Germany Has Faced Its Crimes Against Humanity, Why Not Japan?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, May 16, 2002

Germany Has Faced Its Crimes Against Humanity, Why Not Japan?

Fifty years after it ratified its post-war constitution, Japan is still blocking restitution for million of civilian and POW victims in the Asia-Pacific War, the New York Times said on April 16.

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Fifty years after it ratified its post-war constitution, Japan is still blocking restitution for million of civilian and POW victims in the Asia-Pacific War, the New York Times said on April 16.

Germany has long since repudiated militarist crimes and genocidal ideology. And German industry is even now being held to account by those it exploited as slaves during WWII.

By contrast, in the 57 years since the war, Japan's parliament, the Diet, has never once endorsed any apology to the people of Asia and the Pacific��

Japan's highest officials persist in paying their respects at a shrine to Japan's war dead that includes condemned war criminals��

Japan's schoolbooks downplay the brutal record of Japan's armies and even suggest the war was idealistic��

Official denial and distortion continue to provoke international outrage and protest in Asia and beyond.

On April 28, 2002, Japan marked the 50th anniversary of the ratification of its postwar democratic constitution. While 50 years have passed, Japan still shows contempt for US ex-POWs and its own Asian neighbors through complete denial of its criminal, militarist past --- a denial at odds with its own constitution:

Denial of claims stemming from such atrocities as the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, where the Japanese military slaughtered more than 300,000 unarmed Chinese civilians;

Denial of Japan's official obligations to more than 200,000 Asia women enslaved in Japanese military brothels;

Denial of compensation to millions of slave laborers conscripted to work for Japanese corporations during the war;

Denial of grisly human experiments and massive biochemical warfare against civilians.

Why Japan?

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