ed Different ex-imperialists

Japan’s failure to properly apologize or compensate for its imperial past often leads to comparisons of Tokyo to former Western colonial powers. What has happened in Britain over the past few months has added one more such example.

London is about to enter into negotiations to compensate Kenyans who fought for independence from the United Kingdom in the 1950s and suffered torture by Britons, the Guardian reported Monday. The number of Kenyan beneficiaries may reach 10,000 with aggregate indemnity amounting to scores of millions of pounds. The damage could grow astronomically if a historic ruling at London’s High Court in October applies to victims in other former British colonies.

The British Foreign Office said, “It is an enduring feature of our democracy that we are willing to learn from our history.” That’s a comment Japan’s oblivious political leaders should have listened to.

What’s occurring half-way across the globe reminds Koreans of the March 1, 1919, Independence Movement. In the single incident, 7,500 Koreans were killed, 16,000 were injured and 47,000 were arrested in the course of the crackdown, according to the Japanese colonialists’ own tally. The Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs estimates more than 20,000 Koreans were tortured and many lost their lives.

During the 35-year-long Japanese occupation, a million Koreans were conscripted as soldiers, mobilized as forced workers and coerced and cajoled into being sex slaves for the Imperial Army. Surviving victims have filed more than 40 suits against the Japanese government and companies, but Japan’s executive and judiciary branches have accepted none.

In a glaring case, upon requests from some former Korean forced workers to repay their pension withdrawal allowances a few years ago, Tokyo mocked them by deciding to give “99 yen” ($1) per complainant.

Korea, and other Asian neighbors of Japan for that matter, are tired of comparing Japan with Germany, whose government and businesses have joined forces to clear away their ancestors’ shameful past and be reborn as a new global leader. Japan even balks at comparing itself with Germany and its holocaust of Jews, but what the Japanese Imperialists did in Asia were no less cruel than the Nazis, and it is well-known the meager financial compensation Japan made for Korea and other East Asian countries served as beachheads for Japan’s economic advances to its former colonies.

Japanese leaders, who conveniently remember only what they want to, are reviving their nationalist and revisionist impulses. That points to the need for the rest of East Asia to seek a united front by forming a historical alliance.