BEIJING, June 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Japan and Germany were the two main aggressors, but after the war, the ways in which the two nations choose to remember the conflict couldn’t be more different. Seven decades on Germany still repents for the sins of the past, whereas in Japan the atrocities of war are often swept aside as ancient history.
War time allies.... Both War time aggressors... But today Japan and Germany take a very different attitude to history…
Germans choose shouldering the responsibility of their wartime generation, and admitting guilt for atrocities committed during the Second World War.
On December 7, 1970, former Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt, knelt down in apology at the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was a scene that impressed many across Europe and beyond.
And in 2004, when Germany was invited to the anniversary of D-Day for the first time, then chancellor Gerhard Schroder struck a humble tone, stressing that forgiveness must never mean forgetting the sins of the past.
"We Germans know that we unleashed this heinous war. We recognize the responsibility our history has laid upon us, and we take it very seriously," Gerhard Schroder said.
Current Chancellor Angela Merkel has also stressed the need to own up to war crimes on many occasions, saying that Germany has "an everlasting responsibility" for the crimes by Nazis.
In the meantime, Germans have also gone out of their way to educate their children about Nazi atrocities so that they will never forget this dark chapter of their history.
The same can’t be said for Japan.
As early as 1958, Japan sought to revise the term “aggression in China” into “entering China” in its official school textbooks.
And On August 15, 1985, then Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro paid an official visit to Yasukuni shrine. As well as being a shrine to Japan’s war dead, the controversial memorial also enshrines 14 convicted Class-A war criminals.
And today, incumbent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is continuing down this path, by making right-wing remarks and paying visits to the Yasukuni shrine.
(Source: CNTV.cn)
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