North Korean threat nudges Japan to rethink nukes

The Washington Times ^ | August 8, 2005 | Lucille Craft

[bobsunshine]

TOKYO -- Sixty years after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese are beginning -- with a gentle nudge from Washington -- to talk openly about the long-forbidden subject of nuclear weapons.

The post-World War II pacifism under which Japan's military is known as a "self-defense force" remains strong. But the rise of China and North Korea's nuclear ambitions have spurred what is referred to here as "active pacifism," or a more pragmatic line on defense.

Talk of a nuclear Japan has, in some cases, been broached by American officials.

The new U.S. ambassador to Japan, Thomas Schieffer, had barely settled into his office in June when he told reporters: "If you had a nuclear North Korea ... it seems to me, that increases the pressure on both South Korea and Japan to consider going nuclear themselves."

Two years earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper saying a nuclear-armed North Korea could force Japan to "consider whether or not they want to readdress the nuclear issues."

Japan will likely choose to remain as "America's strategic dependent," wrote Robyn Lim, professor of international relations at Nanzan University in Nagoya, in the July 19 issue of the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief.

But, he said, "Because of the growing sense of threat from North Korea's dangerous nuclear ambitions, it is no longer taboo to talk about nuclear weapons in Japan."

[Drammach]

"Because of the growing sense of threat from North Korea's dangerous nuclear ambitions, it is no longer taboo to talk about nuclear weapons in Japan."

It should be..
It is still too soon for Japan to be thinking of re-arming their military for anything more than a self-defense capability..

And yes, I feel the same way about Germany..

Both countries tried to take over the world..
Both countries committed atrocities still unparrallelled in the world today..

Japan especially, has still not dealt with their role in humanitarian and war crimes..
Very rarely have they publicly admitted those crimes, very rarely have they publicly discussed those crimes with their own people..

As much as I have reservations over the motivations of the Chinese, their recent public demonstrations and demands that Japan make public an open admissions of the atrocities committed in China and throughout the Asian continent were, in fact, justified..

I realize Japan probably carries a lot of guilt over what was done during WW2, and there is a certain cultural thing about "losing face" which must be factored in..

But the fact is, I personally, would feel very uncomfortable with Nuclear Weapons in the hands of Japan..

Let Japan and Germany spend another 50 years or so participating in military assistance in the form of "humanitarian aid" missions first..

[Boundless]

I read this as nudging Japan to admit what I've long
suspected, which is that they've had nukes for some years.

Like Doctor Strangelove reminds us: "Yes, but the...
whole point of the doomsday machine... is lost...
if you keep it a secret! Why didn't you tell the
world, EH?"

[SirAllen]

But the fact is, I personally, would feel very uncomfortable with Nuclear Weapons in the hands of Japan

Sorry bud, China is our enemy, Japan is our friend. China wants to take over the world, Japan wouldn't dare try and repeat their mistakes. It's time for Japan to arm itself with nukes before it's blackmailed by China or North Korea, or even threatened by them to go against us. Think about it. It's in the US interests and Japan's to arm itself.

[RightWhale]

The world is changing very quickly. What might have been a reasonable constraint a century ago is rapidly becoming a matter of survival. The US cannot possibly sustain guardianship over Japan much longer in the face of the rapid arming of China. Japan has to start looking out for itself, and in turn cannot possibly think of reestablishing its empire for the same reason.

[t_skoz]

50 years is merely the blink of an eye in terms of geo-political history.

And it would be wise to remember that the enemy of our enemy isn't always our friend.

[Dont_Tread_On_Me_888]

It would be a nation ending blunder for Japan to rely on the US nuclear umbrella.

With rising millions of illegal aliens, stratospheric Medicaid, Medicare and SS costs, and trashing hundreds of billions to foreign aid and cancellation of debt, America will soon be unable to defend herself.

Since JFK, the % spent on the military has been decreasing, while the % spent on global and domestic welfare has been soaring. The U.S. is cutting back on military procurement because they simply can't afford it anymore with the rising social welfare.

If America can't defend herself, how could she defend Japan?

If the Japanese want to survive, they best start understanding that they must be self-reliant, and placing their bets on a strong America is a losing proposition, and mostly likely, a nation ending blunder of galactic proportions.

[SampleMan]

Spain & France also tried to take over the world.

100 years after Waterloo, the French were hosting a war to ward off the Germans.

History takes some interesting twists doesn't it?

[Brilliant]

If Japan detonates an a-bomb, the Chinese government is going to freak bigtime. I'm betting Jung-Il will be deposed in a matter of days, and maybe the top dogs in China as well.

[Drammach]

Sorry bud, China is our enemy, Japan is our friend.

Japan is an economic competitor that presently shares some of the same values and interests as the U.S...
While Japan has been "freindly" in the broadest sense of the word, they are not necessarilly our "freinds"..
More like partners who guard thier own interests...

One would have said that Germany was our "freind" a couple of decades ago, when their economy was recovering and they were suddenly becoming an international economic giant with the aid of the U.S...
Would you say the same today?
Especially after their dismal performance concerning Iraq and Saddam Hussein?
Is Germany still our Friend?

It's time for Japan to arm itself with nukes before it's blackmailed by China or North Korea, or even threatened by them to go against us.

Who says threats or blackmail will be necessary?

You assume there is great loyalty to the "Gaijin" of the U.S...
You assume too much..
We are still "Gaijin".. no sense of honor, no respect, less than "human".. ( less than Japanese )
Some Japanese refuse to address American Businessmen as equals, using the form of address reserved for women.. ( a severe form of disrespect )
Most americans never realize they are being insulted to their face..

I'm not against Japan arming itself for Self-Defense..
As long as it's not Nuclear, as long as it's not Intercontinental..

[King Prout]

some things here you might care to address

[Avenger]

"Japan especially, has still not dealt with their role in humanitarian and war crimes..Very rarely have they publicly admitted those crimes, very rarely have they publicly discussed those crimes with their own people.."

I'm not sure that anything would ever be enough, but Japan was instrumental in helping China to build its economy up. High-level representatives of the Japanese government have apologized on numerous occassions. Several internationally acclaimed books in the Nanjing massacre written by Japanese scholars have become best-sellers in Japan. Japan also has the highest amount of scholarly output on the Nanjing massacre of any country - the vast majority of which is not the revisionist history sort of stuff that many people might think.

"As much as I have reservations over the motivations of the Chinese, their recent public demonstrations and demands that Japan make public an open admissions of the atrocities committed in China and throughout the Asian continent were, in fact, justified.."

It was unjustified because the vast majority of Chinese people have no idea what Japan has done to redress past wrongs, in terms of apologies and in terms of financial aid, because the CCP intentionally covers it up. This precedent was started back in the early 70's when China and Japan reopened official relations - Mao made the public statement that China did not need or want any compensation for the war, meanwhile privately accepting tons of outright aid and no-interest loans from Japan without giving them any credit for their efforts.

[Drammach]

This is somewhat slanted, from a Chinese perspective..

---

http://theleftrightdebate.com/archives/2004/12/23/the-rape-of-nanking/

UNLIKE THE OUTRAGE over the actions of the Nazis, there has been little international recognition of Japanese war crimes. While the Germans have formally apologized many times, the Japanese emperor still has not. Some conservative Japanese believe the massacre never happened. Many continue to honor war criminals at national shrines. In 1979, when the U.S. first compiled a list of 60,000 European war criminals who were not allowed to travel to the United States, there was no list of Japanese war criminals. There were no memorials erected to honor the Chinese dead, nor to sear the memory of atrocities committed in China into the American conscience.

Only in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, did the Diet house of the Japanese parliament pass a resolution expressing “deep remorse"over Japan’s World War II actions, noting simultaneously that such actions took place in the context of worldwide “colonial rules and acts of aggression.” Soon after, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama made a “personal” statement expressing his remorse, in which he called Japanese actions a “mistake” which would not be repeated. Otherwise, the official Japanese position is that war-crimes issues were settled at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal–after which seven Japanese high-ranking officers were hanged, and at subsequent war-crimes trials in China. The issue of reparations was settled in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, where an approximate $15-per-head payment for POWs was awarded for distribution to the Red Cross. There were no other reparations to victims of the war by Japan.

---

Seems to me, it's only been in the last decade or two that Japan has started to publicly discuss some of these war crimes..
Korea was pretty well known, as they were quite vocal about it, but Japan itself did not discuss it, and definitely did not teach that part of history in their schools..

[Drammach]

Sorry about the caps, that's the way the article was printed:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

DATE=6/8/99 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT NUMBER=5-43605
TITLE=JAPAN/BOOK CONTROVERSY BYLINE=MIKE O'SULLIVAN
DATELINE=LOS ANGELES CONTENT= VOICED AT:

INTRO: THE JAPANESE PUBLISHER OF A BOOK ON JAPAN'S WARTIME ACTIVITIES IN OCCUPIED CHINA HAS CANCELLED PUBLICATION OF THE WORK, A WORLDWIDE BEST-SELLER CALLED "THE RAPE OF NANKING."
AS MIKE O'SULLIVAN REPORTS, THE ACTION HAS RAISED QUESTIONS ABOUT JAPAN'S WILLINGNESS TO ACKNOWLEDGE WARTIME ATROCITIES, WHICH HISTORIANS SAY RANGE FROM MASS KILLINGS TO BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS ON LIVING SUBJECTS.

TEXT:CHINESE SCHOLARS SAY 350-THOUSAND PEOPLE WERE KILLED BY JAPAN'S IMPERIAL ARMY IN 1937, IN THE SO-CALLED RAPE OF NANJING (OR NANKING, AS SOME PEOPLE CALL IT).
SOME JAPANESE ULTRA-NATIONALISTS, SUCH AS TOKYO UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR NOBUKATSU FUJIOKA [PRON: NOH-BOO-'KAH-TZU FOO-JEE-'OH-KAH], SAY THE MASS KILLING OF CIVILIANS NEVER HAPPENED.
ULTRA-NATIONALISTS IN JAPAN HAVE APPLAUDED CANCELLATION OF THE JAPANESE-LANGUAGE VERSION OF THE BOOK BY IRIS CHANG, WHO IS A CHINESE-AMERICAN JOURNALIST.
HER JAPANESE PUBLISHER, KASHIWA SHOBO [PRON: 'KAH-SHEE-WAH 'SHOH-BOH], SAYS THE BOOK WAS CANCELLED BECAUSE SHE REFUSED TO CORRECT ITS FACTUAL ERRORS.
THE AUTHOR ACCUSES OF KASHIWA SHOBO OF CENSORSHIP AND OF GIVING IN TO THREATS BY RIGHT-WING CRITICS.
ONE ASIA ANALYST DEFENDS THE PUBLISHER.

FRANK GIBNEY OF THE PACIFIC BASIN INSTITUTE SAYS MANY JAPANESE ARE AWARE OF THEIR COUNTRY'S WARTIME BEHAVIOR.

/// GIBNEY ACT ///
THINKING JAPANESE, AS THE SAYING GOES, KNOW WHAT HAPPENED.
THEY DON'T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, AND THEY'D LIKE TO SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG.
BUT IN POINT OF FACT, THERE HAVE BEEN ABOUT 10 OR 15 BOOKS WRITTEN BY JAPANESE DENOUNCING THE NANJING MASSACRE, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, AND EXPOSING IT FOR WHAT IT WAS, OVER THE LAST 10 OR 15 YEARS.
SO WHEN PEOPLE LIKE IRIS CHANG WRITE AND SAY THAT EVERYONE IN JAPAN IS AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT THIS, THEY'RE WRONG.
/// END ACT ///

IN FACT, MR. GIBNEY HAS WRITTEN THE FOREWORD TO AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOK BY JAPANESE WRITER KATSUISHI HONDA [PRON: KAHT-SOO-'EE-SHEE 'HOHN-DAH], CALLED "THE NANJING MASSACRE."
THAT WRITER SAYS BETWEEN 100-THOUSAND AND 200-THOUSAND CHINESE CIVILIANS DIED AT NANJING, AND THAT THEY WERE VICTIMS OF A SYSTEMATIC CAMPAIGN OF TERROR BY JAPAN'S ARMY.
(THE BOOK WILL BE RELEASED LATER THIS MONTH BY THE PUBLISHER M-E SHARPE.)
THE PROBLEM, SAYS MR. GIBNEY, IS THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT, WHICH HAS NOT HONESTLY ADMITTED TO THE COUNTRY'S WARTIME RECORD.

ANOTHER RESEARCHER, SHELDON HARRIS, HAS STUDIED A JAPANESE ARMY UNIT -- UNIT 731 -- THAT CONDUCTED EXPERIMENTS WITH BIOLOGICAL AGENTS ON CHINESE AND KOREAN CIVILIANS AND ALLIED PRISONERS OF WAR.
HE SAYS ITS RECORD OF ATROCITIES RIVALS THAT OF THE GERMAN NAZIS, BUT THAT GERMANY HAS ADMITTED ITS WARTIME ACTIONS.

/// HARRIS ACT ///
IT'S A VERY SAD SITUATION, WHEN ONE COMPARES THE OPEN-NESS OF THE GERMANS, THE RECEPTIVENESS TO ADMISSION OF GUILT, AND OF CONTRITION, WHEREAS THE JAPANESE RULING ELITE WILL SIMPLY NOT ADMIT GUILT AND CERTAINLY WILL NOT OFFER A SINCERE APOLOGY.
IT'S GOING TO TAKE ANOTHER GENERATION.
/// END ACT ///

MR. HARRIS SAYS FORMER PRISONERS OF WAR, WORKERS IN FORCED LABOR CAMPS, AND THE SO-CALLED COMFORT WOMEN WHO SERVED JAPANESE TROOPS AS SEX SLAVES SELDOM FIND REDRESS IN JAPANESE COURTS.
STILL, HE SAYS THERE IS DISCUSSION IN JAPAN OF THE COUNTRY'S WARTIME RECORD.
HIS OWN BOOK, CALLED "FACTORIES OF DEATH," IS BEING PUBLISHED IN JAPANESE THIS MONTH BY KASHIWA SHOBO, THE SAME PUBLISHER THAT CANCELLED IRIS CHANG'S "RAPE OF NANKING."
MR. HARRIS EXPECTS A WHIRLWIND OF CONTROVERSY WILL EMERGE AROUND HIS BOOK.
BUT HE SAYS IT IS BASED ON SOUND SCHOLARSHIP, AND HE IS CONFIDENT IT CAN WITHSTAND THE SCRUTINY OF ITS RIGHT-WING JAPANESE CRITICS.
(THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE VERSION OF "FACTORIES OF DEATH" BY SHELDON HARRIS IS PUBLISHED BY ROUTLEDGE.)

(SIGNED) NEB/MOS/WTW 08-Jun-99 5:45 PM EDT (2145 UTC)
NNNN Source: Voice of America .
------------------------------------------------------------------

source doc

[Avenger]

"This is somewhat slanted, from a Chinese perspective.."

Yes, very.

Here are some statements Japanese government officials have made in the past.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_War_Apology_Statements_Issued_by_Japan

"Korea was pretty well known, as they were quite vocal about it, but Japan itself did not discuss it, and definitely did not teach that part of history in their schools.."

The vast majority of Japanese textbooks do discuss these issues though to what degree I'm not sure. I'm not sure it is appropriate to be talking to 12 year-olds about rape, etc. - perhaps with high school students it would be ok. In any case, I am not familiar enough the the evolution of textbooks in Japan to state whether or not they "definitely" did or did not teach this or that topic at any given point in the past. What I do know is that the recent matter over textbooks in Japan really revolved around a couple books that were being used by a fraction of a percent of Japanese students. In any case, I'd be interested to know your source regarding how Japanese textbooks treated this topic in the past.

[Avenger]

"Korea was pretty well known, as they were quite vocal about it, but Japan itself did not discuss it, and definitely did not teach that part of history in their schools.."

By the way, Japanense scholars did some of the earliest research on the Nanjing massacre and other attrocities carried out by Japan during WW II; they were researching this subject at a time when no one else had much interst in the matter - including the Chinese.

[Avenger]

THINKING JAPANESE, AS THE SAYING GOES, KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. THEY DON'T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT IT, AND THEY'D LIKE TO SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG. BUT IN POINT OF FACT, THERE HAVE BEEN ABOUT 10 OR 15 BOOKS WRITTEN BY JAPANESE DENOUNCING THE NANJING MASSACRE, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, AND EXPOSING IT FOR WHAT IT WAS, OVER THE LAST 10 OR 15 YEARS. SO WHEN PEOPLE LIKE IRIS CHANG WRITE AND SAY THAT EVERYONE IN JAPAN IS AFRAID TO TALK ABOUT THIS, THEY'RE WRONG.

---------------------------------

Just like I was saying. In any case, it was a matter between the publisher and the author; it could have come down to a matter of a misunderstanding of two people and proves absolutely nothing about Japanese society in general.

[Drammach]

BUT IN POINT OF FACT, THERE HAVE BEEN ABOUT 10 OR 15 BOOKS WRITTEN BY JAPANESE DENOUNCING THE NANJING MASSACRE, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, AND EXPOSING IT FOR WHAT IT WAS, OVER THE LAST 10 OR 15 YEARS.

I am not sure what your time frame / point of reference is here, but the article was "printed" in '99..
That make "the last 10 or 15 years" mean the "first" books appeared about '84 or '85..

If I were to assume you are younger than I, then what you consider a "long time" would not seem the same to me, but it seems waiting 40 years to discuss a nation's war crimes is a bit "long"..