Topic

Legacy of war in Asiai

In the first half of the 20th century, Japan invaded and occupied large areas of Asia, and the scars of Japan's wartime atrocities in Asia are still obvious in China and the Korean peninsula as the region prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. Although the nations have solid trade and tourism ties with their former colonial aggressor, diplomatic relations remain poor, soured by territorial disputes and rising nationalism.

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Pilger was a seeker of truth and an uncompromising chronicler of inconvenient facts that were often missing from the dominant narrative of the legacy Anglo-Saxon media.

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  • Relatives of victims on the Suez Maru say they are horrified by the British government’s failure to prosecute the Japanese perpetrators involved in the shooting
  • A petition sent to Downing Street asks for official acknowledgement of the cover-up and for failing to reveal the truth to victims’ families

South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld a series of rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate its citizens who were forced to work for them, marking the first time a forced labour victim secured such funds in a legal case.

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Nestled in verdant Pok Fu Lam, the University of Chicago’s Hong Kong campus tells the story of the city’s wartime defeat to the Japanese and of its buildings’ subsequent occupants: prisoners.

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Critics have accused the South Korean government of playing into Japan’s narrative on Dokdo, which Tokyo claims as the Takeshima islands, amid pressure from Washington for the two to set aside their historical quarrels.

Relatives say they are disappointed the US government failed to pressure Tokyo to face up to the historic abuses of prisoners by the Japanese companies during WWII.

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Critics say Osaka-based industrial and engineering firm Hitachi Zosen’s depositing of funds earmarked for compensation with a Korean court breaks with Japan’s position on the issue and sets a bad precedent.

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South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld two lower court rulings, which issued compensation orders against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel.

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From saying you have a ‘tough life’ while drinking with friends to joking about how worthless the money is, the list of banned speech in North Korea is as seemingly endless as it is arbitrary – as a new museum in Seoul shows.

Gregory Golodoff was three years old when the remote Alaskan island he lived on was captured by Japanese troops. His recent death at 84 has stirred up memories of the only WWII battle on North American soil.

The 16 victims filed the suit in 2016, seeking 200 million won (US$155,000) each in compensation but the Seoul Central District Court dismissed the case in 2021.

The ruling effectively ends the legal dispute over the roughly 50-centimetre statue of a sitting Buddhist Bodhisattva, which was stolen from a Japanese temple by South Korean thieves in 2012.

Thousands of residents were evacuated from their homes ahead of the controlled explosion, which caused a thunderous boom to reverberate around the city state on Tuesday.

Many people could not get Japanese or Philippine citizenship due to their birth records being lost in WWII and saw Manila impose financial penalties, which had to be paid before any trip to Japan.

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Lured by Pyongyang’s propaganda, nearly 100,000 mostly ethnic Koreans left Japan for North Korea in the mid-twentieth century. But instead of a better life, all that awaited them was poverty, starvation, death and despair.

Lithuania-based diplomat Chiune Sugihara is seen as a Japanese hero for saving thousands of Jews during WWII but academics said Tokyo has exaggerated his role.

Pyongyang warned any countries ‘blindly following the US’ to ‘behave themselves’, as Washington plans an open meeting at the UN on North Korea’s human rights record.

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PM Kishida instead stressed the destruction Japan suffered from the war and said the country would cooperate with the world in solving global issues.

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Readers discuss the safety of sport-utility vehicles, international football matches in Hong Kong, and one way to begin to resolve the comfort women issue.

This month marks 78 years since nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so memes combining mushrooms clouds and Margot Robbie aren’t going down so well.

North Korea has rejected Japan’s offer to discuss the fate of Japanese nationals abducted by Pyongyang’s agents in the 1970s and 1980s, insisting the issue has been resolved.

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