Today Is the 70^th Anniversary of the End of the European Component of World War II — My Comment on the Contrast between Repentant Germany and Morally Recalcitrant Japan — and the Implied Parable for the United States

08 May 2015

In most instances, culture is ineradicable — which can cause payback problems down the line

A partial exception to this quasi-spiritual geopolitical rule has been post-World War II Germany. Its example leads to a parable with implications for the United States.

By way of background — during the uproar over China’s claim to the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, Martin Sieff contrasted Germany’s admirable willingness to acknowledge the evil of its not so distant past with Japan’s reluctance to do the same:

[F]or all of Japan’s great achievements in building the world’s second largest economy since World War II (now third after China), its leaders have never stood up and fully expressed contrition and remorse, and taken moral responsibility for their country’s appalling crimes during that period.

This silence stands in striking contrast to the moral courage of successive German chancellors from Konrad Adenauer to Angela Merkel who have minced no words in expressing their abhorrence for and rejecting of their country’s Nazi past.

In contrast to Germany’s sincere apologies, Japanese politicians have repeatedly denied the scale and horrors of their invasion and occupation of China and the widespread enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese “comfort women.”

But this policy of Japanese politicians continues to backfire. The more Japan tries to bury its horrific crimes of World War II, the more fear and distrust it generates in China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea.

China’s anger and reaction to Japan’s renewed claims to the Diaoyu Islands [see here] can only be understood in this context.

Note

Pertinent here, and forgotten on our side of the water, are China’s 15 to 20 million (1931 through 1945) war deaths, incurred while fighting imperial Japan.

The Chinese total is second only to the Soviet Union’s, also an Allied partner against the Axis and equally forgotten in our American Land of Impenetrable Ignorance.

Laughably (in a cynical sense) Japan’s prime minister, Shinzō Abe wittingly manages to pour salt into old wounds. Take this May 2013 Time account of his (arguably politically necessary) still prevailing perspective:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made one thing unintentionally clear: He thinks Japan did little wrong in its years of war and colonial expansion, and he sees no reason to apologize now.

“The definition of aggression has yet to be established in academia or in the international community,” Abe said. The policy chief for Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party later said that Abe also disagreed with the allied tribunal that found 14 wartime leaders guilty of war crimes.

Predictably, there were howls of protest from China, where an estimated 20 million Chinese died fighting the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s, and in Korea, which Japan ruled as a colony from 1910 to 1945. South Korea quickly cancelled a visit by its foreign minister to Tokyo . . . .

With the controversy still swirling, Abe posed for a photo in the cockpit of a military training jet emblazoned with the number “731” – that’s the unit number of an infamous Imperial Army group that conducted lethal chemical and biological warfare experiments on Chinese citizens.

That neither Abe nor his handlers grasped the significance of the photo – or didn’t care – demonstrates the distance between Japan and its neighbors when it comes to wartime issues.

Putting Prime Minister Abe’s soft-shoe behavior into geopolitical context, internationally savvy businessman Kenneth Courtis observed that:

Chancellor Merkel would be obliged to resign instantly, if she did something so outrageous. She would be completely disgraced in German and European politics for eternity.

Then there’s this Shinzō Abe blurb from just last week:

Shinzo Abe became the first Japanese Prime Minister in history to address a joint meeting of the US Congress today, seeking to deepen ties in the face of controversy over his views of World War II.

“On behalf of Japan and the Japanese people, I offer with profound respect my eternal condolences to the souls of all American people that were lost during World War II," he said to rousing applause from US lawmakers.

In Congress, Abe was faced with the presence of 87-year-old Lee Yong-Soo, one of the estimated 200,000 Asian women who were forced into sexual slavery by occupying Japanese troops.

Abe expressed his "deep remorse" over Japan's actions toward neighboring Asian nations, but stopped short of a full apology demanded by many.

"Our actions brought suffering to the peoples in Asian countries. We must not avert our eyes from that."

That angered some in Congress, including [Mike] Honda who said it was "shocking and shameful" that Abe "continues to evade his government's responsibility for the systematic atrocity that was perpetrated the Japanese Imperial Army."

China was also unimpressed:

Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, minced no words.

"The nationalist Japanese leader once again failed to deliver an unequivocal apology the world deserves for his country's heinous systematic war crimes seven decades ago” . . . .

A parable for the United States?

The United States has not apologized for the egregious wrongs that it committed in Vietnam, much less admitted that our equally unworkable occupation of Iraq was misguided and led to the bloody maelstrom that is the Middle East today.

This diplomatic “oversight” matters because — just as China is going to karmically chew some pieces off Japan’s economic and territorial ass in the future — so our adversaries are eventually going to take turns happily nibbling bits off our still breathing corpse.

Hatred for an adversary’s unadmitted murderous bent makes an excellent vengeance motivator.

The Eastern Hemisphere loosely calls this spiritual learning process karma. We in the West more narrowly call it payback. Either way, people down the line suffer.

There is of course little chance that widely shared American reflection on moral culpability (in regard to Vietnam or anywhere else) will take place. Our national arrogance parallels Japan’s.

Broadly pertinent to this, Denis MacShane — the United Kingdom’s former Minister for Europe — said:

The 70th anniversary of May 8, 1945 is not a moment to hail victory but should be a time to ask why it all went so badly wrong for so many years and what mistakes are being made today that will ignite new conflicts.

The moral? — Parables teach only those both knowledgeable and willing to listen

The United States makes one strategic mistake after another. The problem is probably not stupidity, but hypocrisy.

Our conflict-provoking strategic errors consistently benefit the Military Industrial Complex — which has increasingly become another name for American capitalism. President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 concern was justified.

American society today encourages historical and cultural ignorance, as well as the absence of moral reflection, so as to continue making money for the elite few. This is fascism that parallels World War II Japan and Germany, but lacks their blatant racism.

Does national culture eventually become what it says it hates?

Cynical pessimism is arguably a non-idealistic realist’s endpoint. But then there’s Germany. At least for now.

PeteFree.com

Today Is the 70th Anniversary of the End of the European Component of World War II — My Comment on the Contrast between Repentant Germany and Morally Recalcitrant Japan — and the Implied Parable for the United States

Today Is the 70^th Anniversary of the End of the European Component of World War II — My Comment on the Contrast between Repentant Germany and Morally Recalcitrant Japan — and the Implied Parable for the United States