Words cannot see - Abe's Pearl Harbor

Anemone 
Kazuhiko Kuwata 

Views Of War Museum Directors Split Over Abe's Pearl Harbor Visit

Tokyo, Dec. 29 (Jiji Press)--The directors of three museums focusing on war history in Japan expressed different views on Wednesday about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor on Tuesday.

Kazushige Todaka, the 68-year-old director of the Kure Maritime Museum, better known as Yamato Museum, in the western prefecture of Hiroshima, described Abe's visit as "very good." "It was meaningful that the leaders of Japan and the United States together mourned for the victims" of the 1941 Japanese attack on the Hawaiian harbor, Todaka said.

He supported the absence of an apology for the attack in Abe's speech delivered in Pearl Harbor, saying that "people can't blame one side or the other for a war that requires reflection, not apology." Abe's Pearl Harbor visit was "remarkable in terms of history," Todaka said.

Katsumoto Saotome, the 84-year-old director of the Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, in Japan's capital, expressed concerns over the emphasis on the Japan-U.S. alliance in Abe's speech, terming it "a military alliance." The words "tolerance" and "reconciliation," both used in Abe's speech, sounded "hollow," Saotome said, referring to the Japanese government's resumption on Tuesday of work to build a new military facility in Okinawa Prefecture to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air station there.

"I think apologies to people in China and the Korean Peninsula, which Japan invaded and colonized, should be made first," added Saotome, who also works as a novelist.

"I felt (Abe's visit) was like a ceremony, themed 'reconciliation without apology,' jointly organized by Japan and the United States," said Seiichiro Kuboshima, the 75-year-old director of a gallery that collects artworks by students who died in war, in Ueda, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan[Mugonkan or Silent Museum]

"The fundamental contradiction of avoiding an apology led to words with no power," Kuboshima said, referring to Abe's Pearl Harbor speech.

"Japan could join a war for the United States," he warned. Abe "lacked a humble attitude" after Japan made the mistake of supporting World War II in the past, he added.

Propaganda context to the final months of WWII

Released on the eve (February 1944) of the beginning of the American strategic bombing campaign of Japan (June 1944), The Purple Heart, is a film portraying the imagined fate of the eight members of a Doolittle Raid bomber crew that were captured by the Japanese of which three were executed and one died of starvation. The Doolittle Raiders were awarded a Congressional Gold Medal this year.

The movie is recalled for having one of the most inspiring endings in a WWII film, Capt. Harvey Ross (Dana Andrews) addresses his Japanese accusers (who look jarringly and inappropriately like Chinese Fu Manchu caricatures) with a defiant speech predicting Japan's coming devastation. Capt. Ross tells the Japanese that Americans do not give up. 

The judges condemn the accused pilots to death, and they proudly march to their destiny, as the US Air Force's theme Wild Blue Yonder plays in a rousing rendition. It is likely the message was as much for the American audiences as it was to impress upon the Germans and Japanese of American determination. 

In the movie, General Ito Mitsubi said "We will win this war because we are willing to sacrifice ten million lives. How many lives is the white man willing to sacrifice?" Well, the answer is we don't have to, we have better technology.