At this late stage in the matter it's true that the number of meaningful options is diminished from what they were in, say, the 1950's and 1960's when so many top Nazi officers and blatant war crime perpetrators from WW2 were tracked down in South America and successfully prosecuted in American and European courts..
I think that for a great many people, a significant amount of pain exists today because Japan has not ever come to terms with it's innumerable war crimes in any meaningful way, certainly nothing like what Germany has done to admit to and make efforts to atone for it's wartime sins. This in fact is a significant focus of the featured book and article here:
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
One thing that really stands out to me, as I read so many passionate posts in this thread as well as the similar thread from September
Beheaded at whim and worked to death Japan's repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs
is that there is a very special, raw anger reserved for the Japanese which is not in evidence for the Nazis or the Russians, and it's being passed down through generations of people with little of it being diminished. A common thread among the posters here at FR is anger at the breathtaking brutality and the scale of it all to be sure, but also a white-hot anger at the modern Japanese for failing to come to terms with what they have done in even the most basic, minimal sense. I have a feeling that a bit of honesty from Japan in these matters would go a long way toward allowing the victims as well as the sons and daughters of victims to have just a bit of peace in their lives. The boiling anger at the Japanese is palpable in both threads and makes it painful to read through them all, as well as heart-rending at times to respond to those posting to me. It doesn't strike me as an irrational anger in most cases, but an anger that is evidence of a deep wound that has been kept open and has become terribly infected, never having been allowed to heal at all.
Realpolitik interferes with this, to good or ill. Japan is an invaluable strategic ally now. It’s a major reason that North Korea doesn’t dare do more than it has. The most insufferable thing in Japanese culture is to be embarrassed. Maybe that is why US politicians do not wish to embarrass Japan with official motion on the issue. Same reason that there is no official fuss about the incident of Israel attacking the USS Liberty.
My mother is German (born a few years after the war). I do not remember a point in my life where I didn't know what vile things the Nazis did, both in learning from my mother and through popular culture. It's always been a part of me to feel that pain and that shame.
I had a boyfriend for awhile with a Japanese mother. He was aware of none of the atrocities committed by Japan during WWII. I did try to educate him somewhat, although I am not sure he took too kindly to it.
I don't have an anger against modern day Japan, although I have an annoyance and a concern that they don't come to terms with it.