imperial-japan

"The main driving force has been a primitive lust for power and dominion among a powerful section of Japan's warrior caste. Just as in the days of feudalism the warriors—the shoguns, the daimyos and the samurai—dominated the domestic political scene, so the successors of that caste to-day—a section of the military and naval leaders and of the corps of "Younger Officers"—aspired to dominate the world outside Japan. They looked upon war as their chosen instrument. Taken as a whole—there are of course many individual exceptions—these successors of the samurai are arrogant, cruel, conceited and possessed of an overweening ambition to dominate and conquer for the greater "glory" of Japan. I do not suggest that this primitive lust of conquest is confined to the Army; but the Army is unquestionably its spiritual home and, but for Army influence in the State, it would never have played such a part in the shaping of Japan's destinies."

"By 1938, in fact, Japan had not only become much stronger economically than Italy, but had also overtaken France in all of the indices of manufacturing and industrial production. Had its military leaders not gone to war in China in 1937 and, more disastrously, in the Pacific in 1941, one is tempted to conclude that it would also have overtaken British output well before actually doing so, in the mid-1960s."

"If new warships are considered necessary we must, at any cost, build them: if the organization of our army is inadequate we must start rectifying it from now; if need be, our entire military system must be changed... At present Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate, and she will be able not only to put in their place the powers who seek to meddle in her affairs, she will even be able, should this be necessary, to meddle in their affairs."

"The astonishing modernisation of Japan since she had abandoned her self-imposed isolation from the West in 1868 had left her traditional society and its moral code little changed. She had copied German and American industry, the German army and the English and German navies. She had not copied the liberal assumptions by which English statesmen governed their actions. The Japanese view of international relations owed nothing to Christianity, evangelical or otherwise; and the internationalist moralising and idealism then current in Britain were as foreign and incomprehensible to the Japanese as to thirteenth-century English barons. For Japanese society remained feudal, hierarchical, obedient, each man looking to his patron and so on upwards to the emperor, who was not only the ruler of the country, but divine and therefore an object of worship. The Japanese venerated the ideal of the warrior brave in battle, jealous of honour, loyal unto death and achieving fulfilment in dying by violence. It was not therefore the gentle dreams of League-of-Nations believers in the West, but bloodthirsty reveries of a destiny of conquest which inspired the most powerful groups in Japanese society, the leaderships of the armed forces."

"[Japan is] a restless and aggressive Power, full of energy, somewhat like the Germans in mentality, seeking in every direction to push out and find an outlet for her ambitions."

"It seems indisputable that the strong Japanese sense of cultural uniqueness, the traditions of emperor worship and veneration of the state, the samurai ethos of military honour and valour, the emphasis upon discipline and fortitude, produced a political culture at once fiercely patriotic and unlikely to be deterred by sacrifices, and reinforced the Japanese impulse to expand into "Greater East Asia", for strategical security as well as markets and raw materials... On land and sea, the better-equipped Japanese forces seemed driven by a will to succeed."

"Japan had much in common with Great Britain, besides high population density. An archipelago of islands located not far from a well-developed continent with a longer-established civilization, Japan had emerged from an era of civil war to embrace constitutional monarchy. Japan was Asia's first industrial nation, just as Britain was Europe's. Both rose to economic power by manufacturing cloth and selling it to foreigners. Victorian Britain was famous for its stuffy social hierarchy; so too was Meiji Japan. The English had their state religion, propounded by the Church of England; the Japanese had theirs, known as Shinto. Both cultures engaged in what looked to outside eyes like emperor- (or empress-) worship. Both cultures venerated and romanticized the chivalric codes of a partly imagined feudal past. The enduring power of Second World War propaganda still makes it hard for Western observers to acknowledge these similarities; we prefer to accentuate the 'otherness' of inter-war Japan. To ignore them, however, is to miss the essential legitimacy of the basic Japanese objective after 1905: to be treated as an equal by the Western powers. To the Japanese this meant more than the share of the Chinese market that was on offer under the system of unequal treaties. The British had acquired a large and lucrative empire, the core of which was their total control of the defunct Asian empire of the Mughals but which also afforded them vast tracts of living space in North America and Australasia. The Japanese saw no reason why they should not build an empire of their own, complete with living space, in the ruins of the no less defunct Qing empire. The biggest difference between Japan and Britain was one of timing. Economically, at least in terms of per capita gross domestic product, Japan was around a century and a half behind, if not more. Strategically, too, Japan was roughly where Britain had been in the first half of the eighteenth century. Her opponents, however, were more numerous and more formidable than Hanoverian Britain's had been."

"Frankly he liked the Japanese. The reasons they gave very often for doing things were quite unintelligible, and they might have no conscience, but they did stand by those who stood by them ... Japan, on the whole, had been faithful to her obligations."

"It began suddenly at 11:58 A.M. the first of September in the twelfth year of Taisho [1923]. A violent rocking deep in the earth shook the Kanto region on which the capital city of Tokyo rests. Houses creaked and whined, twisted grotesquely, and collapsed. Inhabitants were buried alive, while those lucky enough to flee in time ran about screaming like crazed animals. What had once been a thriving center of the civilized world was in the space of a moment transformed into hell itself. One aftershock came only to be followed by another violent tremor and yet another aftershock. Fires broke out all over the city, and great columns of smoke billowed up toward the sky as from a giant volcano. Tokyo was soon under a blanket of thick, black vapor. The terrible tremors left the population in the grip of fear. Then those outrageous rumors started spreading and pandemonium broke out."

"Several factors have conspired to keep Unit 731’s activities from receiving the attention they so richly deserve. The decades of concealment of the outfit’s history were partly the fruit of the Japanese central government’s reputed skill at inactivity, along with its priority on avoiding all manners of controversy, whether domestic or international. Evidence also failed to surface simply because there were no survivors among the victims of Unit 731; all were eliminated before the end of the war. Then, there was the combination order-threat by commanding general Ishii Shiro himself that former unit members were to “take the secret to the grave.” Obedience to the command was probably not at all difficult for those surviving Japanese members of the unit who could have borne witness but would have felt scalpels turned in their own hearts were their children to ask, “Daddy! How could you do something like that?”- and feel it even more acutely in their later years when the question would be prefaced with “Grandpa.”"

"The Epidemic prevention and Water Purification Department of the wanting Army-popularly known by its codename “Manchurian Unit No 731” or simply “Unit 731”-was a secret biological weapons research and development unit maintained by the Imperial Japanese Army in the outskirts of Harbin in Japanese-controlled Manchuria, northeastern China, for the duration of World War II in Asia and the Pacific. It has gained international notoriety in recent decades as research revealed the shocking details of Unit 731’s core wartime activity: the use of thousands of human guinea pigs for medical experimentation. The vast majority of these human subjects are believed to have been Chinese nationals taken prisoner over the course of the course of the Second Sino-Japanese war that originated in the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931, and that grew to fullblown warfare in July 1937. Men, women, and children of other nationalities were also used for experiments, and babies born to women in Unit 731’s custody apparently were not spared either."

"This book outlines medical experimentation that was conducted by Unit 731, heinous acts including injecting human subjects with pathogens; monitoring the progress of diseases by drawing blood samples from and conducting vivisection on live individuals; exposing human subjects to infected insects in an open-air testing field; infecting a health individual with venereal disease by way of forced sexual intercourse with a carrier of venereal disease; causing frostbite on limbs by exposing them to water and cold air in a sub-zero temperature environment; and collecting human specimens-organs, body parts and even entire bodies of human subjects-which were subsequently kept at Unit 731’s lab and the army medical facilities in Tokyo. None of the subjects in Unit 731’s custody survived the war, as they either died during experiments or were killed en masse as part of the Japanese cover-up effort at the war’s end. Some of the biological weapons thus developed, meanwhile, were put to use during the Japanese military campaigns against China. The Imperial Japanese Army also set up other medical units in Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Singapore, so that biological weapons research and development could be carried forth in the broader region of Asia and the Pacific under Japanese military control."

"Some four decades following the end of World War II, details concerning the Imperial Japanese Army’s Unit 731, which researched and conducted biological warfare, began surfacing with startling impact. Information about this outfit, at whose hands an estimated three thousand Manchurians, Chinese, Russians, Koreans, Europeans, and Americans were killed, had remained largely hidden over the years, either by governmental control or a code of silence adhered to by its former members themselves. Then, newly revealed information stirred interest in an era which Japanese officialdom had been trying to wash away with the detergent of neglect. Japan has been told to leave the past behind and move ahead told to new ties of friendship and commerce with other countries. Yet while business ties develop, and amity is proclaimed to be spreading old facts emerging as recent revelations increase their magnetic attraction and pull us into a reexamination of what happened then-and again incite us into debates of how and why. It can be argued that probably no school system anywhere teaches true history; only the degree of rearrangement varies. For the years during which the research units were active, the chasm between history and Japan’s official stance yawns wide. For years, Unit 731 “did not exist.” Requests and demands not just or monetary compensation but for mere recognition of history and apology have been brushed away, turned down because “compensation has been made at government levels.” Instead, Japan offers its dedication to “world peace” with statements that are as vague as they are eloquent."

"The Japanese people began acquiring knowledge about Unit 731 as early as the 1950s, thanks in part to confessional accounts that some of the former Japanese soldiers returning from China published, and also to book-length studies of Unit 731 became a household word with the publication in 1981 of Akuma no hoshoku (“The Devil’s Gluttony”), written by popular author Moriumura Seiichi. This book offered in a gripping narrative the details of diabolical activities of Unit 731, and set in motion a nation-wide dialogue about Unit 731 and its legacy in postwar Japan. Meanwhile, Unit 731 as a subject of scholarly inquiry gained traction, and researchers in Japan as well as elsewhere came to produce a number of original studies that made extensive use of archival materials in China, Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States."

"There are several reasons why the code of silence has evaporated at this late hour. Whatever these motivations might be, however we can be grateful that the grave did not get all the truth. One focus of this book will be the actual words of those who helped conduct Japan’s biological warfare human experimentation program. The exhibition itself, the reactions it provoked, and the testimonies of former unit members who came forth and spoke out were all driving factors behind the creation of this book. It is as important for these events to be available to English-readers as it is that Japanese know them. Some of the testimonies and statements presented ere were originally given at lecture programs which the author attended, recorded, and translated. At other programs in different parts of the country, testimonies were obtained with the cooperation of the local organizing committees. An independent team sought out former Unit 731 members and produced a video series which was another source. A few of the testimonies were told to other people who then reported on them at lectures or in print. The recent declassification under the Freedom of Information Act of some documents that had been sealed for years also played an important role in the creation of this book. Events in the former Soviet Union likewise brought about a freeing of material formerly kept hidden away. Some Japanese documents have also been declassified making them available to researchers. In the end, however, the most thought-provoking source of public information on Japan’s human experiments comes from those who were there, then emerged from silence and provided the personal accounts which lead us back to the crimes with distressing credibility. These firsthand recollections make mockery of statements which attempt to smooth down the edges of the cruelty and racism that made Unit 731 possible."

"This last fact highlights an even more astonishing result of the exhibition. Surviving members of Unit 731 who had sworn to remain silent about their memories came out before the public to testify-to confess-and finally unburden their minds. After a half century of silence, they told. Some could tell all but their names, and retained that one secret before the public: an omission meaningful to them, but a minor exclusion for those of us more interested in their stories than in their identities. Others identified themselves openly. Some reached the point of weeping with equal openness, as they looked back through decades of silence to stir up ugly recollections. But those who are coming forward now, after some half-century of silence, are among the most forceful in pressing for the story to be told. Additionally, a limited number of members of the post-war generation- scientists, doctors, writers-are searching out the survivors, doing their own research, and informing the public through writings and lectures. Outrage and shame span the generations. Exhibition sites generally have a desk where visitors may write their impressions and comments. Attendees from elementary school on up have recorded the shock of the history lesson."

"General readers in the West may be far less acquainted with the history of Unit 731-or, for that matter, the Sino-Japanese War that informs the backstory of Unit 731-for reasons that the remembrance of World War II and war crimes operates on a different plane form the one in postwar Japan. The story of Unit 731 nonetheless needs to be retold and passed on to the next generation of people across the world, as they shoulder the responsibility of protecting those who fall victim to comparable episodes of mass atrocity and grave human-rights abuses in the twenty-first century."

"Information on Japan’s consumption of live human beings as biological test material has been surfacing for many years now. As with the comfort women issue, however, there has never been a jolt of sufficient voltage to rock the national government into acts of contrition or compensation. Rather, it has been local governments who have opened their eyes to history. The efforts of local governments in conjunction with high degrees of volunteer activity in their areas, can be credited with bringing the Unit 731 Exhibition before the eyes of Japanese in sixty-one locations over the course of a year and a half. The exhibition, in whose final days this book was begun, was arranged by a central organizing committee in Tokyo, and each locality which wanted to plan a local exhibition had to raise its own funds and find its own venue. There was, of course, an admission fee to enter the exhibit, and so for the visitors it could be considered a self-financed course in the history omitted by orthodox education. The shock to the Japanese people was predictable. In spite of the occasional documentary coverage or newspaper article, Unit 731 was largely unknown and unthought of. It sat safely outside the scope of the consciousness of most Japanese. True, some attention was drawn to Unit 731 when the Japanese government was taken to court for not permitting factual accounts of it in school textbooks, but even those with some knowledge of the Ishii organization had their eyes opened at the exhibits."

"The Japanese right in the past decades has contested the veracity of individual confessional accounts by former soldiers and other types of documentation by researchers in their effort to deny that alleged heinous acts were ever committed in the name of Japan or of the Japanese emperor. However, it is an indisputable fact that the Japanese army leadership at the highest level sanctioned the establishment off Unit 731 for the purpose of researching and developing biological weapons. Furthermore, given the duration of Unit 731’s operations, given the well-established lines of communication between unit 731 and the army authorities at Tokyo, and given the transmission of human specimens taken from individuals used for medical experimentation from the former to the latter, one could reasonably infer that the Japanese army leadership at the highest levels knew and condoned the use of human guinea pigs, if not that they expressly authorized it. The share of responsibility for Unit 731’s activities on the part of Emperor Hirohito, in this regard, is worthy of further investigation. After all, Emperor Hirohito occupied the highest position in the Japanese army establishment for the entire duration of World War II in Asia and the Pacific, in his capacity as “the head of the Empire, combining in Himself the rights of sovereignty, and exercises them,” and concurrently assuming the “supreme command of the Army and Navy” (The Constitution of the empire of Japan, 1889-1947)."

"While launching counter-offensives against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the last war years, the Allied powers repeatedly issued joint declarations regarding their intention to bring to justice the Axis war criminals. One might expect, under those circumstances, that the members of Unit 731 would have been among the first for the Allied authorities to name as war criminals and to put on trial. But that, in fact, was not the case. Unit 731 rather became a pawn of cold-war politics as the U.S. government prioritized racing against the Soviet Union in securing the biological weapons’ knowledge that Unit 731 had amassed and, to that end, shielding from war crimes prosecution the medical unit’s former members, including its chief, Surgeon General Ishii Shiro. The Soviet authorities, for their part, had their own share of interests in gaining access to Unit 731’s secretive information, but they appeared also focused on using it as a propaganda tool to be deployed against the United States. Having failed in getting the inter-Allied prosecuting agency at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE, 1946-48) to incorporate the evidence of Unit 731 in the case against major Japanese war criminals, the Soviet government set up a special military tribunal at Khabarovsk in December 1949 to hold a joint trial of 12 former Japanese army officers on criminal charges relating to Unit 731’s wartime activities. It went on to publish the official record of the trial in multiple languages (including in Japanese), and put pressure on the United States and other Allied countries to proceed with a trial of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito (1901-89; r. 1926-89), based on the Khabarovsk Trial’s findings. No formal inter-Allied deliberation concerning the possible trial of Hirohito ensued, however, since the U.S. government snubbed the Soviet initiative as a publicity stunt, and the Soviet government eventually let the matter drop. In this manner, the Allied Powers allowed certain known war criminals to escape prosecution despite their stated policy at the outset to mete out stern punishment to war criminals, thereby sending contradictory messages to the Japanese public about the Allied commitment to justice and accountability."

"As of today, Unit 731 is arguably one of the most thoroughly researched and best documented among many known episodes of Japanese war crimes. It may be also said that the highly organized and institutionalized nature of Unit 731’s criminality likely made it comparatively easy for researchers to develop a comprehensive picture of Unit 731’s wartime activities once relevant oral and documentary histories became available. To achieve the same level of comprehensiveness would be challenging with other episodes of large-scale Japanese war crimes, such as the Nanjing Massacre, whose occurrence could not be attributed to the establishment and operation of a single Unit 731-like criminal organization. In a word, the crimes committed by the members of Unit 731 were a case of “criminality of closed systems” in the sense that the unit members made systematic use of humans for medical experimentation in fulfillment of their specific organizational mission, just like the members of concentration camps in German-controlled Europe gassed to death the Jewish people in fulfillment of the camps’ organizational mission."

"At that time, my cousin was only eighteen-years-old. He was taken away by the Japanese troops and never returned. I personally watched as the Japanese troops massacred many people. We had a neighbor, elderly Ms. Zhen, who was about eighty-years-old. She thought that because she was old, she could remain at home and be fine. In actuality, she was brutally murdered by the Japanese, with her stomach slashed open. There was also a tea specialist, who couldn’t bear leaving his home. He was also murdered by the Japanese."

"The third impulse, to rape, is the hardest to interpret. Is it possible for men simultaneously to despise people as vermin and yet to feel lust towards them? Were Japanese troops giving in to a primitive urge to impregnate the womenfolk of their enemy? Or was rape just bayoneting by other means? Perhaps the best answer is that all of these impulses were at work, reinforced by some element of peer-group pressure, since many of the assaults reported were gang rapes. As Hino Ashihei put it in his book War and Soldiers, "We would be friendly with Chinese individuals and indeed came to love them. But how could we help despising them as a nation? . . . To us soldiers, they were pitiful, spineless people." After the war, General Matsui told the International Military Tribunal, which would sentence him to hang for his role at Nanking: "The struggle between Japan and China was always a fight between brothers within the 'Asian family' . . . It has been my belief during all these years that we must regard this struggle as a method of making the Chinese undergo self-reflection. We do not do this because we hate them, but on the contrary because we love them too much." This seemed then and still seems preposterous. Yet it captures the vile ambivalence that lay behind the phenomenon of mass rape."

"Thus, the instant the Japanese soldiers opened fire on us all, I immediately fell toward the ground, faking my death. Struck by the flying bullets, my Chinese comrades all piled up on my body. Right up till it got dark and the Japanese soldiers had all left, I lay under the dead bodies, not daring to move. Only then did I climb out from under the pile of bodies. It was thus how I became a fortunate survivor of the Nanjing massacre."

"Beneath the plane of political memory, the history of the war, of which the Nanjing Massacre is one small part, raises other questions that are pertinent to the present day. There is the issue of why the Japanese army behaved with such apparent barbarism in seizing places like Nanjing and thereafter defending its occupation against Nationalist and Communist insurgencies."

"In China, the number of people still alive who survived the 1937 Nanjing Massacre at the hands of Japanese invaders has fallen to minuscule levels – some experts put the number around 80."

"How is what became known as the Rape of Nanking to be understood? As a breakdown of military discipline, fuelled by alcohol and battle-fatigue? As a deliberate imperial policy? As the hideous offspring of what one writer called a 'militarist monster, forged in late Meiji from a mixture of late Edo [pre-Meiji] nativism and borrowed German racial theories'? Three impulses were consciously unleashed by those in command. The first was the contempt felt for those who surrendered. Japanese troops were trained to regard surrender as dishonourable. It was preferable to commit suicide rather than capitulate. Trainees were also encouraged to believe the corollary: that an enemy who did surrender was essentially worthless. This contempt went hand in hand with a culture of extreme physical brutality. If a Japanese colonel felt displeased with one of his majors, it was not unusual for him to strike the offending officer a blow across the face. The major chastised in this way would then lose no time in striking the first junior officer to incur his displeasure, and so it would continue on down the chain. Right at the bottom came enemy captives, so that any aggrieved Japanese NCO or private had one obvious and defenceless target on which to vent his frustrations."

"The second impulse was not peculiar to the Japanese army. As the Turks had treated the Armenians, as Stalin's henchmen were treating the kulaks, Poles and other 'enemies of the people', as the Nazis were soon to start treating Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill, so the Japanese now thought of and treated the Chinese: as sub-humans. This capacity to treat other human beings as members of an inferior and indeed malignant species - as mere vermin - was one of the crucial reasons why twentieth-century conflict was so violent. Only make this mental leap, and warfare ceases to be a formalized encounter between uniformed armies. It becomes a war of annihilation, in which everyone on the other side - men, women, children, the elderly - can legitimately be killed."

"How many thousands were mowed down by guns or bayoneted we shall probably never know. For in many cases oil was thrown over their bodies and then they were burned. Charred bodies tell the tales of some of these tragedies. The events of the following ten days are growing dim. But there are certain of them that lifetime will not erase from my memory and the memories of those who have been in Nanjing through this period."

"Anyone who tries to deny the massacre will not be allowed by history, the souls of the 300,000 deceased victims, 1.3 billion Chinese people and all people loving peace and justice in the world."

"The Japanese had in fact waged a kind of prototype blitzkrieg in China in the months after full-scale war broke out at the Marco Polo Bridge. But the fighting was harder and a good deal more costly in lives and treasure than Japan's leaders had anticipated. In December 1937, as Japanese troops neared Chiang Kai-shek's capital, Nanking, a decision appears to have been taken to make an example of it, in the hope of dealing a fatal blow to Chinese resistance and bringing the war to a swift conclusion. It is not entirely clear who took this decision. After the war, the blame was laid on General Matsui Iwane, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces in central China. It seems more likely that the real culprit was the Emperor's uncle, Prince Asaka Yasuhiko, who took over command on December 2. It was under his seal that orders were issued three days later - marked 'Secret, to be destroyed' - to 'Kill all Captives'. As they fought their way along the road from Shanghai, two officers gave their men an indication of what was to come. They engaged in a killing competition, which was covered by the Japanese press like a sporting event."

"Nothing prepared me for these pictures - stark black-and-white images of decapitated heads, bellies ripped open and nude women forced by their rapist into various pornographic poses, their faces contorted into unforgettable expressions of agony and shame."

"In Japan, the Nanjing Massacre harms feelings important to national identity – “pride, honor and shame.”"

"General Matsui entered Nanking on December 17, four days after his troops had begun their rampage. Though he subsequently claimed to be dismayed by what he witnessed, he did (or could do) little to stop it. The murderous orgy continued for a further five and a half weeks. It reached its peak in the week from January 28 to February 3,1938, after civilians had been ordered to return to their homes from the refugee camps outside the city whence they had fled. For days, thousands of unburied bodies littered the streets. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East later estimated that more than 260,000 non-combatants had died at the hands of Japanese soldiers at Nanking - more than four times the number of British civilians killed during the entire war. The Japanese did not content themselves with murder, however. There was also a systematic campaign of arson and other destruction."

"China in 2014 designated December 13 as a day of national mourning over the incident. It has held memorial services to boost patriotism among the Chinese people and highlight Japan’s role as a perpetrator."

"If there is no name or ID number, the 300,000 figure could just be a summary of Chinese historical fiction. The history could be a folk tale if there are no supporting historical materials, which is a reflection of the lack of academic rigor in China."

"Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death, but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die. I became an officer and I received an order. If I could not carry it out, I would feel shame. I am very competitive."

""August 6, 1945: Hiroshima. August 9, 1945: Nagasaki." I wrote the words on the classroom whiteboard in large letters. Then I crossed out both dates and places with a big red X. "Not true," I declared. "The atomic bombings never happened. A total fabrication." My university students were dumbstruck. We stared at each other in silence for a long moment. All right, I conceded, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by American warplanes 60 years ago. But only conventional bombs were used and only a few hundred people were killed. Another uncomfortable silence. Then I admitted it was a ruse. The students seemed to collectively exhale in relief. The tragic reality, of course, is that hundreds of thousands of Japanese died as the result of the two atomic bombings. The brief classroom exercise helped students imagine how citizens of Asian countries victimized by Japanese colonialism, invasion and atrocities during World War II feel when the Nanjing Massacre is labeled a fabrication, military sex slaves are portrayed as willing prostitutes, and forced laborers are claimed to have voluntarily toiled for Japan's former empire. It also gave students additional insight into why Chinese and Koreans, in particular, continue to react so indignantly to revisionist Japanese history textbooks and prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are among the Japanese war dead worshipped."

"I know Japan; I lived there for ten years. I know the Japanese intimately. The Japanese will not crack. They will not crack morally or psychologically or economically, even when eventual defeat stares them in the face. They will pull in their belts another notch, reduce their rations from a bowl to a half bowl of rice, and fight to the bitter end. Only by utter physical destruction or utter exhaustion of their men and materials can they be defeated."

"In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. Sincerely facing these facts of history, I once again express my feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology, and also express the feelings of mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, in the war. I am determined not to allow the lessons of that horrible war to erode, and to contribute to the peace and prosperity of the world without ever again waging a war."

"We stand in Tokyo today reminiscent of our countryman, Commodore Perry, ninety-two years ago. His purpose was to bring to Japan an era of enlightenment and progress, by lifting the veil of isolation to the friendship, trade, and commerce of the world. But alas the knowledge thereby gained of western science was forged into an instrument of oppression and human enslavement. Freedom of expression, freedom of action, even freedom of thought were denied through appeal to superstition, and through the application of force. We are committed by the Potsdam Declaration of principles to see that the Japanese people are liberated from this condition of slavery. It is my purpose to implement this commitment just as rapidly as the armed forces are demobilized and other essential steps taken to neutralize the war potential. The energy of the Japanese race, if properly directed, will enable expansion vertically rather than horizontally. If the talents of the race are turned into constructive channels, the county can lift itself from its present deplorable state into a position of dignity. To the Pacific basin has come the vista of a new emancipated world. Today, freedom is on the offensive, democracy is on the march. Today, in Asia as well as in Europe, unshackled peoples are tasting the full sweetness of liberty, the relief from fear."

"During the war, Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. On behalf of the people of Japan, I hereby renew my feelings of profound remorse as I express my sincere mourning to the victims"

"It is a serious and extremely difficult problem that some groups in Japan deny atrocities by the wartime government when the outside world accepts these atrocities as historical fact. This atrocity denial is simply wrong, and its effects are destructive. Admitting to official atrocities in the past should not prevent the building of Japanese national pride today. No one of working age or younger in Japan today is personally responsible for Pacific War crimes. They are part of the new, postwar Japan, characterized by economic and technological prowess and admirable international citizenship. These accomplishments are not canceled out by events from the middle of the last century. As many commentators have pointed out, atrocity-denial is not in Japan’s self-interest because it restricts Japan's opportunities for cooperation with its neighbors and generally damages the otherwise favorable Japan 'brand' internationally... Japan and South Korea are both democracies that fear Chinese domination, yet the animosity between the two societies restricts what should be natural strategic partnering... Despite harboring atrocity-deniers, Japan is certainly no more likely to start a war of aggression than any other country of comparable size and economic capacity in the international community, and probably less so because of lingering anti-militarism stemming from Japan’s disastrous experience in the Pacific War."

"Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians, among whom armchair arguments about war are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices."

"We have never forgotten that Japan caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries during the last war. Many lost their precious lives and many were wounded. The war has left an incurable scar on many people, including former prisoners of war. Facing these facts of history in a spirit of humility, I reaffirm today our feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology."

"It is, of course, also in our interest that Japan wants to secure for herself further possessions in the South, Indo-China, etc., just as every measure of Japan directed toward expansion is in principle welcomed by us. I shall give you detailed instructions within the near future, relative to the consequences which might, and no doubt will, result from the occupation of Iceland by American military forces, and the attitude which we will take toward Japan in this connection. As a directive for talks we can advise you already today that the sending of American military forces to the support of England into a territory which has been officially announced by us as combat area, shows not only Roosevelt’s aggressive intentions, but the fact of the intrusion of American military forces into the combat area in support of England is in itself an aggression against Germany and Europe. After all, one cannot enter a theater of war in which two armies are fighting, and join the army of one side without the intention of shooting and without actually doing so. I do not doubt for a moment that in case of the outbreak of hostilities between Germany and America, in which case today already it may be considered as an absolutely established fact that only America will be the aggressor, Japan will fulfill her obligations, as agreed upon in the Three-Power Pact. However, I ask you to employ all available means in further insisting upon Japan’s entry into the war against Russia at the soonest possible date, as I have mentioned already in my note to Matsuoka. The sooner this entry is effected, the better. The natural objective still remains that we and Japan join hands on the Trans-Siberian railroad, before winter starts. After the collapse of Russia, however, the position of the Three-Power Pact states in the world will be so gigantic, that the question of England's collapse or the total destruction of the English islands will only be a matter of time. An America totally isolated from the rest of the world would then be faced with our taking possession of the remaining positions of the British Empire which are important for the Three-Power-Pact countries. I have the unshakeable conviction that a carrying through of the new order as desired by us will be a matter of course, and there will be no insurmountable difficulties if the countries of the Three-Power Pact stand close together and encounter every action of the Americans with the same weapons."

"During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history."

"The Second World War started in Asia with another convenient episode but it too had deeper roots. The Japanese militarists and nationalists were looking to build an empire in Asia to provide raw materials, markets, cheap labour and land for settlement. Japan had already taken the rich Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931 after a series of bombs had conveniently exploded on a Japanese-owned railway line. In 1937 Japanese soldiers were out on regular patrol in Beijing, a right established after a multinational force had defeated the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion at the end of the nineteenth century. As the patrol neared an ancient bridge in Beijing, said to be the one the Venetian explorer Marco Polo had crossed on his way into the city centuries before, shots apparently rang out. The next day the Japanese produced a body in Japanese uniform. Although rumour in Beijing claimed that the Japanese had simply dressed up a dead Chinese beggar, the Marco Polo Bridge incident became Japan’s justification for invading China south of the Great Wall and occupying a great swathe of the coast down to the border of Hong Kong. That invasion helped to turn American opinion away from isolationism to confrontation."

"Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists in Well-Thought-Out Scheme: From the East Asian Correspondent, Sept 1, 1939. — In a course of action praised by many as "far-sighted" and "tactically brilliant," the Japanese government has sworn its allegiance to the Axis powers led by white-supremacist Nazi Germany. In a formal statement, Japanese leaders declared, "We wish to be counted among the loyal allies of this back-stabbing, racist hate nation." Following the announcement, Japanese General and military leader Hideki Tojo told reporters, "We are pleased to enter into an alliance with the paranoid, xenophobic government of Nazi Germany. We anticipate a deeply enriching exchange of our military aid with their deep-seated hatred of our non-white heritage.""

"Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command. Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve."