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 aerial 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)
