Chinese Anger, Japanese Shame

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Even the most illiterate amongst us Westerners knows that in Adolph Hitler’s Germany, millions of Jewish people were brutally murdered in the death camps of Auschwitz, Poland. In today’s world nobody can commit crimes against humanity without getting labeled as Hitler-esque. This is as it should be. Since the collapse of the ties that bind the world that became World War II, ever so slowly we’ve been trying to distance ourselves from that sort inhumane destruction. Has it happened, of course it has. But the most serious offenders of human dignity and some lesser so have been labeled as being a “Hitler” or like Hitler himself. Everyone from Pol Pot, the mass murderer of Cambodia to George W. Bush, the proponent of pre-emptive war and the man whom led the charge to depose Saddam Hussein to the exclusion of all else, seems to wear the albatross of Hitler at some point or another.

However, being a Westerner and having a somewhat depreciated historical view of life beyond the Atlantic Ocean, occasionally one can be quite surprised and disgusted by events far flung from our sphere of influence that are still affecting international relations to this day. On this marble we call a planet when two countries from the Far East are having a mud throwing fight, it is almost assured that we in the West will get dirty. Therefore it is a moral imperative to understand the who, what, when, where and why of whatever conflict is making waves wherever it may be.

This of course brings me to our 800lbs gorilla friend, the People's Republic of China and our pacifist trading partners to the East, Japan. The news out of Beijing and Tokyo is essentially a conflict over Japan attempting to garner a seat on the UN Security Council, which China is at this time adamantly against. “Japan's quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is one of the factors fueling the anti-Japan protests that have erupted across China. Hopes are fading fast that Japan will win a seat anytime soon.

Japan has joined Germany, India and Brazil in pressing a claim for a permanent Security Council seat. But Japan's bid is unlikely to even make it out of its own neighborhood with China and the two Korea's firmly opposed to their neighbor winning a seat.” (Voanews.com)

The story seems to have started around April 10th, when, “Boisterous anti-Japanese protesters yesterday hurled stones, eggs and plastic bottles at Japanese diplomatic installations in Beijing in a protest certain to heighten frictions between East Asia's two biggest powers…It also follows months of rising tensions, fueled by disputes over undersea oil deposits in the East China Sea, and a recent flare-up over the way Japanese textbooks portray Japan's wartime record.

It marked the biggest public protest in the tightly guarded Chinese capital since 1999, when angry Chinese gathered near the U.S. Embassy after warplanes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the NATO-led war over Kosovo.” (Philly.com)

Both of the above cited articles state that one of the problems the Chinese have with Japan stems from a newly released history book that seems to downplay the actions of the Japanese forces during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). If you are like me and went to public school you’ve probably never heard of this until now. “The Second Sino-Japanese War was a major invasion of eastern China by Japan preceding and during World War II. It ended with the surrender of Japan in 1945…most historians place the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War on the Battle of Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge Incident) on July 7, 1937. However, Chinese historians place the starting point at the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931. Following the Mukden Incident, the Japanese Guandong Army occupied Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo (February 1932). Japan pressured China into recognizing the independence of Manchukuo. China and Japan did not formally declare war against each other until after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Following the Battle of Lugou Bridge in 1937, the Japanese occupied Shanghai, Nanjing and Northern Shanxi as part of campaigns involving approximately 200,000 Japanese soldiers, and considerably more Chinese soldiers. Chinese historians estimated that as many as 300,000 people died in the Nanjing Massacre, after the fall of Nanjing…The Japanese had neither the intention nor the capability of directly administering China. Their goal was to set up friendly puppet governments that would be favorable to Japanese interests. However, the actions of the Japanese army made the governments that they did set up very unpopular, and the Japanese refused to negotiate with either the Kuomintang or the Communists, which could have brought popularity.” (En.wikipedia.org)

There’s more to the story but what is important here and what is partially fueling the rage in China against the Japanese are the downplayed or underreported atrocities and acts of barbarity the Japanese army committed against the Chinese during this time period in such places as Nanjing. “Those suffered most from the barbarity were women. They were not only raped by the Japanese, they were often brutally killed by the Japanese after the rape. "Sometimes (Japanese) cut off their breasts to reveal their white ribs; sometimes Japanese pierce through their lower body with bayonets, let them cry in pain! Sometimes they sticks wooden sticks, reed pipe or carrots into their lower body and stir, until they are dead, Japanese soldiers clap their hands and loudly laugh alongside" (Ref. The Record of the Brutal Acts of the Japanese Invaders, Political Department, KMT Military Commission, Published July 1938).

CenturyChina.com has more details from this Hitler-esque episode. “During the period of the NanJing massacre, inside and outside the city, many female bodies [were raped and mutilated]…in a house close to the city wall at the XinZhong gate, laid the body of woman in her sixties, her lower body bloated; on north YangPi street, a girl laid dead, with her abdomen being cut open and intestines dragged out, two eyes wide open, blood in the mouth. In GuYiDian Street, a girl of age twelve laid dead, her under-ware was torn, her eyes closed and mouth open. These facts tell us: these women not only died under the butcher' knifes of the Japanese, they had been humiliated before they died.

The crime of rape that the Japanese committed were extremely savage, just like their brutal murders. The Japanese officers never restrained these brutal acts, they even encourage them, to satisfy their soldiers animal desire. As a consequence, Japanese invaders raped wherever they went. In ShangHai, SuZhu, WuXi, HangZhou... Japanese invaders did the same. The fate of the women in NanJing were particularly miserable.

After the fall of NanJing, Japanese invaders searched everywhere in NanJing in groups, whenever they found women, they gang raped them.”

The Japanese did worse, far worse than what I’ve written about here. They also haven’t apologized for it according to the Chinese. “China, South Korea and other Asian nations have long accused Japan of not apologizing adequately for invading and occupying its neighbors, and Chinese animosities are aggravated by their rivalry with the Japanese to be the region's dominant power.” (Timesargus.com) However Tokyo sees things rather differently and also has a different take one why China is exercising its veto at the UN. “Japan insists that it has apologized for its wartime atrocities, and has given China some $34 billion in development aid that is war reparation in all but name—a fact seldom mentioned in the Chinese media. Rather, the two rivals are engaged in an increasingly vitriolic struggle to dominate the economic, diplomatic and military future of Asia. China, flush with pride and power after 20 years of pell-mell economic growth, is spending heavily on its military and flexing its newfound diplomatic muscle. Japan, nervous about China's rise, is shedding the pacifism that has anchored its foreign policy since the end of World War II.” (Msnbc.msn.com)

The textbooks issue is a valid one regardless of whether or not it’s a red herring in the face of China simply trying to exercise its muscle in its sphere of influence. If Japan has apologized for its actions during the war than it won’t hurt to do again. It wasn’t that long ago former President Bill Clinton apologized for slavery, which ended well before that man was even born. While it is true that Japan may be able to do nothing to soothe the pain of World War II transgressions because the real issue is dominance not reparations, the actions were heinous and deserve to be acknowledged on the world stage. If Japan truly sees itself as more than just an economic power but instead a broker of influence then it needs to face up to its history and then move ahead to bigger and better things. I’m no fan of China at this time but I won’t support Japan rewriting the history of near genocide either.