Japan, Media Still Deny Nanking Massacre

Last month on Veterans Day, the world learned of the tragic death, apparently by suicide, of Iris Chang, the youthful American author of Chinese descent who wrote the 1997 best-selling history The Rape of Nanking. Chang's book did more than any other work to reveal the facts of the 1937-38 Nanking massacre in which the Japanese Empire raped untold thousands and murdered perhaps as many as 300,000 unarmed Chinese civilians and soldiers. Many in Japan still officially deny the massacre took place despite historical evidence and eyewitness accounts establishing it as unimpeachable fact. Outcry among them succeeded in derailing a Japanese edition of Chang's book.

Intolerably, official denials of the massacre continue to this day among Japanese government officials and media editors. The same day news of Chang's death broke, the Japanese publisher Shueisha Inc. said that it would bow down to conservative Japanese politicians by censoring material about the massacre in one of its magazines.

The most important fact to glean from the terrible things that the Japanese did prior to and during World War II is that nations that do such things can be redeemed.

Time after time I hear bigoted Democrats claim that the Muslims of the middle east can not be redeamed....that they are not fit for Democracy. They say it time after time. And the media never calls them on it.

They Democrats and the media tends to support such men as Kofi Annon who apparently feels that blacks in Sudan and Muslims in Iraq have no ability to maintain or right to demand freedom.

What happened to the Japanese culture after WWII puts a lie to the media's support of the Democrat's bigotry.

Democrats will be painted in history as very racially biased people.. full of prejudice. They try to make the case that those who do not fit their elite perceptions of who constitutes the "right" people, do not deserve to be free.

Until Japan acknowledges this and other WWII atrocities, and stops whitewashing them in their school textbooks, they certainly don't deserve a permanent seat on the UNSC.

It is true that Japan is one of the most ethnocentric societies alive, and arguably the only truly racist among first-world nations. This mindset has apparently been kept alive since World War II, when they were hell-bent on enslaving the South Pacific (which is why people who call Michelle Malkin a hypocrite are really being silly: as a Filipini by ancestry, she would be the first one you would expect to support the Japanese internment). Even so, I'm not sure I would decry their sense of identity and strict immigration policies; after all, they're only trying to keep Japan Japan. We once had the same mindset, until the Kennedy-Johnson government changed immigration policy and turned us into a multicultural hellhole. As one who generally supports nationalist movements and strict immigration laws, I can't say I completely loathe the mindset that makes the Japanese reluctant to acknowledge their World War II crimes.

That being said, I am obviously in no way suggesting that what they did was excusable, or that they should not have to own up to what they did. Germany, after all, has had to own up to its brutal murder of Jews and Slavs, and we have had to come to terms with our less than humane treatment of slaves. (All this does provoke an interesting thought, though. I don't believe Western politicians have held Turkey's feet to the fire for its genocide against the Armenians, either--is it only Christian countries who have to play fairly?) I don't think love of one's country or refusal to surrender one's identity to a "global village" requires one to abandon all notions of humanity or morality. I guess what I'm saying is that while their denial irks me, I can at least (to a point, of course) admire their proud nationalistic mindset.

The most important fact to glean from the terrible things that the Japanese did prior to and during World War II is that nations that do such things can be redeemed.

I have never heard a Democrat argue against the Iraq war on the grounds that Muslims are not fit for democracy--if it were so, these people would be championing an immediate halt on the influx of Muslims to the U.S. And this Republican, for the record, remains thoroughly convinced that Islam and Democracy are incompatible. It is a matter of culture.

When Christianity swept Europe, it managed to transform the outlook and values of the continent, but was open to absorbing its culture. Christ, after all, said little more about politics than to "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God," acknowledging the validity of secular institutions apart from His Church. And even when the Church and the State were allied, as they were in Medieval Europe, the Church remained a separate institution from the state itself.

Not so with Islam. Orthodox Islam draws no such distinctions between religion and politics, between the sacred and the secular. The Islamic imamate, unlike the Christian priesthood, has traditionally been as much a secular office as it has a spiritual one. They don't call it "Islamic law" for nothing. The very nature of Islam explains the fact that it has caused immense damage to every civilization it has come into contact with: from Byzantium to Persia.

Critics will argue that Turkey is an example of a secular democracy with a predominantly Muslim population. To this I have two things to say. First, Kemal Attaturk was only able to Westernize his country by suppressing all public expressions of Islam through the military, which to this day remains the guardian of the Kemalist tradition. Second, the ruling political party of Turkey grew out of the ashes of a previously banned Islamic movement--and I, for one, think it needs to be monitored very carefully.

Now, back to Japan. Since World War II, they have indeed managed to make something good of themselves, but their ethnocentrism has not subsided. Foreigners often have a difficult time making it in that country, even ethnic Japanese who immigrate from Brazil. I'm not suggesting that nationalism or tight immigration restrictions are bad things, or that Japan is likely to revert back to its imperial hegemony. I am only saying that they have changed more so in some ways, less so in others. They may have abandoned vicious imperialism, but I don't think they ever had the same remorse that, say, Germany has had to bear.

I have never heard a Democrat argue against the Iraq war on the grounds that Muslims are not fit for democracy

What they say is the Iraqi's do not want Democracy and are not ready for Democracy. That argument is made daily by liberal spokespersons on FNC. Try tuning in and listening. They make the same argument the slave owners made about black slaves in the United States. In 1860 Democrats argued that Blacks did not want freedom and could not handle it if given the opportunity. They are saying the same thing about muslims today.

That is exactly the Demcoratic Position on Iraqi freedom. That is why they say it is a mistake to have removed Saddam. They would have said the same thing had we taken Hitler down in 1937.

You also argue that Liberal Democrats are logical. That since Democrats do not object to Muslim imigration they must favor freedom for Muslims. Arguing that liberals are consistant is an oxymoron.

Today's Democrats favored leaving Saddam in power just as they argued for leaving Hitler in power in 1937.

They argued that it was an evil thing when Churchill wanted to take Hitler out in 1937. Even the French admitted that Hitler could have been over thrown at the cost of about 1,200 deaths. Instead they waited until it cost a total of 50 million lives to take Hitler down.

Liberals have the blood of 50 million WWII Dead on their hands. And if it had not been for Winston Churchill you would have a NATZI jack boot up your rump today.

If it were not for George Bush you could look forward to a nuclear death or slavery at the hands of Muslims.

What you post only reveals your ignorance of the real world and proves you have learned nothing of the lessons of history!!

I have little patience for televised news, so I'll have to take your word for it. Perhaps some of them are saying that, but if so, it is merely partisan fervor that is causing them to think that way. Democrats did not, after all, have any objection to romanticizing the KLA in order to allow Clinton to murder Serbian Orthodox under KFOR. Like you say, "Arguing that liberals are consistant is an oxymoron."

And as for your overly simplistic correlation of the Democrats' position on American blacks to the condition of Arab Muslims, it would be remiss not to point out that the demograpics of the Democratic Party of the 1800's more closely resembled those of the Republican Party of today. I would have voted Democrat in 1860--not because I'm for slavery (I'm a New Yorker by nature), but because I'm for Constitutionism.

Today's Democrats favored leaving Saddam in power just as they argued for leaving Hitler in power in 1937.

No, it was Democrats and liberals who wanted to meddle in world affairs in the 1930's. Isolationists were usually Republican and conservative. Wendell Willkie managed to get at least a few votes in 1940 by accusing President Roosevelt of "warmongering."

Again, "arguing that liberals are consistant is an oxymoron." They are engaging in partisan bickering. Were it not for something called the Twenty-Second Amendment, today Democrats would be singing Bill Clinton's praises for invading Iraq.

That was the problem of the English and French for failing to enforce the armistice treaty (without which, I might add, we might never have had the doomed Weimar Republic in the first place). How were we supposed to know what Hitler would do?

If it were not for George Bush you could look forward to a nuclear death or slavery at the hands of Muslims.

But while U.S. troops are securing Iraq, George Bush is hard at work increasing the number of refugees and immigrants allowed into this country.

What you post only reveals your ignorance of the real world and proves you have learned nothing of the lessons of history!!

With all due respect, your own grasp of simple facts about history and world sociology is strikingly deficient.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.