Yoshida: Amy, Japan has apologized. This is the whole point. Japan has apologized many many times for World War Two. Every few years we have to go through this spectacle where it’s said that Japan needs to apologize for its actions during World War Two. But Japan has done so, repeatedly. Let me read you a few quotes.
This is from a statement by Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, on August 31, 1994. “Japan’s actions in a certain period of the past not only claimed numerous victims here in Japan but also left the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere with scars that are painful even today. I am thus taking this opportunity to state my belief, based on my profound remorse for these acts of aggression, colonial rule, and the like caused such unbearable suffering and sorrow for so many people, that Japan’s future path should be one of making every effort to build world peace in line with my no-war commitment. It is imperative for us Japanese to look squarely to our history with the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere.”
And again, from a statement by the Diet, on June 9, 1995: “On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, this House offers its sincere condolences to those who fell in action and victims of wars and similar actions all over the world. Solemnly reflecting upon many instances of colonial rule and acts of aggression in the modern history of the world, and recognizing that Japan carried out those acts in the past, inflicting pain and suffering upon the peoples of other countries, especially in Asia, the Members of this House express a sense of deep remorse.”
I can go on and read you dozens of other quotes like this. Japan has apologized, Amy.
Yet, every few years, the propaganda organs of certain regimes hostile to a free and prosperous Japan try to dredge up settled historical events to manufacture controversy. When is this going to end? And some men of otherwise good intellect have allowed themselves to become the tools of propaganda. I wish they would wake up and see how they are being used.
Rowe: Dr. Wei, I have to say, those do sound like apologies to me.
Wei: Amy, it is not my aim or goal to humiliate Japan. My commitment is to the victims and their memory, not theater. What I’m asking for is for Japan to acknowledge the truth of what happened at Pingfang. I want to focus on specifics, and acknowledgment of specifics, not empty platitudes.
But since Ambassador Yoshida has decided to bring up the issue of apologies, let’s look closer at them, shall we?
The statements quoted by the ambassador are grand and abstract, and they refer to vague and unspecified sufferings. They are apologies only in the most watered-down sense. What the ambassador is not telling you is the Japanese government’s continuing refusal to admit many specific war crimes and to honor and remember the real victims.
Moreover, every time one of these statements quoted by the ambassador is made, it is matched soon after by another statement from a prominent Japanese politician purporting to cast doubt upon what happened in World War Two. Year after year, we are treated to this show of the Japanese government as a Janus speaking with two faces.
Yoshida: It’s not that unusual to have differences of opinion when it comes to matters of history, Dr. Wei. In a democracy it’s what you would expect.
Wei: Actually, Ambassador, Unit 731 has been consistently handled by the Japanese government: For more than fifty years the official position was absolute silence regarding Unit 731, despite the steady accumulation of physical evidence, including human remains, from Unit 731’s activities. Even the Unit’s existence was not admitted until the 1990s, and the government consistently denied that it had researched or used biological weapons during the War.
It wasn’t until 2005, in response to a lawsuit by some relatives of Unit 731’s victims for compensation, that the Tokyo High Court finally acknowledged Japan’s use of biological weapons during the War. This was the first time that an official voice of the Japanese government admitted to that fact. Amy, you’ll notice that this was a decade after those lofty statements read by Ambassador Yoshida. The Court denied compensation.
Since then the Japanese government has consistently stated that there is insufficient evidence to confirm exactly what experiments were carried out by Unit 731 or the details of their conduct. Official denial and silence continue despite the dedicated efforts of some Japanese scholars to bring the truth to light.
But numerous former members of Unit 731 have come forward since the 1980s to testify and confess to the grisly acts they committed. And we have confirmed and expanded upon those accounts with new eyewitness accounts by volunteers who have traveled to Pingfang. Everyday, we are finding out more about Unit 731’s crimes. We will tell the world all the victims’ stories.
Yoshida: I am not sure that “telling stories” is what historians should be doing. If you want to make fiction, go ahead, but do not tell people that it is history. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And there is insufficient proof for the accusations currently being directed against Japan.
Wei: Ambassador Yoshida, is your position really that nothing happened at Pingfang? Are you saying that these reports by the American occupational authority from immediately after the War are lies? Are you saying that these contemporaneous diary entries by the officers of Unit 731 are lies? Are you really denying all of this?
There is a simple solution to all this. Will you take a trip to Pingfang in 1941? Will you believe your own eyes?
Yoshida: I’m—I am not—I’m making a distinction—It was a time of war, Dr. Wei, and perhaps it is possible that some unfortunate things happened. But “stories” are not evidence.
Wei: Will you take a trip, Ambassador?
Yoshida: I will not. I see no reason to subject myself to your process. I see no reason to undergo your “time travel” hallucinations.
Rowe: Now we are seeing some fireworks!
Wei: Ambassador Yoshida, let me make this clear. The deniers are committing a fresh crime against the victims of those atrocities: Not only would they stand with the torturers and the killers, but they are also engaged in the practice of erasing and silencing the victims from history, to kill them afresh.
In the past, their task was easy. Unless the denials were actively resisted, eventually memories would dim with old age and death, and the voices of the past would fade away, and the denialists would win. The people of the present would then become exploiters of the dead, and that has always been the way history was written.
But we have now come to the end of history. What my wife and I have done is to take narrative away, and to give us all a chance to see the past with our own eyes. In place of memory, we now have incontrovertible evidence. Instead of exploiting the dead, we must look into the face of the dying. I have seen these crimes with my own eyes. You cannot deny that.
Archival footage of Dr. Evan Wei delivering the keynote for the Fifth International War Crimes Studies Conference in San Francisco, on November 20, 20XX. Courtesy of the Stanford University Archives
History is a narrative enterprise, and the telling of stories that are true, that affirm and explain our existence, is the fundamental task of the historian. But truth is delicate, and it has many enemies. Perhaps that is why, although we academics are supposedly in the business of pursuing the truth, the word “truth” is rarely uttered without hedges, adornments, and qualifications.
Every time we tell a story about a great atrocity, like the Holocaust or Pingfang, the forces of denial are always ready to pounce, to erase, to silence, to forget. History has always been difficult because of the delicacy of the truth, and denialists have always been able to resort to labeling the truth as fiction.