ASEAN prefers pragmatic approach to Japan

ASEAN prefers pragmatic approach to Japan

Karl Malakunas, Agence France-Presse/Singapore

While Japan's military atrocities remain a source of fury in China and the Koreas, analysts say Southeast Asian nations have been more willing to bury anti-Japanese sentiments for the sake of trade.

The actions of Japanese troops during their World War II occupations of much of Southeast Asia are still deeply resented in the region, but their governments have long favored a pragmatic approach in dealing with Japan's imperialism.

"It's not true that Southeast Asians have completely forgotten the Japanese occupation because our people suffered a great deal under them," former Association of Southeast Asian Nations secretary general Rodolfo Severino told AFP.

"However Southeast Asians have not let these things get in the way of substantial relations with Japan... Southeast Asians are not letting the legacy of the war and occupation get in the way of present and future relations."

Severino, a Filipino who is now a senior research fellow with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said another important factor was that Southeast Asian countries do not view Japan as a rival in the way that China does.

Also, Japan's history of interference in Southeast Asia, while substantial, brutal and traumatic, was not as great as in China and North and South Korea.

"Of course most of the countries in Southeast Asia suffered a great deal under the Japanese... but this took place under a much shorter period of time than the Koreans and the Chinese endured," Severino said.

In Malaysia, there are still some rumblings of anger from the ethnic Chinese, who account for about a quarter of the country's 26 million population.

The Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia on Wednesday echoed the chorus of criticism emanating from China, which was triggered by Tokyo's approval of a textbook that many say whitewashes Japan's wartime atrocities.

"After nearly 60 years, Japan has still not apologized to the world for its atrocities during World War II and now it is distorting historical truth. We strongly object to it," federation secretary Cheng Lai Hock told AFP.

Shamsul Amir Baharuddin, a sociology lecturer at the National University of Malaysia, said Japanese sentiments in Malaysia were divided along ethnic lines, with the majority Malays understanding the occupation helped trigger nationalism that led to independence.

But he said the Chinese in Malaysia were also "more pragmatic than emotional" and had moved ahead to establish important business ties with Japan.

Professor Lee Poh Ping of the National University of Malaysia's Institute of Malaysian and International Studies said there was little danger of anti-Japanese tensions rising too high in Malaysia.

"It will not gather much intensity in Malaysia like what we see in China and the two Koreas since Japan's occupation was more intense in those two countries," Lee said.

In the Philippines, Japan's brutal occupation is still remembered, fueled periodically by the long and unsuccessful campaign for justice by Filipinos who were used as sex slaves, or "comfort women", for Japanese soldiers.

However these issues have been largely relegated to the background amid Japan's rise as one of the top foreign investors in the Philippines and the largest source of bilateral foreign aid.

Asked to assess the relations between the two nations, Philippine ambassador to Japan Domingo Siazon described the ties as "very good".

"We have no serious problems. The only political issue there, right now maybe, is the claim of some comfort women."

Japan enjoys a similarly positive relationship with Indonesia, where the occupation, although as vicious as anywhere else, triggered the end of Dutch colonial rule and was backed up with enduring economic and foreign aid support.

"During the Soeharto years Japan was seen as savior of our economy because of its generous aid and investment in Indonesia," Ketut Suradjaja, a Japan expert at the University of Indonesia, said referring to the Indonesian leader's reign from 1965 to 1998.

"Indonesia has never criticized Japan's history text books, probably because of our realization that it is a Japanese history text book anyway and is aimed at serving Japan's national interests."

In Chinese-majority Singapore, the nation's founder and one of the most influential figures in post-World War II Southeast Asia, Lee Kuan Yew, wrote in his memoirs of the Japanese occupying troops being "unbelievably cruel".

He wrote that Japan's leaders needed to finally apologize for their World War II actions. "Asia and Japan must move on. We need greater trust and confidence in each other," he wrote.

Nevertheless, under Lee, Singapore and Japan established strong economic links and he wrote that he now counts some Japanese as "good friends".

Japanese troops also occupied Thailand during World War II, and the country was the scene of horrific labor camps for allied prisoners of war and Asian forced laborers.

But the Thais themselves were largely spared, said Woravuth Suwanarith, an advisor at the War Museum in Kanchanaburi, near a cemetery for POWs who died while making the infamous Death Railway to Myanmar.

"Thai people who were alive in World War II have not forgotten what Japanese troops did to prisoners of war, but no one hates Japan because Japan treated Thais well," Woravuth said.

"Thai people nowadays see Japan as an economic power... the new generation has no feeling about what Japan did during the war. They only know Japan from products, advertisements, cartoons and movies."