Nanjing massacre in a reporter's view

The Nanjing Massacre; Honda Katsuichi; Penguin Books India, 2000; xxvii+367

JAKARTA (JP): In the five decades or so since the end of the Second World War, it has been a constant theme of international debate that the Japanese should both apologize for and make recompense for crimes committed in their name at the time. The issue, far from going away, is still alive as the protests of Korean comfort women, some enslaved as far away as the Andaman Islands, demonstrate. Former POWs, mostly of an advanced age, continue to raise the issue of their savage ill-treatment.

To many non-Japanese it seems that the entire Japanese nation is in a state of constant denial. This, I would contend, is unfair. Living as I did in Japan in 1988-89 during the time of the Emperor Showa's (Hirohito) last illness and death, I saw how it all touched off a wide spectrum of debate about Japanese conduct in the Pacific war, and, more specifically, Hirohito's possible guilt for war crimes. I was able to discuss the matter openly with university students and with elderly Japanese students of mine.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Mayor of Nagasaki paid for his outspoken attribution of blame to the Emperor by being stabbed, but, small mercy, not fatally, by an extreme rightist. There were even those who said they would celebrate Hirohito's passing, and one all-female rock band announced they would hold a concert on the eve of the funeral for just this purpose.

Of course, many Japanese were still reluctant to see what others saw in them, or rather in the wartime atrocities and other crimes against humanity committed by Imperial forces. And even when overwhelming evidence was presented they continued to deny.

Few events matter as much in this context as the 1937 Rape of Nanking, when Imperial Japanese forces brutalized the Chinese population of the city of the same name, here transliterated as Nanjing. Chinese bitterness over this remains until today.

Journalist Honda Katsuichi has set out to put the record straight and to stare down the deniers among his own people. He even regards it as his patriotic duty to get at as much of the truth as possible, whether or not it reflects badly on Japan. And like the Nagasaki mayor, he has roused the wrath of the far right whose threats forced him to change his address and telephone number.

"The massacres that unfolded everywhere," he writes, "were systematic acts based on policies of the upper echelons of the Japanese military. Katsuichi has made exhaustive research and continues, "A first-class source for demonstrating this is 'Division Commander Nakajima's Diary".

He then quotes the Army Infantry School's textbook, Studies in Methods of Fighting the Chinese Army, which states openly, "There would be no repercussions for killing prisoners." However, the Nakajima Diary makes it plain that the killing of prisoners was a deliberate policy, "For the most part our policy is not to take prisoners."

Katsuichi has looked firmly into the dark circle of this crime. Interviewing extensively among Chinese survivors -- itself an act that would enrage the far right, the author has brought us face-to-face with the full horror of this project in which the Japanese were made to believe the Chinese were untermenschen (sub-humans). The book has many illustrations -- the photos tend to be very grainy -- and maps that flesh out the detail.

This is an important volume, I would contend, and one which should serve as proof that not all the Japanese believe there is nothing to answer for. As the world struggles to come to terms with more recent outrages in places such as Bosnia, Chechnya, Rwanda and East Timor it is a welcome and thorough contribution to an issue that continues to bear weight. The struggle to reveal history's dark side, and, where possible, to learn from it, continues.

Perhaps the egregious Senator Jesse Helms, opponent of U.S. membership of the International Criminal Court should be sent a copy. And, indeed, the men in high places in TNI.

-- David Jardine