I refer to the report ("Abe push to raise defence spending", January 6).
It said the government of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may make a new statement about the nation's "historical perspective on the second world war".
This would be a review of the 1995 statement by then-premier Tomiichi Murayama, expressing his "feelings of deep remorse" and making a "heartfelt apology" for the "tremendous damage and suffering" resulting from Japan's "colonial rule and aggression".
No amount of apologies in words will heal the wounds in the hearts of the Chinese people regarding the cruelty inflicted upon China by Japanese aggressors in the Sino-Japanese war.
On December 7, 1970, West German chancellor Willy Brandt, while on a goodwill visit to Poland, laid a wreath at the monument commemorating the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against German aggressors in the spring of 1943. He then knelt silently before the monument.
That act alone started to wipe away the hurt in the hearts of the Polish people who suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany in the second world war.
Would Mr Abe consider going to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, in Nanjing, one day?