US
and Japanese Lies about Atomic Bombing
Yuki
Tanaka
On
the morning of 8 April (Melbourne time), I was invited by Professor Kirsten
Ziomek, Director of Asian Studies at Adelphi University in New York, to speak
about my latest book, Entwined Atrocities: New Insights into the US-Japan
Alliance (Peter Lang) on the Modern Japan History Association’s online program.
It was a great honor to talk about my book and to have a discussion with
Professor Ziomek.
I
would be grateful if you could take a look at the PowerPoint presentation I
used for my talk and give me your comments.
However,
please read the following introduction before viewing the PowerPoint.
The
PowerPoint URL is at the end of the introduction.
Introduction:
During the
Asia-Pacific War, which lasted 15 years from September 1931 to August 1945,
Japanese Imperial troops, operating under the supreme command of Emperor
Hirohito, committed numerous atrocities against civilians in occupied
territories as well as combatants and prisoners of war (POWs) of enemy forces
across various regions of China, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. A thoroughgoing examination of numerous
archival documents and testimonies substantiates this fact.
In
particular, the Japanese military in China engaged in a brutal war of
consistent aggression from the outset. It is estimated that the number of
Chinese casualties amounted to approximately 20 million, including those who
were indirectly affected by Japanese conduct, such as famine, over 15 years. In
addition to the phenomenal number of Chinese victims, the following are the
estimated numbers of other Asian fatalities of Japanese military violence
during these 15 years of war: 1.5 million in India, two million in Vietnam,
100,000 in Malaya and Singapore, 1.11 million in the Philippines, four million
in Indonesia. If the losses of Pacific Islanders are added, it can be
speculated that about thirty million people died as a result of the war that
Japan conducted.
The number of victims of the Holocaust is
estimated to be between 5.8 and 6 million. Of course, the victims of
well-planned genocide committed by the Nazis over five years cannot be easily
compared with thirty million direct and indirect victims of the Japanese
military activities in the Asia Pacific over 15 years. Unlike the Nazi regime,
the Japanese military government did not entertain a clear policy of genocide.
Yet, considering the massive number of the victims, consequently it can be said
that the Japanese treatment of the Asians and Pacific Islanders during the
Asia-Pacific War was undoubtedly genocidal.
On the one hand, the world’s first atomic bomb
was dropped on Hiroshima at 8.15am on 6 August 1945, followed by a second on
Nagasaki at 11.02am on 9 August. The victims of the bombs were not only
Japanese nationals, but also many Koreans who were brought to Japan and forced
to work at military arsenals. In Nagasaki, there were also some Australian and
Dutch POWs from the Allied forces captured by the Japanese military. Tens of
thousands of others died soon after the bombs were dropped owing to a lack of
medical supplies. By the end of 1945, an estimated 210,000 people including
40,000 Koreans had died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Countless more have died
from various after-effects, including radiation, since 1945. Many of those who
lived through this hellish experience also suffered serious psychological
damage. The majority of victims of the atomic bombs were civilians.
Furthermore, the United States military
deployed a total of 160,800 tons of bombs and incendiaries against Japan, with
more than ninety percent of these deployed from B-29s in the final five months
of the Pacific war. Consequently, Japan, as a nation without an adequate air
defense system, allowed 393 cities, towns and villages to be victimized by the
U.S. aerial bombing. The estimated total number of victims was 1.02 million,
including 560,000 deaths (excluding the deaths of Okinawans during the Battle
of Okinawa). It is estimated that 70% of these casualties were women and
children. This is indicative of the inaccuracy of the term “indiscriminate
bombing,” which was used to describe the aerial bombardment. The term “discriminating
bombing against civilians” is a more appropriate description for the majority
of victims of the so-called “strategic bombing” being civilians, particularly
women and children. Furthermore, from a quantitative perspective, the aerial
bombardment of Japanese and Korean civilians by the United States can be
regarded as a genocidal act.
Why
did the Japanese, unlike the Germans, fail to develop a sense of collective
responsibility for the wartime and colonial atrocities they committed, and why
do they continue to fail to do so? The Japanese government and the Japanese
people in general always emphasize the fact that Japan is the only nation in
the world to have suffered the atomic bombing, while they tend to ignore the
terrible wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial forces. At the
same time, they also tend to forget the fact that there were many other
Japanese and Koreans who were victims of the US fire-bombing. Of course, a
sense of responsibility is closely linked to a sense of justice, and a
collective sense of justice is an essential factor in the concept and practice
of democracy. The failure to seriously address the issue of war responsibility
is therefore not simply a matter of historical perspective. It is fundamentally
a problem of a flaw in Japan’s ‘democracy.’
In my
book, Entwined Atrocities, I have tried to find answers to this big
question by focusing on the atomic bombings - how the US made that decision,
how Japan came to accept defeat, how both the US and Japan created their own
state-sanctioned narratives to justify each decision, and how they accepted
such narratives from each other for their own interests. I also tried to
examine what kind of social and political problems arose as a result of this
collaboration, and how the prevailing social and political problems currently
confronted by the Japanese people are in essence, fundamentally rooted in the
manner in which the war ended.
The present volume was originally conceived as a
Japanese-language book intended for a non-specialist readership, with a
particular focus on activists involved in anti-war, anti-nuclear, and peace
movements in Japan. I didn’t plan to make an English version because it was
written for a Japanese audience. However, as I couldn’t include everything I
wanted to write in the Japanese edition, I decided to produce an English one.
Due
to the limited time in the actual ZOOM session, I focused mainly on issues
related to the atomic bombings and omitted to explain slides 3 to 15.
Therefore, I provide below my analysis of the issues of indiscriminate bombing conducted
by both Japanese and US forces prior to the atomic bombing, which I intended to
discuss using slides 3 to 15. I have also included here some other explanations
that I could not include on other slides after slide 15 due to limited slide
space. Finally, I have also included two of several questions that Professor
Ziomek asked me, and my answers to them, which may be of interest to you.
Indiscriminate
bombing conducted by both Japanese and US forces prior to the atomic bombing
(Slides 3-15)
1)
Indiscriminate bombings conducted by Japan
during the Asia-Pacific War
It has
been frequently proposed that the inaugural deployment of aircraft as a weapon
of war occurred during the colonial conflicts in the Balkans and North Africa
in early 1910s.
Similarly,
there is a Japanese military document indicating that Japan used poison gas in
1930 during the Musha Incident, an uprising by indigenous Taiwanese in October
that year. This incident occurred during Japan’s colonial rule of Taiwan, where
poison gas was reportedly used in experimental air strikes.
On 18
September 1931, Japanese forces invaded the northeast of China, claiming that
Chinese forces had destroyed the railway at Lake Liu near Mukden in southern
Manchuria, although this had actually been done by the Japanese themselves to
provide a pretext for the invasion. Following the commencement of the Kwantung
Army’s invasion of Manchuria, aerial bombardment of the city of Jinzhou of
Liaoxi (present-day Liaoning) Province commenced on 10 October 1931 under the
order of Lieutenant Colonel Ishiwara Kanji. A
formation of twelve bombers was responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of
the railway station, a hospital and university buildings, with a total of
seventy-five 55-pound bombs being dropped. This air raid occurred six years
prior to the Nazi bombing of Guernica in Spain and marked the inaugural
instance of indiscriminate bombing in East Asia. Upon receiving a report of
this sudden air raid, Emperor Hirohito endorsed it as a “necessary action” and
expressed his willingness to reinforce the troops, inquiring as to whether the
Kwantung Army would require additional support forces.
In
January 1932, the Japanese imperial forces commenced a series of much better
known and more substantial aerial bombardments of Chinese urban centers,
beginning with an attack on Shanghai. On
7 July 1937, a skirmish occurred between Japanese and Chinese troops near
Lugouqiao (Marco Polo) Bridge over the Yongding River in Fengtai, a suburb
south of Beijing. The Japanese government took advantage of this incident,
commencing a full-scale war against China, with the intention of annexing the
whole country.
In the
aftermath of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, there was a notable escalation in
Japanese military operations in China. This resulted in numerous additional
cities, including Beijing, Wuhan, Guangdong, and Chongqing, becoming targets of
indiscriminate bombing by the Japanese forces. While the Nanjing Massacre is
now widely known, it is less well documented that approximately 600 individuals
were victims of repeated Japanese bombings of Nanjing City in late September
1937. Despite the absence of military facilities
and arsenals in Chongqing, the city was subjected to over 200 aerial bombings
over a three-year period from 1938, resulting in the deaths of approximately
20,000 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians. The city became a
target for Japanese aerial bombing simply because it became the capital of the
Guomindang.
(Re
the bombing of Chongqing, watch the following film footage on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_l_HahosOQ )
2)
Indiscriminate firebombing of Japan’s main
islands by the U.S.
At that
time, bombing civilians was still shocking. On 28 September 1937, the General
Assembly of the League of Nations adopted a resolution unanimously condemning
Japan in the wake of the bombing of Nanjing. In a public address in Chicago on
5 October, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt strongly condemned Japan,
asserting that it had perpetrated the merciless killing of numerous Chinese
non-combatants, including women and children, without a justifiable cause and
without declaring war against China. However, in the final stage of the
Asia-Pacific War, with the firebombing of numerous Japanese cities and the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, US forces were responsible for the
deaths of large numbers of Japanese civilians, the majority of whom were women
and children.
However,
this was not the first US attack of this kind. Prior to the commencement of the
extensive and indiscriminate aerial bombardments of Japan in late November
1944, the U.S. forces had already initiated attacks on Japanese colonies in
June 1944. For these operations, the U.S. forces utilized the recently
constructed B-29 bomber base in Chengdu in Sichuan Province, in addition to one
in Kolkata in India. These attacks were directed towards industrial zones
situated along the South Manchurian Railway in Northeast China, as well as
military bases located in Southeast Asia such as Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and
Singapore. Japanese military bases in Indochina, most notably Saigon, were
subjected to intensive bombing raids, resulting in the deaths of many civilians.
After
establishing airbases in the Marianas, the USAAF (Army Air Forces) began its
bombing campaign against Japan in late 1944. When Curtis LeMay took over as Commanding
General of the 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific in late January 1945, US
AAF’s bombing campaign quickly escalated to indiscriminate bombing with the new
type of powerful incendiary bomb, napalm. When Lemay realized that even with
the use of the powerful napalm bombs, high-altitude bombing did not achieve the
desired level of destruction in the targeted areas, as the incendiary bombs
dropped from high altitudes were scattered. This was to be changed to low-level
bombing, which would drastically reduce the flying altitude to between 5,000
and 8,000 feet (1,500 and 2,400 meters). However, this would have greatly
increased the risk of bombers being shot down by anti-aircraft guns, so the
previous daylight bombing was abandoned and replaced by night bombing. Thus
began the “low-level night bombing” or “night-time carpet bombing”
by countless bombers from early March until mid-August when the war ended.
In
order to justify this indiscriminate bombing, LeMay asserted that the bombing
of civilians was a crucial tactic in disrupting Japanese morale and
accelerating the process of their surrender. Concurrently, it was the most
effective method of reducing the number of casualties among their own troops.
In this sense, LeMay and other U.S. military leaders inherited the concept of
“strategic bombing,” which was originally advocated by the RAF leaders, in
particular Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard, in World War I. According to this
concept, the killing of enemy civilians is justifiable, regardless of the
method used, and is an indispensable tactic for hastening surrender.
The
Great Tokyo Raid, carried out by 300 B29 bombers on 10 March 1945, was the
first “low-level night bombing” that LeMay adopted. It provides a case study in
the indiscriminate nature of such “strategic bombing.” In this raid, 237,000
napalm bombs, equivalent to 1,665 tons, were used, resulting in an estimated
97,000 deaths and 125,000 injuries over a six-hour period. One-fiftieth of
Tokyo’s population was wiped out in one night. Tokyo was then “the world’s
largest open-air crematorium.”
Beginning
with the air raid on Tokyo on 10 March, a series of low-level, night-time,
incendiary carpet-bombing raids were carried out on Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe.
Nagoya was bombed three times on 12, 19 and 25 March, killing some 3,500
people, injuring 5,500 and burning almost 70,000 houses. In Osaka, 70,000
incendiary bombs were dropped in a three-hour period from midnight on 13 March
to 14 March. The death toll exceeded 3,000, and 510,000 people, more than 20%
of Osaka’s total population at the time, were affected. In Kobe, 36,000
incendiary bombs were dropped on 17 March, killing 2,600 people, injuring more
than 8,500 and destroying 65,000 homes.
Although
air raids with conventional bombs continued on Nagoya and Osaka until the end
of the war, from mid-June Lemay selected a number of small and medium-sized cities
throughout Japan as targets for a thorough destruction of the whole of Japan,
bombing most of them indiscriminately at night with incendiary bombs. Cities
such as Kure and Iwakuni near Hiroshima were badly damaged, and Toyama, bombed
on the night of 2 August, was 98 per cent burnt to the ground by flames fanned
by strong winds.
Rhetorically,
U.S. leaders continued to make public statements indicating that their bombs
were aimed at strategic targets and that they remained committed to the
strategy of “precision bombing.” However, actually these were all
indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets. During the war, numerous small
Japanese houses in major cities were also identified as military targets. To
justify such indiscriminate attacks, the U.S. argued that many small family-run
factories operated in those houses, producing a vast array of weapon components
for large arsenals.
3)
The Air Defense System of Japan’s
Emperor-Fascism State
Nevertheless,
the extent of the U.S. responsibility for mass killings by aerial bombing can
only be determined when the intricate interrelationship between the perpetrator
and the victim is elucidated. In other words, a comprehensive understanding of
responsibility can only be achieved when the criminal acts of the U.S. military
forces are considered in conjunction with the fact that Japan’s so-called air
defense system was deeply embedded in the Japanese philosophy of victimizing
its own nation for the sake of “national defense.”
In
April 1937, the Air Defense Law was enacted for the first time in Japan. In
point of fact, the law in question constituted an air defense drill
law, as it set forth the obligations of Japanese citizens in the event of
aerial bombardment. The objective of this legislation was not to protect the
lives and property of the Japanese people; rather, it was designed to exert
control over them by mobilizing them for so-called air defense exercises. In
1941, two additional amendments were introduced to the existing law: the
prohibition of escaping and the emergency firefighting duty. In essence, these amendments
stipulated that, with the exception of infants, the elderly, and the infirm, no
ordinary citizen was permitted to flee from aerial bombardment. Furthermore,
they prohibited residents from relocating to an alternative residence without
official authorization, even in the period preceding the bombing.
In
other words, nobody was permitted to evade incendiary attacks; all were
compelled to fight, and to resist. In the context of the emperor-military state
system, the distinction between the front line of battle and the home front was
effectively erased. All Japanese combatants and civilians were compelled to
sacrifice their lives in order to defend the Gyokutai (sacred body) of
the emperor, which symbolized Kokutai (the state polity). This can be
described as a form of forced gyokusai (suicide to defend the emperor).
Tonarigumi-seido (the
neighborhood association system) was established as a vital wartime social unit
for Taisei Yokusan Kai, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, an
organization intended to establish a totalitarian political regime in wartime
Japan. This was set up on 12 October 1940. Tonariigumi-seido was originally
set up as an organization to collaborate with the police for maintaining
security of the community. In this system, each group of approximately ten
neighboring households constituted a fundamental social unit. This was also
used for the purpose of air defense. It was their responsibility to work
together to maintain public order, providing faithful assistance to the local
police force and civil defense units. Members of each group were required to
cooperate closely with one another in the event of an aerial bombing as well.
By
1943, 1.2 million neighborhood association groups had been established
throughout Japan, and the family-state ideology was applied to Tonarigumi,
stating that Tonarigumi must be a family, and that this was ‘the basic
unit of the imperial family state’ and the first step towards the realization
of Hako-Ichiu, unifying and controlling the whole world as a single
house under the emperor’s authority. The practical drills that the military
authorities emphasized were firefighting drills based on the primitive methods
such as a bucket brigade utilizing barrels, bath buckets, pails, and similar
vessels. In the event of an incendiary bomb attack, the prevailing method of
defusing the device was to pour sand or soil over it and beat it with a broom. As the entire population of Japan was strictly controlled
and governed by the Tonarigumi system, and especially towards the end of
the war, food rations were also distributed through this system, it was
virtually impossible to lead a daily life without being a member of Tonarigumi.
From mid-1943, when the state of war in many parts of the
Pacific became less favorable for Japan, the construction of air raid shelters
was promoted all over the nation. Basically, two types of air raid shelters
were built: one for a group of people and the other for a family. The group
shelter was usually built in a cave form on public land such as on a street, a
piazza, at a railway station, or in a park, while the family shelter was made
in pit form in the family garden or under the floor of a private house. Neither
were solid air raid structures to securely protect civilians from an avalanche
of bombs and incendiaries, since they were more like dugouts or trenches. This
was because the Japanese military decided that the shelters would be places
where people could temporarily escape when the bombing started, and as soon as
the risk of being attacked diminished, the people should come out and engage in
firefighting as members of the neighborhood association. Consequently, the
depth of the dugouts was only about three feet, and they were useless and
futile once surrounded by raging flames caused by incendiaries.
In
short, Japan’s Air Defense Law and the strict control exercised over the
wartime social organization for air defense played a decisive role in
increasing the number of casualties caused by the United States’ aerial
bombing. In fact, it was a result of the complete failure of Japan’s efforts to
establish its own total war system.
A total
war system is the rational and efficient use, as far as possible, of the
material and human resources available to the state in a manner systematically
adapted to the war effort. This requires the systematic allocation of material
resources to production objectives and the systematic mobilization and
deployment of human resources to the right places.
To this end, Japan’s
traditional family-oriented occupational distribution, employment patterns, and
old-fashioned master/apprentice relationships in the workplace at the time were
totally unsuited to a system of total warfare that required thorough and
purposeful mobilization and deployment of human resources.
Indeed, Japan passed its first
National General Mobilization Law in 1938 during the Asia-Pacific War. However,
for the National Mobilization Law to fundamentally change this distribution of
traditional family-oriented occupations, employment patterns and labor
relations would have to lead to the collapse of the Emperor's State itself,
which was based on a patriarchal familism. Therefore, despite the National
Mobilization Act, in reality it did not lead to any social reorganization for a
total war system, as the Ministry of Trade and Industry bureaucracy of the time
had planned, since the main priority was to maintain the existing traditional
systems of production activities and enterprises as long as possible.
Consequently, the endeavors to
institute a total war system within imperial fascism ultimately engendered an
extreme contradiction to such a system, namely “gyokusai,” signifying the
compulsory self-destruction of the most valuable human resources, namely
soldiers and civilians. As the war approached its conclusion, over 6,000 young
pilots were deployed to the front lines of air defense as kamikaze suicidal
pilots. It is evident that housewives, members of the Tonarigumi system,
were obliged to engage in armed conflict against the invading US troops using
bamboo spears and commit “gyokusai (mass suicide).” The Emperor’s War, in which
both soldiers and civilians of Japan were not allowed to surrender or become
prisoners of war, was a product of this tremendous madness and irrationality
that the failure to establish a rational system of total war produced.
The US military regarded the entire
Japanese population as a “quasi-military force” which cooperated fully with the
Emperor and the Japanese Imperial Army. The result was the indiscriminate
bombing of numerous cities, towns and villages from Hokkaido to Okinawa,
including the Tokyo Air Raid, which killed 100,000 people, as well as the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was a total of nearly 800,000
dead, 300,000 injured and more than 2.34 million homes lost. Nearly 70% of the
casualties were women and children.
-----------------------------------------
Other explanations that I could not include on PowerPoint slides after slide
15:
Slide 18:
It
is imperative to note that the most crucial information source regarding the
significance of Hirohito's role in the decision-making process concerning
numerous pivotal war-related issues is the diary of Marquie Kido Koichi,
Hirohito's most trusted advisor. It is noteworthy that he maintained a diary
with meticulous care during the war. This diary provides a comprehensive record
of the individuals who came to see Hirohito, the subjects discussed during
these meetings, and the content of the conversations held between Hirohito and
Kido himself.
One of the most important and useful documents among numerous
relevant US archives is the diary of Henry Stimson, Secretary of War. It seems that
Stimson was a meticulous person, too. Like Kido, almost every day he recorded
in his diary what he had discussed, with whom, and his own personal opinion on
many issues in a concise manner.
When you read both of these diaries you get a very interesting
picture of what was going on between the United States and Japan at that time.
Slide 19:
This
particular clause was included as a result of a strong recommendation by Joseph
Grew, former ambassador to Japan. Trueman also expressed support for the
inclusion of this clause in the draft. In other words, the U.S. decided to use
the Emperor’s authority as much as possible in order to quickly place Japan
under US control after the war and to make Japan a vanguard base against the
Communist bloc in Northeast Asia.
Slide 22:
The
Potsdam Declaration was a key element of the United States' strategy to delay
Japan's surrender, a course of action that Japan was unlikely to accept. The
primary objective of the atomic bomb was to demonstrate the immense potency of
nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union, which had not yet acquired such weapons,
and to bring an end to the war without providing the Soviet Union with the
opportunity to engage in hostilities against Japan or to participate in the
occupation of Japan in the post-war era. This approach was driven by purely
political considerations and not by strategic necessity.
In
fact, the use of atomic bombs was not at all necessary to end the war, as
Truman and members of his administration were well aware of Japan's imminent
surrender.
Slide 24:
In
the many meetings of war leaders, cabinet meetings and Imperial Council
meetings held in the period leading up to the Potsdam Declaration's acceptance
between 6 and 14 August, the issue of the damage caused by the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was rarely addressed. The sole topic of discussion
was how to persuade the US side to accept only one condition for surrender: the
preservation of Kokutai (national polity) and the Emperor system. This
discussion went on endlessly.
Slide 30:
The
prevailing sentiment in the Peace Park is one of destruction, with the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and its subsequent impact on the city and its inhabitants
being the primary and only focus.
Slide 31:
At
the same time, the Japanese people became trapped in a strange ‘victim
mentality without identifying the perpetrator,’ which neither sought to hold
the US Government’s responsibility for the atrocities committed against the
Japanese, nor did it hold the Japanese responsible for the atrocities that the
Japanese committed against many people in the Asia-Pacific and POWs during the
war.
Slide 32:
He
then proceeded to emphasize the significance of the US-Japan military alliance,
characterizing it as ‘to keep the peace,’ and ensured that the fundamental
principle of the US as a nuclear-weapon state was not in any way undermined.
The fact that Obama made the round trip from the largest US military base in
the Far East, Iwakuni, to come to Hiroshima symbolizes the true meaning
of his visit.
Slide 33:
The
formal invocation of the pseudo universal humanitarian principle renders the
message devoid of meaning and invalid for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
However, by presenting it as emanating from the Ground Zero of Hiroshima, it
creates the impression that it embodies the universal principle. The fact that
it originates from 'Ground Zero' facilitates the holding of grand political
addresses and conferences, such as the International Commission on Nuclear
Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference, the G8 Speakers’ Meeting, the G8
Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the G7 Summit in Hiroshima.
Thus,
in May 2023, the G7 summit even sent a message to the world from Hiroshima that
nuclear deterrence must be maintained until the eventual elimination of nuclear
weapons is possible, a message that in fact endorsed the permanent maintenance
of nuclear weapons by the US, UK and France of the G7.
Slide 34:
I
think that the suggestion put forward by Oda is fundamentally accurate.
Nevertheless, it is challenging to establish a profound sense of solidarity
with others by merely criticizing the actions of those responsible for harm,
whilst simultaneously acknowledging one’s own actions that have resulted in
similar harm.
I
think the better way to achieve what Oda intended with his idea would be to
“share the pain” together.
Slide 35:
The degree
of personal agony is unchanged regardless of the type of weapon which inflicted
the casualty— whether atomic bomb, firebomb or cluster bomb. In order to make
others understand one’s own physical and psychological pain as a war victim,
one must try to understand a similar grief of others, in particular of the
victims of the atrocities committed by the people of one’s own nation, through
re-experiencing and internalizing their pain as one’s own. In other words, it
is important to go through the psychological process of remembering it as if it
were one’s own experience.
Slide 36:
In this way, a tormenting memory of a particular group of
victims can be truly shared and consequently passed on to a different group,
through mutual
internalization of their counterpart’s
unforgettable experiences. Harrowing memories of war can be shared and
preserved only through such interactions between different groups of different
nations, using moral imagination to build a better society together.
Q
& A
Below
are two of several pertinent questions posed by Professor Kirsten Ziomek and my
answers.
Question 1:
My question is if you could explain to the audience how you came to frame this book as an
indictment on Hirohito and the emperor system in general. Looking back at your
earlier books and articles, I do not recall seeing such pointed criticism of
the emperor in your previous work- maybe it was always there?
My
Reply:
As
you mentioned, I did not discuss the necessity of abolishing the emperor system
at all in my previous work, although I did discuss and criticize the “emperor
ideology” as one of the vital factors that made the Japanese armed forces so
brutal and inhuman. It was also because I did not think carefully about how the
emperor system was a detrimental factor in severely distorting post-war
Japanese “democracy,” and why such a flawed Japanese constitution was drafted
and promulgated, and the emperor system came to be called a “constitutional
monarchy.”
As
you know, the majority of Japanese still think that the Constitution, including
Article 9 on the renunciation of war, is wonderful. I absolutely agree that not
only Article 9 but also the Preamble of the Constitution is a jewel, and I
still think that we must make sure that these two sections are not allowed to
be deleted from the Constitution.
However,
the more I studied how this constitution was drafted, the clearer it became
that it was formulated to cover up Hirohito’s war crimes and war
responsibility. I also realized this when I began to seriously study Okuzaki
Kenzo’s relentless pursuit of legal redress against Hirohito. It was and still
is the case that Okuzaki is the only one who has argued in Japan’s courts that
Chapter 1 Emperor is unconstitutional. The simplicity and clarity of his
argument is such that it cannot be challenged, yet even constitutional scholars
in Japan do not take it seriously and regard it as crazy. It is really sad to
see that no one pays any attention to Okuzaki’s argument because he actually
went mad and died. I just hope that people don’t think I’m crazy for believing
that Okuzaki’s argument is not crazy, but brilliant.
Let
me give you just one simple example of how undemocratic and unconstitutional
Chapter 1 is. Article 1 defines the emperor as the symbol of the state and the
unity of the people. Article 24 guarantees gender equality. However, Chapter 1
of the Imperial House Law stipulates that the Imperial Throne shall be
inherited by a male descendant in the male line of the Imperial
Lineage. This means that Article 1 itself is clearly unconstitutional because
it violates Article 24.
For my view of the emperor system
and ideology, please see: ‘An Open Letter to Emperor Akihito: For Establishing a
Genuine Democracy in Japan’ https://apjjf.org/2018/09/tanaka
Question
2:
At what point in the historical past do you
think Japan could have gone down a different trajectory in terms of accepting
their war responsibility whether it is war crimes, what happened to forced
laborers, atomic bomb survivors, or comfort women?
My Reply:
This is a very difficult question. Accepting
responsibility for war requires not only learning about our history of brutal
acts committed by our fathers and grandfathers against other Asians and Allied
prisoners of war. We need to cultivate a humane moral imagination that will
enable us to extend our compassion to others who are suffering. To achieve this
goal, it is necessary to make full use of our moral imagination. In particular,
the use of symbolic representations of war memories through various forms of
culture, such as drama, the performing arts, film, literature, artwork and the
like, seems to be an effective way of generating such a positive and
constructive imagination. Symbolic representations of war memories can vividly
and impressively show the essence of tragic historical events and thus convey a
universal message of humanism for the future without extensive explanations.
This is because a symbolic representation of the essence of a particular memory
with a profound humanitarian message goes straight to people’s hearts and
leaves a strong and lasting impression. It needs no intellectual explanation.
To pass on the memory, it is not necessary to express it in words. What is
important is that it impresses and moves people and makes them want to pass the
message on to others. Such symbolic representations of war memory are
particularly important after all the survivors of a particular war atrocity
have died, making it impossible for us to hear the living testimony of the
survivors.
To achieve this, we need to change our
culture as a whole - a kind of cultural revolution. Until the end of the
Asia-Pacific War, Japan had been under the emperor system and emperor ideology
for 77 years from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. During these 77 years, Japan
went through a series of wars - the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War,
the First World War, and then the long and bloody 15 Years’ War. During this
period, the emperor ideology basically disregarded basic human rights, not only
for Japanese but also for foreigners, especially Asians. In addition, the
prolonged wars had a deleterious effect on Japan, engendering a societal
dehumanization that impacted the entire population and various facets of
Japanese culture. In particular, it created strong racism among the entire
population against Koreans, Chinese and other Asians. Thus, we failed to
develop the culture of humane moral imagination as a national culture. The “democratization
of Japan,” facilitated by the United States in the post-war period, likewise
proved unsuccessful in cultivating a humane culture, due to a multitude of
factors, including the persistent impact of the emperor ideology on day-to-day
life, and the manifold social and political domains. Racism against Koreans,
Chinese and other Asians among us is still rampant. In addition, we have been
virtually under the military control of the United States, which is truly
contradictory to our peace constitution. We have been living in this inhuman
and contradictory culture for 80 years and are still incapable of taking
responsibility for war. How can we change this culture? I would like to ask for
your advice, if any of you have one.
