Japanese PM Shinzo Abe under pressure from right-wing to offer no apology during Pearl Harbour visit
It has been suggested Abe needs to make a new and significant expression of regret after US President Barack Obama visited Hiroshima
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday that Abe’s two-day visit to Hawaii from December 26 would be for “consoling the souls of the war dead, not for an apology,” but an editorial in the Asahi newspaper said the Japanese leader should use the occasion to “vow never to resort to the use of arms based on genuine remorse for rushing into a reckless war”.
Tens of thousands of civilians died in Hiroshima ... there is no need for any apology
It has also been suggested that Abe needs to make a new and significant expression of regret given that President Barack Obama in May became the first sitting US leader to visit Hiroshima and pay his respects to the victims of the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945.
“Why should Abe apologise?” asked Hiromichi Moteki, acting chairman of the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.
Moteki insisted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was not the start of the war with America as hostilities had effectively commenced in July, when Washington imposed crippling economic sanctions on Tokyo.
He is also angered at suggestions that Japan carried out a “sneak attack” against the US in Hawaii and insists that the failure to deliver a declaration of war to the US government until after the attack had commenced was simply a result of the “ineffectiveness” of Foreign Ministry officials.
Yoichi Shimada, a professor of international relations at Fukui Prefectural University, agreed Abe should not apologise when he visits Hawaii “because Obama did not apologise in Hiroshima”.
“Tens of thousands of civilians died in Hiroshima, but in the Pearl Harbour attack, Japan targeted military facilities and personnel,” Shimada told the South China Morning Post. “There is no need for any apology.”
Yet Moteki – who says the US attack on Hiroshima should be considered a war crime – admits he is “very concerned” that Abe may actually apologise during his visit to Hawaii.
Japan’s view of history is still strongly influenced by the outcome of the Tokyo war trials, that Japan was the aggressor and in the wrong
“It would be very stupid, but there is a possibility that he might apologise,” he conceded. “He is under a lot of pressure from the US and the Japanese media to do that. Here, that it because Japan’s view of history is still strongly influenced by the outcome of the Tokyo war trials, that Japan was the aggressor and in the wrong.
“But for the prime minister to apologise would be a distortion of history,” he said.
The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact is remarkably consistent in its positions on many of the key events in the Asia-Pacific region in the early decades of the last century.
After exhaustive research, Moteki says, the society has determined that China triggered the Sino-Japanese war in August 1937, there was no massacre of civilians in Nanking four months later and “comfort women” were willing and well-paid professional prostitutes.
Equally, annexation of the Korean Peninsula was “inevitable” because the kingdom was unable to maintain its independence, while the Korean people flourished under benevolent Japanese rule.
“There is a need for a correct view of history if Japan is to go forward in its relationships with other countries,” Moteki said.
