Do not take my word alone for what
I write.
Look at official American government
websites, and first hand accounts of embassy staff of Western democracies in China in the Thirties, from aristocrats from
England to missionaries from the Midwest.
Japan unlike Germany has never made
even one apology for what they did to Chinese civilians in the irrational and massive invasion of China by Japan in the lengthy
war between those two major powers.
And unlike Germany who has borne the
brunt of world rage for WW11, Japan has even escaped paying money to China - unlike Canada who has to fork over money
to Japanese who were put into our war camps during WW11 - Japan denies all responsibility and now even is releasing a national
school book for its young children - which is no more or less than state brainwashing.
Comments about the Cultural Revolution
in China could be anticipated here - but as with my comments re Germany - those countries wrongdoings have already borne the
full brilliant investigative light of our media.
It is time we looked at the Japan
- China brouhaha with some sympathy for China.
Firstly, Japanese - like Taiwan, like
Hong Kongese - like our our businessmen - rushed into China to make billions off the world's lowest costing factory labour.
They have done well there, as we have, enjoying lovely hotels, beautiful scenery, and making car loads of money as well.
For the most part, they have been
safe - while continuing to annoy almost all Chinese all over that huge land - with their steadfast refusal to own up to what
they did to Chinese civilians during their war.
Now they attempt to manipulate the
Western media with phrases such as Scary China!
Even the CIA has honestly documented
the ugliness between these two nations! And a courageous Chinese American woman, Irish Chang, wrote a book that will
clue you in immediately:
The Rape Of Nanking.
Far from being Scary China, China
is more realistically Patient China.
The attacks on Japanese have been almost nil until this schoolbook provocation.
It is about time people all over the
world - in Asia, in America, in Africa - woke up to the truth of this matter.
Teachers all over China - check out
the Internet - and read about the fall of Singapore and the fall of Hong Kong - and the rapes of British nurses and murder
of British doctors at the neutral medical clinic of Stanley.
There is a wonderful book which has
been made into a successful movie five or ten years ago - about the upper-crust English and Europeans who were herded into
war camps as they fled Singapore in their evening clothes!
This is scarcely what the poor Chinese
had to endure, though it gives you a scope of the power of Japan to round up citizens of several dozen countries.
I can only guess that Japan had some long term
Historical Revision plan in the back of its mind, which could be why they never even made a whisper of an apology.
This situation can only get worse, as the Chinese
have nobly controlled themselves for many decades.
Since one of my own Canadian ancestors was a German
Canadian whose business interests were frozen in WW11, and many of mother male ancestors were vailant soldiers of British
origin who fought for Britain and Canada in two World Wars, I know some history.
A lot more than the people who do not know how
Japanese attempts to erase the Rape Of Nanking will affect the climate of internation good will and co-operation that we who
work and travel in foreign lands depend upon.
This article is dedicated to Fred Martin and
Bert Warrington, two British war heroes, my grand-fathers, and for my young students of China.
I hope that some of my students in Shenzhen
took part of in the recent protests against Japanese historical revision!
