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.