Free Republic

Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th Century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan and went to school in Australia. Former history teacher and scholar Tamaki Matsuoka holds Japan's education system responsible for a number of the country's foreign relations difficulties. "Our system has been creating young people who get annoyed by all the complaints that China and South Korea make about war atrocities because they are not...

Japan has conveyed its concern to the U.S. government that a statement made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could contradict an agreement with South Korea over the “comfort women,” sources close to the matter said. “It’s one that only they can resolve,” Tillerson told reporters this month after a 20-nation ministerial meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. “And we know that there’s more that needs to be done,” he said, referring to the issue of the Korean girls and women who were forced into Japan’s military brothels before and during the war. Tokyo has told Washington that Tillerson’s words could...

A film about a member of the Nazi party who saved thousands of Chinese during the massacre in Nanjing recently opened in Germany. The BBC's Zoe Murphy looks at the possible impact this unlikely hero's story may have on Sino-Japanese relations. On Christmas Eve in 1937, German businessman John Rabe visited the mortuary in China's then capital, Nanjing. He later described in his diary the charred body of a civilian man whose eyes had been gouged out, and a boy of perhaps seven, whose corpse was punctured with bayonet wounds. "I wanted to see these atrocities with my own eyes,...

Former President George W. Bush said during an ABC interview aired in December that the "biggest regret" of his presidency was the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, for which the U.S. waged the war. His statement virtually acknowledges it was a war without a cause. It's too late for regrets, but what about Japan? The Japanese government did support the U.S.-led war on Iraq, but it has now fallen silent as if the war is someone else's affair. Are we simply going to evade the issue by saying it was a decision by former Prime Minister Junichiro...

MANY Japanese were surprised that a hotel chain, under a cloud for shoddy earthquake-proofing standards, should sponsor a competition for the best essay to deny Japan’s wartime role as an aggressor and sponsor of atrocities. But then the chain’s boss, Toshio Motoya, is a vigorous historical revisionist (and big supporter of Shinzo Abe, prime minister in 2006-07). More astounding, then: the competition winner, Toshio Tamogami, was none other than the head of Japan’s air force.

SIERRA VISTA — Fon B. Huffman, the last survivor from the international Panay Incident of 1937, died Thursday, his family announced. Huffman, born in 1913, celebrated his 95th birthday on Aug. 19. He died peacefully in his sleep at noon in Hacienda Rehabilitation and Care Center. His daughter, Nancy Ferguson, was by his side. The Iowa farm boy who joined the Navy at age 16 was a 24-year-old sailor aboard the USS Panay when it was attacked near Nanking, China, on Dec. 12, 1937, by Imperial Japanese warplanes. In those days, the American gunboat, part of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet,...

SIERRA VISTA — Four years before Pearl Harbor was attacked, a local man sailed on a U.S. Navy ship that was bombed and sunk by Imperial Japanese warplanes. The incident happened on Dec. 13, 1937, as the USS Panay was evacuating U.S. embassy personnel from Nanking, China’s capital of that era. It was a city under siege whose downfall became the infamous Rape of Nanking. The Panay was a gunboat that belonged to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, whose 1930s peacetime mission included protection of American lives and property from pirates along the lawless Yangtze River, under a treaty with the...

Survivors and relatives attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing massacre in Nanjing December 13, 2007. Thousands of pigeons are released during a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. Chinese people attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops. Chinese students hold candles during a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre Students light candles during a memorial event marking the 70th anniversary of Nanjing massacre in Nanjing. People attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops at the memorial...

Japan's embattled defense minister resigned Tuesday over his comments suggesting the 1945 atomic bombings Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inevitable, news reports said. Fumio Kyuma had come under intense criticism from survivors of the bombing following the comments made over the weekend. He had apologized. Broadcaster NHK and NTV carried news of the resignation.

TOKYO: About 100 Japanese governing party lawmakers denounced the Nanjing Massacre as a fabrication on Tuesday, contesting Chinese claims that Japanese soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of people after seizing the Chinese city in 1937.

August 6th marked the 60th anniversary of America’s use of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. While some still argue that President Truman’s decision to use the A-bomb was “controversial,” they are afflicted with the scourge of our time, the loss of a sense of moral proportion and certainty. Unfortunately, those with relativistic morals will lead us to see the day when nuclear weapons are used again – this time to end once and for all the barbaric savagery of Islamism. Green Left Weekly (GLW) calls the U.S. putting a swift end to WWII – using atomic...

To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the surrender of Japan on Aug. 15, the Chinese government has released a film made by an Episcopal priest documenting the Nanjing massacre. The Rev. John G. Magee, an Episcopal missionary in China from 1912-1940, recorded the Dec. 13, 1937, capture of the city and six-week killing spree by Japanese soldiers that claimed over 300,000 Chinese lives. China’s Xinhua News Agency reported the National Museum in Beijing began screenings of Fr. Magee’s film on Aug. 10, and that a library in Nanjing dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of the massacre had...

Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday expressed "deep remorse" and "heartfelt apology" for Japan's wartime wrongdoings, in a gesture believed to be aimed at mending ties with its Asian neighbors that have soured due to historical issues surrounding Japan's war in Asia and its occupation of Korea. In a speech delivered to a meeting of Asian and African leaders held in the Indonesian capital, Koizumi also made a pitch for reforms of the U.N. Security Council and underscored Tokyo's qualifications as a potential permanent member of the U.N. decision-making body. "In the past, Japan, through its colonial rule...

A young historian's book on the 1937 atrocity unleashed a tide of repressed anguish and international recriminations that continue even after her suicide THOSE who knew Iris Chang used to worry about how she could cope with the gloom of her chosen work. But when they visited the house in California that she shared with her husband and saw him playing with their two-year-old son by the swimming pool in the backyard, they were reassured. The 36-year-old historian would sip lemonade with her friends at a Chinese café called the Tea House and, for a while, the torrent of terror...

S.J. author's death felt deeply on anniversary of Nanking atrocities By Jessie Mangaliman Mercury News More than 100 Bay Area residents gathered Saturday in Millbrae to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the "Rape of Nanking," atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in China in the 1930s. But the already solemn occasion took on a sad and somber mood as organizers paid tribute to author Iris Chang, the most prominent voice of an international movement to force the Japanese government to apologize and pay wartime reparations. Chang, 36, author of the best-selling book "The Rape of Nanking," apparently took her own life...

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Li Xiuying, who survived one of the greatest atrocities of Japan's World War II invasion of China and later became a powerful advocate for victims, has died at age 86, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday. She died Saturday of respiratory failure in the eastern city of Nanjing, the scene in 1937 of what became known as the Nanking Massacre, Xinhua said. "As a witness of the massacre, my mother had been fighting to reveal the truth of history," Lu Yongsen, Li's eldest son, was quoted as saying. Li was 18 and pregnant when Nanjing,...

Here's something compelling to think about on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7: 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...

A Sadness Set In Commentary John Harris Jr. The article began “Best-selling Chinese-American author Iris Chang was found dead in her car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was 36 and had recently been treated for depression.” Iris Chang spoke at my college graduation, here at Cal State Hayward. It was just last June. I remember sitting, thoroughly disenchanted by the regalia-clad mob swelling around me. Given it was a time of excitement and celebration, to the ceremony clung the uneasy sense of a population madding. It was in the way people fought in the stands for seats no better...

Noted Author Iris Chang Dies Was 2004 Commencement Speaker By Cassia Clinton Staff Writer Cal State Hayward honorary alumna and bestselling author Iris Chang was found dead last week from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in a remote area outside of Los Gatos, said police. She was 36. Chang was awarded an honorary doctorate when she served as the keynote speaker at the CSUH commencement ceremony in June. In her speech, she challenged graduates to “Believe in the power of one.” “Your path to freedom lies in your belief in the power of one person to make a difference,” she...

'The Rape of Nanking' author is found dead Iris Chang, the bestselling Bay Area author whose book on Japanese atrocities in China during World War II catapulted her to fame and prominence, was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was 36. Chang drove down a road south of Los Gatos and shot herself in her car, authorities said. Santa Clara County sheriff's Deputy Terrance Helm said a motorist driving Tuesday morning on Highway 17 south of the Cats restaurant in an unincorporated area near Los Gatos noticed a car a short distance down a private water district...