Recently,
the New York Times published an article entitled “NO, Israel Is Not
Committing Genocide in Gaza” by its opinion columnist Bret Stephens. In the
article, Stephens stated the following: “If the Israeli government’s intentions
and actions are truly genocidal — if it is so malevolent that it is committed
to the annihilation of Gazans — why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly
more deadly?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/opinion/no-israel-is-not-committing-genocide-in-gaza.html
It is truly shocking that one of the world’s
top opinion columnists can claim that killing over 60,000 people
indiscriminately (half of whom are women and children), destroying 94% of
hospitals in Gaza and now intentionally starving people by blocking and
destroying aid from entering Gaza are not “methodical and deadly” genocidal
acts. What has happened to the common sense of journalists? It is sad that war
not only brutalizes and dehumanizes politicians and combatants, but also
ordinary people living far from war zones, who become numb despite seeing awful
photos of starving children and babies.
With the 80th anniversary of the end of World
War II in the Asia-Pacific region approaching, various media reports are being
publicized. They provide us with an opportunity to consider why, even after two
devastating and prolonged world wars, we human beings are utterly incapable of
preventing armed conflicts, and why we are unable to learn from history.
I hope you find the following extended
version of the note I prepared for my recent pre-recorded interview with ABC
(the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) useful for pondering these
questions.
My thoughts on some war issues at the 80th
anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War
Below is the extended version of the note
that I prepared for the pre-recorded interview conducted by ABC (the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation) on 28 July. I am not sure how or when this interview
will be used by the ABC, or how much of it will be included in the program.
However, I thought the questions I was asked were very good, so I made an
expanded note to explain my thoughts on each one. I hope readers will find them
useful.
Questions and answers from the interview
conducted by Ms. Ning Pan, an ABC journalist, on July 28, 2025.
1)You’ve written extensively about the Asia-Pacific battleground
of the WW2. About 30 million people died. But for decades the textbooks, movies
or media reports in the English world often focus on the Europe battleground.
Do you think the Asia battleground and atrocities happened there have been
largely ignored?
Like the
European battleground, I think, the Asia-Pacific battlegrounds have also been
the subject of many books, films and media reports in English-speaking
countries, particularly in the US. For example, many Hollywood films have been
made about the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Burma-Thai
Railway construction site, the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Iwo Jima
and the Battle of Okinawa. Many English publications and documentaries have
also covered these and other battles. Yet, by and large, these English-language
materials portray American and Australian troops as fighting bravely against
vicious and brutal Japanese soldiers who were fanatically loyal to their
emperor and would rather die in a suicidal attack than surrender. Consequently,
the Allied combatants made great sacrifices.
I do not
deny that Japanese soldiers were brutal. However, we should recognize that war
makes everyone more or less inhumane and brutal, and that
the nature and extent of this brutality differs from nation to nation according
to its culture. For example, the US forces were extremely brutal in their
indiscriminate killing of large populations through firebombing and atomic
bombing. They are still brutal in their
indiscriminate aerial bombings in many parts of the world.
The problem is not the
sheer quantity of books, films and documentaries that have been produced, but
rather the reasons behind the selection of specific battles for public
presentation. By focusing on the battles that I mentioned, Americans and
Australians are essentially ignoring the fact that many Asians and Pacific
Islanders were also victims of war. A large number of Chinese people were
victims of Japanese atrocities in China, Singapore and Malaya, and many East
Asians and Pacific Islanders were victims of the battles fought between the
Japanese and Allied forces.
For example, during the
Battle of Manila in February 1945, the Japanese killed many Filipino civilians,
and at the same time numerous civilians were also killed in indiscriminate bombings
conducted by U.S. forces. Battles in the Pacific region saw many similar cases.
Another issue rarely covered by the American and Australian media is that of
Japan’s military sex slaves, known as “comfort women,” and the sexual violence
committed by members of the American and Australian occupation forces in
post-war Japan. In this way, many of the atrocities committed by both the
Japanese and the Allies against Asians and Pacific Islanders have been largely
overlooked by Englis-speaking media.
The same can be said of
the European battles that have been covered in films, books and documentaries
in the English-speaking world. Numerous films, books and documentaries have
been produced about the Holocaust and the Normandy landings. Yet hardly any materials
have been produced about the mass rape committed by the invading Russian Red
Army in Germany, particularly in Berlin. Another issue that has not received
much coverage is that the American and British aerial bombing of Nazi military
bases and troops in France killed many French civilians. There are many other
unfavorable issues that have been ignored by both the American and British
media.
2) One of the victim groups in this war are called Comfort Women.
United Nations put the figure at about 200,000. But Japanese government has
continued to deny their existence or they were “forcefully taken away.” You’ve
written a book about this group. Can you tell us who they are and why their
story matter?
Following the Nanjing
Massacre of late 1937 and early 1938, the Japanese army expanded its “comfort
women” system and “comfort stations” rapidly as an organizational measure to
prevent rape. However, this did not prevent Japanese troops from raping women.
These stations were established wherever Japanese troops were stationed across
China. Most of the women mobilized as “comfort women,” who were in reality
military sex slaves, were from Korea, a Japanese colony at the time. Many of
these women were deceived into believing that they would be employed as
military canteen workers or trainee nurses and the like, but were instead raped
and forced to work in “comfort stations.” Many Chinese women were also forcibly
taken away as sex slaves.
Following the outbreak
of the Pacific War in December 1941 and the subsequent invasion of various
parts of the Asia-Pacific region by the Japanese army, countless “comfort
stations” were established in Japanese-occupied areas.
The Japanese “comfort
women” system had several special characteristics and operated on an
unprecedented scale.
1) The estimated number
of women involved (between 80,000 and 90,000).
2) The international
scope of the operation (women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines,
Indonesia, the Netherlands and Melanesia).
3) The scale of the
military-organized system required to procure women (involvement of the
Ministry of the Army, the Ministry of the Navy, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, etc.).
4) The length of time
over which the system operated (1932–45) and the degree of violence inflicted
upon women.
5) The geographical
breadth of Japan’s wartime empire in which the system was administered (the
entire Asia-Pacific region).
The Japanese
military’s system of sexual slavery is a historically unprecedented case of
military violence against women. However, military violence against women is an
almost universal problem that is still occurring in many areas of armed conflict.
Therefore, the Japanese case enables us to consider how military violence
against women can become so extreme, and how we can prevent this ongoing
problem.
3) If my research is correct, you’ve interviewed the
Dutch-Australian comfort women survivor Jan Ruff O’Herne in Adelaide. Can you
describe to us your meeting with Jan? Anything she has said or done that left a
deep impression on you till today?
Shortly
after Japanese forces invaded Java Island — a Dutch colony at the time — about
47,000 Dutch women and children were interned in several camps set up by the
Japanese outside Semarang. Jan was sent to one of these camps with her mother
and two younger sisters. One morning in February 1944, when the internees were
struggling to survive starvation and illness, a small group of Japanese
military officers arrived at the camp. They selected sixteen young women aged
between 17 and 28 and took them away, ignoring the protests of their mothers
and the other internees. Amongst them was twenty-year-old Jan, who was pressed
into a special “comfort station” serving the Japanese army officers.
In
August 1991, after almost 50 years of silence, Jan was surprised to hear of a
Korean woman by the name of Kim Hak-Sun, who came forward as one of Japan’s
military sex slaves. Kim’s brave action encouraged many other women not only
from Korea but also from China and the Philippines to speak of their wartime
ordeals for the first time. This sudden development led Jan to reveal her own
past as a victim of sexual violence committed by Japanese soldiers.
From early 1993, both in Australia
and elsewhere, Jan became active in testifying about her horrific wartime
experience as a sex slave for the Japanese forces. Around the same time, I, as
a lecturer in Japanese Studies at Melbourne University, also started conducting
research on this topic. I became acquainted with Jan through correspondence and
occasional telephone conversations.
In March 1997, the United Nations
University organized an international conference “Men, Women and War” at Ulster
University in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Together with Jan, I was invited
to this conference as a researcher on the topic of Japan’s military sex slaves.
At the conference, following Jan’s testimony, I presented a paper on the
history of sexual violence committed by Japanese forces during the Asia-Pacific
War including the military sex slave system. Many female lawyers and medical
specialists from the U.S., U.K., and other Western nations, who were then
conducting surveys on the victims of mass-rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the
Bosnian War, also participated in this conference.
During the three-day
conference, I became aware that Jan’s testimony – i.e., that of a white woman
among predominantly Asian victims – on Japan’s military sex slavery in the
Asia-Pacific, far from Europe and more than 50 years ago, had a stronger
message than I had expected. It was clear to many conference participants that
military violence against women is a universal problem that continues to this
day. At the same time, Jan herself clearly realized that the military violence
against women that she had experienced has been repeated and is still recurring
in many places of armed conflict. This realization made her even more
determined to speak out against any form of violence against women. Her resolve
is clear from the many subsequent testimonies she gave, such as at the Women’s
International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery in Tokyo
in 2000, and at the congressional hearing on “Protecting the Human Rights of
Comfort Women” in the U.S. House of Representatives in February 2007.
4) With so
many comfort women passing away and few left, Koreans, Chinese, Philippines are
erecting comfort women statues or peace statues around the world. Do you think
it’s a powerful way to commemorate this group?
5) Japanese
government seems not happy with these statues. In 2017 after the San Francisco
comfort women statue was set up, the Japanese government cut the sister-city
relationship between Osaka and San Francisco. In 2018, a comfort women statue
in Manila went missing after Japanese officials raised their concern. What do
you think are the concerns of Japanese government about these peace statues?
Let
me explain my thoughts on this issue based on the most recent incident. In
Berlin, a statue of peace (also known as “the statue of comfort women”) was
erected in 2020 in a park in the Mitte District by a civil organization, the
Korean Verband, with the permission of the Mitte District. Since then, the
Japanese government has exerted pressure on the German government to remove the
statue, claiming that the issue of comfort women has already been resolved and
that the women were not sexual slaves but prostitutes.
 |
The Statue of Peace in Berlin
|
In
May last year, Mr. Kai Wegner, the Mayor of Berlin, visited Japan, where he met
the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yoko Kamikawa, in Tokyo. During the meeting, he
stated that he supported monuments commemorating violence against women, but
that they should not be one-sided. On 19 July last year, Ms. Remlinger, the District
Director of Mitte, met with a Korean-German citizens’ group. She informed them
that should they fail to remove the statue by 28 September, the date on which
the installation permit would expire, she would impose fines until it was
removed. According to media reports, the Mayor and District Director had
devised a plan to install a memorial to all victims of wartime sexual violence
in Mitte by April this year. I suspect this idea was first suggested by the
Japanese government. Fortunately, due to strong opposition to the Mayor and District
Director, the Peace Statue in Berlin is still in place, although its future
remains uncertain.
The very abstract “monument against all wartime violence against women” without
any reference to concrete examples of brutal cases of military sexual violence,
does not have the power to speak strongly and deeply to the hearts and minds of
those who see it. In the end, such monuments end up with the idea that “wartime
sexual violence is not unusual because it is often seen everywhere and at all
times, and we do not feel personally responsible for such atrocities,” and so
in the end no one takes responsibility. In other words, under pressure from the
Japanese government, the Mayor of Berlin and the District Director of Mitte are
trying to advance the notion of “pseudo universal principles” to cover up
Japan’s responsibility.
Conversely,
the case of Japanese military sexual slavery demonstrates the necessity of
holding the Japanese government accountable for its refusal to acknowledge the
extensive and long-standing perpetration of severe sexual violence in the form
of such monuments. This underscores the importance of holding other forms of
sexual violence accountable to prevent future sexual violence. Already the
Statue of Peace in Berlin is fulfilling such a role well.
A proposed abstract monument by the Mayor of Berlin and the District
Director of Mitte is strikingly similar to Barack Obama’s speech in Hiroshima
Peace Park on 27 May 2016, when he was US President. In this speech, Obama
characterized the atomic bomb attack as a natural disaster, describing how
“death fell from the sky ... and a wall of flash and flame destroyed this
city.” By incorporating the issue of genocidal atomic bombing into a similar
“pseudo universal principle,” Obama effectively rendered the “nuclear weapons
problem” a “common problem for all humanity” and thus negated the
responsibility of the US by making it the “collective responsibility of
humanity.” In other words, his speech created the illusion that the atomic
bombing was not the responsibility of anyone in particular.
6) We have
one Korean peace statue erected in Melbourne and another Chinese peace statue
to be on display next month. Do you have hopes and concerns for the future of
these statues?
 |
The Statue of Peace in Melbourne
|
For the
reasons I have just mentioned, I strongly support the installation of Korean
and Chinese peace statues side by side in a public park in the city center of
Melbourne, ideally near the War Memorial, i.e., Shrine of Remembrance. Alongside
these two statues, I would also like to see one symbolizing a group of
Australian military nurses who were possibly raped and killed by Japanese
troops on Radjik Beach, Bangka Island, in February 1942. This would enable
visitors to learn about the sexual violence suffered by women at the hands of
Japanese forces during the Asia-Pacific War. I hope that these statues will
also educate people on the fact that military violence against women is not
just a thing of the past, but an ongoing issue caused by armed conflicts around
the world. I hope this will inspire a strong desire to build a peaceful
society.
7) In a
speech you made for the Modern Japan History Association earlier this year,*
you talked about the “victim mentality without identifying the perpetrator”
that trapped Japanese people. Explain this collective mentality to me and how
they impact people view the WWII, its victims and victim symbols such as the
peace statues.
<* Re my
speech for the Modern Japan History Association of the US, please refer to the
articles below:
Political
Lies Are More Plausible Than Reality: American and Japanese Lies about Atomic
Bombing: https://apjjf.org/2025/6/tanaka
Q&A
with Yuki Tanaka and Kirsten Ziomek: https://apjjf.org/2025/6/ziomek-tanaka
>
Well
before the end of the war, the US had decided to exploit Hirohito’s authority
as emperor in order to occupy and control Japan smoothly. This would prevent
the infiltration of communist ideology into Japanese society, while also making
Japan a vanguard base against the communist bloc in Northeast Asia. To this
end, the US prevented Hirohito from being tried as a war criminal after the war,
perpetuating the myth that he was a peaceful individual whose authority had
been abused by military leaders for political gain. The Japanese government, of
course, was delighted by the US’s treatment of Hirohito and collaborated
closely with them to perpetuate the myth that he was a victim of the war rather
than a perpetrator of war atrocities.
Therefore,
the Japanese people came to regard the emperor as a symbol of their experience
as victims of war, particularly of the intense, indiscriminate US fire and
atomic bombing in the final stages of the war. As a nation without an adequate
air defense system, Japan allowed 393 cities, towns and villages to fall victim
to U.S. aerial bombing. It is estimated that 1.02 million people were affected,
including 560,000 fatalities. This collective “100-million-victim mentality,”
in which only Japanese people were seen as victims, completely excluded other
Asian victims of Japanese military atrocities. However, they were also unable
to hold the US responsible for the indiscriminate genocidal bombing campaign, partly
because they believed that the US had “liberated” them from the military
regime.
As
a result, the Japanese people became trapped in a strange “victim mentality
without identifying the perpetrator,” which neither sought to hold the U.S.
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.
In other words, because as a nation
Japan does not openly recognize the criminality of the many brutal acts it
committed against other Asian peoples or its own responsibility for those acts,
it denies the illegality of similar crimes that the United States perpetrated
against the Japanese people. Many in Japan are caught in a vicious cycle:
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 victims
(Asian people and Allied POWs) of their own crimes or the gravity of their
responsibility for the crimes.
Due to the lack of a collective
sense of national responsibility for the war in Japan, the country is still not
fully trusted by neighboring Asian countries, particularly China and
South/North Korea. Consequently, Japan is unable to establish good international
relationships with these nations.
8) Last
question is a bit more personal: In your book Japan's Comfort Women:
Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation,
you said that you dedicated this book to your daughters Mika and Alisa. Why do
you want them to learn about this dark chapter of modern history?
Sex is a
beautiful and extremely enjoyable human activity that strengthens an intimate
relationship with a partner. However, when it is out of control, sex can become
ugly and monstrously abusive. Unfortunately, these two diametrically opposed
characteristics are inherent in sex. Sex does not only become out of control
during armed conflicts; it can happen to anyone at any time. Sexual violence
and harassment are also committed in everyday life, often alongside harassment
based on power imbalances. Controlling your own sexuality is not easy. You need
to learn how to do so without making serious mistakes. When I was writing this
book almost 25 years ago, I very much hoped that both our young teenage
daughters would grow up with an understanding of this. Fortunately, our
daughters are now both happily married and fine feminists.
< Please refer
to the article below:https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/two-of-us-a-passion-for-justice-drives-yuki-tanaka-and-his-daughter-alisa-20190411-p51d49.html >
Yuki Tanaka
(July 31,
2025)
