The article "Surviving the postwar Soviet detention camps" in the Aug. 23 edition comes as no surprise. Every year in Japan when August comes around we are once again bombarded with TV programs and newspaper articles about how the "poor Japanese" were made to suffer during World War II. This year, being the 70th anniversary of the war's ending, there are even more reminders than usual.
War is a truly terrible thing, and naturally we must feel sympathy for all who suffer, but the media here seem to focus almost exclusively on the Japanese experience, and we are forced to wonder what was happening in the rest of the world in the meantime. On the rare occasions when we see a documentary about wartime brutality, it is almost invariably about the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.
Where are the documentaries, for example, about the inhumane and illegal treatment of Allied prisoners of war in Japanese camps, starved, beaten, tortured or worked to death? The "lucky" ones were the poor soldiers whose miseries were brought to an abrupt end when they were decapitated by a samurai sword.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made a show of "apologizing" for Japan's behavior during the war. Many people doubt his sincerity. But now The Japan Times has the chance to go some way to giving a more balanced view of things by publishing a follow-up article (or articles) detailing the suffering of Allied POWs, too, and all the other people in Asia and the Pacific who suffered for years under Japanese tyranny. Enough of this Japanese self-pity!
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
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