Today: Japan's foreign minister apologized to US ex-POWs

[David_Aiken]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... 8158.story

[Pat Carry]

Interesting story David. Something that should have happened a long time ago!

[tom d. friedman]

better late than never for the apology. mr tenney mentions no such apology from japan's ww 2 corporate structure which now reaps billions via our servicemen who weren't even hardly fed as slaves for their war effort. 70 plus years of savings adds up!! don't be in denial, all the high profile brands & companies of the former axis that are around today benefited & socked away money at the expense of american, british, australian lives. volkswagen, mitsubishi, dhiahtsu, mercedes benz, i.g. farben, countless high profile drug companies that did disgusting human experiments on pow guinea pigs in the name of science. i find it very callous & cold that these mega companies of today refuse to aknowledge the past blood on their hands at human expense that has put their profits well in the black.

[ZeamerB17]

Too little, too late. I do love one of the comments on this story:

GregMaragos at 3:16 PM September 13, 2010 -

"It is good that Japan acknowledge what happened at Bataan, but it has been too long. Furthermore, what they did to the Chinese during World War II was beyond the pale.

Japanese suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though tragic, was Japan's own fault. There ought to be photos of Pearl Harbor, Bataan and the Rape of Nanking placed AT THE VERY FRONT of the Hiroshima memorial museum so as to remind visitors of the following equation:

"This...plus this...and this...equals THIS."

[k5083]

Ah yes, the principle that when the other side behaves savagely, it justifies our descent to equal or even greater levels of savagery. We are not that far from apes after all.

A government apology is a political action. It took so long because of politics, and it is being made at this time because of politics. Its relevance to what transpired 65 years ago strikes me as very limited.

August

[warbirdcrew]

better late than never for the apology. mr tenney mentions no such apology from japan's ww 2 corporate structure which now reaps billions via our servicemen who weren't even hardly fed as slaves for their war effort. 70 plus years of savings adds up!! don't be in denial, all the high profile brands & companies of the former axis that are around today benefited & socked away money at the expense of american, british, australian lives. volkswagen, mitsubishi, dhiahtsu, mercedes benz, i.g. farben, countless high profile drug companies that did disgusting human experiments on pow guinea pigs in the name of science. i find it very callous & cold that these mega companies of today refuse to aknowledge the past blood on their hands at human expense that has put their profits well in the black.

The same could be said about American companies who are known to have done business with the Nazis... IBM, Standard Oil, Ford, DuPont, Chase Manhattan, Coca Cola, and others... But we don't like to talk about that too much.

[mustangdriver]

There is a huge difference between not being proudof it, and not admitting it took place. I remember watching a VW commercial not long ago that said that they were only making cars for 50 years.

[Bill Greenwood]

It's a step. They ought to require any companies that used POW or forced civilian labor to make a similar statement.
Have they given China any such apology?
The US has received a lot of heat for our internment of Japanese in WWII. At least they were not used as slave labor and they were not starved.
I think, not sure about this, that the U S govt has apologized for this as well as paid some money as a repayment for property lost.

There are those who think any residual feelings against the Japanese are outdated now, and that they are the same good folks as any other people. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe their leadership was bad and the people were ok. But the U S , Britain, Canada, France, Australia, for the most part,did not treat civilians or POWs that way,and of our allies, I think only Russia did similar.

I talked to a Japanese born flight instructor at Boulder recently about some of this, and he said they don't teach an accurate version of WWII history in schools there. They know a lot more about Hiroshima and Nagasaki than the Pearl Harbor attack. Of course the Pearl Harbor attack was against military targets and the Atomic Bombs were used on mostly civilian targets.
I doubt if there is much teaching, if any, about other civilian atrocities and treatment of Allied prisoners.

The Japanese have or had a concept of "saving face", that is not admitting blame or error. This seems to me to be about like Bernie Madoff. Thus you put on a good face and hope no one looks any deeper. Are they really any different now? I am not sure, but I think my friend said it was illegal in Japan now to publish, maybe even speak, anything negative about Japan re WWII.