Japan 'Apologizes' for Bataan Death March...HMMM!
As many of my friends know, my grandfather was a POW in Japan, and I have taken a great interest in his experience, researching his footsteps, the atrocities suffered and visited the island (Corregidor) where he was captured and his first POW camp (Cabanat...uan) in the Philippines.
Here is an article about Japan apologizing for the Bataan Death March. My grandfather, like all Japanese POWs suffered a great deal, though he was never part of the Bataan Death March. What about all those others who weren't part of the death march?
I am not completely sure how I feel about this. One POW/Death March survivor wrote to me saying this man, Steele speaks for himself if he wants to accept the apology and go to Japan, and I can understand his feeling that way.
I too admire and respect Mr. Steel, but don't agree with his stance on their apology at all. I don't understand why they (the Japanese) would apologize for one atrocity (specifically Bataan) and not to all allied prisoners who suffered at their hands.
Also, I disagree on Steele's take on the money. It isn't about an apology, it is about what they had coming as slave labor at the end of the war. The PRIVATE companies that profited on slave labor in Europe had to pay back wages, and that was a HUGE mistake on the part of America to excuse the Japanese companies from doing the same (as part of the Treaty at San Francisco after the war). As for the benefits you get through the VA, I don't know that my grandfather ever took any (I know he never looked back on the army, and never wrote an affidavit etc.), but his health after his POW experience was so bad, that while others were coming back to great jobs in the telephone and electric companies, he couldn't pass the medical exams to get in. His experience in Japan (part of which was as slave labor in privately owned coal mines) and his poor health thereafter had an impact on the rest of his life. The least America could have done was to make the PRIVATE companies that profited on his slave labor pay him for his work.
I do know that the Japanese have never before acknowledged any atrocities, to a point where there are history academics from Japan living in the US with outstanding lawsuits against the Japanese govt., and I am hoping this is a start for them. Perhaps they will eventually let the truth of what they did throughout Asia and to the POWs be published, and will genuinely atone for their behavior so that we can be sure history will not repeat itself. I know this would mean a lot to their Asian neighbors, who also sufferred, and have never forgiven or forgotten what happened there.
Please read the article (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-19/healing-the-wounds-of-bataan/), as it goes into more detail on what these attrocities were, how the last-living POWs feel about the apology and the controversy surrounding it all. Thanks, Christine
Here is an article about Japan apologizing for the Bataan Death March. My grandfather, like all Japanese POWs suffered a great deal, though he was never part of the Bataan Death March. What about all those others who weren't part of the death march?
I am not completely sure how I feel about this. One POW/Death March survivor wrote to me saying this man, Steele speaks for himself if he wants to accept the apology and go to Japan, and I can understand his feeling that way.
I too admire and respect Mr. Steel, but don't agree with his stance on their apology at all. I don't understand why they (the Japanese) would apologize for one atrocity (specifically Bataan) and not to all allied prisoners who suffered at their hands.
Also, I disagree on Steele's take on the money. It isn't about an apology, it is about what they had coming as slave labor at the end of the war. The PRIVATE companies that profited on slave labor in Europe had to pay back wages, and that was a HUGE mistake on the part of America to excuse the Japanese companies from doing the same (as part of the Treaty at San Francisco after the war). As for the benefits you get through the VA, I don't know that my grandfather ever took any (I know he never looked back on the army, and never wrote an affidavit etc.), but his health after his POW experience was so bad, that while others were coming back to great jobs in the telephone and electric companies, he couldn't pass the medical exams to get in. His experience in Japan (part of which was as slave labor in privately owned coal mines) and his poor health thereafter had an impact on the rest of his life. The least America could have done was to make the PRIVATE companies that profited on his slave labor pay him for his work.
I do know that the Japanese have never before acknowledged any atrocities, to a point where there are history academics from Japan living in the US with outstanding lawsuits against the Japanese govt., and I am hoping this is a start for them. Perhaps they will eventually let the truth of what they did throughout Asia and to the POWs be published, and will genuinely atone for their behavior so that we can be sure history will not repeat itself. I know this would mean a lot to their Asian neighbors, who also sufferred, and have never forgiven or forgotten what happened there.
Please read the article (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-19/healing-the-wounds-of-bataan/), as it goes into more detail on what these attrocities were, how the last-living POWs feel about the apology and the controversy surrounding it all. Thanks, Christine
posted by Unknown | 3:18 PM
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