How The Victims of the Asia-Pacific War Have Fared – And Why

By Erna Paris

It’s a great pleasure to have been invited to participate in this important conference, especially at this sad and dangerous time. With the onset of war there is always the risk that war crimes and crimes against humanity will take place.

I’d like to start by telling you a little about my book, Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History, because it is central to my topic today. The central questions I asked myself when I began to research this work were this: How is the past remembered, especially after times of crisis? How is public memory shaped? And what are the consequences for the victims of war – most of whom are ordinary people who do not have access to the microphones of their nations where national myths are propagated and the collective story is knit together.

I travelled around the world observing and interviewing people – and what I found everywhere was a simmering anger among people whose mistreatment at the highest levels had been ignored at the highest levels, or openly lied about. Regardless of how many generations had lived and died, the response to injustice remained sharp and focused.

How have the victims of the Asia-Pacific war fared more than half a century after the trauma they endured? I would say that, in spite of great efforts over the past decade or so by many determined people in this very room, the victims of the Asia Pacific war have unfortunately not fared particularly well. There has been little resolution as far as I can tell – either public or private. I was deeply moved yesterday by the testimony of the two survivors – by their courage in coming here to speak to us, but also by the continuation of their suffering after so many decades.

Why has it been so difficult for the victims of Japan’s war? There are several reasons – but the most serious is the central problem of impunity. Writing Long Shadows led me to the inescapable conclusion that impunity at the highest levels, which includes the refusal of post-war governments to acknowledge even those events that occurred before their tenure – means continuing pain and anger. When impunity holds sway –in spite of eye-witness reports and a known historical record – the past cannot easily be laid to rest.

Let me stress that I am talking here about the response of official Japan. Because in my travels in that country I met many individuals who are haunted by the knowledge that their country committed atrocities. Some people told me they felt unable to speak publicly within the context of Japanese culture, where social harmony is supposed to reign. And as we know, a number of individuals who have raised their voices have been threatened or worse – such as Hitoshi Motoshima, the former mayor of Nagasaki, who was shot at for saying, in December, 1988, that Emperor Hirohito bore responsibility for the war.

At the risk of embarrassing him, I would like to honour a man of great courage in this audience. Yoshiyuki Masaki has done as much as anyone in Japan to bring the facts about the Asia-Pacific war to the attention of his countrymen and women through his popular website. He has done this out of moral conviction. And he has paid a price. Yet he carries on not only because he believes in historical truth – but – and this is important - because he loves his country. Yoshiyuki please stand.

Because Long Shadows was a comparative book, I’d like to say a few words about how France and Germany have handled the subject of war crimes committed during the Second World War as well as the historical record of their countries.

In the German case it took more than two decades, but the government did eventually acknowledge responsibility for the Holocaust. They were forced to do so, starting in the late 1960s, by a generation of young people who demanded a national discussion about what “the fathers,” as they called them, had done in the name of the nation. These young people were responding to the international youth movement of that era, which had special resonance in Germany for obvious reasons. They were successful, and since the 1970s Germany has tried to make amends through reparations, memorials to the victims, and repeated apologies.

Why is Japan’s record so different? To begin with, there has never been massive activism – but then, the Japanese did not know a lot about their history, and still don’t. To understand this I believe we should look, at least in part, to the Nuremberg and the Tokyo Trials, both of which took place immediately after the war. At Nuremberg, the prosecution exposed mountains of evidence for the world to see – but most importantly for Germans to see. Verification of this evidence by the top Nazis – most of whom were in the prisoners’ box – made responsible refutation impossible - which, I may add, is the reason why the Holocaust denial movement has remained marginal. Nuremberg helped to reinforce dormant legal consciousness among Germans - and consequently helped to frame the future direction of society. Courtroom evidence about what had happened helped Germans who were emerging from the chaos of war to recognize the underlying structures of the Nazi era, and to draw clear conclusions.

The Tokyo trials unfolded very differently. Only a few selected officers were charged with war crimes. Emperor Hirohito was never charged under the rubric of command responsibility – meaning that impunity was maintained at the very highest level. Shiro Ishii and the other scientists of Unit 731 who had been experimenting with biological warfare on living prisoners were granted secret immunity deals in exchange for their research and never appeared in the prisoners’ dock. The truth about slave labourers and the sexual slavery of foreign women was certainly not a priority. Finally, as we’ve heard this weekend, for reasons of Cold War strategy, General Douglas MacArthur allowed the hierarchy of Japanese society to continue more or less as before.

These facts also framed the future direction of society – though rather differently than at Nuremberg. I sometimes think about an interview that Harumi Ishii, the daughter of Shiro Ishii, gave to the Japan Times in 1982. She asked rhetorically: “Isn’t it important that not a single man under my father’s command was ever tried as a war criminal?” Although Ms Ishii didn’t mean it this way, the answer is Yes - very important. It is a truth that speaks to the failure of the war crimes trials. Because so little courtroom evidence was produced, the Tokyo Trials failed to educate the Japanese public about the facts of the recent past. The veil that was thrown over history continues to this day.

As a result, it was considerably easier for the Japanese to dismiss the Tokyo Trials as the imposition of foreign “un-Japanese” values than it was for the Germans to dismiss Nuremberg.

Today, the debate in Germany is about degrees of national guilt and how long Germans must expect to make apologies and amends. It is not about denial. Japan has moved forward far more slowly – and this difference has profoundly affected the way the respective victims of German and Japanese atrocities have fared - both personally and collectively.

The perceived legitimacy of victims’ claims depends largely on whether or not historical truth has been established. And one of the ways this is advanced – or blocked – is through the teaching of history. Beginning in the 1970s, the German government demanded that all schoolchildren be taught about the Holocaust. Students are taken to visit the sites of concentration camps, which are now museums and memorials to the victims. The negative influence of parents and grandparents who might have denied or tried to diminish the Nazi genocidal enterprise has been consistently counteracted by the government’s commitment to educate factually and truthfully. Furthermore, the denial of the Holocaust has been designated a crime.

Compare this to Japan where just months ago a pro-nationalist text book was approved for school use; and where in 2002 a court overturned an earlier textbook victory. In the latter case, the judge wrote that the purpose of history texts was to deepen the love that children bear for their country. Here was a member of the judiciary explicitly arguing that propaganda and false patriotism may be properly substituted for fact.

It is not easy for a perpetrator country to teach its children the truth about the past, or to raise monuments, build museums, offer apologies, or pay reparations. But Germany has had the courage to do this. Which is why the pain of Holocaust survivors has not been compounded by the denial or the diminishing of their terrible personal experience.

A few words now about France, the third country I profiled. As background, it’s important to know that Jews in occupied France were deported largely by the French police in collaboration with the Nazis.

As in Germany, there was a long post-war silence - until Serge Klarsfeld, the son of a deported Jew, began a massive media campaign to reinstate the facts of history. In 1983, Klarsfeld and his German-born wife, Beate, were responsible for bringing the war criminal Klaus Barbie to France for trial. A series of high-profile prosecutions followed this, each one moving closer and closer to the heart of the French collaboration – until another son of a another survivor capped decades of personal research by pointing to Maurice Papon as the French official who had been responsible for deporting his family and thousands of others from the region of Bordeaux. Papon was tried in 1997 for complicity in crimes against humanity, as many of you will know. The media-savvy Klarsfelds and their friends had successfully convinced the French government that waffling and mythmaking was no longer in their political interests.

Looking over the initiatives that have been made in recent years on behalf of the victims of Japanese warcimes, it is I think possible to discern slow progress. Last year the Japanese government was finally forced to admit the existence of Unit 731 – even though compensation has so far been denied. There has been a partial acknowledgement of the truth about the ‘comfort women’ – though not sufficient to satisfy the need for official apology and justice. Veterans of the Rape of Nanking such as Shiro Azuma have been telling their stories publicly in film and in the media. Yoshiyuki Masaki’s informative website has educated thousands of Japanese.

But while it is true that Japanese courts have not been particularly friendly to suits on behalf of victims, the world at large is becoming aware of the implications of criminal impunity as never before. In the 1990s, the United Nations established ad hoc courts to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.

As far as the prevention of future crimes against humanity is concerned, the most important news is the birth of the International Criminal Court. I attended the official inauguration in The Hague last week. It was a historical milestone. Never before has there been a permanent international court dedicated to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As the ceremony inaugurating the court began, the assembled international dignitaries in the beautiful 13th century Knight’s Palace were asked to remember the countless victims of atrocities in whose name the international criminal court has been created. A quartet played Alexander Borodin’s moving Nocturne from the Second String Quartet in the silent hall. I thought about that yesterday as I listened to the stories of the two survivors in this room. I want them to know that that music was also played for them, in recognition of their tribulation.

The ICC can only indict individuals accused of crimes committed after July 1, 2002, when the court was first signed into being, so it will not be directly helpful to the victims of Japanese aggression. But it is an institution of great hope for future generations – a hope for deterrence as well as after-the-fact judgement.

Using existing international law, Belgium recently passed legislation allowing its courts to hear human rights cases regardless of where the abuse to place. Cases against Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat, and - just this week - against George Bush Sr. have already been filed. There is, apparently, no statute of limitations attached to eligible cases, which may be of interest to the lawyers in this room.

In recent years new approaches to justice, healing and reconciliation have also emerged, such as truth and reconciliation commissions. A TRC is not “justice” in any recognizable sense, but in South Africa I did observe that the commission that was created by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu to bridge the gap between apartheid and an inclusive democracy did play a useful psychological role in helping victims overcome their trauma.

In Long Shadows I document an even less formal initiative dealing with the second generation. In the 1980s, an Israeli psychologist named Dan Bar-On successfully brought together children of major Nazis and children of Jewish Holocaust survivors, most of them Americans. Through these difficult encounters, the children of the perpetrators were helped to confront their deep shame – a shame they had assumed because of their parents’ acts. On the other side, the children of the survivors were helped to overcome the suffering and fear they had inherited from their parents. These were not the Nuremberg trials, to be sure. But they were modestly helpful, according to some of the participants I spoke with.

I’ll conclude by reading the last paragraphs of Long Shadows. By way of explanation to those of you who have not read the book, I have used the image of painted Japanese screens to illustrate the way Japan has hidden and managed the memory of its war.

Thank you.