Troubled Times by Erick San Juan

 Troubled Times by Erick San Juan

In these troubled times, aside from a possible regional conflict that will probably start in the Korean Peninsula, there is also an impending possibility of people repeating history as in the case of the Nanjing Massacre that happened 75 years ago.

In an article written by Manfred Henningsen (professor of political science at the University of Hawaii) – ‘Opportunity to break the silence’, he wanted the world to know especially in Asia where the Japanese army had savagely terrorized and killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike that started in 1937 in Nanking, China. Japan never gave any official apology since then.
“The refusal of the Japanese political class to officially recognize the imperial record of terror in China and other parts of Asia was illustrated in a remarkable way by Shinzo Abe when he was selected to lead the Liberal Democratic Party in October. He immediately visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The shrine has become a permanent monument to the horrors of Japan’s militarism since 1978 when war criminals of World War II were enshrined there.” (Ibid)
Like any traditional politicians, Abe has made a promise that he did not keep. Many pundits believe that it only prove that the Japanese government wanted the world to forget the terrorism they did during the Second World War in countries like China and the Philippines.

“Abe also announced last year that he would, if elected prime minister, revise the so-called Kono Statement, an official apology that Tokyo made in 1993 for the military’s sexual enslavement of women during World War II. And since he became prime minister, he has not said that he accepts the Judgment of Tokyo, which confirmed the historical record of imperial violence, including the figures of the estimated 300,000 dead and 60,000 women raped in Nanjing in December 1937.” (Ibid)

Like Germany, Japan had also the ambition to conquer the world and build their empires by raping city after city of sovereign nations. But after the dust and smoke has subsided, they became oblivious of the reparations that they should grant to countries they ravaged into nothingness.

Although from the article of Prof. Henningsen, he said that “Unlike the Japanese, the Germans have come to terms with their past. They were able to break out of their silence and amnesia they shared with the Japanese and face their record of evil and made peace with their neighbors whom they had invaded, occupied and, in some cases, violently terrorized. Most importantly, they were willing to recognize 60 years ago the claims of the large number of non-state victims and are still accepting compensation claims today, having already paid roughly $89 billion.”

Accepting ones mistakes and atrocities in the past against people of another country, especially a neighbor, coupled with the granting of reparations due them, are the right thing to do in order to give justice and to restore the dignity of the victims of war: the survivors and their families.

Like what I kept saying in my daily radio program, in times of war and peace, collaborators are made and conspiracies are woven to fool the rest of the world. Just what happened to Japan’s Hirohito, as what Prof. Henningsen wrote – “General Douglas MacArthur (then the US Army chief) kept the imperial system and its head, Hirohito, in place, as the US wanted to retain a semblance of legitimate national authority in order to facilitate the administration of the country. Hirohito had, by US decree, became untouchable, and he presided until his death in 1989 over collective Japanese amnesia. By protecting Hirohito from prosecution as a war criminal, the US laid the foundation for Japan’s refusal to acknowledge its war guilt and war crimes.”

The facts are in the open now, like what I have been saying all these years. With Uncle Sam’s blessings, not all war criminals are prosecuted and worse, war crimes are completely forgotten by diverting historical facts into oblivion that has left the victims including their own citizenry into a terrible case of amnesia.

Now the silence has been broken. Humanity should learn from this and must always on the lookout for a possibility that such incident will happen again.

In these dangerous times when the drums of war are getting louder - will people repeat a bad part of the world’s history?  Or history will repeat itself? The signature of a global conflict is already here. The actual confrontation and shooting war is in the offing that might lead to another world war. If this scenario will happen in the Korean Peninsula, and the possible reunification of the two Koreas will commence, Uncle Sam (and the globalists) will now be free from the burden of supporting North Korea and the heavy task will now be given to the people of South Korea. Remember the chopping of the 'Berlin wall'?

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke (1729-1797)