Radio Interview: Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Workers; Emperor Akihito’s Performance and Japan’s War Responsibility

オーストラリア公共放送 ABC ラジオ番組 Japan in Focus： 福島原発労働者被曝問題、天皇明仁と戦争責任問題（２０１８年８月１７日放送）

「天皇明仁と戦争責任問題」では５分ばかりという短い時間ながら、私見を述べておきました。英語圏に知人をお持ちの方は、拡散していただければ光栄です。

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News Radio Program: Japan in Focus（August 17, 2018）
  This week: The United Nations says workers used to clean up the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan are at grave risk of radiation exposure and exploitation, Emperor Akihito has made his last appearance as reigning monarch at an annual ceremony marking Japan's World War Two surrender and we take a look at the postal service on top of Mount Fuji.
  Eleni Psaltis speaks to UN Special Rapporteur Baskut Tuncak, representative of the August 6 Hiroshima Peace Assembly Dr Yuki Tanaka, and Tokyo bureau chief at the New York Times Motoko Rich.

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/newsradio/audio/201808/r1853811_29904324.mp3

Below is the text I prepared for this short interview:

  In order to understand Emperor Akihito’s performance concerning Japan’s war responsibility, we must first know the unprecedented scale of the human toll that resulted from the Asia Pacific War. The total number of deaths of Japanese military personnel and civilians is estimated at 3.1 million. Eighteen percent of these deaths, i.e., 560,000 deaths were victims of indiscriminate U.S. aerial bombing including the fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final year of the war. This was due to the fact that Akihito’s father, Hirohito, and his military and political leaders needlessly wasted time by delaying their surrender to the Allied nations. Approximately 60% of more than 2.5 million Japanese soldiers who died were due to starvation, malnutrition and tropical diseases. Many others were victims of forced suicide attacks known as “banzai attacks” on many Pacific islands such as Guadalcanal, Saipan and Peleliu. In addition, the reckless 15 year-long war that Japan conducted between 1931 and 1945 victimized 21 million Chinese as well as several million people in various other parts of the Asia-Pacific. Apart from the soldiers who were killed in action, more than sixty thousand Allied POWs and civilian detainees also died.

   It should be clear from these figures that Emperor Hirohito was partly responsible for this huge number of deaths, and that the whole system of Emperor Fascism and ideology was also responsible for this tragedy. It is also true that Hirohito was deeply involved in making decisions on major battles such as the Battle of the Philippines and the Battle of Okinawa, despite the myth created after the war that he was totally manipulated by his military leaders such as General Tojo Hideki.    

  It is true that Akihito and his wife Michiko have been sincerely concerned about the victims of the war and visited many wartime battlefields and prayed for the dead. In general Japanese people admire this warm-hearted gesture by their emperor and empress and thus respect them as symbols of peace, democracy and reconciliation. Yet, in each visit, they met only Japanese survivors or Japanese relatives of war victims to console them. They have not met, for example, survivors of the Nanjing Massacre or the Massacre in Singapore and Malaysia that the Japanese committed and offered apologies to them. In each visit, Akihito has repeatedly stated that we must not forget this sad history and must make sure that the ravages of war will never be repeated. However, in order to make sure that the tragedy of war is never repeated, it is essential to know why Japan conducted such a war of aggression and who was actually responsible. In his statements Akihito has never touched on these questions and never referred to his father’s responsibility or the wartime Emperor ideology.

  Of course his performance is better than that of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who adamantly denies any responsibility for many atrocities that the Japanese forces committed during the war. Yet, simply emphasizing Japan’s war victimhood without identifying who actually victimized them and without truly admitting Japanese national responsibility for the atrocities committed against vast numbers of people in the Asia Pacific will never bring peace and reconciliation. For me, Emperor Akihito, like his father, is still a symbol of the irresponsibility of Japan’s war of aggression and war crimes.

  Akihito’s gesture is indeed a reflection of the Japanese mentality that can be called a “sense of war victimhood without identifying victimizers.” The same mentality can also be identified in their attitude towards the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese people always talk about the horrific victimization by the fire bombing and atomic bombing, yet hardly pursue the US responsibility for this grave crime against humanity.

  Precisely because they do not thoroughly interrogate the criminality of the brutal acts the U.S. committed against them or pursue U.S. responsibility for those acts, they are incapable of considering the pain suffered by the Asian victims of their own crimes or the gravity of their responsibility for them. This is the reason Japan has willingly subordinated itself to US military control, although it has never been trusted by neighboring Asian nations and cannot establish a peaceful relationship with them.

Yuki Tanaka