To Japan: Just apologize

By Deauwand Myers

Korea, China, and other Asian countries aren't happy with Japan, or at least with the conservative Abe government.

Why?

A little history: Korea was a Japanese protectorate from 1905-1910, and then until the end of World War II, an annexed country under Japanese rule. (Gwangbokjeol, Korea's Independence Day, celebrated on Aug. 15, commemorates Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule).

World War II is infamous for many reasons, not least of which for the deaths of tens of millions of civilians. Nazi Germany had its concentration camps, where at least 6 million Jews and millions of others were systematically murdered in a genocide not surpassed in the 20th century, with the exception of the Stalinist Purges, which left about 20 million people dead.

Imperialist Japan committed all the crimes against humanity its Nazi counterparts did. Millions of Korean citizens were forcibly conscripted into labor for Imperialist Japan's war effort under horrendous working conditions. This left anywhere from 210,000 to over 600,000 dead, not including many thousands more killed as collateral damage during the Allied invasion of Japan.

Besides Korean males' forced labor, Korean women were shipped throughout the Pacific Theater as sex slaves (euphemistically called ''comfort women"), and they lived under much worse conditions than their male counterparts, exposed to physical and emotional abuse, venereal diseases, forced abortions and unwanted pregnancies. The comfort women arrangement was systematic, normalized and well-organized rape, a fact that has left the few surviving Korean women who were sex slaves to demand reparations and a full apology from the Japanese government.

Arguably, China suffered much worse than Korea under Imperial Japan, first because of the sheer numbers of citizens killed by Japanese soldiers, but also because China was host to Unit 731 (a covert chemical and biological research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, tasked with human experimentation for future use in warfare). This unit was headed by Surgeon General Shiro Ishii.

Unit 731 was Imperial Japan's answer to Nazi Germany's own human medical experiments unit. (It was headed by the diabolical chief SS physician Dr. Eduard Wirths, medical commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his even more sadistic subordinate, Dr. Josef Mengele).

Just like the Nazi human experiment regime, Unit 731 performed unspeakable medical procedures on men, women, and children. The vast majority of these victims were Chinese, Korean or Mongolian, and at least one POW. Vivisections, forced rape, intentional infection of venereal diseases, mass inoculations of the general populace with bubonic plague, cholera, and anthrax, exposure to hyperthermia, high-pressure air chambers, burns, frostbite and forced invasive surgeries (done without anesthesia) were the norm.

In total, well over half a million people, most of them Chinese, died from these experiments, many from the intentional spread of diseases in the surrounding areas and other Chinese cities by Unit 731.

Then, there's the rape of Nanjing, where Imperial Japanese troops murdered, tortured and raped hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens. Anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 civilians were massacred during the incident.

Even if Chinese and Korean governments use these atrocities to foment nationalism and consolidate political power (particularly in China) from time to time, these crimes were evil by any measure.

Japan has officially apologized for these acts, yet Prime Minister Abe's conservative government has made signals, large and small, obfuscating the history of Imperial Japan before and during World War II. Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine (where some war criminals are buried) by high-ranking Japanese officials, comments by some officials calling Korean ''comfort women" either consensual prostitution or ''necessary" during times of war, outright denial of events like Nanjing by members of Abe's LDP party and manipulation of textbooks whitewashing or omitting Japan's behavior during the 1930s and 1940s, have all made Asia, particularly China and Korea, quite angry, and rightfully so.

The recent passing of military bills allowing Japan more flexibility in defense and war by the Japanese Diet (parliament), and territorial disputes over the Senkaku Islands with China, or even more absurdly, Dokdo Island with Korea, do not help matters.

Perhaps the worst of these government-sanctioned attempts at revisionist history is the manipulation of Japanese history textbooks. Younger generations of Japanese people know less and less about Japan's violent past, and in time, a majority of Japanese people will forget it all together.

An aggressive, warlike government led to the brutal and bloody defeat of Japan once before. Forgetting why this occurred serves nothing but (predominantly) male egos, starting with Prime Minister Abe's. It damages diplomatic ties with Korea and China, key economic and military powers in Asia and the world. Further, Korea and China are countries most closely involved with curbing North Korea's aggression.

Until Prime Minister Abe, et al, simply apologize and mean it, without caveats and equivocations, Korea, China, and others will be angry with Japan.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.co m.