... while Japan fails at remembering

HONG KONG (JP): On Aug. 31, as the government led by Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama presented what was billed in advance as a one billion dollar ten-year package meant as atonement for the bitter fruits of Japanese aggression in World War II, it brought about no redemption beyond a few words of faint praise from some Southeast Asian leaders.

Already, it is clear that the only way in which some "atonement" will be achieved is if East and Southeast Asian leaders use their authoritarian powers to suppress those who will continue agitating for a just settlement. In order to understand why this is so, it is only necessary to try and put oneself in the shoes of one of the victims whom the package was supposed to help: "You are old, you are tired and for fifty years you have nursed the shame and the hurt of a dark and painful secret. When you were still a fourteen year old girl at school, you were recruited into the sexual service of the Imperial Japanese Army. Day in and day out for eight months you had to make your young body available for the satisfaction of an unending stream of mainly Japanese soldiers and civilians, though sometimes your own people used you, too, since they were also fighting for the Japanese.

"The mental and the physical pain was unbearable, so you were almost relieved when your services were terminated as a result of a bad case of venereal disease. You then asked for help from those who had raped you, but none came.

"Throughout the years since then, the agony of remembrance never went away in the endless struggle to survive. Then friends persuaded you to join them in speaking out against the great wrong that was done to you and tens of thousands like you. The Japanese are changing, they said, they will make amends for our suffering. So you joined them and spoke out, despite the shame, waiting for the day of atonement.

"When it came, there was nothing there. The Japanese promised to collect more history documents. They promised to fund exchanges for today's students, but there was no mention of compensation for the `exchanges' you were forced to provide when your students days were arbitrarily ended.

"So the speaking out achieved nothing, the pain and the shame abide. You cheer on the students as they throw eggs and rocks in protest at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. It's so maddening that the world refers to you as a "comfort woman", for, whatever comfort you were forced to give to others, you were provided with no comfort for yourself."

The abject Japanese failure to make real atonement was hardly surprising. Murayama himself seemed to hint at dissatisfaction. He did not present the package himself, but had his words read out by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi. Murayama knew that this was not his initiative.

First and last the package was a perfect paradigm for Japan in the last 50 years: it was created by bureaucrats for bureaucrats with bureaucratic interests very much in mind.

Take Japan's most intractable foreign policy problem -- finding redemption for the horrors it perpetrated in World War II -- throw a lot of bureaucrats into a room, and what emerged last Wednesday is entirely predictable. The text of the "Peace Friendship and Exchange Initiative" (PFEI) is heavy with "bureaucratese," and makes no appeal to the hearts of East and Southeast Asians, wherein the power to grant atonement for past Japanese sins essentially lies.

The package-response began winding its way through the Japanese bureaucratic maze several years ago when the exposures and agitation over the "comfort women" saga surfaced. Clearly, those in charge of creating the PFEI were not given any clear political direction, so they were more anxious to avoid a problem rather than solve it. The basic, exaggerated, bureaucratic fear was the possibility of having to find, examine and ultimately reward every aging prostitute in East and Southeast Asia.

So the second sentence of the PFEI, far from appealing to the head or heart of past victims, makes a determined typically bureaucratic caveat: "With regard to the issues on reparations, property, and claims relating to the war, we have dealt with them in good faith in accordance with the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the other relevant international agreements".

The Japanese have a point. As they re-emerged after the war, they did make reparations deals with the nations that recognized them. But all the payments were government-to-government. If there is little to show for past reparations today, then it is because much of the aid was wasted, the deals had little lasting impact and in some countries reparations became a synonym for corruption.

There will be little atonement for Japan in the latest package because it repeats the same mistake. The collection of historical documents in South Korea and China will be a government-to- government program.

Given the extent to which the Japanese bureaucracy earlier sought to cover up documentation of the comfort women saga, the promised new history archives are closer to an insult than an atonement. Talk of founding vocational training centers for the comfort women (not mentioned in the PFEI) would be laughable were it not so inept.

There was only one faint indication that the package might measure up to the problem Japan faces. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the plan called for the hastened repatriation of all the Sakhalin Koreans still wishing to go home after 50 years forced exile brought about by the Japanese. Forty three thousand Koreans were taken from South Korea for forced labor in Sakhalin 1943-45, and most of them were never included in any repatriation scheme after the Soviet Union took over the island in 1945.

It would be a great idea if Murayama had said that finally Japan would make amends for this great injustice, and had meant it. But in the full text of the bureaucratic atonement package, printed by the Yomiuri, the Sakhalin Koreans were not even mentioned.

Window: Given the extent to which the Japanese bureaucracy earlier sought to cover up documentation of the comfort women saga, the promised new history archives are closer to an insult than an atonement.