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This year’s Aug. 15 marks the 75th anniversary of Japan’s unconditional surrender in World War II (WWII).

For most people in Asia, Aug. 15 is a special date that will never be erased from their memories. The war of aggression initiated by Japan brought untold sufferings to the people in Asia. China alone suffered 35 million casualties and 600 billion U.S. dollars in economic losses in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

However, with the advent of “75 years after the war,” the generation that experienced the war of aggression has become a minority group in Japan. The memories about the history of aggression are increasingly fading, and the reflection on the war in the Japanese society is becoming neglected through the years.

Experts have pointed out that this trend is worrying, and that only by choosing to face up to and deeply reflect on its history of aggression, can Japan truly win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the international community.

ACTIONS AVOIDING RESPONSIBILITY

On Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 every year, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold ceremonies to commemorate the atomic bombings. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the number of participants decreased this year.

In an effort to hasten the surrender of Japan which had staged the war of aggression, the U.S. army dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Japan has long portrayed itself as the “victim” of World War II, especially of the nuclear explosions, with little reference to the historical background of the atomic bombings.

“Seventy-five years ago, the atomic bombs turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into ruins,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in his speeches at this year’s ceremonies. “The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the suffering caused by them must not be repeated,” he said. However, Abe said nothing about the reasons for the bombings and their

background.

In the annual World War II memorial ceremony on Aug. 15, Abe’s speeches, since he came to power again in 2012, have always focused on mourning for the Japanese soldiers who died in the war of aggression, avoiding talking of Imperial Japan staging the brutal aggression war and the colonial rule.

He has also evaded repeating Japan’s responsibility for wartime atrocities mentioned by his predecessors starting from former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, showing no intention of reflection and apology.

POISONOUS, WRONG VIEW OF HISTORY

Japan Conference, a right-wing group, also used political means to exert influence on local education committees this year, urging the adoption of history textbooks published by IKUHOSHA Publishing Inc. which are highly controversial.

The textbooks not only beautified the Japan-initiated war of aggression as a “self-defense war” and “Asia’s national liberation war of independence,” but also called the Nanjing Massacre as “Nanjing Incident,” despite the fact that the Japanese war criminals of the massacre had been tried at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after WWII.

According to statistics from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the adoption of the IKUHOSHA history textbooks in 2020 accounts for 6.4 percent of the national total. Citizens in Nagoya, Yokohama, Kyoto, Osaka and other cities have launched campaigns against the adoption of the textbooks that distort Japan’s history of aggression.

As is customary on Aug. 15, Abe usually offers a sacrifice fee to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Class-A war criminals and advocates twisted views that “Japanese aggression is justified” and “Japan liberated the Asian people.”

Takakage Fujita, director general of a civil group dedicated to upholding and developing

the well-known Murayama Statement, said that whether to visit or offer sacrifices, it equals the worship of Class-A war criminals, which means supporting the beautification of the war of aggression, and will seriously undermine Japan’s post-war peace order.

ALARMING ARMED FORCES

Over the years since taking office, the Abe administration has taken a series of actions challenging the post-war international order, such as strengthening defense cooperation between Japan and the United States, revising security laws, and promoting the amendment of the pacifist Constitution.

After the Abe administration passed the new security law in September 2015, which lift the ban on the right of collective self-defense and fundamentally changed Japan’s post-war policy of exclusively defense-oriented strategy, it sparked concerns in Japan, Asian countries and even in the international community.

In the same year, a new version of Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation was published, listing “cross-domain operations” and “U.S. vessels protection” as part of maritime security.

In recent years, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force has been modernizing its military hardware. The 2019 edition of the defense white paper stressed that the Self-Defense Force will strengthen its military, scientific and technological capabilities in space, cyber security, electromagnetic waves and other fields to build a “multi-dimensional and comprehensive defense capability.”

In May 2020, Japan’s first Space Operations Squadron was established at its base in Tokyo Prefecture.

Nobuyoshi Takashima, an honorary professor at Japan’s University of the Ryukyus, said Japan’s recent rising trend in exclusionism and economic and military ambitions would provoke vigilance from its Asian neighbors.

(Xinhua)

Historical memories should not fade, 75 years after Japan’s defeat in WWII File photo taken on Sept. 2, 1945 shows Japan’s

surrender ceremony aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. (Xinhua)

File photo taken on Sept. 2, 1945 shows Japan’s surrender ceremony aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. (Xinhua)

Zhang Guangsheng carefully took out a well-preserved envelope dating back 77 years when flames of the Second World War (WWII), the deadliest in history, were raging everywhere.

A black postmark can be seen on the upper-left corner of this fading, brownish-yellow hued envelope, which is about 6.2 cm long and 5.5 cm in width.

The letter was sent from Stockton, California, on May 10, 1943. It was a letter from home to an American prisoner of war (POW) who had been held at a notorious POW camp in northeast China.

Zhang, a private collector in Shenyang, capital of northeast China’s Liaoning Province, aims to offer people a glimpse into the history of the Shenyang World War II Allied Prisoners Camp through the envelope. The camp was originally known as Mukden POW Camp among the Japanese.

Operated by the Japanese army, the Shenyang camp also got its name “oriental Auschwitz” after the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the biggest of its kind built by Nazi Germany during WWII.

More than 2,000 allied POWs from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand, all captured in the Pacific War, were held at the camp between November 1942 and August 1945.

The POWs suffered brutal enslavement at the camp and about 260 of them died of diseases, cold, starvation and torture.

The letter’s long journey was full of twists and turns. It was posted from San Francisco in May 1943, then passed on to the Japanese Red Cross Society via New York, before being

handed over to the American soldier captured by Japanese troops on the Philippine battlefield.

The postmark bears a tiny note --”379, Aug. 45” -- handwritten with pencil, indicating that the possible time of the letter’s arrival was August 1945, Zhang said, noting that “379” was the American POW’s number at the Shenyang camp.

According to the staff at the Shenyang World War II Allied Prisoners Camp Site Museum, the name of prisoner 379 is Leland Andrews, a U.S. military sergeant. No other information is available about him.

A message reading “Mukden POW Camp,” “Censored, read and delivered” and “Tamura” in a rectangular stamp is clearly visible on the upper-right corner of the envelope.

The letter crossed the Pacific Ocean during the war and traveled for more than two years, Zhang said, adding that it was finally delivered to Leland Andrews after the Japanese surrendered. “You can imagine how he might have felt when he saw this letter from home.”

Zhang said that it is impossible to know what exactly Andrews’ family had written in the letter, but they must have expressed their hopes for the war to end and the family to be reunited.

As the 75th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII approaches, Zhang wishes to find Leland Andrews’ family and return the envelope to its owner.

“Just as a famous Chinese poem says, the beacon fire has gone higher and higher, and words from household are worth their weight in gold,” Zhang said. “This letter, full of love, should be returned to his family.”

(Xinhua)

A letter from home to “oriental Auschwitz”

Photo taken on July 31, 2020 shows an envelope of a letter sent from Stockton, California, on May 10, 1943 to an American prisoner of war (POW) who had been held at a notorious POW camp in northeast China. (Xinhua/Zhao Hongnan)

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, which falls on Sept. 3. A manuscript, collected by a Chinese translator living in eastern China’s Shandong Province, uncovered a number of facts buried in the fierce war.

Now being carefully restored by translator and writer Wang Jinling, the manuscript was written by American novelist Irving Wallace in the 1940s, which revealed the Japanese army’s atrocities and Chinese people’s struggle in the most desperate condition.

“Wallace and his family always care about China’s condition and development,” said Wang, who recently received an email from Wallace’s son, sending regards and expressing his concern about China’s COVID-19 situation.

According to Wang, this manuscript dates back to 1940, when Wallace was a journalist assigned to the Far East by a U.S. magazine to report the war between China and Japan, part of the World Anti-Fascist War.

At that time, Wallace managed to collect information from both sides. He interviewed several core figures behind Japan’s expansionist policy, including Hideki Tojo, as well as common people from the two countries.

He made scrupulous records on several major events in Japan’s invasion of China, including the September 18 Incident of 1931, the July 7 Incident, the August 13 Incident and Nanjing Massacre, all in 1937.

Besides writing articles for the magazine, he decided to write a book to expose Japan’s ambitions and the crimes it committed in China to the rest of the world.

However, his plan to publish the book was postponed due to the Pearl Harbor incident, after which the United States declared war on Japan and other fascist countries. Since then, the manuscript remained dust-laden for decades.

The special value of this manuscript was discovered by

Wang after he was granted the translation right of Wallace’s work by the family. “No matter how long it was sealed, the truth of history will finally emerge and be known by people,” said Wang. The manuscript was translated into Chinese and published in China in 2005, titled “Japan’s Mein Kampf.”

In the book, Wallace wrote about the Sept. 18 Incident, when Japanese troops blew up a section of railway under their control near Shenyang and accused Chinese troops of sabotage as a pretext for attack. They then launched an invasion of the northeast part of China.

“Japanese soldiers bayoneted citizens who didn’t understand their foreign orders and stripped and raped all women within reach,” he wrote in the book.

As to the Nanjing Massacre, he wrote that “there were more men, handcuffed back to back, stood up against walls being used as living dummies for real bayonet practice.”

There is also a video stored in Wang’s outdated laptop, produced by Wallace and his colleagues after he joined the U.S. army. The film, titled “Battle for China,” was used to encourage Americans to join the army and soldiers to fight more bravely.

“China is land. China is people. China is history.” The film says in the very beginning, praising the friendship between China and the United States in their joint fight against the fascists.

Though died of cancer in 1990, Wallace’s articles and films are valuable records of that part of history and have made more people aware of China’s role in the Anti-Fascist War. Professor Rana Mitter from Oxford University in an article in the New York Times shared a similar opinion.

“If we wish to understand the role of China in today’s global society, we would do well to remind ourselves of the tragic, titanic struggle which that country waged in the 1930s and 1940s not just for its own national dignity and survival, but for the victory of all the allies, West and East, against some of the darkest forces that history has ever produced,” wrote Mitter.

(Xinhua)

China’s anti-fascist endeavor in the manuscript of deceased American writer

File photo shows Chinese soldiers fighting hard to resist Japanese invaders at Lugou Bridge in Beijing. China was the first nation to fight against fascist forces. The struggle started on September 18, 1931, when Japanese troops began their invasion of northeast China. It was intensified when Japan’s full-scale invasion began after a crucial access point to Beijing, Lugou Bridge, also known as Marco Polo Bridge, was attacked by Japanese troops on July 7, 1937.

(Xinhua)