Japan Apologizes for Bataan Death March

ABCNews ^ | 5/30/09 | Vija Udenans

[Question_Assumptions]

That’s a quite strongly worded and unequivocal apology from the Japanese. Now they need to offer a version of that apology to the Chinese, Koreans, and others that they brutalized.

[SuziQ]

Amazing. We had a family friend who was one of the soldiers in the Bataan Death March. Even though he lived another almost 30 years, he never truly recovered from that horror.

[Texas resident]

Very true. To this day, even communist China with it’s billions of people, are very wary of Japan.

[dljordan]

They foresee trouble with N. Korea and possibly China and want to cozy up to us.

[angelrod]

The most disturbing book I have ever read. Hard to reconcile Japan back then with the modern Japan. The author of the book committed suicide and it is theorized that it was because of the graphic nature of the research that she did for the book.

[Carley]

The book is banned in Japan as far as I know.

I did find it on the internet at the request of my son and mailed it to him a couple of years ago.

There are other books out there on the sadistic mind of the Japanese.

Not something to be forgotten.

[DTogo]

Certainly a nice gesture, but can our two countries put this dark chapter behind us?

"Let us move forward together" - Winston Churchill

日本＊ピング＊ (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)

[william clark]

There’s a potent online documentary about it. Not sure if it’s specifically based on the book.

But anytime anyone ever tries to argue that we were wrong for using nukes to end the war, I offer one word: Nanking. After having seen the aforementioned documentary, I was purged of any sympathy for the citizens of Japan at that time.

[agrace]

He once told me that if they had been liberated a week or two later, he wouldn’t have made it.

My grandfather's 40+ years in the military started when he was nineteen with the Philippine liberation - he was on active duty from 43-46 and stationed at Leyte Island. He earned a Philippine Liberation Ribbon, a Philippine Presidential Unit Citation (given by the Philippine President) and an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one battle star, among others. I have his WW2 Victory Medal and ribbon framed and hanging on my office wall. After active duty in the army he went into full time service with the National Guard, became a top grade warrant officer and retired in 1984 after two five year tours at the Pentagon with the NG Bureau.

At 85 he is losing his own personal battle with Alzheimers and I am currently compiling everything we have on his life to do a video tribute at his eventual memorial service. As I review all his wonderful stuff, I couldn't be prouder that he took part in securing the freedom of POWs held by the Japanese.

MacArthur returned to the Philippines at Leyte Island in 1944. The Battle of Leyte kicked off the Philippine Liberation.

[Carley]

I well remember Peter Jennings speaking about the war as an apologia for Japan.

[Larry381]

My dad was a Marine in one of the units scheduled for the invasion of Japan. When they got word the war had ended they were sent to North China to help with the demobilization of the Japanese troops there. He always remembered how wonderful the Chinese were to them and strangely, how helpful the demobilized Japanese were. Since their unit was so dispersed all over Northern China they were forced to use some of the Japanese troops as military police for a few weeks.
I still have pictures of him with a smiling Japanese soldier with both of them surrounded by a mob of Chinese kids.

[ought-six]

When I was a kid there was a Bataan Death March survivor in our neighborhood. I remember him as being a very quiet man who always seemed to be working in his garden.

[tinamina]

I think a large number of the guys on the march were from New Mexico. My great uncle was among them, a survivor.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Now the Italians need to apologize for the Roman Empire, the English to the Irish, and so on and so forth. Like all such things—its fluff, feel good fluff but how will it stop the inflation? How will help the economy?

[Tolkien]

Well, I'm speechless.

[agrace]

I am quite respectful of the fact that an entire generation of Japanese was able to do such an about face and reject the ideology through which they had operated for as long as they did, despite the fact that they had grown up with it. No doubt it was difficult. (Islam needs the same sort of ideological cleansing.)

My FIL was in the Navy and on a ship heading for the AP theatre when we dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His boat turned around and went home.

Decades later my BIL, his eldest son, a Navy Lt-Commander who in that same area served on a nuclear sub and later an aircraft carrier, met and married a Japanese woman with whom he could barely communicate, not knowing the language very well. Soon after, my in-laws traveled to Japan to meet their son’s new family. Through the translation of their new step-grandson (Naomi had an eight year old by a previous marriage), the two patriarchs learned that they likely narrowly missed fighting against one another toward the end of the war because of those bombs.

Despite the anticipated apprehension they both felt, they were able to come together on the common ground of how happy they both were that they were meeting as friends rather than enemies.

Upon learning that about my husband’s family, as well as the fact that my grandfather served there, the dropping of the atomic bombs took on a new meaning for me in that things might very well have been different otherwise. What if my grandfather or my father-in-law had died there instead?

It’s a sobering thing to imagine.

[Jmouse007]

Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki, I along with multitudes of Americans want to thank you and the government of Japan for your apology regarding the Bataan Death March. While it can not restore the lives of those who were murdered at the hands of the Japanese military, your admission and apology mean a great deal. It took tremendous courage on the part of Japans to finally admit its guilt in this matter and will go a long way towards providing healing for many who survived it and who are still alive.

[M. Espinola]

1942-2009, why did it take this long for a Japanese official to admit 'some' of Imperial Japan's war crimes regarding the Bataan Death March?