KAUPA Letters Volume 9, Issue Number 6 August 2022 KAUPA Letters Journal of the Korean American University Professors Association KAUPA.ORG 북미한인교수협회 Dark Side of Shinzo Abe’s Legacy: Do Americans have to apologize for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Yeomin Yoon Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University Since the reports on the assassination of Shinzo Abe on July 8, American newspapers and other media provided numerous expositions of the late Japanese prime minister. For example, The Atlantic magazine proclaimed on July 8, “Shinzo Abe Made the World Better.” Its staff writer David Frum asserted: “The assassinated Japanese leader was the visionary architect of a vital security alliance in the Indo-Pacific region.” Quoting Abe, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt reported on July 12: "Japan alone cannot balance China's military power, so Japan and America must cooperate to achieve a balance," Abe said. "The U.S.-Japan alliance is vital for America too." In the eyes of this KAUPA Letters columnist, the reports by the American media have been tilted too much toward reporting the positive side of Abe's legacy, primarily from the US's geopolitical perspective. So, he attempts to provide below the dark side of Abe's legacy – from the perspective of Japan's neighbors – hoping to compensate for the weaknesses (biases or misunderstanding and ignorance of history) of American media as perceived by him. As the longest serving (2006-2007, 2012-2020) prime minister in Japanese history, Abe epitomized Japan's powerful right-wing political forces. He served as a special advisor to the group Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), which claimed that (1) Imperial Japan should be lauded for liberating Asia from Western colonial powers; that (2) the Tokyo war crimes tribunals were illegitimate; and that (3) war crimes such as the Rape of Nanking in 1937 were exaggerated or fabricated. (A super-majority of cabinet members in the Abe administration were Nippon Kaigi members.) Abe was known to hold "negationist" views on Japanese history, including denying the role of government coercion in recruiting "comfort women" during World War II. This position has created tension with South Korea. Historical negationism, also called denialism, is the falsification or distortion of the historical record. (It should not be conflated with historical 53 KAUPA Letters Volume 9, Issue Number 6 August 2022 revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, reasoned academic reinterpretations of history.) Abe has expressed admiration for his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who was imprisoned after World War II for being a Class A war criminal. In 2007, during his brief first stint as prime minister, Abe personally disavowed the 1993 Kono Statement that apologized to the World War II-era victims of systematic sexual abuse by the Japanese army, dishonestly claiming a lack of evidence. During his long tenure as Japan's prime minister, Abe kept using veiled language in describing Japan's initial military expansion as a reaction to incursions of Western colonial powers to East Asia and the American attempt to isolate and contain Japan in the process of ambitious modernization. Abe kept implying that Japan alone among the Asian nations had the power and courage to counter Western domination and liberate Asians from Western aggression and exploitation. The Japanese forces marched with the slogan "We Will Build a Pan-Asian CoProsperity Sphere," through which Imperial Japan attempted to appeal to alleged Asian xenophobia. Abe often cited the expressions of sadness and remorse offered by post-war Japanese leaders over the suffering that Japan caused countless people in the regions under Japanese occupation. But the readers were forced to wonder if he was making such citations with an honest admission to Japan's commission of such crimes against humanity. Such crimes included the Nanjing Massacre, medical experimentation on live Chinese, sexual enslavement, and exploitation of Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Dutch women by the Japanese military, exploitation of tens of thousands of Chinese and Korean men in Japanese mines and factories, and torture and murder of prisoners of war -- acts inconsistent with the self-conferred status of a liberator. Even though past Japanese leaders used the word "apology," Abe's reference to all expressions of contrition by his predecessors could not be taken to mean that he apologized. The semantics and pragmatics of his predecessors' "apology" differ from Abe's "sadness" and "remorse." Sadness and remorse are subjective states that do not necessarily imply a determination of the will. A sentimental wrongdoer may be sad and remorseful about the suffering his act causes, yet he may be determined to repeat it for reasons he deems overriding. He may even poetize the inner conflicts. Sincerity is necessary for an apology. To apologize to a victim of one's wrongdoing is to confess his guilt for the deed, ask for forgiveness, accept a corrective measure willingly, and do his part in the remedial process. An apology is a moral ritual and action. Post-war Germany accepted collective German guilt for Nazi atrocities, condemned and outlawed the Nazi party, compensated the surviving victims and relatives of deceased victims of the Holocaust, let a Holocaust memorial be built in Berlin, and sought and prosecuted participants in Nazi atrocities. The Japanese admiration for German culture does not include an emulation of German virtue. Abe's statements often obsequiously thanked the mercy and generosity of Japan's victorious foe for its rapid recovery from ruins to peace and prosperity. But Abe significantly omitted Japan's benefit from the American-imposed pacifist constitution in growing into a peaceful democracy. 54 KAUPA Letters Volume 9, Issue Number 6 August 2022 Nor was there any mention of his political engineering to change the constitution to allow Japan to participate in military action beyond self-defense despite solid opposition from numerous Japanese citizens. Abe has often expressed his hope that the future Japanese generations will not be "predestined" to repeat apologies. But he did not close the long game of rationalization, evasion, and obfuscation. He did not renounce and discourage, rather than condone or instigate, public acts belying gestures of reconciliation such as having historical facts distorted in Japanese school textbooks. A crucial question can be raised from the perspective of Japan's neighbors. Can Abe's successor and followers be persuaded to redirect their will from the current historical negationism/denialism toward a vision of a Pan-Asian alliance of nations for peace and prosperity true to the name? Can their Weltanschauung embrace a framework for cooperative interaction for economic development and prosperity, deepening cultural ties enabled by their shared cultural resources, and establishing peace and justice among nations drawing from the reservoir of ancient wisdom they share? Unfortunately, Japan's neighbors are not optimistic about such a prospect. There seem to be so many historical negationists/denialists in Japan today. They adore Hirofumi Ito (伊藤博文), who led the colonization of Korea in the early 20th century, the late World War II Class A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介), and his grandson Shinzo Abe (安倍 晋三). Notwithstanding such an unfortunate reality in Japan, Japan's neighbors, especially Koreans, seem to be trying to be saved by hope for world peace. Do Americans have to apologize for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? On August 15, Koreans will celebrate the historical day of Korea's liberation from the harsh, 36year-long colonial rule by the Empire of Japan. Recently, I received from a former (American) student an article published by The Nation magazine in August 2015. The essay, authored by Christian Appy, an American historian, was titled "70 years later, We [Americans] Still Haven't Apologized for Bombing Japan." The US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, killing an estimated 220,000 Japanese instantly and over time. On August 15, Japan's then Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender in a radio address, citing the devastating power of "a new and most cruel bomb." My student asked me, "Do you think that we, Americans, have to apologize for the atomic bombing of Japan?" So, I will summarize the article first, present my finding on Japanese views that I could gather from dialogues, albeit limited, with some Japanese regarding the American atomic bombing of Japan, and provide my thoughts. Finally, I hope the readers share their thoughts on any future issue of the KAUPA Letters regarding this emotional, historical event. 55 KAUPA Letters Volume 9, Issue Number 6 August 2022 Following is my summary of Appy's article: The US should apologize for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because it was a direct attack on the civilian population and not a justifiable act of war. The bombing was justified based on the consequentialist that it would save American lives by ending the Pacific war sooner rather than later. But there are moral limits to conducting even a just war, including avoiding harm to innocent civilians if possible. While the loss of some civilian lives is sometimes an unavoidable consequence of war, the dropping of nuclear bombs on large population centers seems to rise to the level of a morally unjustified act because it is a direct attack on innocent lives and, as such, intrinsically wrong. Moreover, even assuming the bombing was in accord with just war principles, there should have been a more significant effort to alert the Japanese officials and the civilian population of the severe devastation the bombing would cause. When I worked at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) some years ago, my (summer) office was located only a block from the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima. I frequently visited the museum and had numerous discussions with Hiroshima residents (sometimes with the aid of interpreters) and other visitors regarding the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of them (Japanese interviewees) believed that the US used atomic bombs against Japan because of the "American racism toward Asians." For example, some interviewees cited the racist expression, "yellow peril," that they thought Americans frequently used regarding Asians. They even said: "Germans are whites, but we, Japanese, are not." I understand that the carpet bombing of Dresden (in Germany) caused more casualties than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The bombing of Germany during World War II killed roughly 600,000 civilians.) The destruction of Dresden shortened the time for further mischief the Nazis could do to the innocent people in death camps. As was well-known, the Nazis were developing nuclear weapons, but the research by the German scientists failed. Had they succeeded, they would undoubtedly have used atomic weapons on Britain, Russia, and the US if possible. The Nazi Germans would have capped V-2 rockets with nuclear bombs. Didn't the Allies try to obtain Japanese surrender, even with some allowable conditions, by warning about the pain of suffering that new weapons' unprecedented destruction would cause? Didn't Japan scoff at the Potsdam proposal? Christian Appy seems to say either that the US should apologize to Japan for dropping atomic bombs on the latter's cities or that the US should not have used nuclear bombs at all. Of course, these issues are ethical and have different sets of presuppositions. Nevertheless, a moral view that the winner of war owes an apology to its vanquished foe for using a particular type of weaponry while relishing the result of its use is conceivable. The more fundamental ethical issue is that all belligerents should agree on comprehensive ethics of war before a war is started. Should such ethics not include the clause proscribing a war of aggression? Such a clause is implied by permission for defensive war. 56 KAUPA Letters Volume 9, Issue Number 6 August 2022 The moral permissibility of weapons of mass destruction such as fission/fusion bombs or chemical/biological weapons presupposes a 19th-century distinction between combatants and civilians. This presupposition was abandoned with the rise of total war in the 20th century. The Axis Powers and the Allied Nations all had acquiesced to the idea of war being total. I think Appy should take this historical fact into account. The root of war is self-identity and will to power. People like Hegel and Nietzsche saw this. Therefore, shouldn’t the ethics of war start with an ontological probing? I have also discussed with many non-Japanese East Asian (mostly Chinese, Filipino, and Korean) university students the issues caused by the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. All students I have met (a "biased" sample?) maintained that the Japanese nation does not deserve an apology. The primary reason is that it has not bothered to genuinely apologize for the Empire of Japan's crime against humanity and other atrocities committed against its neighbors and others, sharply contrasting to what the post-war German nation did. It is well known that post-war Germany accepted collective German guilt for Nazi atrocities. It condemned and outlawed the Nazi party, compensated the surviving victims and relatives of deceased victims of the Holocaust, let a Holocaust memorial be built in Berlin, and sought and prosecuted participants in Nazi atrocities. Contrastingly, post-war Japan did nothing. Moreover, the Japanese admiration for German culture did not include an emulation of German virtue. The non-Japanese Asian students pointed out that the Japanese government has never apologized to the Chinese, Dutch, Filipino, and Korean women made into sex slaves by the Japanese military, the Chinese and Korean men used as slave laborers, or the Chinese for the Nanjing Massacre. Concisely, the non-Japanese Asian students' point is that since Japan has ever made no due apology in a total sense, the Japanese nation does not deserve an apology from any other country. Is such a position morally justifiable? I hope the readers share their views on the future issue of the Letters. *** 57