International Apologies

Saying “I’m sorry” with sincerity is hard enough for an individual. We’re watching candidates with long political records have to own up for policy mistakes in the past. Not fun, and those “bad acts” will form meat in the attacks they face. It’s not just mouthing the words, making an apology, that counts. It’s feeling it, owning it and paying the consequences. The United States has lots to be apologetic for – from out-and-out slavery or dragging the Cherokee nation in a death march across the United States that began in the 1830s (others from the “Five Civilized Tribes” were ripped from their lands too) to the carpet-bombing, napalm and massacres in the Vietnam War – but today’s blog is a study in contrasts: two Axis powers who surrendered in WWII – Germany and Japan – in accepting wartime and pre-war atrocities committed against “genetically inferior” peoples.

One, having tortured, enslaved and murdered 13 million human beings (part of Hitler’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” that took gypsies along for that final ride) – Germany… and the other – Japan – having invaded (at least) two other fellow Asian nations (notably Korea and China), while attempting to annihilate and entire Korean language and culture, taking “comfort women” at random as forced military prostitutes and later, in China, raping, killing and looting, taking slaves for horrific medical experiments. Both maintained prison labor camps, some to house prisoners of war, but most subjecting the ethnic inmates to barbarism, torture, medical experimentation, slavery, starvation and murder.

When WWII ended, Germans generally believed that they were suckered into the war, that is was part of an allied conspiracy to contain Germany’s attempt to escape from the super-repressive WWI war reparations extracted by the victorious allies. They generally thought that the stories of German atrocities and concentration camps, particularly against those “hateful and conspiratorial Jews,” were either apocryphal or the product of a few rotten applies in an otherwise barrel of fine German produce. They argued that the bombing of their cities, particularly the decimation of Dresden, were war crimes against Germans and that it was the allies who should have been on trial at Nuremberg, where only 200 Nazis were actually tried. The Nuremberg trials were mostly about the high-ranking military leaders, those who had not committed suicide, and not the bulk of good German soldiers and bureaucrats during their Motherland proud.

It was not until a decade later, when a Jewish lawyer, Fritz Bauer who had fled to Scandinavia in 1935, was brought back to Germany as a war crimes prosecutor. He drilled down, from top to bottom, against those who commanded concentration camps to the enlisted soldiers who carried out the torture/extermination of “Jews and other inferior undesirables.” We were just loyal soldiers “just following orders” was the repetitious mantra of the accused.

Many were not convicted, but what the German people read and saw was the extent of the genocide and torture and that fact that it was implemented by so many “ordinary” people and junior officers and enlisted soldiers. A shudder of shame crossed the country. By the late 1960s, German youth turned on their parents, most of whom could not respond to their children’s inquiries about “why did you let that happen? Where were you?” Student protests and a rise of left-wing politics, militants (like the Baader-Meinhof gang) declared that the entire German culture to be corrupt and must fall, including the capitalist system behind the German machine; German youth took to the streets.

In 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt visited a Polish ghetto, where Jews had been shot or taken to Nazi concentration camps. In an extraordinary act of contrition, Brandt knelt down and asked for forgiveness for all of Germany. That moment is captured in the photo above. The reaction of Germans and Germany to the pandemic of Germans’ following Hitler’s agenda, the death and horrific mistreatment of Jews and other unpopular minorities… became revulsion. Germany paid reparations. Acknowledged guilt and began structuring a “never again” government.

To my friends who point out the rise of a small alt-right movement in Germany today, I remind them that that the largest political party in Germany today are the Greens. German textbooks are rife with the hideous description of Nazi death camps, and virtually all German children are required to visit the rather gruesome concentration camps where the horrors are openly presented.

When I was in Munich in late July, I was very aware of the difference between Germany and the United States. There was a calm notion of togetherness, biracial couples walking arm in arm, hijab-wearing Muslim women sipping tea with their non-Muslim friends… a sense that Germany was now a nation where diversity and tolerance replaced one of the worst periods in modern history. Commonality of spirit and the absence of that political tension that marks the United States was so clear.

And then there’s Japan. It never really accepted culpability for invading (1905) and annexing (1910) Korea, trying to replace their language with Japanese, recruiting innocent women into forced prostitution, indiscriminately torturing and killing locals who believed in their independence. Japan also invaded China in 1931, seeking cheap workers and raw materials for its expanding war machine. The most egregious carnage occurred over six weeks starting in December 1937. Japanese soldiers bayonetted, shot, blew up half the population of Nanking China – 300,000 civilians were slaughtered. Just about every female was raped, many then shot. The scar runs deep.

Japanese textbooks gloss over these horrors, pretending as if they never occurred. The evil Americans unnecessarily dropped nuclear bombs on an innocent Japan that was forced into war because it was denied essential natural resources. Japanese atrocities are nowhere to be found.

The few apologies issued by Japanese leaders for Japan’s egregious pre-WWII and war conduct have been perfunctory, anything but heartfelt, and almost always qualified. For example, in the summer of 2015, Japanese Prime Minister “Shinzo Abe of Japan reiterated his support for past official apologies for the country’s imperial expansionism and said Japan ‘did inflict immeasurable damage and suffering’ on ‘innocent people.’… But he added, ‘We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.’” New York Times, August 14, 2015.

Korea and China have never forgotten. They are acutely aware of Japan’s half-hearted and insincere formal apologies, never remotely admitting the details of the extreme and barbarous cruelty that Japan inflicted on its hapless Asian neighbors. There is always an undercurrent of resentment against Japan from the many Asian nations that felt Tokyo’s spiked boot in the first half of the twentieth century.

It doesn’t take much to bring that simmering hatred to the surface. “In July, Japan tightened rules on the export of materials crucial for South Korean tech manufacturers… Those restrictions, on products needed to make display panels and memory chips, have worried Seoul over the risks to its already slowing economy… Both countries have accused each other of inadequate export controls.

“Japan will now be placed in a new category of countries that have not run their export control systems in line with international principles… A senior South Korean trade ministry official, Park Tae-sung, accused Japan of inappropriate trade practices, but gave no data…

“South Korea has said it will take Japan off its favoured trade partners' list… The move is a tit-for-tat response to Japan's decision earlier this month to do the same to South Korea… Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo said Japan would be placed on a newly created restrictive trade list instead.

“Long-running bilateral tensions were inflamed last year by South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese firms to pay compensation to Koreans over forced labour during World War Two… The legal decisions drew condemnation from Japan, which argues the dispute was settled in 1965 when diplomatic ties were normalised between the neighbouring countries… The two nations share a complicated history that includes Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910 until the defeat of Japan in 1945.” BBC.com, August 12^th.

The lessons of history can be brutal, but a brutal nation seeking to move on after its own unacceptable and often unspeakable behavior without owning the egregious conduct, paying for it and taking steps never to allow such horribles ever to happen again… cannot really recover. Sooner or later…

              I’m Peter Dekom, and when I see Americans condoning cruelty, embracing racism and provoking hatred, I wonder exactly what eventual price we will have to pay for such mindless and unforgivable conduct… and there is always a very, very expensive price.