When will Japan ever Apologize for the Nanjing Massacre?

Published: September 14.2021

By staff writer

December 13, each year, is a National Memorial Day in China for remembering Nanjing Massacre Victims.Nanjing Massacre or Nanking Massacre named after how the city was called then is also referred to as Rape of Nanjing which happened in (Dec 1937- January 1938), when Japanese Imperial Army seized Nanjing port city, during the Sino- Japanese war before the start of World War II.  

The war tribunals formed after WW II, concluded that approximately 300,000 Chinese citizens were brutally murdered in the six weeks of the Japanese army inhuman acts in Nanjing. 

The destruction of Nanjing which had been the capital of the Nationalist Chinese from 1928 to 1937 was ordered by Matsui Iwane, who was commandinggeneral of the Japanese Central China Front Army that captured the city. Over the next several weeks, Japanese soldiers carried out Matsui’s orders, perpetrating numerous mass executions and tens of thousands of rapes. The army looted and burned the surrounding towns and the city, destroying more than a third of the buildings.

Despite overwhelming evidence of the heinous acts committed by the Japanese soldiers in Nanjing, for more than 80 years now, Tokyo authorities have never issued a formal apology for the violation of human rights in China. 

Japanese historian Ienaga Saburo, in his research published on facing history.org website, informs how the Japanese public figures, intellectuals and politicians have over the years denied the truth of atrocities committed in wartime and called for revision of textbooks to hide the reality like in the Nanjing massacre.

“In Japan today, some forces still refuse to acknowledge the war of aggression and persist in affirming and glorifying the war. And these war glorifiers focus particularly on denying the facts of the Nanjing massacre. Just as Nazi glorifiers focus particularly on denying the facts of the Holocaust, the symbol of German war crimes, their Japanese counterparts are vehement deniers of the Nanjing massacre, which symbolized the war crimes committed by Japan,” wrote, Japanese historian Ienaga Saburo. He goes on to observe that, “researchers must investigate the Nanjing incident in order to stop these denial arguments and demolish the glorification of war…”

The Chinese people and the world are watching when Japanese authorities will find it of moral value to apologize to the Chinese for the Nanjing massacre. The dead will not be resurrected, neither the dignity of the rape victims returned, but the act of humanness of accepting wrong doing and apologize, no matter how many years have elapsed, the act of apology  will  touch and heal many Chinese hearts that are grieving for almost a century.    

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