We don't owe them shit!
Posted on 12/06/2003 11:58:37 AM PST by Chi-townChief
There is a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japan's ample history of warfare. But if you visit the plainly named Military Museum, you will find no reference to the grotesque medical experiments the Japanese army conducted in World War II or the sex slaves it kidnapped. The Rape of Nanking, when rampaging Japanese troops raped and murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese, is airbrushed into the "Nanking Incident'' and the facts are said to be uncertain. Civilian deaths aren't mentioned at all until the Americans begin firebombing Tokyo in 1944.
This is par for the course. In Japanese textbooks the relentless quest of military domination that so marked that nation's conduct in the 20th century gently morphs into a brave struggle for independence against a hostile world.
Nor is the museum a relic of the equivocating past. It opened just last year. "The museum's jingoism begins in the very first room,'' wrote Howard French in the New York Times. "There, a saber adorned with gold braid, an ancient relic from the Imperial Palace guard, hangs, dramatically lit, above a block of text glorifying 2,600 years of independence, secured by valiant warriors against unnamed invaders.''
So it is irony of the most extreme sort that Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb are unhappy with how the Smithsonian Institution is displaying the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb used in war on Hiroshima, in its new Air and Space Museum annex next to Dulles Airport.
They would like photos of radiation burns and stats of the 160,000 who died in the first atomic blast next to the airplane.
"As victims of the A-bombs, we can't bear to have the Enola Gay, which killed thousands of Hiroshima residents, on public display without including details of the destruction it wrought,'' said Terumi Tnaka, the Japan Confederation of A-Bomb and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization's director.
This is not an obscure issue of museum policy. History is an argument -- a war, so to speak. The battles of the past continue in the present in symbolic form, as academics, survivors, and regular people struggle to decide how a thing will be remembered.
It is a war, I'm sad to say, that America is losing. Most nations make their history into a flattering story they tell themselves. Japan isn't even the most extreme case -- history in North Korea is a fairy tale honoring a madman. And we all know what kids learned in school in Iraq up until last spring.
We like beating ourselves up
The United States, however, is different, possibly unique, with the arguable exception of Germany, in how we view our past. Because of our standards and sensitivities, we paint a picture of ourselves that is extraordinarily bleak. Not only have the Japanese complained, but some American academics argued that the Enola Gay should not be displayed without slapping ourselves around.
This fits perfectly with the standard public school version of America: a nightmare of slavery and broken treaties, relieved only by the unsung bravery of pioneer girls and Indian fighters, who are the true heroes of our history, as opposed to dead white males such as slave-owner George Washington and whoremonger Thomas Jefferson.
Such a skewed dismissal is as bad as Japanese self-glory. History should not be a whitewash, but it shouldn't be self-flagellation either. The United States has made mistakes, but those missteps need to be put into the greater story of the miracle that is our country. We need a balance -- otherwise our children grow up needlessly abashed, just as Japanese children grow up with a view of their country that enormously diverges from both fact and the perception of the rest of the world.
Called 'good war' for a reason
The United States does indeed have things to be ashamed of. But World War II is not one of them. Shameful chapters -- such as the internment of our own Japanese citizens -- must be compared to the unchecked brutality in much of the world at the time. Before we honor the victimhood of others, we should honor our own. Before some group of A-bomb survivors guilts the Smithsonian into kneeling on a rail over the atomic bomb, I wish a delegation of Bataan Death March survivors or men maimed at Pearl Harbor would whisper their side. Perhaps the Enola Gay should be displayed next to that photo of a Chinese baby wailing in the rubble of a Japanese bombing, as a reminder of how the Japanese had very methodically removed themselves from the pale of humanity over a period of years before the bomb dropped. Perhaps the Enola Gay should be shown next to photos of kamikaze planes and descriptions of how surrendering Japanese would pull the pins on grenades, or next to tales of Iwo Jima and Saipan and all the miserable chunks of rock that U.S. Marines died trying to pry away from the Japanese death grip. Harry Truman, a haberdasher from Missouri, perhaps the most ordinary American ever to serve in the presidency, was absolutely right to drop the bomb. The Japanese nation earned the Enola Gay's visit. The rest is just present day politics and the posturing of those not in any position to complain.
As for apologies, the "Japanese way" is for both parties to apologize without assigning blame. In other words, the Japanese probably feel that both American and Japan should issue a joint apology expressing regret over the lives that were lost on both sides without detailing who did what to who or why. That sounds awfully unjust to Americans but that's how things are done in Japan. Before you condemn this approach, let me simply say that few disagreements in Japan wind up in front of a judge. On the other hand, it can be abused to let the guilty off the hook. The American way, of course, demands that the Japanese apologize since what they did caused the problem and their atrocities were inexcusable. To the Japanese, the American way seems rude. As an American, I certainly do feel that they should apologize and there is no excuse for glossing over the atrocities in their text books (that's not all they gloss over, by the way -- there are other embarrassing details about the Emperor and Japanese history that they gloss over, or so a Japanese person told me). But I can understand why they don't and why they expect America to apologize for Hiroshima.
Like I said above, people are trying to apply “modern” views about nuclear weapons to what happened in 1945 and that is something one should not do.
They were actually more destructive. And still they didn't surrender. The A-Bombs were needed to force them to see that we could with little effort reduce Japan to smoking rubble. They were hoping to make the main islands to tough a nut to crack.
Someone once said, "We might not be able to win but we can trouble you greatly with our dying." That was the whole plan. The A-Bomb showed that it would be no trouble at all. Forty planes, forty bombs, forty cities gone. You can't win against an enemy who can and will do that. There is no waiting them out or making the war too costly.
The tough nut cracked.
However, I do think that the Japanese government should acknowledge what happened during World War II and apologize to the people (those still alive) who it harmed but not to anyone else. Germany admitted its guilt for its crimes in WWII, Japan never have.
I have always believed that using the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. It saved lives on all sides and ended a bloody war that would have only become worse if it had continued.
I'd frankly be happy if the Japanese simply taught their children the truth. The Japanese did a lot of awful things that certainly warrant an appology but I'd be happy if the Japanese knew how awfully their soldiers behaved so they never go down that road again. Also bear in mind that there is a certain amount of backlash in Germany about all of the hand-wringing and guilt and a certain amount of nationalism and anti-Semitism are, again, rearing their ugly head there.
I have always believed that using the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. It saved lives on all sides and ended a bloody war that would have only become worse if it had continued.
Oh, I agree totally. But just bear in mind that even if you point this out, a lot of revisionists will claim that the Americans simply should have let the Japanese off with a conditional surrender since they'd already been beaten back and were mostly harmless. To those people, it is important to point out that then Japan would have been left without American protection and support and would have fared no better against communist agression than the Korea or Vietnam. The hardcore commie leftists might actually consider this a plus but most thinking Americans will realize that this would have been as awful for Japan as an invasion.
Don't want a city nuked, don't attack America.
We don't owe them shit!
Unfortunately, Riyadh, Mecca and Medina are not a sea of glass.
My, how times have changed.
That's why I use Netscape.
Ctrl-T opens a new browser tab to Netscape search, which defaults to Google. I do my research, then I click on my original FR tab and go right back to where I was.
IE is way behind Netscape and Opera in that regard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.