Lest We Forget: China's Timely Reminder to Japan

Mention the name Nuremburg and immediately, the Western World will know of the trial, mention the name Tokyo and no one thinks of anything other than it’s the, Japanese capital city, we might think of the high tech engineering, we might think of Sushi or other Japanese culture but who would think of war crimes and this is exactly how the Japanese would like it to be. They want us to forget that Tokyo was the site of over two and a half years of war crimes in which many people were hung, convicted to life imprisonment or other sentences for atrocities carried out throughout the Asian theatre of the Second World War.

So, in order to remind us, China has done something which I think is both necessary and out of character - it’s stepped up to the plate to expose the situation as they see it.

Japan is looking to re-militarises and expand once more, there are people all over Asia watching and wondering where it will end, if any power has the ability to stop it. There’s a resurgence of military ambition coming from the right in that country, in which the recently elected the new, Right Wing and Prime Minster has already arbitrarily threatened China, done deals with Australia to expand their military capacity and suggested that Japan should possess nuclear weapons. All of these are in breach of their own Constitution which, since the defeat in the Second World War has been Pacifist.

There are large protests inside Japan, these are clearly not popular government decisions but they are being pushed through anyway. However, what’s most worrying is the number of Japanese people, especially students who are beginning to believe that Japan was the victim in World War Two, that Japan invaded most of Asia in order to release those impoverished countries from the Imperialist Western colonisers.

Some also believe that tales of atrocities such as the Burma Thailand Railroad where at least 35% of the enslaved captured prisoners died, some of them civilians, most of them prisoners of War who had all their rights under the Geneva Convention ignored and died in horrific slave labour camps are made up stories to make Japan look bad. Some people believe that, despite thousands of harrowing testimonies, hundreds of surviving photographs, copies of Japanese newspapers glorifying the massacre that the Rape of Nanjing is a Chinese hoax. And it is these people who want to “Make Japan Great Again”. The US, the only country to have ever dropped a nuclear bomb are supportive of this and is actively encouraging it as it looks for more sales of more weapons to Japan and would love China to look as if it’s the aggressor here.

Japan has voted to increase its military “defence budget” by a record amount to meet “NATO guidelines”. This must indeed be worrying and ought to be alarming for every sane person in the West, particularly those who have parents or grandparents who fought against their expansion but especially in China which was the victim of Japanese aggression for a lot longer than most people outside of China realise - Japan first invaded China in the 1890s, it took over and colonised Taiwan during that era and held the Chinese island until its defeat in 1945. China will never let that happen again and does not want to see a powerful Japanese military returning to the region.

Had Japan accepted that they were guilty of both war crimes and crimes against humanity, the world could move on but they very fact that they will not accept this situation and are continuing to rewrite the history as if they were the victim, means we need to be worried. What China has done, which is so far removed from their normal diplomatic behaviour that it’s worthy of note is this: just a few days before the 80th anniversary of the Tokyo War Crime Tribunal China did something to ensure the world remembers and pays attention to the new wave of Japanese nationalism and expansion.

They have translated and released for public view, the complete Trial Records of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East . A Zhejiang University worked for 10 years to produce this domestic archival gap.

The complete translation spans 40 volumes, totalling more than 20,000 pages and over 22 million Chinese characters, and is published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press.

The documents have always been available online in English and anyone can read them - I’ve provided a link to the United Nations Archive where they can be found but it’s worth remembering that these trials took place over more than two and a half years, the Tribunal conducted 818 court sessions, heard testimony from 419 witnesses, and examined 4,336 pieces of evidence. It sentenced seven Class-A war criminals to death by hanging and 16 others to life imprisonment.

There were literally hundreds of others who escaped justice because they were either necessary to the country’s regrowth, useful to the USA or connected to the Imperial Royal Family. I don’t make this up, it’s worth reading what the History guild has to say about this, the most notable criminal to escape justice was the Emperor himself according to that site, written by recognised historians.

Unit 731, Comfort Women, The Nanjing, or Nanking Massacre, these, all well known atrocities are not the end of Japan’s crimes, they are just the tip of a huge iceberg, most people no longer remember the Bataan Death March, where thousands of American Prisoners of War and Filipinos were murdered by bayonets because they were too sick, starved or diseased to keep up. Many have forgotten about the Banka Island Massacre where survivors of a torpedoed ship, 60 soldiers and 22 nurses were machine gunned or bayoneted to death on a beach with only one nurse surviving to tell the tale. How many others were there where there wasn’t a survivor, we’ll never know but the list of atrocities that we do know goes on, and on!

What the world and what this region definitely do not wish to see is a resurgence of the conditions which led to these atrocities.

In Australia we have a poignant expression, “Lest We Forget”. China has taken the very unusual step of reminding us, just in case we do.