 60,000 Nazi, Austrian, and Italian war criminals on the "Watch List"

"After the war, they were not punished, so why is the U.S. government dealing with this problem now ?" said Masao Okonogi, professor of political science at Keio University in Tokyo.

"This seems to me remarkably hypocritical. At the end of WWII, the U.S. occupying force was aware of the information about Unit 731 but deliberately exonerated the men in return for their agreement to be debriefed on the findings of their atrocious experiments. We agreed to Cover-Up their crimes." said John Dower, MIT professor and specialist on modern Japanese history and US relations.

Saburo Ienaga, a professor of Japanese history who has battled with mixed success to get Japanese high school textbooks to include the facts of the country's conduct in World War II, suspects that the U.S. government fears Shinozuka's testimony would embarrass American officials. "He will cause them problems, not because of what he did, but because of what he knows."

They were scheduled to take part in a historical tour called "The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII in Asia." and forum of "A Glimpse of Reconciliation-Unit 731 Photo Exhibition". It was organized by The Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia. It traveled five cities: Toronto, New York, Washington, D.C., Vancouver and San Francisco from late June to early July. Mr. Koken Tsuchiya, a senior lawyer from Tokyo, was leading the delegation. He is also the chief attorney for the lawsuit of 108 Chinese germ warfare victims against the Japanese government.

Of the 3 eyewitness, only Dr. Takemitsu Ogawa was allowed to enter into the US to give his testimony. In recalling the basis of Japanese military training, Ogawa explained that it was a training of killing with the three-all policy: kill all, burn all, and loot all. Even with the thorough education system at the time to brainwash the Imperial soldiers, many were not psychologically fit to kill and developed autonomic ataxia with symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, abnormal fever, incontinent urine, asthma, spasm, paralysis of one side of the body, etc.

"The soldiers knew that if they deserted the three-all order, they would be shot dead. In those extreme situations, they showed abnormal symptoms - that was extreme autonomic ataxia," Ogawa explained. One of "The soldier was so afraid to return to the battlefield that he killed himself." Ogawa's testimony sheds light on Japan's experience on the war -something that its government and people had for a long time kept silent about.

July 31 1998, Japanese new agriculture minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who is opposed to describing Japan's wartime atrocities in school textbooks, said that Asian women may not have been forced to work as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels during WWII. A few hours later, he retracted them. "They were forcibly recruited," He said at a later news conference. The new Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi played down the incident.

In the past Japanese cabinet ministers have frequently made similar public comments DENYING atrocities Japan committed during WWII, with some losing their posts over the statements. As in January 1997, Seiroku Kajiyama, a LDP contender for the premiership, claimed that "comfort women" had provided sex to Japanese troops "for money."

Feb. 1999 Nobukatsu Fujioka, a professor at Tokyo University and the chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform which aims to erase all Japan's atrocities from textbook, "Comfort women were not sexual slaves" said the professor. They were simply prostitutes taken to war zones by private brokers," Fujioka told a luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan.

August 23, 1998 Banned from entering North America, 4 Japanese veterans made a global Internet Web Apology over a satellite video link to panelists at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.

 

[edward]

Former U.S. POW's have sued Japan

Japanese atrocities (the other holocaust) during WWII were never properly addressed. There were some war criminal trials against specific persons. But it is obvious that they never were dealt with in a manor anything close to the German war crimes.

http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp82.html
http://www.jpri.org/members/clemons_ABCNEWS_06-11-02.html

Israel was abducting former German soldiers from the :USA, Brazil, and Argentina up until just recently. John Demanuk (sp) was the last one I remember. Most of them were tried and hung.

German companies are still paying reparations to former slave laborers.

Why did China not have the same options? Let's call a spade a spade. China became a communist country during and shortly after WWII. We became close to Japan to fight communism so we conveniently covered up records of atrocities. We also signed an agreement with Japan in 1951 that proclaimed that they would not be held responsible for anything regarding WWII. That was wrong on our part.

But now is the time for China to receive its just deserves. They are a most favored trading partner. They buy U.S. T-bills. But the truth is that the USA seldom admits its mistakes. And from another perspective U.S. and Japanese big business were in bed together for many years.

So we continue with the big coverup, even to the point that former U.S. POW's are not winning their law suits against Japan.

I know that there are some here who can't stand the term LAW SUITS.
These are not frivolous "whip lash Charlie law suits". The Chinese people and Former U.S. POW's have just as much right to justice as any of the Countries or persons who or have collected from Germany.

In law there is need to have a precedent. Germany has set that precedent.

 

[The Smoking Man]

I know that there are some here who can't stand the term LAW SUITS.
These are not frivolous "whip lash Charlie law suits". The Chinese people and Former U.S. POW's have just as much right to justice as any of the Countries or persons who or have collected from Germany.

In law there is need to have a precedent. Germany has set that precedent.

I suppose it must be a b!tch to be 63 years of age and, just when the evidence needed to prosecute the people who infected with glanders is released from the US military, some prick on a website says you're not entitled to it because it is his 'gut feeling' you don't deserve it.

Women in the USA can sue McDonalds for their coffee being too hot and scalding her while she drove with a cup between her legs but get a man infected with glanders at the age of three and it's a no-go zone.

Do you reccon that the womans burns have healed by now there, Russ?

 

[The Smoking Man]

For a dead issue, it seems to be quite a newsworthy item as of late:

http://english.people.com.cn/200508/16/eng20050816_202708.html

UPDATED: 08:27, August 16, 2005
Auschwitz museum to cooperate with Unit 731 Exhibition Hall

The Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum and the Unit 731 Exhibition Hall in northeast China on Monday expressed intention to exchange exhibition.

Deputy director of the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum, Krystyna Oleksy, presented to the Chinese a detailed introduction to the museum and a picture book about those who died in the Auschwitz camp. In exchange, curator of the Unit 731 Exhibition Hall, Wang Peng, presented her a book on how the notorious Japanese military unit conducted germ tests and warfare in China.

"This is the first step towards bilateral cooperation in the future, though a detailed schedule hasn't been set," said director of the information center of the Auschwitz museum Teresa Suiebocka, adding they still need time to study items and documents preserved by the exhibition hall, in a bid to decide what to present in the Auschwitz museum.

Oleksy and Suiebocka paid a visit to the site of Unit 731 on Sunday, and discussed with the Chinese the logistics of exchange of exhibitions. Wang visited the Auschwitz museum in June this year.

Unit 731 was a secretive detachment of the Japanese invading troops which experimented on live humans in order to develop germ weapons, such as bubonic plague, typhoid, anthrax and cholera. At least 3,000 people mostly Chinese civilians and including Russians, Mongolians and Koreans, died in the experiments between 1939 and 1945. Outside the site, more than 200,000 Chinese were killed by biological weapons produced in the unit's laboratories.

Both the sites of Auschwitz museum and the Unit 731 Exhibition Hall are evidence of Fascism's murderous brutality, such as the frozen and germ experiments on live humans, said Suiebocka, adding the cooperation between the two exhibition agencies will provide a more comprehensive picture of history, and an impetus to all the people to the promotion of world peace.

Although many countries suffered a lot in World War II, like Poland, some Europeans don't know what happened outside Europe during the war. The exchange of exhibits will help people know the crimes committed by Fascists across the world.

As for the possible difficulties in their cooperation, Suiebocka said, "If there is any difficulty, we can overcome it. Because we have a similar mission, which is to protect the people against a new world war."

http://english.people.com.cn/200508/17/eng20050817_203076.html[QUOTE]UPDATED: 17:37, August 17, 2005
Expert finds new evidence of Japan's germ warfare in WWII

A Japanese expert has found a series of documents about the Japanese aggressive army's Unit 731 that carried out the brutal germ warfare in China during the World War II, causing deaths of many Chinese people, the Tokyo News reported Wednesday.

The two declassified documents were found in the US National Archives by Keiichi Tsuneishi, professor at Kanagawa University and an expert on biological and chemical weapons, the newspaper said.

One of the top-secret documents was a report on bacteriological warfare for the chief of staff of the Far Eastern Commission, dated July 17, 1947, compiled by Brig. Gen. Charles Willoughby, head of the "G2" intelligence unit of the US-led postwar occupation forces in Japan.

The other was a letter dated July 22 the same year that Willoughby sent to Maj. Gen. S. J. Chamberlin, director of intelligence of the US War Department General Staff, to illustrate the need for continued use of confidential funds without restrictions to obtain such intelligence.

In the documents, Willoughby described the achievements of his unit's investigations, saying the "information procured will have the greatest value in future development of the US BW ( bacteriological warfare) program."

Citing a US War Department specialist in charge of the investigation, Willoughby wrote in the report that "data on human experiments may prove invaluable" and said the information was " only obtainable through the skillful, psychological approach to top-flight pathologists" involved in Unit 731 experiments.

According to Tokyo News, besides the two documents from US archives, Tsuneishi also found a secret book in Japan's national congressional library -- "Reports of epidemic prevention development for medical academy of land forces."

The reports in the book reveal that Unit 731, established by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1936, developed many biological weapons using plague, anthrax and other bacteria, and conducted related human experiments during the war, the daily said.

Headquartered in the suburbs of Harbin in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, the unit conducted germ warfare in various places in China and used Chinese as subjects in human experiments, resulting in deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of people.

The documents also indicated that the biological weapons of Unit 731 originally targeted the Soviet Union, the newspaper noted. [/QUOTE]