Subject:     Japan builds WWII war museum
From:         lam <--@--.-->
Date:         1996/10/30
Message-Id:   <327796BF.4A17@--.-->
Newsgroups:   chinese.talk.politics


Japan Starts Building World
  War II Museum Amid
  Protest

  By Mary Jordan
  Washington Post Foreign Service
  Wednesday, October 30 1996; Page A25
  The Washington Post 

  TOKYO, Oct. 29 -- Construction on Japan's first national
  museum commemorating World War II began this week amid
  protests that Japan still refuses to face up to its responsibility in 
the
  conflict.

  The Tokyo museum, so controversial that its construction has been
  debated and delayed for almost 20 years, is being built by the
  national government at a cost of $120 million. It is to be run by an
  influential conservative nationalist group, the Japan War Bereaved
  Families Association, and will focus solely on the suffering of
  Japanese families and soldiers.

  Those opposed to the project say Japan should also use the
  museum to chronicle the suffering the country inflicted on its Asian
  neighbors and the United States, and to acknowledge its
  aggressive role in escalating the war.

  "This is a national museum, but it does not touch on the history of
  the war. It does not state that this was a war of aggression," said
  Shigenori Nishikawa, a leader of a group of 13 Japanese
  organizations that oppose the museum. "This museum offers only a
  one-sided view of history."

  The museum is such a touchy issue that even as workers begin
  building it, its official name has not been decided. Tentatively, the
  name of the museum is either the War Dead Peace Memorial Hall
  or the Hall to Commemorate the War Dead and to Pray for Peace.

  Many Japanese academics have signed petitions criticizing the
  museum's scope for neglecting to mention Japanese atrocities,
  including the 1937 massacre in the Chinese city of Nanking, now
  called Nanjing. Estimates of how many Chinese were killed at the
  hands of Japanese soldiers during the war years run into the
  millions. Yet Japanese officials and textbooks often either omit any
  reference to Japanese brutality or tiptoe around it with fleeting
  mentions such as "Nanjing was occupied" or "a massacre occurred
  there." 

  China and South Korea, in particular, long have been angered by
  Japan's failure to issue a full apology for its behavior before and
  during the war. Even 51 years after the war ended, the lack of a
  clear acknowledgment of responsibility by the Japanese
  government in the war's escalation is a major factor behind much of
  the anti-Japanese sentiment still prevalent in Asia.
  Spokesmen at the Chinese and South Korean embassies here said
  today they were unaware that construction of the museum had
  begun and had no immediate comment.

  The museum is important, according to protest leader Nishikawa,
  because among those who will tour it when it opens in 1998 are
  schoolchildren who will learn "an unbalanced view" of Japan's role
  in the war. He said his group filed suit in August to stop the
  groundbreaking, but failed.

  Yoji Kakihara, a Health and Welfare Ministry official in charge of
  the museum project, said he is aware of the "so-called history
  recognition" debate surrounding the museum. He said the museum
  has one focus: "to collect, preserve and exhibit information about
  Japanese life during and after the war" and especially to exhibit the
  pain and suffering of the families of the war dead.

  He said another project is planned that will exhibit a more
  comprehensive war history; it may take as long as 10 years to
  complete and cost $1 billion. Part of that effort would include the
  building of what is being called an Asian History Document Center.

  A special panel convened last year to deal with the museum
  decided that at this time it would be "too difficult to objectively
  exhibit facts relating to the war." So, instead of a comprehensive
  exhibit, the panel decided the museum would narrow its focus to
  displaying the "painful and hard life of the Japanese, especially the
  families of the war dead." The museum originally was conceived in
  1979 for the children of the soldiers who died in the war.

  Japanese officials say the flap over the museum is reminiscent of
  one last year at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
  Veterans' groups were angered by a planned exhibit at the
  National Air and Space Museum on the U.S. atomic bombing of
  Hiroshima and Nagasaki that portrayed the Japanese as victims of
  U.S. determination to avenge Pearl Harbor. That exhibit ultimately
  was changed under pressure from veterans and other critics.