Japan's War Crimes: Has Justice Been Served?
From Chinese American Forum, January, 2000, from a speech by Assemblymember Michael M. Honda. He authored a joint resolution asking Japan to apologize for their war crimes and to pay reparations to the victims of the war crimes. He himself is a Japanese-American. He and his family had been in one of the internment camps. (Direct quotes will be in italics.)
He starts by talking about those camps.
Japanese Americans from Hawaii saw mainland
Japanese Americans as different from them — they considered
us bitter, maladjusted and dysfunctional — because
we never recovered from the impact of the internment.
The persons of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii during WWII were not interned in mass numbers at all, unlike those living on the West Coast of the United States. There were a few basic reasons. For one, they constituted a large portion of the population of Hawaii and their removal would have devastated the Hawaiian economy and hurt the war effort. Another reason is that they had assimilated far better than the persons of Japanese ancestry who were living on the West Coast. Finally, martial law was declared in Hawaii and that, with the other factors, kept the vast majority of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii and not in internment camps.
As for the effects of internment, he writes:
Of course, as a community we on the mainland
lost millions in assets, families were torn apart, and communities
were forever lost. However, the greatest damage that
was done was to our dignity as human beings and as Americans
— we lost self-respect as a community, A loss that was not
suffered by fellow Japanese-Americans in Hawaii,
These people were put in the camps without having committed any crime, without having their day in court, and they were kept behind barbed wire with armed soldiers, some of them kept for years.
Now, this was an offense on the part of the United States but the United States did issue an apology.
The apology by the US Government
to the Japanese American community did not "make
us whole" and it did not please everyone, however, it did succeed
in bringing closure in two infinitely critical ways: (1) It
stipulated to one truth establishing once and for all that our
community was innocent and the internment was not justified;
and (2) It recognized that our community suffered immeasurably
and paying reparations is the symbolic detriment accepted
by the US Government, Those of us who love this country very
deeply, now had grounds to defend it.
Thus, the American government admitted they had done something wrong, they apologized for it, and they paid reparations.
What, exactly, merits such an apology and a redress?
There are significant parallels between the Japanese American
Redress Movement and the international call for reparations
for Japan war atrocities. A writer in a 1987 Harvard Civil
Rights Review article identified several prerequisites for meritorious
redress claims:
(1) a human injustice must have been committed;
(2) it must be well documented;
(3)the victims must be identifiable as a distinct group;
(4) The current members of the group must continue to
suffer harm;
(5) such harm must be causally connected to the past
injustice, [Mari J. Matsuda, Looking to the Bottom:
Critical Legal Studies and Reparations, Harvard Civil
Liberties - Civil Rights Law Review 22 (1987): 323,
362-97.]
Victims of both the Japanese American Internment and
Japan's war atrocities meet these criteria.
Let's examine those in relation to Japanese war crimes. As for #1, there is no doubt that that is true. It is, or at least should be, by anybody's definition an injustice when people are murdered, raped and pillaged when they have not actually done anything wrong. Remember that most of those who suffered in China were civilians, not soldiers.
Are Unit 731, the Rape of Nanking and other similar atrocities well documented? Definitely. There are photos, films, numerous personal accounts, official documents and so on.
Were the victims a distinct group? Without doubt, yes. The Chinese are a distinct group. Various other peoples that suffered Japanese atrocities were victims in their own countries so they, too, would be distinct groups.
Do the members of the groups continue to suffer harm? Many of them still do as they carry the emotional pain of what happened to them or to their loved ones.
Is the harm connected to the past injustice? Definitely.
He notes one problem is that so many of those involved are very old now and are dying off.
Has anyone in Japan apologized?
Several officials of the Japanese Government
have apologized. Yet, other high ranking officials
continue to deny that atrocities took place. Yes, some form
of reparations have been paid or made available. Yes, treaties
have been signed resolving issues between governments. Yet,
there are many individual claims, including the claims of those
forced into sexual slavery, that are not precluded by treaties
and are actionable under international law. Some argue that
since some apologies have been made and some.reparations
paid, the issues are settled. I disagree. The issue is not whether
Japan can on technical grounds elude responsibility. The question
is whether justice has been done.
In other words, some leaders have apologized, others have not. Reparations have been made to only some of those who suffered.
So, what can be done to bring justice to those who suffered?
(1) Stipulation to one truth: establishing once and for all that
the victims were innocent and their suffering was not
justified; and
(2) Recognition that they have suffered immeasurably by the
paying reparations which becomes the symbolic detriment
accepted by the Japanese Government.
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