Plantagenet,
As for the number, 35,000,000, I would like you very much to read Yoshimichi Moriyama's five comments on www.yaleglobal.yale.edu/Alistair Burnette/War Drums in Asia.

A group of people at Stanford University compared history textbooks of Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. I felt Japanese textbooks got the highest ratings. They were least nationalistic and most impartial and comprehensive. I am not good at the Internet, but you can read brief summaries at "Divided Memories：History Textbooks　and the Wars in Asia," "Compartive study of history textbooks of Asian countries by Stanford University," "Japan's teaching on war doesn't deserve bad press/Education..." and "Gi-Work Shin and Daniel Sneider (eds),History Textbooks and the war in Asia."

The step-mother said to Cinderella, "You stay where you belong." This is the Sino-centric tributary hierarchy, and China and (South) Korea are saying, "You stay where you belong, Japan." There are three Confucianist countries in the world, China, Korea and Vietnam. Japan is not. If interested a bit more, please read Yoshimichi Moriyama's comments to www.project-syndicate/Ian Buruma/East Asia's Nationalist Fantasy Islands."

Michi

I can see there are communications problems. There is nothing like usable and recent hyperlinks.

The process of discussion is not aided by booklists.

I'm talking to people from Japan frequently but I'm not going to raise what there grandfathers did in the War directly.

Regards

Pete

Japan did not advance into South East Asia and the South Pacific Area for "the noble cause of liberating colonized countries and the ambitious desire of building an empire." It went into those regions to make access to natural resources like oil an bauxite. It allowed itself to drift into a big war (Joseph Frankel, The Making of Foreign Policy, Oxford University Press.) The liberation of those countries was the unintended by-products. (People of those countries, except the Philippines, say that unless set free once, their colonial status would have endured much longer.) If Japan had not been made dry and empty, it would have gone on negotioating with the United States, and ultimately came to face up to the inconvenient fact, which many leaders of pre-war Japan had known, that is, that Japan had to pull out from hopeless war with China.

During the thirty-five years, the Korean populatin rose from ten million to twenty five million; the average life expectancy from twenty-four to forty-five years; compulsory education had been introduced but had not spread, only 2.5 percent of the people went to elementary school just before Japan's annexation, but of the Koreans born in the 1930s 78 percent received it and 17 percent had more than twelve years' education. The northern half of the peninsula had been heavily industrialized and this is why Kim Ilson embarked on the war of unification in 1950. "By this standard, however, the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have doen so well as (South) Korea and Taiwan...(David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, W.W. Norton.) To be continued.

Hi Michi

If only the average, tertiary educated Japanese person had the same sophisticated knowledge of Japan's WWII history that you have.

But the average is left with "Japan was the victim. Nanking was a police action to restor order. Only deaths of Japanese really counted or really happened."

The Japanese were not intricate record-keepers like the Germans. Also the overwelming Japanese atrocities, in China, were either obscured by:

- the rapid Russian "liberation" of China mid-late 1945

- the Chinese civil war in the decades up to 1949, or by

- Chinese communist rule, 1949 on.

The senior Japanese Administrators of China 1937-45 would have known but they are probably all dead or won't dishonour their living or dead colleagues, hence won't tell.

Regards

Pete

Plantagenet,
I feel the Japanese have been far more apologetic. Prime ministers, foreign ministers, chief cabinet secretaries made statements of sincere apologies. The Diet (the Japanese parliament) passed at least two resolutions of apologies. As I understand, there is an English site provided by the Japanese Foreign Ministry, but I do not know how to guide you there.
Did any German chacellors or foreign ministers express, on behalf of (West) Germany or of the people, forman remorse? I am not sneering here; I simply do not know. Did the (West) German parliament pass a resolution of apology? I do not know. I will continue.

I (Yoshimichi Moriyama) said in my comment on www.thediplomat.com/Stefan Soresento/What Japan and South Korea Learn from Europe, "I know Willy Brandt was a hero of anti-Nazi resistance movements. The photo of him kneeling down in the pouring rain was indeed moving in spite of what Wawer said. But (West) Germany has been fortunate, unlike Japan, in that she did not have fundamentalists in her neighborhood. She even obained an apology from Czechoslovakia...." I mean China and South Korea by fundamentalists (of the philosophy of Confucianist Zu Zhi or Chu Hsi).
Japan gave a lot of money and economic assitance to both China and South Korean. The CCP has kept the people in the dark about this and a small number of South Koreans know.

uLet's see what Wawer (perhaps a Polish) said in his/her two comments on What Japan and South Korea Could Learn.
"Brandt attention and point of 1970 visit in Warszwa was rather towards Jewish victims than Polish."
"I would like to point out that German example is not quite adequate from Polish site of view....But communistic authorities where disappointed that chancellor Willy Brandt nealed down before the monument of ghetto heroes in Warsaw, but forgot to do the same for Polish victims of Warszwa uprising 1944. Yes there where two uprisings in Warszwa! First in Jewish Ghetto 1943, second led by Polish Underground Movement.... There is also case with Polish forced labour. Over one million of Polish workers were deported to Germany for harsh labour during the war....After joining UE they have gained ridiculous repayment of 150$ each for their slave labour in Germany."

After the Polish uprising of 1944, Warsaw was emptied of anybody except Germans. Warsaw citizens were deported to Germany and elswhere. German soldiers stood on the both sides of the march, picking out women they liked out of the walking columns.
I also understand that Wehrmacht imposed a choice on women in Eastern Europe between going to Germany to work in factories or on farms and staying in their homelands to entertain friendship with German soldiers. I think I will continue a little bit more.

Regards.