Tony Abbott needs to get his tongue out of the dirt.

The War is over. The past must not be allowed to control the present.
For many centuries, nations have gone to war and then, many years later, have been able to live together harmoniously.
Why is this author harping on a period of violence that took place 70 years ago? Is it our of some sense of revenge?
If so, then what good can that do to the millions of citizens of nations who once were warriors?
How long do you want to harbour hatred?
Let go and live together with those against whom we once fought. Don't keep opening old wounds and hatreds; accept that the world is now different to what it was in World War 2, and don't ry to micro-analyse the national psyches of either combatant side.
The past is past!

Ponder, the article is criticising Shinzo Abe's downplaying of Japanese war crimes in World War Two. Japan should face up to its past.

Well, who is to apologize, the few demented men left, who actually where responsible, or millions yet unborn who were not, or the non combatant women left behind!?
The pages of history, once accurately recorded, can never ever be erased!
That said, no amount of apologizes or recriminations, can ever change the past or take back the hurt, the harmed or return the dead!
How many times should war widows bow deeply to us, to, in their own way, express the most extreme regret, for the dark deeds of husbands, sons or fathers!?
Even so, some of the enemy remained, in their eyes, honorable, and simply squandered their often very young lives, in a heroic Kamikaze self sacrificing effort, to force their enemy, us, to a negotiating table and the conditional offers on it!
And before we dropped those A bombs, the very worst atrocities of a war; where both sides, were simply not blameless!
I mean, just how many Japanese prisoners of war, survived the trip from the front line, to the rear and or, our prison camps!? Well?
Which is the worst crime, brutally beat a man half to death, or simply shoot a disarmed and surrendering prisoner of war, in the back, and kill him?
Time to let go and move on! Bury the past with the dead!
Those who live in the past, have no future!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty:"Those who live in the past, have no future!"

Never a truer word spoken.

Rhosty & Antiseptic regardless of what happened in the past, unfortunately the Japanese have a "superior attitude" to other people, do not tell me I do not know as a member of our family is Japanese, I am a far lesser being, the Australian way of life is not theirs.
When visiting Hiroshima a few years back we were told the Japanese stopped the war and not defeated as should have been said, I do agree with the writer, they admit nothing of horrors past.
I am sure if both of you had been decapitaded in WW2 brutally and had the chance to return for a day now, you would sat "thanks very much" I understand, that is why I laid down my life, I think you would be thinking "what did I die for"
Yesterday's horrors like the Baden Clay case, we all must move on and not live in the past, after all it was a few weeks back, but is still in the past, so lets forget it and move on

Ponder, Rhondy & Antiseptic, it is not about living in the past and not moving forward. Rather, it is about the problem of particular Japanese officials seeking to downplay and deny the past.

Just so we're clear,the rape of Nanking was a war crime and the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not?

The most despicable crime of the Japs was to wage war on peoples who were not at war with anyone. Likewise the Germans. Aggression - properly recognised by decent people everywhere as top of the list of war crimes. The Germans had their noses rubbed in it until they recognised the culpability of playing any part in the crime of aggression: Egging it on, fighting it, glorying in it in retrospect - participating in it in thought, word or deed. With a handful of disgusting exceptions they don't brag about it or try to excuse it.

Not so the Japs. This is largely because - disgracefully - their monstrous symbolic leader Hirohito was spared suitable punishment which would be execution at the hands of a Korean hangman (since the Japs regard Koreans as submen). Australia called for trial of Hirohoto [1] but the Yanks demurred (maybe they were thinking about their own wars of aggression to come). Now, the Japs have shrines to honour the criminals who fought without honour. They have elected a criminal who seeks to shrug off their constitutional bar to aggression. They remain the enemy.

All the appalling crimes of the Germans and Japs and their collaborators (including Ukrainians and Indonesians) flowed from that initial crime of aggression. Calls for impunity and burying the past are calls for the crime to remain in place, just as they do in regard to ordinary criminals at home. First cripple the capacity and the will to do it again, then forgive and “move on”.


[1] Google Australian call trial Hirohito

Jay of Melbourne I understand what you are saying, which is correct, , but we must remember without the atomic bomb drops we most possibly would be under the rule of Imperial Japan now, from memory at the time it was getting very close to Australia being overtaken.
Lets forget the past and move on as stated by writers, so lets forget WW1 this year and next, presume those writers will not remember the horrors of that Royalist war and move on and be happy doing so, many relatives were killed in that very unnecessary war that involved the very young lads of Australia.
Always remember it is the peace loving ordinary people who get killed in any war, not those that create it.

Never forget.
Never forgive.

Some time ago, laying flat on my back in Gold Coast hospital, almost unable to feed myself, who do you think came to help and spoon fee me, or put a cup to my lips, day after day?
No not the as usual, run off of their feet, exhausted overworked nurses, but a Japanese lass, in there visiting her very polite Japanese Husband.
When I thanked her profusely, she assured me on each and every occasion, it was both a privilege and a pleasure.
Laying next to her husband I learned, many Japanese hold Aussies in very high regard, given our military was the first to stop them in their tracks; and force them to retreat, and with vastly inferior numbers/weapons.
There is something of a reverence in Japanese tradition for the heroic warrior tradition!
But especially, when they see it in an honorable enemy!
Some years ago, when overseas and on R+R, many traveling Japanese war widows went out of their way, one by one, to seriously attend and bow very deeply, very ceremoniously before me, while I waited for my plane. Bowing which I acknowledged with a thank you/head nod!
Thanks to their english speaking tour guides, I understood, they were all travelling widows apologizing for their husbands etc; and Japanese wartime "exploits"! I don't know how they recognized me as ex-military, perhaps the Akubra hat and or, the kangaroo emblem hat badge?
These people are anything but superior, just dam decent and caring human beings, usually very reserved, which is all to often interpreted by over anxious/ignorant or overly judgmental Australians, as superiority?
Yes sure, we do sometimes see the very worst examples in a few travelling Japanese business men?
Even so, they see the worst of us, in our own travelling business men, always on the lookout for cheap, exploitable, Asian labor!? Ordinary folk, be they Aussie or Japanese, are very different from their traveling Business men examples!
Somewhere it is written, do not point to the sty in another's eye, least you ignore the one in your own eye!
Rhrosty.

what do South Africa, Burma, and Nineveh have in common which Russia, China and Japan still haven't got and don't get?

Gee! Rhosty I would be waiting a very long time for all the niceties you mention from my daughter in law who is Japanese, we all can be very nice in certain situations, can' t we?

The West has always practised a double standard in regard to German and Japanese war guilt.

The German war guilt has been well and truly overplayed and overworked, while Japanese war guilt has been more or less expunged from Western discourse. (And as for Italy, well, Italian war guilt was never even an issue.) Much of the double standard lies in the fact that Germany and England were long-time rivals for European hegemony. Germany, being for centuries a loose confederation, didn't get its military act together until it was too late to get itself an empire. So it tried to get itself an empire much closer to home - which seriously threatened England and France's domination as the main superpowers of the day.

As a result, we in the West are never allowed to forget Germany's war crimes, especially as they were committed against Europeans.

Japan, on the other hand, mostly committed its war crimes against other Asian countries, especially the Chinese, and those countries had been getting brutalised for centuries under European imperial domination anyway. It doesn't suit Western interests to labour that point too much.

Also, pushing the envelope on Japanese guilt leads inevitably to the West's grand-daddy of all war crimes - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the true story of which remains buried under a mountain of self-gratifying 'well, it ended the war' lies and propaganda.

Killarney being around when those two bombs were dropped, the war stopped immediatelyi, Japan surrended, that is an actual fact, were you born at that time, if you were you must have been on another planet at the announcement that war with Japan had ended, and thank goodness it had,
Hirohito (God) to the Japanese people should have been strung up by the balls, but the good old USA decided otherwise.
I do agree it would be a war crime, but like all war crimes it all depends on which side of the fence you sit on as we all know. Hirohito was a war crime criminal, likewise the bombing of the two Japanese cities, all being a crime against humanity.
Absolutely nothing has changed since that time, the cluster bombs dropped on Laos by the USA is a fine example of a crime against humanity, they are not even there cleaning up the mess they left behind.

ojnab

I can't see how my being alive at the time would have made a brass razoo's difference about the A bomb and the Japanese surrender, any more than my being alive now would make any difference to Israel bombing the crap out of Gaza ... again.

Anyone who reads the Potsdam Declaration issued to Tokyo in July can see that their terms for complete unconditional surrender were extremely aggressive, revenge-based, devoid of any respect or room for diplomacy and left the Japanese completely confused about whether the emperor would be hung for war crimes.

Enter the Soviet declaration that ended the Japan-Soviet neutrality pact and that they would be officially at war with Japan as of 9 August (does that date ring a bell?). This added to the US paranoia that Japan had to completely surrender before any chance of their future cold war enemy getting a slice of it.

Thirdly, the Japanese had been negotiating through the Soviets for a peace deal with the allies, so it was not a case of Japan not surrendering but on what terms.

But don't listen to me. I'll leave the last word to General Eisenhower: 'It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.'

The simple historical facts are that Hirohito was an irrelevance, a figurehead, he had and could have no influence on the waging or ending of the war at all, and leaving him in place prevented a lot of problems for the victors. It was realpolitik, and sensible.
There were a few Japs attempting to sue for peace but they didn't represent anyone but themselves and a few rich business types, they were never going to be able to halt the military, and in fact would have been summarily executed if they'd tried.
The bombs were an atrocity, but a needed one, without them the war would have ended far more bloodily, the military didn't, couldn't, believe in or accept surrender, and they would have gloriously taken the civilians to hell with them, along with hundreds of thousands of Allied service-men.
What real difference does it now make if the Japs have a few wrong ideas about the war? It's not as if they are going to start it all again, is it?
Time and the real world will cure them, eventually, and there's nothing sensible anyone else can do that will make any difference, so, let sleeping dogs lie and allow the hurts of 70 years ago fade into history, where they belong.

The difference between Israel & Gaza and Japan & Australia is the fact that Australia was going to be taken over by Japan in war, this is not the case with the other, we do not have to have our motor car headlights blacked out now, as we did then, with other restrictions also in place because Israel & Gaza are fighting each other, the events taking place back then were very serious for Australia, that is the difference.

Japan was never going to take over Australia they were defeated at the point at which they'd just begun to consolidate their gains in the Pacific.
1942 ended Japan's aspirations and they were on the retreat from that point, it was one disaster after another.
The Pacific war was just as much a race war as the eastern front in Europe and it was sold to the allied combatants in exactly the same way, the wildly exaggerated atrocity stories, dehumanising caricatures and propaganda etc which enabled and excused the use of incendiary and nuclear weapons on civilian targets.
Remember it was the allies who started carpet bombing whole cities and developed the technical expertise in starting "Firestorms" to eliminate civilians, not the axis forces.
If anything some of the stories about Japanese atrocities and "medical experiments" are more even ridiculous and unbelievable than the ones about people being killed with diesel exhaust and insecticide which Stalin's propagandists concocted.
Are we expected to take seriously stories about victims of the Japanese being dissected while still alive to study the typhoid and cholera bugs?

Those who are so on about Japan's role 70 years ago should prove their tearing at nearly healed wounds by not using anything japanese or german for that matter. Let's see how they get through life.

Many of us have relatives who served in WW2, my grandfather fought the Japanese but the idea that succeeding generations can be traumatised by the experiences of ancestors is just completely stupid.
Where does it end, my great grandfather fought in the first world war, am I in any way affected by his experiences,am I a victim of the Irish famines because some of my ancestors came from the poorest counties?
This idea of trans generational trauma and trans generational healing suits a particular political agenda, it's not a real phenomenon, it's a tactic to make your enemy answer questions outside his own experience and to entangle him in arguments which cannot ever be resolved.
Here's a little "open secret" which some of the posters here might not be in on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals
I use those tactics all the time, anyone on the "right" who doesn't study and apply the rules of their enemy to their arguments runs the risk of going insane LOL.

Jay of Melbourne I do find it interesting how the young now perceive what happened all those years ago as perhaps not being correct, although they lived through it at the time, perhaps I dreamt that Japanese submarines didn't enter Sydney Harbour, bomb Darwin & Broome after all they were on a holiday and after enjoying themselves would return to Japan and show their holiday photo's, come on get real
Perhaps in seventy years time when the young being born from now on will be saying that a bomb blew a commercial plane to pieces, you will be trying to hi-light the fact of what really happened, but the young will not believe you, saying that must have been a television show.you were watching at the time.
Books written a year or two after the war are the ones to read for truth, not those written fifty years later

Books written a year or two after the war are the ones to read for truth, not those written fifty years later
Ojnab,
I agree but academics need more than two years to collectively invent historical evidence.
They need first hand witnesses permanently out of the way before they can start producing "true" accounts without fearing to be proven wrong by someone who was actually there.