Does the Japanese PM have remorse?

Digger History

In July 2014, Prime Minister Abe traveled to Australia and gave a speech to the country's parliament. His words were well received and viewed as thoughtful and healing. Thus, there is a focus on Abe's speech Down Under as a model for his upcoming address to a joint meeting of Congress on April 29th, Emperor Hirohito's birthday.

Will Americans and America's Pacific war veterans be satisfied with the same sort of statement? To understand why this is problematic, we reprint and analyze the relevant sections here:

Our fathers and grandfathers lived in a time that saw Kokoda and Sandakan. How many young Australians, with bright futures to come, lost their lives? And for those who made it through the war, how much trauma did they feel even years and years later, from these painful memories?

I can find absolutely no words to say. I can only stay humble against the evils and horrors of history.

May I most humbly speak for Japan and on behalf of the Japanese people here in sending my most sincere condolences towards the many souls who lost their lives.
I can find absolutely no words to say. I can only stay humble against the evils and horrors of history.
May I most humbly speak for Japan and on behalf of the Japanese people here in sending my most sincere condolences towards the many souls who lost their lives.

Many people believe that the Prime Minister used the word "remorse" in the speech. This is not true. It is not in the document.

Instead, he sends” his “condolences towards the many souls who lost their lives." It is a general expression of empathy without any hint of responsibility. Who was responsible for the dead?

Abe merely mentions “Sandakan." It dangles out there without explanation or reflection. It is associated with distant time, not tied to a series of human decisions. He does not say that “Sandakan” was a series of senseless death marches in 1945 on Borneo for approximately 2,400 Australian and British POWs. Only six Australians survived. Of those who died, most were never found.

He did not say that Sandakan was a callous, premeditated war crime perpetrated by an incompetent and fanatical leadership. He did not say that it was an atrocity perpetrated by Imperial Japan. He did not say there was any justification to march to death or murder these sick and defenseless men.

Americans should insulted if Abe mentioned the Bataan Death March in as off-handed a manner. No former POW of Japan will be satisfied to only receive a condolence for his suffering and the deaths of his buddies. They do not want a promise to do better and they certainly do not want condescending pity. They want the assurance that comes with acknowledgment of responsibility. They want to hear remorse.

Prime Minister Abe objects to his country’s past war apologies. He walked out on the vote for the 1995 war apology. He now shuns apologies and never mentions who was responsible for his country's most fatal mistakes.

Abe will squander his grandest opportunity to show that Japan has learned from 70 years of peace if he fails to say that Imperial Japan was responsible for the War. Americans want less an apology than an affirmation that what happened was wrong, very wrong.

Wake Island Massacre Anniversary

In the late afternoon of October 7, 1943, 98 civilian American POWs were lined up and seated along the ditch facing the sea. They were blindfolded with their hands and feet bound. Three platoons of Japanese troops then mowed them down with machine gun and rifle fire.

The Americans, all civilian contractors for Morrison-Knudson captured after the historic defense of Wake Island in December 1941, were dumped into the ditch and covered with coral sand. The following day, a report from an enlisted man that he saw one of the prisoners escape during the confusion of the massacre prompted the disinterment of the bodies. The corpses were dug up and counted, then hastily reburied.

The sailor had been correct; one American was missing. That man, whose identity has not been discovered, was re-captured and beheaded personally by the island's commander, Admiral Sakaibara, three weeks later.

On a large coral rock near where the victims were buried is carved 98 US PW 5-10-43 [pictured above]. It is believed that the lone escapee of the massacre returned to the site to carve this lonely memorial before he was recaptured.

The 98 men were what was left of the 1,150 civilian contractors on Wake Island employed by the Morrison-Knudsen Company, to build an airfield, seaplane base, and submarine base and to dredge a channel into the lagoon to allow access for U.S. submarines. Combat, disease, and shipment to Japan and China for slave labor had reduced the group to those unlucky few.  They toiled, for the Japanese, in violation of the Geneva Convention at various military projects on all three islands of the atoll.

The Wake Island Massacre was not the worst nor the most infamous of Imperial Japan's military's tendency to favor the expediency of a mass killing over a humane plan for those suddenly put into their care. Nanking and Manila may be the most well-known for the number of non-combatants killed, but Palawan (which I will soon write about), Bangka Island, and Sandakan have well-documented histories.

On the beach at Bangka in 1942, Japanese soldiers machine gunned 22 shipwrecked Australian military nurses. There was only one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkle. The Sandakan Death Marches were a series of forced marches in Borneo from Sandakan to Ranau which resulted in the deaths of more than 3,600 Indonesian civilian slave laborers and 2,400 Allied prisoners of war. The 38 prisoners left alive at Ranau were shot by their guards, possibly 12 days after the War's end.

Good Sources:

A Magnificent Fight: Marines in the Battle for Wake Island by Robert J. Cressman

The Seige of Wake Island: Facing Fearful Odds by Gregory Urwin

Massacre on Wake Island By Major Mark E. Hubbs, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired)Naval History Magazine - February 2001 Vol. 15 Number 1