Japan must give the world a truthful account of what happened in the second world war, not more apologies

The 70th anniversary of the victory of the Allies over Japan in the second world war is upon us. This war created tens of millions of victims, perhaps even hundreds of millions, in Asia. I was one of those victims, but a relatively lucky one. My parents lived in Hong Kong before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. They were fortunate enough to escape after the Japanese army invaded and occupied Hong Kong in 1941, to move back to Guilin , in Guangxi .

Towards the end of 1944, in one of its last offensives, the Japanese army made a big push for Guilin. My family became war refugees once again and tried to flee to Chongqing , the wartime capital of China, on land. My mother was pregnant with me then. We had to travel through Guizhou first and stopped in Zunyi , a regional administrative centre, when my mother could not go on any more. However, with no place to stay, I was born in the Zunyi regional administrator's office. I was very lucky to have survived. That was why my Chinese name is Zunyi.

In the mid-1950s, it became known that in 1935, Mao Zedong had consolidated his leadership of the Chinese Communist Party at the critical Zunyi Conference. Zunyi has since become, like Yanan , a mandatory stop on every Red tourism itinerary. But at the time I was born, very few people knew about the Zunyi Conference.

It is at times like this that discussions emerge about whether apologies by the Japanese government for the hardships, miseries and suffering caused by the Japanese army and the atrocities committed, especially to civilians, during the war have been sufficiently contrite and from the heart. Almost every Japanese prime minister since 1945 has apologised in some fashion or another. But these apologies never seem to have been deemed sufficient. Why?

To be fair, the Japanese people also suffered greatly during the second world war. Japan was the only nation that suffered the massive devastation of atomic bombs - not one, but two - and, most unfortunately, almost all those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were civilians. But just because everyone suffered does not and should not eliminate the culpability and responsibility of those who started the war and committed atrocities, or allowed them to be committed.