By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
President Lee Myung-bak said Japan's Emperor Akihito should apologize for the atrocities Japan committed against Korea, China and other Asian neighbors during World War II.
In an interview last Sunday with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun and the Times of Britain, President Lee said Japan should follow the example set by Germany in owning up to its past wartime crimes.
Lee also made a reference to the late German Chancellor Willy Brandt who, in 1970, fell to his knees at a monument honoring murdered Polish Jews and victims of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The late German chancellor's gesture became a potent symbol of postwar German contrition for the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II, according to the Times.
During the interview, President Lee said, ``Willy Brandt touched a firm emotional chord with the whole of the Polish people, Europeans and indeed the world. That was a turning point in the partnership between the countries of Europe. And the visit of the Emperor of Japan could be a similar occasion."
No Japanese leader has made a similar gesture, the British newspaper noted, though Japanese governments have issued statements of ``deep remorse" and apologies.
Japan's wartime record again became a topic of discussion recently when a military official wrote Japan was not an aggressor during World War II.
Japan's Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Toshio Tamogami, who has since been fired following the incident, submitted an essay to a writing competition defending Japan's wartime conduct.
In his essay, which won an award in the contest, the former Air Force official wrote that ``it is certainly a false accusation to say that (Japan) was an aggressor nation."
He also wrote that life in countries under Japanese occupation was ``very moderate" and that the occupation had improved the subjects' standard of living and ``liberated the Asian people from oppression."
The former military official also wrote Japan was tricked into attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941 by then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The writing quickly became news and he was dismissed from his post. Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada and three other senior officials took partial pay cuts and two other bureaucrats have also been reprimanded.