Subject: Re: [GA general] Wall Street Journal articles on Diaoyu Tai
To: Editor, The Wall Street Journal, Date: 9/17/12 wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
From: Peter Stanek, PhD., President (2008-2012) Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WW II in Asia
Subject: Diaoyu Tai Island dispute
Reference 1: WSJ article, Friday, 14 September 2012
Reference 2: WSJ article, Monday, 17 September 2012
Reference 1, by Yuka Hayashi and Eleanor Warnock, is a gross distortion of the truth of history, as well as a misleading analysis of the political situation between the US, Japan, and China. The Diaoyu Tai Island group has been Chinese and/or Taiwanese territory for centuries, as reflected in both Chinese and Japanese records and history publications.
Reference 2, by Brian Spegele and Takashi Nakamichi, further compounds the Journal’s errors by focusing attention away from the underlying problem of Japanese government’s decades-long refusal to acknowledge, confront, and remedy the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in Mainland Asia and in Island Nations of the Pacific.
The central issue is Japan’s aggression in Northeast China in 1931, which started the Pacific War, 1931-45, and the multiple injustices inflicted on Asian and Allied nations.
For it was on today’s date in 1931, that Japanese Imperial Armed Forces began the devastating Pacific War.
In a barbaric rampage across Asia, Japan’s record of murder, rape, looting and destruction still today in 2012 goes unacknowledged by Japan.
Any wonder Asians are upset?
Among Japanese war crimes and atrocities:
* 35 million unarmed civilians murdered in China, Southeast Asia, and island nations of the Pacific.
* Tens of thousands tortured and murdered by Japan’s Army Unit 731 in the search for efficient and effective biochemical weapons of mass destruction.
* Repeated use of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction in China and Southeast Asia.
* Hundreds of thousands of Asians and Allied POWs enslaved to work to death in mines and factories of Japan during the war.
* A half-million young girls and women from Korea, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere abducted for sex slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army, to be raped daily for years.
* Millions of POWs executed by the Japanese Imperial Army
* And the infamous 1937 Rape of Nanjing: 300,000 murders, 80,000 rapes, buildings and homes looted and destroyed.
Eighty one years ago today, Japan started the Pacific War. Asians have suffered terrible injustice.
The whole world–Japanese citizens included–suffers these injustices yet again as Japan’s government continues to deny her moral responsibility.
To this very day, high Japanese government officials and prominent business and social leaders continue to worship the memory of brutal Japanese thugs and sadistic killers, and to deny any of this ever happened.
Today, instead of moral and ethical behavior appropriate to modern, civilized nations, Japan has now set a new course of Imperial conquest that might well lead to another Pacific War.
The Diaoyu Tai Islands are not now and never have been Japanese territory.
Today is rather a time for peace, harmony, and reconciliation among all Western Pacific nations.
Dr. Peter Stanek
Forgotten faces: Japan’s comfort women
IFC Comment to WSJ & the US Secretary of Defense’s Comment to Cool …
The recent protests in China and around the world including US cities, San Francisco, Houston, New York, etc against Japan’s aggression and her maneuvering to capture the Diaoyu Islands were like an emotional volcano suppressed more than 100 years exploded.
This sentiment not only was brewed by Japan’s war crimes against the Chinese people and her capture of Chinese territories but more so by the humiliation and shame the Japanese applied to Chinese while they occupied them.
Moreover, the Japanese government and its emperor never showed remorse nor apologized after their defeat in WW II.
Adding salt to the injury, the Japanese school textbooks white wash Japan’s criminal acts before and during the WW II.
The recent aggression, partly instigated by Japan’s right-wing extremists party, which tries very hard to restore Japan’s pre-war glory, includes not only aggression towards South China Sea but also engages disputes with Korea in the East of China.
Protests with violence should not be encouraged by any means but the harsh verbal dialog and militant actions against Chinese and Taiwanese fishermen made by the Japanese government or forces are more responsible for this kind of world wide break out.
Observing the past 70 years the two Chinese governments due to their internal conflicts have exercised extreme constraint in dealing with the Japanese aggression to the point they angered many Chinese on two sides of the strait and around the world.
No wonder this kind of sentiment is boiling over prior to September 18th, the Memorial Day for Japanese invasion of China.
That invasion had cost China tremendous money, land, sea and pride.
All Chinese buried that shame deeply while their leaders showed mercy to Japan by not demanding penalty payment but only accepting Japan’s surrender with agreement of returning all captured Chinese territories which include these disputed islands back to China.
As the global factions immediately surfaced after the WW II, China was divided internally and influenced externally; it is this situation that has given Japan the opportunity and desire to capture and control of the Diaoyu Islands.
US may have contributed to the mess by unilaterally given Japan access (so called administrative rights) to these island which emboldened Japan to take the actions she did in the recent years to capture these islands.
From the legal stand point, this type of dispute should be settled by international courts perhaps.
However, Japan knowing her weak legal position is not motivated to take that path, hence creating a phony scheme to buy the islands.
On the other hand, the two Chinese governments are hamstrung by their internal squabbles unable to cooperate.
For the sake of world peace and justice, it seems that US ought to take a very neutral position not to encourage aggression but help the Chinese to solve this problem peacefully.
The US and the world stand to gain by working with the Chinese to jointly develop energy resources to share with the world.