Monday, 14 December 2009

The Victims

When claims are made that the Holocaust did not happened, it only draws out the heated emotion out of the Jews. However, the Germans did make their official public apology. In the case of Nanking Massacre or The Rape of Nanking, the Japanese not only denied it ever happened, they even attempted to rewrite the History of WW2.

So far, no official public apology has ever been offered.

Siren sounded on Sunday, 13 December 2009 at 10 a.m. as 5,000 people gathered, as reported by Xinhua, on the square in front of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre, mourning the dead in deep reverent silence and presenting their wreaths. Later the bell tolled as the crowd prayed for world peace.

It all happened 72 long years ago!

From Wikipedia, we learn that the “Nanking Massacre also known as the Rape of Nanking, refers to a six-week period following the Japanese capture of the city of Nanjing (Nanking), former capital of the Republic of China, on December 9, 1937. During this period, hundreds of thousands of civilians were murdered and 20,000-80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. The massacre remains a contentious political issue, as various aspects of it have been disputed by some historical revisionists and Japanese nationalists, who have claimed that the massacre has been either exaggerated or wholly fabricated for propaganda purposes. As a result of the nationalist efforts to deny or rationalise the war crimes, the controversy created surrounding the massacre remains a stumbling block in Sino-Japanese relations, as well as Japanese relations with other Asia-Pacific nations such as South Korea and the Philippines.”

“The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates 260,000 casualties; China’s official estimate is 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. While the Japanese government has acknowledged the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of Nanking, some Japanese officials have argued that the death toll was military in nature and that no such crimes ever occurred. Denial of the massacre, and a divergent array of revisionist accounts of the killings, has become a staple of Japanese nationalism. In Japan, public opinion of the massacres varies, and few deny the occurrence of the massacre outright.

What’s needed is a public admission & apology by the Japanese Government to satisfy the hearts & minds of the people in China, South Korea & other East Asian nations.

The Hall is built in the eighties when a number of Japanese politicians and writers claimed that the Massacre had never ocurred and history textbooks were rewritten by the authority describing the Massacre as a minor incident.

Instead, a number of Japanese politicians and writers denied not just the Massacre but any of their wrong doings in the Second World War. They claimed that they had “liberated” Asian peoples from Western colonialism. The Nanjing Massacre is one of their so-called “liberations”.

This WWW Memorial Hall is created to expose their lies and to preserve the historical truth.

Let the victims of the Massacre rest in peace but not be buried in lies.

Zhang Jiuhan, vice-chairman of Jiangsu Committee of the People’s Political Consultative Conference, said this: “China and Japan should keep friendly relations for generations and cooperate for mutual benefits. This is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples.”

I would like to say this: people can forgive but forgetting is another matter.

Any attempt to rewrite history rather than to admit & apologise is futile indeed.