all right, this demands a rant
Let us, dear flist, imagine a world in which the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during the World War II era were never officially recognised by the Germany government, that victims were never officially compensated for their ordeals. Let us also imagine that leaders of the Nazi government were not only allowed to escape unscathed but were even permitted to maintain their jobs in the bureaucracy. Finally, let us imagine that Angela Merkel's government has openly questioned the historical validity of the Holocaust.
Would there be outrage? You fucking bet.
Last February, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider passing a non-binding resolution that would ask the Japanese government to apologise for the World War II practise of enslaving of some 200,000 women throughout Asia as "comfort women," i.e., sex slaves. This is just one of the many crimes committed by the Japanese military and political establishment against the populations of Asia, which include experimentation of biological warfare on humans, the employment of chemical weapons against civilians, forced labour, and general massacring of people (see: the Rape of Nanking), all of which resulted in about 30 million corpses. Overwhelming amounts of evidence pay testimony to these crimes (see: pictures, among other contemporary accounts of that time), but the Japanese government has yet to issue a formal apology about any of this. Indeed, powerful ultra-conservative elements in Japan will still maintain that these atrocities are fabricated and exaggerated. One such ultra-conservative seems to be Japan's prime minister, who, in response to the House's resolution, stated that there was no such evidence of military-run brothels.
I used that above article from The Economist for my current events assignment in AP econ, and after being called upon to explain its contents to the class, I was faced with an overwhelming reaction of exasperation and indifference. Why should we care? they asked. Why is this important? Why is our Congress wasting time on this?
True, the United States is not Japan, and true, the United States did not slaughter some 30 million Asians (on the other hand, I am going to point out that, while the United States concentrated much effort in convicting high ranking Nazi officials at the Nuremberg trials, they more or less let the Japanese equivalents walk free as the U.S. couldn't afford to piss off the Japanese, needing them as a democratic bulwark against Communist China and the Soviet Union). But the United States isn't Nazi Germany either, yet awareness of the sheer evil that was the Holocaust forms a large part of the American education. Neither is the United States the country of Sudan, yet there is growing indignation that we haven't acted in regards to the genocide in Darfur. Therefore, I find myself wanting to say this, but alas, I always get emotional and offended about this and can never be coherent when I need to:
I know that there is a personal bias involved. I'm only a generation removed from China, and three of my four grandparents were alive when Japan occupied China in the 1930s (interestingly enough, my grandmother is fluent in Japanese because she was forced to attend Japanese-run schools). Nevertheless, there is a reason why they're called human rights, and I'm quite sure that human rights include the right to not be raped by invading soldiers, the right to not be forced into laying railroad tracks, the right to not be gassed, and the right to not be killed without consent, among others. When human rights are violated, it is not merely an affront against the people upon whom the violations are exacted. No, it is an affront to every single one of us - as men, as women, as children, as humans, bound together by that ineffable something that make us as much. That is why we ourselves feel offended when we read of the slave trade, the massacres of the Crusades, the Holocaust, the pogroms, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, all of the other horrific behaviours man has and continues to exact upon himself, as if we were the ones that had been raped, pillaged, killed. And always, always, we must remember, we must grieve, we must promise that never again will such a thing happen, but how can any of this be accomplished when governments hide the facts, label victims as liars, deny that anything ever happened, and get away with it?
Whether it is the United States' role to ask Japan to apologise is not the point. Indeed, I applaud the United States for siding with the victims - still without compensation, still without even an official government apology - of this lesser known side of the brutality of World War II. As long as extreme nationalists continue to occupy high-ranking positions in the Japanese government, as long as Japanese atrocities remain a footnote compared to the emphasis devoted to those of their Nazi allies, I suspect proper reparations won't be coming any time soon.
*breathes* Sorry that was so long, but there really is no other subject that gets me this emotional. On the other hand, I won't apologise for the lack of an LJ-cut. LJ-cuts are for extensive squee about Current Romantic Interest or extensive angst about academia, but this? This is one of the most important things to me in the world.
Signing off, V.M. Bell
Would there be outrage? You fucking bet.
Last February, the U.S. House of Representatives began to consider passing a non-binding resolution that would ask the Japanese government to apologise for the World War II practise of enslaving of some 200,000 women throughout Asia as "comfort women," i.e., sex slaves. This is just one of the many crimes committed by the Japanese military and political establishment against the populations of Asia, which include experimentation of biological warfare on humans, the employment of chemical weapons against civilians, forced labour, and general massacring of people (see: the Rape of Nanking), all of which resulted in about 30 million corpses. Overwhelming amounts of evidence pay testimony to these crimes (see: pictures, among other contemporary accounts of that time), but the Japanese government has yet to issue a formal apology about any of this. Indeed, powerful ultra-conservative elements in Japan will still maintain that these atrocities are fabricated and exaggerated. One such ultra-conservative seems to be Japan's prime minister, who, in response to the House's resolution, stated that there was no such evidence of military-run brothels.
I used that above article from The Economist for my current events assignment in AP econ, and after being called upon to explain its contents to the class, I was faced with an overwhelming reaction of exasperation and indifference. Why should we care? they asked. Why is this important? Why is our Congress wasting time on this?
True, the United States is not Japan, and true, the United States did not slaughter some 30 million Asians (on the other hand, I am going to point out that, while the United States concentrated much effort in convicting high ranking Nazi officials at the Nuremberg trials, they more or less let the Japanese equivalents walk free as the U.S. couldn't afford to piss off the Japanese, needing them as a democratic bulwark against Communist China and the Soviet Union). But the United States isn't Nazi Germany either, yet awareness of the sheer evil that was the Holocaust forms a large part of the American education. Neither is the United States the country of Sudan, yet there is growing indignation that we haven't acted in regards to the genocide in Darfur. Therefore, I find myself wanting to say this, but alas, I always get emotional and offended about this and can never be coherent when I need to:
I know that there is a personal bias involved. I'm only a generation removed from China, and three of my four grandparents were alive when Japan occupied China in the 1930s (interestingly enough, my grandmother is fluent in Japanese because she was forced to attend Japanese-run schools). Nevertheless, there is a reason why they're called human rights, and I'm quite sure that human rights include the right to not be raped by invading soldiers, the right to not be forced into laying railroad tracks, the right to not be gassed, and the right to not be killed without consent, among others. When human rights are violated, it is not merely an affront against the people upon whom the violations are exacted. No, it is an affront to every single one of us - as men, as women, as children, as humans, bound together by that ineffable something that make us as much. That is why we ourselves feel offended when we read of the slave trade, the massacres of the Crusades, the Holocaust, the pogroms, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, all of the other horrific behaviours man has and continues to exact upon himself, as if we were the ones that had been raped, pillaged, killed. And always, always, we must remember, we must grieve, we must promise that never again will such a thing happen, but how can any of this be accomplished when governments hide the facts, label victims as liars, deny that anything ever happened, and get away with it?
Whether it is the United States' role to ask Japan to apologise is not the point. Indeed, I applaud the United States for siding with the victims - still without compensation, still without even an official government apology - of this lesser known side of the brutality of World War II. As long as extreme nationalists continue to occupy high-ranking positions in the Japanese government, as long as Japanese atrocities remain a footnote compared to the emphasis devoted to those of their Nazi allies, I suspect proper reparations won't be coming any time soon.
*breathes* Sorry that was so long, but there really is no other subject that gets me this emotional. On the other hand, I won't apologise for the lack of an LJ-cut. LJ-cuts are for extensive squee about Current Romantic Interest or extensive angst about academia, but this? This is one of the most important things to me in the world.
Signing off, V.M. Bell