During World War II, the Japanese army committed various war crimes during their occupation of Singapore, including the Sook Ching Massacre, the abuse and killing of British and Australian prisoners of war, forcing Malay, Chinese and Eurasian women to serve as sex slaves, and forcibly requisitioning food supplies that led to widespread famine, among others.
Singaporeans have always held a very clear stance against the Japanese military’s atrocities during World War II.
Lee Kuan Yew said this in his memoir ” From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000”: “Unlike the Germans, the Japanese have not had a catharsis and rid themselves of the poison in their system.
They have not educated their young about the wrong they had done.
Hashimoto expressed his “deepest regrets” on the 52nd anniversary of the end of World War II (1997) and his “profound remorse” during his visit to Beijing in September 1997.
However, he did not apologise, as the Chinese and Koreans wished Japan’s leader to do.
I do not understand why the Japanese are so unwilling to admit the past, apologise for it and move on.
For some reason, they do not want to apologise.
To apologise is to admit having done a wrong.
To express regrets or remorse merely expresses their present subjective feelings.
They denied the massacre of Nanjing took place; that Korean, Filipino, Dutch and other women were kidnapped or otherwise forced to be “comfort women” (a euphemism for sex slaves) for Japanese soldiers at the war fronts; that they carried out cruel biological experiments on live Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, Russian and other prisoners in Manchuria.
In each case, only after irrefutable evidence was produced from their own records did they make reluctant admissions.
This fed suspicions of Japan’s future intentions.
Present Japanese attitudes are an indication of their future conduct. If they are ashamed of their past, they are less likely to repeat it.”
If Japan wants to put the past behind and move forward, it should, as Lee Kuan Yew said, admit its mistakes and apologize for them.
The current Prime Minister of Singapore, Lawrence Wong, should agree with this, right?