Atoning for World War II, 60 years later

By Joseph Coleman

updated 1:05 a.m. ET July 31, 2005

HANAOKA, Japan - Townspeople here cheered when the Chinese slave laborers, dressed in rags, eyes wild with hunger, were paraded back from the mountains after a failed rebellion and escape.

At the time, July 1945, many in this northern mining town thought the 800 slaves got what they deserved for killing several Japanese guards in their revolt: They were beaten, forced to kneel on the floor for days, and denied food and water. Scores were tortured to death. At the end of the war, only half the slaves were alive.

Yet the perpetrators got off lightly.

Three employees of Kajima Gumi, the construction company overseeing the workers, were sentenced to death and another to life imprisonment by the Allied war crimes court in 1948. But the penalties were later reduced, and all were released by 1955. The man responsible for laborers in the town is celebrated in a bust near where his charges were killed; the former camp now rests at the bottom of a pool of toxic waste.

The so-called “Hanaoka Incident,” in this hamlet 325 miles north of Tokyo, could easily enter the record as yet another example of how Japan has failed miserably to face up properly to the colossal slaughter of innocents as it conquered a wide swath of Asia in the 1930s and '40s.

Such perceived failures continue to keep Asia on edge even now, 60 years after the end of World War II. While some of the criticism is fueled by political opportunism stemming from present-day rivalry for pre-eminence in Asia, it is also driven by the deep wounds left by Japan’s march across the region.

'I feel nothing but remorse'
But there is another side to the Hanaoka story.

Yasuo Togashi remembers the bone-thin captives eating weeds as they were marched from the train station to their mining camp. As a boy of 9, he cheered with his neighbors when the escapees were recaptured.

Then, as he entered adulthood, he was overwhelmed with regret as he learned the details of what those Chinese endured, and he joined a group of townspeople who dedicated their lives to keeping those memories alive — and spreading the word.

“We were militaristic youth. We thought the Chinese weren’t even human, and we were happy when they were caught,” said Togashi, now 69 and a retired elementary school teacher, as he stood outside the train station where laborers were brought on their journey to Hanaoka.

“Now, I feel nothing but remorse,” he said. “I didn’t really understand it at the time, but as an adult, I was really shocked about it.”

That shock translated into action. Since the 1950s, Togashi and others have tried to set things right: They have built monuments, hosted survivors visiting from China and taught their schoolchildren about the past. The town holds annual remembrances of the victims. The outdoor sculpture of the smiling labor manager, Kyoichi Hatazawa, lists his civic accomplishments and never mentions the massacre. But 25 feet away stands a stone slab commemorating the Chinese dead.

The effort has gone beyond assuaging the guilty conscience of a town. Faced with a lawsuit by survivors, Kajima Corp. in 2001 agreed to pay about $4.5 million into a fund administered by the Chinese Red Cross to assist the families of the 986 Chinese who were brought to work in the mine.

“We have to make an apology from the heart,” Togashi said beside a monument to the victims put up in 1966 on a hill overlooking the former camp. “Even if they were not directly involved, people should feel regret about this. We have to make sure it never happens again.”

Many apologies, but to little effect
Few countries have apologized as often as Japan has for its war of aggression in Asia — and to so little effect.

Since the 1970s, Japanese prime ministers and even emperors have expressed varying degrees of regret and remorse — albeit sometimes in vague, nuanced wording — over the suffering caused by the war.

Just last April, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in a bid to defuse a sudden upsurge of war-related tensions with China, offered this statement of remorse in a speech to an Asian summit:

“In the past, Japan through its colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering for the people of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations,” Koizumi said.

Tokyo’s commitment to peace goes beyond rhetoric.

The country’s U.S.-drafted constitution foreswears war to settle international disputes, and no Japanese soldier has fired a shot in war since 1945. Japan is the world’s No. 2 source of developmental aid in the world after the United States, and it has paid billions of dollars in reparations to nations it invaded.

Tokyo’s supporters say they should get more credit for this.

“History didn’t stop in 1945, and for 60 years Japan has been a generous donor around the world. They have been a very peaceful nation and peaceful with their neighbors,” U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer said recently. “People need to take that into account as well.”

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