No

The Asahi Shimbun reports in its July 1 Online edition that

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba has asked Toshio Tamogami, the controversial ex-chief of the Air Self-Defense Force, to change the date of a speech planned for Aug. 6, the day the city memorializes the atomic bombing of 1945, officials said.

The mayor sent a letter to Tamogami, pictured, and the organizer of the lecture, the Japan Conference Hiroshima, on Monday.

Akiba said the lecture, "Questioning the peace of Hiroshima," could upset hibakusha survivors and victims' relatives.

Failure to Launch

On Thursday, June 25, Japanese Foreign Ministry Deputy Press Secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura called into question the official nature and sincerity of his government's recent apology to the POWs of Japan. It was simply stunning and inexplicable.

Over the past six months, the Government of Japan has made a number of dramatic and historic moves toward reconciliation for their abuse and misuse of Allied POWs. New documents were rediscovered that confirmed that Prime Minister Aso's family used POWs in their family-owned coal mine, the Prime Minister then followed with his own acknowledgment of this fact, the government issued a statement to Senator Yukihisa Fujita (DPJ) that was an apology for "damage and suffering" by many people inlcuding "former POWs," and on May 30th the Japanese Ambassador to the US delivered an apology for "damage and suffering" to those on Bataan and Corregidor and "other places."

In all, the Aso Administration was making substantial progress in recognizing some obligation toward the prisoners put in their care during the War. On the 25th, however, this dramatically evaporated as the MOFA spokesman downplayed the significance of apology to the American POWs and brushed off the visit of Australian former POW as insincere.

It is difficult to comprehend the Spokesman Kawamura's answers. Was he misinformed or did he want to misinform? Did he have some idea how his answers would look to the Western press? Did he hope that no one would notice? In the Internet Age, this will not happen.

IV. Questions concerning the POW issue

Q: If other people have any questions directly related to today's issue, I have some completely different questions.

Mr. Kawamura: Any questions, please.

Q: I would like to ask about the POW issues. One, about the official apology, so-called, by Ambassador Fujisaki in the US in the end of May; The apology was a so-called official apology from the Japanese Government, but is it projected only for Bataan and Corregidor? Because he came over to the convention and made the apology. Also, how serious is the Japanese government's thinking about their demand which is educating Japanese young people to know what happened about POWs and also the program exchange inviting them, because Americans were excluded. The program covering Dutch, Australian, British POWs, inviting them to Japan and let them visit camps they used to be in. Those are two questions about the Fujisaki apology.

The second question is about very recently a POW from Australia and the son of a POW from Scotland who were made use of in the Aso mines visited. Prime Minister Aso did not meet them, he refused to meet them. What is the real reason he did not meet them?

Mr. Kawamura: Before I forget, let me start with the last question.

Q: OK.

Mr. Kawamura: Those people visited Tokyo and requested a meeting with Prime Minister Aso. The meeting did not take place. You are asking me about the reasons, but I am not the right person to respond directly to that question, why the meeting did not take place.

Q: But the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered to meet instead.

Mr. Kawamura: Right, exactly, but unfortunately, this proposed meeting did not take place.

I am going to touch upon the basic stance of the Japanese Government regarding the POWs. All the actions and the Japanese treatment of the POWs should be understood in the context of Japan's post-war announcements which clarify its official stance. As you recall, former Prime Minister Murayama expressed very clearly that we had a sense of remorse and apology for the conducts of what Japan did during World War II.

Regarding the government to government relations, we think that the issues related to World War II have been legally settled. This stance together with the feeling of the Government and the people of Japan has been expressed by our leaders in the past.

The first question about Ambassador Fujisaki's statement should also be seen from the Japanese Government's fundamental stance concerning the World War II and the apology and feeling of remorse that should be applied to the case of Japan-Philippines relations during World War II. I understand Ambassador Fujisaki expressed his feeling in line with the above mentioned official Japan-Philippines relations.

There are two more questions about Ambassador Fujisaki's case, education and Dutch and other countries' invitation programs, I will come back to you. I need to do some research on this.

Q: About the second question, if the Foreign Minister tried to meet them instead of the Prime Minister...

Mr. Kawamura: The Foreign Ministry, not the Foreign Minister, I think.

Q: The Foreign Ministry, yes. How were you planning to explain to them the reason that you did not prepare any explanation why the Prime Minister could not see them or did not want to see them or whatever? Or did you try to repeat what you have just explained?

Mr. Kawamura: Well, it is really hard for me to predict what exactly happened in the conversation particularly with visitors and our officials. But I want to stress that we like to see those people with sincere minds and that we would be prepared to listen carefully to what they would comment on. I think a sincere dialogue should help retain trust.

Q: May I ask which section is planning to meet them? Who is going to meet them?

Mr. Kawamura: I will come back to you because this issue is related to not one but more than two divisions or bureaus.

Q: It would be very nice if I could know who is going to see them.

Mr. Kawamura: Yes, I will come back to you.

Any other questions? Thank you very much.

Mainichi on War Memory Part II

New argument in Japan on the United States (Part B): Warped conservatism

MAINICHI (Top play and page 3) (Abridged slightly)
June 22, 2009

The decision to suspend the publication of the conservative monthly magazine Shokun was made unanimously at a Bungeishunju special board meeting on February 26. The major reason was a drop in advertising revenues. The magazine's circulation peaked at 95,000 in the early 2000s when it turned excessively anti-China, anti-South Korea and anti-North Korea. But no one positively evaluated that period in the board meeting.

The magazine was established in May 1969 when the student movement was sweeping through Japan. The aim was to present an option different from the left wing based on Japan being a U.S. ally during the Cold War era.

Masao Asao, who served as the magazine's editor in chief in the mid-1990s, indicated that conservatism takes pride in being tolerant. Every time the magazine's star critic Ikutaro Shimizu's argument swayed, its regular critic Tsuneari Fukuda chided him. The magazine also carried articles by the Asahi Shimbun's popular reporters and left-wing opinion leaders, such as Akira Asada of the "modern thought boom" of in the 1980s. Anti-U.S. writers had a certain place in the magazine.

The Berlin Wall came down in the year that marked the 20th anniversary of Shokun. The history textbook row in the 1990s in the process of finding a "new enemy" replacing the left-wing sparked strong criticism of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, and this led to the recent boom of conservative arguments.

The rejection of the Tokyo Tribunal could have resulted in the refusal of the United States, but assertions, including those of self-claimed pro-American writers, simply escalated. But as if to fill the gap with a head-on clash with the United States, criticism was directed at the question of visits to Yasukuni Shrine by the prime minister and East Asian countries in connection with the issue of abductions by North Korea.

The use of pejorative expressions against China and North Korea increased in the form of being influenced by the conservative magazine Seiron published by the Sankei Shimbun. That shift was well received by readers but the magazine became less tolerant. Historians, such as Ikuhiko Hata, were often criticized in connection with the argument by former Air Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff Toshio Tamogami, who claimed in his essay that Roosevelt tricked Japan to go to war with the United States.

Nonfiction writer Masayasu Hosaka takes this view: "The left wing's characteristic of prioritizing its interpretations of historical facts has emerged in the inner circle of the conservatives, who have lost their enemy."

Shokun's readership diminished due in part to the establishment in November 2004 of the third conservative magazine WiLL. Some writers, who disliked Shokun's radical policy course, reportedly refused to contribute their essays to the magazine in the last two years.

Many readers favored radical arguments over a wide range of arguments, and the magazine's circulation fell below 40,000 in the end.

Some think Bunshun's decision to discontinue the stigmatized Shokun was sensible, but the venue to express sensible views has now disappeared.

The suspension of the Shokun was preceded by a long road of limited arguments that caused stress for the conservative print media, which was unable to frontally discuss the United States, its true theme. Even in criticizing the historical view on the Tokyo Tribunal, the magazine could not go beyond the framework of the Japan-U.S. alliance. The magazine occasionally vented its stress as "anti-U.S. historical views."

Okazaki Institute Director Hisahiko Okazaki, a self-styled pro-American opinion leader, supervised the compilation of the new history textbook that passed the government's examination in 2005. He said: "The original text included the conspiracy theory that the United States had planned to wage a war against Japan since the Russo-Japanese War. We removed that part altogether." In 2006, Yasukuni Shrine's war museum, Yushukan, eliminated the part describing the U.S. government's strong reaction from its explanation. "We have corrected anti-U.S. thinking," Okazaki said proudly. But anti-U.S. thinking can be said to have been capped only temporarily.

The argument calling for correcting historical views that was directed at East Asia might cause a schism between the Japan-U.S. alliance if something goes wrong. The Foreign Ministry's decision to offer an apology to the former U.S. soldiers comes in part from the conservative media's inflection since the late 1990s.

Japan's Mainstream Press on War Apology Part A

Mainichi Shimbun appears to be taking the lead in Japan's new mainstream discussion of the legacies of the war and issues of apology. Last month, it published an opinion piece by Amb. Kazuhiko Togo on his opinions on the Japanese government's apology to the American POWs of Japan and Japan's "moral" responsibility.

On Monday, June 22, the newspaper published a two part article linking the Comfort Women and POW apologies to Japan's greater accountability to the US-Japan Alliance.

Below is not Mainichi's translation, but one most likely to be read by analysts and scholars in the West. In the next post you will find the translation of Part B.

One interesting point for scholars, is that the Japanese apology word used for the Japanese government's apology to the POWs is shazai. This is the same word Amb. Togo used in his translation of the apology. To date, an official Japanese government Japanese written statement of the apology has yet to be issued. Thus there is no way to confirm this historic and significant use of an apology word that implies responsibility.

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New argument in Japan on the United States (Part A): Japan offers apology 68 years after Bataan Death March that claimed lives of 800 American POWs; First step to discussions on historical views triggered by wartime sex slavery resolution

MAINICHI (Top play and page 3) (Abridged slightly)
June 22, 2009

On May 30, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Ichiro Fujisaki, attending the convention of an organization of former prisoners of war (POW), offered the Japanese government's apology for the first time for the Bataan Death March. The Bataan Death March is an incident that occurred in 1942 during WWII in which the Imperial Japanese Army forced over 10,000 people, including American POWs, walk for more than 100 km on the Philippines' Bataan Peninsula, and some 800 people died as a result.

Since the history textbook issue of late 1990s, discussions have been going on in Japan over the meaning of the last major war and the question of wartime responsibility. But the issue of historical views between Japan and the United States has effectively been sealed off. What does the apology 68 years after the incident signify?

The convention of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor (ADBC), which sought Japan's apology, took place in San Antonio, Texas. The organization disbanded itself that day, citing the advanced ages of its members.

At the convention, Fujisaki said: "The government of Japan would like to extend a heartfelt apology for having caused tremendous damage and suffering to many people, including prisoners of war, those who have undergone tragic experiences on the Bataan Peninsula, Corregidor Island (where the U.S. military command was located) and other places. An invitation to Japan is being worked on." Fujisaki's words elicited a standing ovation from about half of the 400 attendees.

At the convention hall, Fujisaki also said: "The basic view expressed [by me] today was within the framework of the statement issued in 1995 by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. But I think Japan responded clearly to the interest of former POWs. I was glad that I was able to attend the ADBC's last convention."

ADBC National Commander Lester Tenney met with Fujisaki for the first time last November. Since receiving letters of apology last December and this February, Tenney had repeatedly called for Fujisaki's attendance at the convention to make a direct apology to the ADBC members. Listening to Fujisaki's candid statement, Tenney nodded his head in approval, thinking, "The chapter has now come to an end."

The question of historical views between Japan and United States had long been a taboo. The taboo was shattered in July 2007 when the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a resolution seeking Japan's apology for having forced foreign women to serve as sexual slaves for the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. The Japanese government tried to block it and conservative opinion leaders and lawmakers fiercely objected to it. The event exposed gaps in view between the two countries.

It sent especially strong shockwaves through the Foreign Ministry. "Japan's postwar pacifism is not sufficiently understood by the American public. If there are calls in the United States for Japan's apology, the government should respond to them as much as possible," a senior Foreign Ministry official noted.

Chuo University law professor Yozo Yokota took this view: "The handling of POWs could be a violation of international law. But if the United States tries to pursue Japan, arguments would emerge from Japan that the dropping of atomic bombs and air raids were also illicit. I believe there has been a tacit understanding between Japan and the United States to avoid subjects that could harm the bilateral security alliance."

The question of wartime responsibility has been put on the backburner throughout the postwar period for the sake of strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance. But the question still haunts the two countries which will celebrate [next year] the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.

In the postwar period, the argument has gained ground in Japan that the country was forced to accept the masochistic historical view under the American Occupation. At the same time, Japan tends to direct its criticism to China, South Korea, and North Korea instead of frontally discussing the United States on which Japan heavily relies for its national security. With an increase in the use of sensational language in conservative magazines, the monthly magazine Shokun suspended its publication in May. Reportedly the reason was partly because even though its basic line was conservative the magazine's stance of carrying a wide range of arguments, including counterarguments, showed that it could no longer resist the trend.

DPJ Forms a Committee on POWs

DPJ Announces New Party Subcommittee for Postwar Settlement
Issues Involving Allied POWs

On May 20, as part of its project team for postwar settlements, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) launched a new subcommittee for addressing Allied POW issues stemming from World War II. It is the first time that a political party in Japan has dealt with POW issues, even though the war ended 64 years ago.

Raymond Heimbuch, an 89-year-old American former POW, was invited to the Diet for the subcommittee’s first study session on May 20. Mr. Heimbuch described how he became a prisoner in the Philippines and was made to work at a factory in wartime Japan.

The subcommittee plans to investigate POW matters and visit related locations in Japan, including the Aso Mining site. To the extent possible, the subcommittee also intends to invite former POWs and their families to relate their wartime experiences and thoughts.

As part of the new administration that will result from the imminent general election, we believe that the task of confronting “inconvenient truths” from the past such as POW issues is something that cannot be avoided if Japan is to realize true peace and friendship and assume an honorable position within the international community.

Although such action is long overdue and many of those concerned have already passed away, the United Nations has declared 2009 to be the “International Year of Reconciliation.” This year also marks the 80^th and 60^th anniversaries of the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949. Therefore, we believe there is great political and historical meaning in addressing the POW problem at such an opportune time.

We earnestly desire to receive much information and to hear frank opinions, and for this to be reflected in policy making. We especially request the active cooperation of former POWs and family members from various countries, researchers and journalists with relevant information, and concerned organizations.

Goals of DPJ Postwar Settlements Subcommittee on POW Issues

The prisoner of war (POW) issue is one of the major pillars of Japan’s postwar diplomacy. Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration, which stipulated the handling of POW matters, and also signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty, which required Japan to become a party to the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of prisoners of war.

The POW issue represented the official pledge of postwar Japan’s reentry into the international community, but sufficient reconciliation with elderly former POWs in other countries has not yet been achieved. The POW problem remains like a thorn caught in the throat.

This Subcommittee on POW Issues has been established in order to clarify the realities of wartime work and forced labor involving prisoners of war, and to formulate trust-building policies such as exchange and reconciliation programs for former POWs.

Chair: Naoki Minezaki (Member of the House of Councillors)
Deputy Chairs: Issei Koga (Member of the House of Representatives),Tomiko Okazaki (Member of the House of Councillors
Secretary General: Yukihisa Fujita (Member of the House of Councillors)
Executive Secretary: Kusuo Oshima (Member of the House of Councillors)

Contact details:
Office of Yukihisa Fujita
Member of the House of Councillors
Room 205, House of Councillors Office Building
2-1-1 Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8962
Tel:03-3508-8205
Fax: 03-5512-2205
yukihisa_fujita0 [AT] sangiin.go.jp

Office of Kusuo Oshima
Member of the House of Councillors
Room 320, House of Councillors
2-1-1 Nagata-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-8962
Tel:03-3508-8320
Fax: 03-5512-2320
kusuo_ooshima01 [AT] sangiin.go.jp