US scholar hits Abe for failing to apologize

By Kim Hyo-jin

Alexis Dudden

A U.S. historian has criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for stopping short of apologizing to the victims of his nation’s wartime atrocities during his speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, saying the speech lacked substance.

“Unfortunately, I think yesterday’s speech has only made matters worse, rather than doing what could have been done,” said Alexis Dudden, history professor at the University of Connecticut, during a speech at Yonsei University.

She said Abe should have repeated the Murayama statement issued in 1995. Former Japanese Prime Minister Murayama offered the statement in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, saying he offered a “heartfelt apology” for the tremendous damage caused by “mistaken Japanese national policy.”

“Repeating these words would have made clearer that Abe honors this apology instead of simply ‘inheriting’ it,” she said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made his historic speech in Washington, D.C. Wednesday.

His speech, which barely touched upon the issue of sexual slavery, disappointed the victims who expected more from him than upholding the apologies his predecessors had made.

“Our actions brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries. We must not avert our eyes from that. I will uphold the views expressed by the previous prime ministers in this regard,” he said.

Dudden said Abe’s status in domestic politics kept him from addressing the issue clearly. “If he says the words of the Murayama statement aloud, he will lose his base at home, and he can’t do that because he is not a strong leader,” she said.

She explained that Abe’s faction in the Liberal Democratic Party is against the San Francisco Treaty which acknowledged Japan’s war crimes. “It’s also Abe’s view,” she said.

The historian was also critical that Abe steered away from taking responsibility for Japan’s wrongdoing during World War II.

“By not mentioning subjects like the Japanese state or the Japanese military, his remarks have no legal or moral ramifications,” Dudden said.

She added that what matters the most in apologies is whether they have any substantive meaning or not. However, what Japan has been doing so far has been simply apologizing for the sake of pursuing its national interests, not for the sake of making amends for their past deeds, she said.

Dudden is a professor who leads an anti-Japanese revisionist movement in the U.S.

She published a statement in the March edition of the American Historical Association's journal, along with 18 U.S. professors, against the Japanese government’s attempt to change references in textbooks. The statement expressed their "dismay at recent attempts by the Japanese government to suppress statements in history textbooks both in Japan and elsewhere.”