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Japanese war crimes

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: World War II

   The term Japanese war crimes refers to events which occurred during the
   period of Japanese imperialism, from the late 19th century until 1945.
   Other names, such as Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities, are
   also used for these incidents.

   Historians and governments of many countries officially hold the
   military of the Empire of Japan, namely the Imperial Japanese Army and
   the Imperial Japanese Navy, responsible for killings and other crimes
   committed against many millions of civilians and prisoners of war
   (POWs) during the first half of the 20th century.

Definitions

   Hsuchow, China, 1938. A ditch full of the bodies of Chinese civilians,
   killed by Japanese soldiers.
   Enlarge
   Hsuchow, China, 1938. A ditch full of the bodies of Chinese civilians,
   killed by Japanese soldiers.
   Aitape, New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet,
   about to be beheaded with a katana sword. Many Allied prisoners of war
   were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.
   Enlarge
   Aitape, New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt Leonard Siffleet,
   about to be beheaded with a katana sword. Many Allied prisoners of war
   were summarily executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.

   There are differences from one country to another regarding the
   definition of Japanese war crimes. In Japan itself, the description of
   particular events as war crimes — and specific details of these events
   — are often disputed by Japanese nationalists, such as Tsukurukai
   (Society for History Textbook Reform). Such organisations and their
   activities are a subject of controversy and are alleged to be examples
   of historical revisionism.

Japanese definitions

   Although the Geneva Conventions have, from 1864 onwards, provided the
   standard definitions of war crimes, the Empire of Japan never signed
   the Geneva Conventions. However, many of the alleged crimes committed
   by imperial personnel were also violations of the Japanese code of
   military law, which Japanese authorities either ignored, or failed to
   enforce. The empire also violated provisions of the Treaty of
   Versailles such as article 171, which outlawed the use of poison gas
   (chemical weapons), and other international agreements signed by Japan,
   such as the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which protect prisoners
   of war (POWs). According to historian Akira Fujiwara, Hirohito
   personally ratified, on 5 August 1937, a proposition by his Army chief
   of staff Prince Kan'in to remove the constraint of those conventions,
   on the treatment of Chinese prisoners.

   In Japan, the term "Japanese war crimes" generally refers to cases
   tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also
   known as the Tokyo Trials, following the end of the Pacific War. The
   tribunal did not prosecute war crimes allegations involving mid-ranking
   officers or more junior personnel. Those were dealt with separately in
   other cities throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

The position of the Japanese government

   The Japanese government officially honours war service by all those who
   died in wartime, including "listed war criminals". Some Japanese people
   believe such service is above all other considerations, even though war
   crimes are unacceptable. It is for this reason that Japanese leaders
   visit the Yasukuni Shrine. Emperor Hirohito himself refused to visit
   Yasukuni after Class A war criminals were enshrined there in 1978.
   However, he never blamed leaders such as Hideki Tojo, who was Prime
   Minister in 1941-44, calling him a "loyal servant".

Geneva Conventions

   The Japanese government takes the position that as Japan was not a
   signatory to the Geneva Conventions, it violated no international law.
   For the same reason, the Japanese government also takes the view that
   Allied states did not violate the Geneva Convention in acts committed
   against Japanese personnel and civilians, including the internment of
   ethnic Japanese citizens of Allied countries, the fire bombing of
   Tokyo, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and instances of
   Japanese POWs being killed or otherwise brutally treated.

Other treaties

   The Japanese government did sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact in 1929,
   thereby rendering its actions in 1937-45 liable to charges of crimes
   against peace, a charge which was introduced at the Tokyo Trials to
   prosecute Class-A War Criminals. (Class-B War Criminals are those found
   guilty of war crimes per se, and Class-C War Criminals are those guilty
   of crimes against humanity.) However, any convictions for such crimes
   are not recognised by the Japanese government, as the Kellogg-Briand
   Pact did not have an enforcement clause, stipulating penalties in the
   event of violation.

   The Japanese government accepted the terms set by the Potsdam
   Declaration (1945) after the end of the war. The declaration alluded,
   in Article 10, to two kinds of war crime: one was the violation of
   international laws, such as the abuse of prisoners of war (POWs); the
   other was obstructing "democratic tendencies among the Japanese people"
   and civil liberties within Japan.

Japanese law

   Japanese law does not recognize those convicted in the Tokyo Trials and
   other trials as criminals, despite the fact that Japan's governments
   have accepted the judgments made in the trials, and in the Treaty of
   San Francisco (1952). This is because the treaty does not mention the
   legal validity of the tribunal. In the Japanese text, the word used for
   "accept" is judaku, as opposed to the stronger shounin ("to approve").
   Therefore the position of the Japanese government is that it accepts
   the judgment and sentences set by the trials as demands, but it does
   not accept the legal validity of the tribunal. This means, among other
   things that those convicted have had no ability, under Japanese law, to
   appeal, as the Tokyo Tribunal and other war crimes courts have no
   standing in Japanese law. Under normal circumstances it violates a
   number of fundamental principles of modern legal procedure to punish
   someone whose crime and penalty were defined only after the fact. Had
   Japan certified the legal validity of the war crimes tribunals in the
   San Francisco Treaty, this might have resulted in Japanese courts
   reversing such verdicts. Any such outcomes would have created domestic
   political crises and would have been unacceptable in international
   diplomatic circles.

   The current Japanese jurists' consensus regarding the legal standing of
   the Tokyo tribunal is that, as a condition of ending the war, the
   Allies demanded a number of conditions including the execution and/or
   incarceration of those whom they deemed to be responsible for the war.
   These people were defined as guilty by a tribunal organized by the
   Allies. The Japanese government accepted these demands in the Potsdam
   Declaration and then accepted the actual sentencing in the San
   Francisco Treaty, which officially ended the state of war between Japan
   and the Allies. Although the penalties for the convicted, including
   execution, can be regarded as a violation of their technical legal
   rights, the constitution allowed such violations if proper legal
   procedure was followed, in the general public interest. Therefore, any
   such execution and/or incarceration is constitutionally valid, but has
   no relationship to Japanese criminal law. Hence those convicted as war
   criminals are not defined as criminals in Japan, although their
   execution and incarceration is regarded as legally valid.

International definitions

   War crimes may be broadly defined as unconscionable behaviour by a
   government or military personnel against either enemy civilians or
   enemy combatants. Military personnel from the Empire of Japan have been
   accused and/or convicted of committing many such acts during the period
   of Japanese imperialism from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. They
   have been accused of conducting a series of human rights abuses against
   civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) throughout east Asia and the
   western Pacific region. These events reached their height during the
   Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937– 45 and the Asian and Pacific
   campaigns of World War II ( 1941-45).

   Different societies use widely different timeframes in defining
   Japanese war crimes. For example, the annexation of Korea by Japan in
   1910 was followed by the deprivation of civil liberties and
   exploitations against the Korean people. Thus, some Koreans refer to
   "Japanese war crimes" as events occurring during the period shortly
   prior to 1910 to 1945. Events such as the March 1st movement where 7000
   people were killed and the murder of Empress Myeongseong are considered
   war crimes in Korea. By comparison, the United States did not come into
   military conflict with Japan until 1941, and thus Americans may
   consider "Japanese war crimes" as encompassing only those events that
   occurred from 1941 to 1945.

   A complicating factor is that a small minority of people in every Asian
   and Pacific country invaded by Japan collaborated with the Japanese
   military, or even served in it, for a wide variety of reasons, such as
   economic hardship, coercion, or antipathy to other imperialist powers.
   The Formosan Army, which was part of the imperial army, was recruited
   from ethnic Chinese men on Formosa (Taiwan). The Indian National Army
   is perhaps the best-known example of a movement opposed to European
   imperialism, which was formed duing the war to assist the Japanese
   military. Prominent individual nationalists in other countries, such as
   the later Indonesian president, Suharto, also served with Japanese
   imperial forces. In some cases such non-Japanese personnel were also
   responsible for war crimes committed by the Empire of Japan. B. V. A.
   Roling, the Dutch justice at the Tokyo war trials, noted how "many of
   the commanders and guards in POW camps were Koreans [as] the Japanese
   apparently did not trust them as soldiers." Korean guards, he added,
   were often said to be "far more cruel than the Japanese.". One Korean
   described abject Allied POWs: "[n]ow I have seen how depraved and
   worthless the white man is." For political reasons, many non-Japanese
   personnel in the Imperial armed forces were never investigated or tried
   and brought to justice after 1945. In South Korea especially, it is
   alleged that such people were often able to acquire wealth by
   participating in exploitative activities with the Japanese military. It
   is further alleged in South Korea that some former collaborators have
   covered up "Japanese" war crimes in order to avoid their own
   prosecution and/or exposure.

   It has been argued that acts committed against people subject to
   Japanese sovereignty cannot be considered "war crimes". The issue of
   Japan's de jure sovereignty over places such as Korea and Formosa,
   prior to 1945, is a matter of controversy. Japanese control was
   accepted and recognized internationally and was justified by
   instruments such as the Treaty of Shimonoseki ( 1895, which included
   China's ceding of Taiwan) and the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty (
   1910). The legality of the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, in
   particular, is in question because it was not signed by the Korean head
   of state; it was signed by government ministers under duress. The
   native populations were not consulted on the changes in sovereignty,
   nor was there universal acceptance of such annexations. There was
   ongoing resistance to Japanese invasions and — in any case — war crimes
   may also be committed during civil wars. (See Korea under Japanese rule
   and Taiwan under Japanese rule for further details.)

   There are also allegations that war crimes were committed even after
   the Empire of Japan officially surrendered on August 14, 1945. For
   instance, it is believed that Allied prisoners of war who survived the
   Sandakan Death Marches, in North Borneo, were killed up to two weeks
   after the Emperor signed the surrender document.

Background

Japanese military culture and imperialism

   Military culture, especially during Japan's imperialist phase had great
   bearing on the conduct of the Japanese military before and during World
   War II.

   Centuries previously, the samurai of Japan had been taught
   unquestioning obedience to their lords, as well as to be fearless in
   battle. After the Meiji Restoration and the collapse of the Tokugawa
   Shogunate, the Emperor became the focus of military loyalty. During the
   so-called "Age of Empire" in the late 19th century, Japan followed the
   lead of other world powers in developing an empire, pursuing that
   objective aggressively.

   As with other imperial powers, Japanese popular culture became
   increasingly jingoistic through the end of the 19th century and into
   the 20th century. The rise of Japanese nationalism was seen partly in
   the adoption of Shinto as a state religion from 1890, including its
   entrenchment in the education system. Shinto held the Emperor to be
   divine because he was deemed to be a descendant of the sun goddess
   Amaterasu. This provided justification for the requirement that the
   emperor and his representatives be obeyed without question.

   Victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) signified Japan's rise
   to the status of a world power. Unlike the other major powers, Japan
   did not sign the Geneva Convention — which stipulates the humane
   treatment of civilians and POWs — until after World War II.
   Nevertheless, the treatment of prisoners by the Japanese military in
   wars such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and World War I
   (1914-18), was at least as humane as that of other militaries.

The events of the 1930s and 1940s

   By the late 1930s, the practices of Japan's military dictatorship
   created at least superficial similarities between the wider Japanese
   military culture and that of Nazi Germany's elite military personnel,
   such as those in the Waffen-SS. Japan also had a military secret police
   force, known as the Kempeitai, which resembled the Nazi Gestapo in its
   role in annexed and occupied countries.

   As in other dictatorships, irrational brutality, hatred and fear became
   commonplace. Perceived failure, or insufficient devotion to the Emperor
   would attract punishment, frequently of the physical kind. In the
   military, officers would assault and beat men under their command, who
   would pass the beating on to lower ranks, all the way down. In POW
   camps, this meant prisoners received the worst beatings of all.

   The traditional severity of Bushido and the ethnocentrism of Japan's
   modern imperial phase often coalesced into brutality towards civilians
   and POWs. After the launching of a full-scale military campaign against
   China in 1937, instances of murder, torture and rape committed by
   Japanese soldiers seemed to be overlooked by their commanding officers
   and generally went unpunished. Such acts were repeated throughout the
   Pacific War.

The crimes

   Because of the sheer scale of suffering caused by the Japanese military
   during the 1930s and 1940s, it is often compared to the military of
   Nazi Germany during 1933–45. The historian Chalmers Johnson has written
   that:

          It may be pointless to try to establish which World War Two Axis
          aggressor, Germany or Japan, was the more brutal to the peoples
          it victimised. The Germans killed six million Jews and 20
          million Russians [i.e. Soviet citizens]; the Japanese
          slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese,
          Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them
          ethnic Chinese. Both nations looted the countries they conquered
          on a monumental scale, though Japan plundered more, over a
          longer period, than the Nazis. Both conquerors enslaved millions
          and exploited them as forced labourers — and, in the case of the
          Japanese, as [forced] prostitutes for front-line troops. If you
          were a Nazi prisoner of war from Britain, America, Australia,
          New Zealand or Canada (but not Russia) you faced a 4 % chance of
          not surviving the war; [by comparison] the death rate for Allied
          POWs held by the Japanese was nearly 30 %.

Mass killings

   R. J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of
   Hawaii, states that between 1937 and 1945, the Japanese military
   "murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably
   almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and
   Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war. This
   democide was due to a morally bankrupt political and military strategy,
   military expediency and custom, and national culture."

   In China alone, during 1937-45, approximately 9.13 million civilians
   were killed, and there were another 8.4 million Chinese civilian
   casualties. (See Chinese Casualties in the Sino-Japanese War.) The most
   infamous incident during this period was the Nanjing Massacre of
   1937-38, when, according to the findings of the International Military
   Tribunal for the Far East, the Japanese Army massacred 260,000
   civilians and prisoners of war.

Experiments on humans and biological warfare

   Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and
   POWs in China. One of the most infamous was Unit 731. Victims were
   subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, amputations, and were used
   to test biological weapons, among other experiments.

          To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken
          outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms,
          periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was
          later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the
          victim’s upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone,
          the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso
          remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens
          experiments.

   According to GlobalSecurity.org, the experiments carried out by Unit
   731 alone caused 3,000 deaths. Furthermore, "tens of thousands, and
   perhaps as many 200,000, Chinese died of bubonic plague, cholera,
   anthrax and other diseases...", resulting from the use of biological
   warfare.

   In 2006, the first accounts of experimentation by the imperial military
   outside China were published. According to the BBC and Kyodo news
   agency, former IJN medical officer Akira Makino stated that he was
   ordered — as part of his training — to carry out vivisection on about
   30 civilian prisoners in The Philippines between December 1944 and
   February 1945. The surgery included amputations and the victims
   included women and children.

Use of chemical weapons

   According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Emperor
   Hirohito authorized by specific orders ( rinsanmei) the use of chemical
   weapons in China. For example, during the invasion of Wuhan from August
   to October 1938, the Emperor authorized the use of toxic gas on 375
   separate occasions, despite Article 171 of the Versailles Peace Treaty
   and a resolution adopted by the League of Nations on May 14, condemning
   the use of poison gas by Japan.

Preventable famine

   Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to the Japanese military in
   occupied countries are also regarded as war crimes by many people.
   Millions of civilians in southern Asia — especially Vietnam and the
   Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), both of which were major
   rice-growing countries — died during a preventable famine in 1944–45.
   (See, for example, the article on the Vietnamese Famine of 1945.)

Torture of POWs

   Japanese imperial forces are also reported to have utilized widespread
   use of torture on prisoners, usually in an effort to gather military
   intelligence quickly. Tortured prisoners were often later executed. A
   former Japanese Army officer who served in China, Uno Shintaro, stated:

          The major means of getting intelligence was to extract
          information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an
          unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows
          naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and
          acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We
          carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for
          the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our
          ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the
          Chinese humans. When you're winning, the losers look really
          miserable. We concluded that the Yamato [i.e. Japanese] race was
          superior.

   After the war, some 148 Koreans were convicted of war crimes by Allied
   war trials. Most prominent was Lieutenant General Hong Sa Ik, who
   orchestrated the organization of prisoner of war camps in Southeast
   Asia.

Forced labour

   The Japanese military's use of forced labour, by Asian civilians and
   POWs also caused many deaths. According to a joint study by historians
   including Zhifen Ju, Mitsuyochi Himeta, Toru Kubo and Mark Peattie,
   more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kôa-in
   (Japanese Asia Development Board) for forced labour. According to
   Himeta, 2.7 million Chinese civilians died in the Sanko sakusen
   (scorched earth policy) implemented in 1942 by Yasuji Okamura. More
   than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma
   Railway.

   The Geneva Convention exempted POWs of sergeant rank or higher from
   manual labour, and stipulated that prisoners performing work should be
   provided with extra rations and other essentials. According to
   historian Akira Fujiwara, Emperor Hirohito personally ratified the
   decision to remove the constraints of international law on the
   treatment of Chinese prisoners of war in the directive of 5 August
   1937. This notification also advised staff officers to stop using the
   term "prisoners of war". During World War II such rules were largely
   respected in German POW camps, except in the case of Soviet POWs.
   However, Japan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention at the
   time, and Japanese forces did not follow the convention.

Comfort women

   The term comfort women (慰安婦, ianfu^ ?) (or military comfort women
   (従軍慰安婦, jūgun-ianfu^ ?) was a euphemism for prostitutes in Japanese
   military brothels in occupied countries, some later making allegations
   of sexual slavery . The extent to which individuals were forced to
   become comfort women has been disputed. Some sources claim that
   virtually all comfort women consented to becoming prostitutes and/or
   were paid, but others have presented research establishing a link
   between the Japanese army and the forced recruitment of local women.

   In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi published material based on his
   research in archives at the National Institute for Defense Studies.
   Yoshimi claimed that there was a direct link between imperial
   institutions such as the Kôa-in and "comfort stations". When Yoshimi's
   findings were published in the Japanese media on January 12, 1993 they
   caused a sensation and forced the government, represented by the Chief
   Cabinet Secretary, Kato Koichi, to acknowledge some of the facts that
   same day. On January 17, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa presented
   formal apologies for the suffering of the victims, during a trip in
   South Korea. On July 6 and August 4, the Japanese government issued two
   statements by which it recognized that "Comfort stations were operated
   in response to the request of the military of the day. The Japanese
   military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and
   management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women"
   and that the women were "recruited in many cases against their own will
   through coaxing and coercion".

   There are different theories on the breakdown of the comfort women's
   place of origin.

   While some people linked to the Tsukurukai such as Ikuhiko Hata claim
   that the majority of the women were from Japan, others, such as
   historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, argue as many as 200,000 women, mostly from
   Korea and China, and some other countries such as the Philippines,
   Taiwan, Burma, Netherlands, Australia and the Dutch East Indies were
   forced to engage in sexual activity. </ref>

   Estimates of the number of comfort women during the war are ,
   corroborated by testimony by surviving comfort women.

Looting

   Many historians state that violence by Japanese personnel was closely
   tied to looting. For example, Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, in a 2003
   book on " Yamashita's gold" — secret repositories of loot from across
   Southeast Asia, in the Philippines — argued that the theft was
   organized on a massive scale, either by yakuza gangsters such as Yoshio
   Kodama, or by officials at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, who wanted
   to ensure that as many of the proceeds as possible went to the
   government. The Seagraves allege that Hirohito appointed his brother,
   Prince Chichibu, to head a secret organisation called Kin no yuri
   (Golden Lily) for this purpose.

Post-1945 reactions

The Tokyo Trials

   The Tokyo Trials, which were conducted by the Allied powers, found many
   people guilty of such crimes, including three former (unelected) prime
   ministers: Koki Hirota, Hideki Tojo, and Kuniaki Koiso. Many military
   leaders were also convicted. Two people convicted as Class-A war
   criminals later served as ministers in post-war Japanese governments.
     * Mamoru Shigemitsu served as foreign minister both during the war
       and in the post-war Hatoyama government.

     * Okinori Kaya was finance minister during the war and later served
       as justice minister in the government of Hayato Ikeda.

   However, these two had no direct connection to alleged war crimes
   committed by Japanese forces, and foreign governments never raised the
   issue when they were appointed.

Other trials

   Besides the Tokyo Trials, other prosecutions of Japanese personnel for
   war crimes were also held in many other cities throughout Asia and the
   Pacific, during 1946– 51. Some 5,600 Japanese personnel were prosecuted
   in more than 2,200 trials. The judges presiding came from the United
   States, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, France,
   the Soviet Union, New Zealand, India and the Philippines. More than
   4,400 Japanese personnel were convicted and about 1,000 were sentenced
   to death. The largest single trial was that of 93 Japanese personnel
   charged with the summary execution of more than 300 Allied POWs, in the
   Laha massacre (1942).

Official apologies

   The Japanese government considers that the legal and moral positions in
   regard to war crimes are separate. Therefore, while maintaining that
   Japan violated no international law or treaties, Japanese governments
   have officially recognised the suffering which the Japanese military
   caused, and numerous apologies have been issued by the Japanese
   government. For example, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August
   1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression,
   caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries,
   particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings
   of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on September
   29, 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated, "The Japanese
   side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage
   that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and
   deeply reproaches itself."

   However, the official apologies are widely viewed as inadequate by many
   of the survivors of such crimes and/or the families of dead victims.
   The subject of official apologies is controversial as many people
   aggrieved by alleged Japanese war crimes maintain that no apology has
   been issued for particular acts and/or that the Japanese government has
   merely expressed "regret" or "remorse". However, according to the
   Oxford English Dictionary, an apology is "a formal, public statement of
   regret", and moreover, the Japanese word for "apology" itself has also
   been used on several occasions. Some allege that the media in some
   countries "glosses over" or hides efforts at reconciliation by Japan,
   including "generous" Japanese aid packages, especially in countries
   where media outlets are under formal or de facto state control It is
   further alleged that this reflects anti-Japanese sentiment.

   Some in Japan have asserted that what is being demanded is that the
   Japanese Prime Minister and/or the Emperor perform dogeza, in which an
   individual kneels and bows his head to the ground — a high form of
   apology in east Asian societies that Japan appears unwilling to do.

   Some point to an act by German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who knelt at a
   monument to the Jewish victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, in 1970, as an
   example of a powerful and effective act of apology and reconciliation,
   although not everyone agrees.

   Citing Brandt's action as an example, John Borneman, associate
   professor of anthropology at Cornell, states that, "an apology
   represents a non-material or purely symbolic exchange whereby the
   wrongdoer voluntarily lowers his own status as a person." Borneman
   further states that once this type of apology is given, the injured
   party must forgive and seek reconciliation, or else the apology won't
   have any effect. The injured party may reject the apology for several
   reasons, one of which is to prevent reconciliation, because, "By
   keeping the memory of the wound alive, refusals prevent an affirmation
   of mutual humanity by instrumentalizing the power embedded in the
   status of a permanent victim."

   Therefore, some argue that a nation's reluctance to accept the
   conciliatory gestures that Japan has made may be because that nation
   doesn't think that Japan has "lowered" itself enough to provide a
   sincere apology. On the other hand, others state their belief that that
   particular nation is choosing to reject reconciliation in pursuit of
   permanent "victimhood" status as a way to try to assert power over
   Japan.

Compensation

   There is a widespread perception that the Japanese government has not
   accepted the legal responsibility for compensation and, as a direct
   consequence of this denial, it has failed to compensate the individual
   victims of Japanese atrocities. In particular, a number of prominent
   human rights and women's rights organisations insist that Japan still
   has a moral and/or legal responsibility to compensate individual
   victims, especially the sex slaves conscripted by the Japanese military
   in occupied countries and known as comfort women.

   The Japanese government officially accepted the requirement for
   monetary compensation to victims of war crimes, as specified by the
   Potsdam Declaration. The details of this compensation have been left to
   bilateral treaties with individual countries, except North Korea,
   because Japan recognises South Korea as the sole legitimate government
   of the Korean peninsula. In the case of POWs from the western Allies,
   compensation was paid to the victims through the Red Cross. The total
   amount Japan paid was £4,500,000. However, in a number of Asian
   countries, claims for compensation were either: abandoned for political
   reasons, or; paid by Japan, under the specific understanding that it
   would be used for individual compensation, but was not paid out to the
   victims by the governments concerned. Therefore a large number of
   individual victims in Asia received no compensation.

   Therefore, the Japanese government's position is that the proper
   avenues for further claims are the governments of the respective
   claimants. As a result, every individual compensation claim brought to
   Japanese court has failed. Such was the case in regard to a British POW
   who was unsuccessful in an attempt to sue the Japanese government for
   additional money for compensation. As a result, the UK Government later
   paid additional compensation to all British POWs. There were complaints
   in Japan that the international media simply stated that the former POW
   was demanding compensation and failed to clarify that he was seeking
   further compensation, in addition to that paid previously by the
   Japanese government.

   A small number of claims have also been brought in US courts, though
   these have also been rejected.

   During the treaty negotiation with South Korea, the Japanese government
   proposed that it pay monetary compensation to individual Korean
   victims, in line with the payments to western POWs. The Korean
   government instead insisted that Japan pay money collectively to the
   Korean government, and that is what occurred. The South Korean
   government then used the funds for economic development. The content of
   the negotiations was not released by the Korean government until 2004,
   although it was public knowledge in Japan.

   There are those that insist that because the governments of China and
   Taiwan abandoned their claims for monetary compensation, then the moral
   and/or legal responsibility for compensation belongs with these
   governments. Such critics also point out that even though these
   governments abandoned their claims, they signed treaties that
   recognised the transfer of Japanese colonial assets to the respective
   governments. Therefore, to claim that these governments received no
   compensation from Japan is incorrect, and they could have compensated
   individual victims from the proceeds of such transfers.

   The Japanese government, while admitting no legal responsibility for
   the so-called "comfort women", set up the Asian Women's Fund in 1995,
   which gives money to people who claim to have been forced into
   prostitution during the war. Though the organisation was established by
   the government, legally, it has been created such that it is an
   independent charity. The activities of the fund have been controversial
   in Japan, as well as with international organisations supporting the
   women concerned. Some argue that such a fund is part of an ongoing
   refusal by the Japanese government to face up to its responsibilities,
   while others say that the Japanese government has long since finalised
   its responsibility to individual victims and is merely correcting the
   failures of the victims' own governments.

Compensation under the San Francisco Treaty

Compensation from Japanese overseas assets

   Japanese overseas assets refers to all assets owned by the Japanese
   government, firms, organisation and private citizens, in colonised or
   occupied countries. In accordance with Clause 14 of the San Francisco
   Treaty, Allied forces confiscated all Japanese overseas assets, except
   those in China, which were dealt with under Clause 21. It is considered
   that Korea was also entitled to the rights provided by Clause 21.

         Japanese overseas assets in 1945
       Country/region    Value (1945, ¥15=US$1)
     Korea               70,256,000,000
     Taiwan              42,542,000,000
     North East China    146,532,000,000
     North China         55,437,000,000
     Central South China 36,718,000,000
     Others              28,014,000,000
     Total               ¥379,499,000,000

Compensation to Allied POWs

   Clause 16 of the San Francisco Treaty stated that Japan would transfer
   its assets and those of its citizens in countries which were at war
   with any of the Allied Powers or which were neutral, or equivalents, to
   the Red Cross, which would sell them and distribute the funds to former
   prisoners of war and their families. Accordingly, the Japanese
   government and private citizens paid out £4,500,000 to the Red Cross.

Allied territories occupied by Japan

   Clause 14 of the treaty stated that Japan would enter into negotiations
   with Allied powers whose territories were occupied by Japan and
   suffered damage by Japanese forces, with a view to Japan compensating
   those countries for the damage.

   Accordingly, the Philippines and South Vietnam received compensation in
   1956 and 1959 respectively. Burma and Indonesia were not original
   signatories, but they later signed bilateral treaties in accordance
   with clause 14 of the San Francisco Treaty.

   Japanese compensation to countries occupied during 1941-45
   Country Amount in Yen Amount in US$ Date of treaty
   Burma 72,000,000,000 200,000,000 November 5, 1955
   Philippines 198,000,000,000 550,000,000 May 9, 1956
   Indonesia 80,388,000,000 223,080,000 January 20, 1958
   Vietnam 14,400,000,000 38,000,000 May 13, 1959
   Total ¥364,348,800,000 US$1,012,080,000

   The last payment was made to the Philippines on July 22, 1976.

Debate in Japan

   There is a widespread perception, outside Japan, that there is a
   reluctance inside Japan to discuss such events and/or admit that they
   were war crimes. However, the controversial events of the Japanese
   imperial era are openly debated in the media, with the various
   political parties and ideological groups taking quite different
   positions. What differentiates Japan from Germany and Austria is that
   in Japan, there is no restriction to the freedom of speech in regard to
   this matter, while in Germany, Austria and some other European
   countries, Holocaust denial is a criminal offence.

   Until the 1970s, such debates were considered a fringe topic in the
   media. In the Japanese media, the opinions of the political centre and
   left tends to dominate the editorials of newspapers, while the right
   tend to dominate magazines. Debates regarding war crimes were confined
   largely to the editorials of tabloid magazines where calls for the
   overthrow of " Imperialist America" and revived veneration of the
   Emperor coexisted with pornography. In 1972, to commemorate the
   normalisation of relationship with China, Asahi Shimbun, a major
   liberal newspaper, ran a series on Japanese war crimes in China
   including the Nanking Massacre. This opened the floodgates to debates
   which have continued ever since. The 1990s are generally considered to
   be the period in which such issues become truly mainstream, and
   incidents such as the Nanking Massacre, Yasukuni Shrine, comfort women,
   the accuracy of school history textbooks, and the validity of the Tokyo
   Trials were debated, even on television.

   As the consensus of Japanese jurists is that Japanese forces did not
   technically commit violations of international law, many right wing
   elements in Japan have taken this to mean that war crimes trials were
   examples of victor's justice. They see those convicted of war crimes as
   "Martyrs of Shōwa" (昭和殉難者, Shōwa Junnansha^ ?), Shōwa being the name
   given to the rule of Hirohito. This interpretation is vigorously
   contested by Japanese peace groups and the political left. In the past,
   these groups have tended to argue that the trials hold some validity,
   either under the Geneva Convention (even though Japan hadn't signed
   it), or under an undefined concept of international law or consensus.
   Alternatively, they have argued that, although the trials may not have
   been technically valid, they were still just, somewhat in line with
   popular opinion in the West and in the rest of Asia. However, the peace
   groups and the left also generally consider the bombing of Japanese
   civilians by the Allies, particularly the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima
   and Nagasaki, to be unjust and/or a violation of the international law.
   The left is also accused of being soft on Soviet atrocities.

   By the early 21st century, the revived interest in Japan's imperial
   past had brought new interpretations from a group which has been
   labelled both "new right" and "new left". This group points out that
   many acts committed by Japanese forces, including the Nanjing Incident
   (they generally do not use the word "massacre"), were violations of the
   Japanese military code. It is suggested that had war crimes tribunals
   been conducted by the post-war Japanese government, in strict
   accordance with Japanese military law, many of those who were accused
   would still have been convicted and executed. Therefore, the moral and
   legal failures in question were the fault of the Japanese military and
   the government, for not executing their constitutionally-defined duty.

   The new right/new left also takes the view that the Allies committed no
   war crimes against Japan, because Japan was not a signatory to the
   Geneva Convention, and as a victors, the Allies had every right to
   demand some form of retribution, to which Japan consented in various
   treaties.

   However, under the same logic, the new right/new left considers the
   killing of Chinese who were suspected of guerilla activity to be
   perfectly legal and valid, including some of those killed at Nanjing,
   for example. They also take the view that many Chinese civilian
   casualties resulted from the scorched earth tactics of the Chinese
   nationalists. Though such tactics are arguably legal, the new right/new
   left takes the position that some of the civilian deaths caused by
   these scorched earth tactics are wrongly attributed to the Japanese
   military.

   Similarly, they take the position that those who have attempted to sue
   the Japanese government for compensation have no legal and/or moral
   case.

   The new right/new left also takes a less sympathetic view of Korean
   claims of victimhood, because prior to annexation by Japan, Korea was a
   tributary of the Qing Dynasty and, according to them, the Japanese
   colonisation, though undoubtedly harsh, was better than the previous
   rule in terms of human rights and economic development.

   They also argue that, the Kantōgun (also known as the Kwantung Army)
   was at least partly culpable. Although the Kantōgun was nominally
   subordinate to the Japanese high command at the time, its leadership
   demonstrated significant self-determination, as shown by its
   involvement in the plot to assassinate Zhang Zuolin in 1928, and the
   Manchurian Incident of 1931, which led to the foundation of Manchukuo
   in 1932. Moreover, at that time, it was the official policy of the
   Japanese high command to confine the conflict to Manchuria. But in
   defiance of the high command, the Kantōgun invaded China proper, under
   the pretext of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. However, the Japanese
   government not only failed to court martial the officers responsible
   for these incidents, but it also accepted the war against China, and
   many of those who were involved were even promoted. (Some of the
   officers involved in the Nanking Massacre were also promoted.)
   Therefore, claims that the government was held hostage by soldiers on
   the field hold little weight.

   Whether or not Hirohito himself bears any responsibility for such
   failures is a sticking point between the new right and new left. Though
   both sides agree that constitutionally, he was exempt from any legal
   responsibility, some insist that he was ultimately responsible both
   politically and morally. They cite the fact that, after the war, the
   Emperor consulted Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida regarding his possible
   abdication, a course of action that Yoshida advised against. Others
   argue that Hirohito deliberately styled his rule in the manner of the
   British constitutional monarchy, and he always accepted the decisions
   and consenses reached by the high command. Accordingly, the moral and
   political failure rests primarily with the Japanese High Command and
   the Cabinet, most of whom were later convicted at the Tokyo War Crimes
   Tribunal as class-A war criminals.

Controversial reinterpretations outside Japan

   Some activists outside Japan are also attempting controversial
   reinterpretations of Japanese imperialism. For example, the views of a
   South Korean ex-military officer and right wing commentator, Ji
   Man-Won, have caused controversy in Korea and further abroad. Ji has
   praised Japan for " modernising" Korea, and has said of women forced to
   become sex slaves: "most of the old women claiming to be former comfort
   women, or sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II, are
   fakes." In Korea, such views are widely regarded as being offensive,
   libellous of the women concerned, and as representing historical
   revisionism but are born out of political tensions within nations such
   as Korea and China between democratic and establishmentary movements in
   which the use of Japanese history, or contrived Japanese hate, is a
   useful tool for both sides.

Later investigations

   As with investigations of Nazi war criminals, official investigations
   and inquiries are still ongoing. During the 1990s, the South Korean
   government started investigating some individuals who had allegedly
   become wealthy while collaborating with the Japanese military. In South
   Korea, it is also alleged that, during the political climate of the
   Cold War, many such individuals and/or their associates or relatives
   were able to acquire influence with the wealth they had acquired
   collaborating with the Japanese and assisted in the covering-up, or
   non-investigation, of war crimes in order not to incriminate
   themselves. With the wealth the had amassed during the years of
   collaboration, they were able to further benefit their families by
   obtaining higher education for their relatives.

   Non-government bodies and individuals have also undertaken their own
   investigations. For example, in 2005, a South Korean freelance
   journalist, Jung Soo-woong, located in Japan some descendants of people
   involved in the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong (Queen Min),
   the last Empress of Korea. The assassination was conducted by the Dark
   Ocean Society, perhaps under the auspices of the Japanese government,
   because of the Empress's involvement in attempts to reduce Japanese
   influence in Korea. Jung recorded the apologies of the individuals.

   As these investigations continue more evidence is discovered each day.
   It has been claimed that the Japanese government intentionally
   destroyed the reports on Korean comfort women. Some have cited Japanese
   inventory logs and employee sheets on the battlefield as evidence for
   this claim. For example, one of the names on the list was of a comfort
   woman who stated she was forced to be a prostitute by the Japanese. She
   was classified as a nurse along with at least a dozen other verified
   comfort women who were not nurses or secretaries. Currently, the South
   Korean government is looking into the hundreds of other names on these
   lists.

   Sensitive information regarding the Japanese occupation of Korea is
   often difficult to obtain. Many argue that this is due to the fact that
   the Government of Japan has gone out of its way to cover up many
   incidents that would otherwise lead to severe international criticism.
   On their part, Koreans have often expressed their abhorrence of Human
   experimentations carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army where people
   often became fodder as human test subjects in such macabre experiments
   as liquid nitrogen tests or biological weapons development programs
   (See articles: Unit 731 and Shiro Ishii). Though some vivid and
   disturbing testimonies have survived, they are largely denied by the
   Japanese Government even to this day.

Major incidents

     * Alexandra Hospital massacre
     * Invasion and Occupation of the Andaman Islands during World War II
     * Bataan Death March
     * Changteh Chemical Weapon Attack
     * Comfort women
     * Death Railway (Construction of the Burma-Siam Railway)
     * Kaimingye germ weapon attack
     * Laha Massacre
     * Nanking Massacre
     * Manila Massacre
     * Parit Sulong Massacre
     * Panjiayu Massacre
     * Sandakan Death Marches
     * Three Alls Policy
     * Sook Ching Massacre
     * Tol Plantation Massacre
     * Unit 100
     * Unit 200
     * Unit 731
     * Unit 516
     * Unit 543
     * Unit 773
     * Unit 1855
     * Unit 2646
     * Unit 8604
     * Unit 9420
     * Unit Ei 1644
     * War Crimes in Asia Mainland
     * War Crimes in the Pacific

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