Survivors urge Abe to correct inaccurate views

A man moves paper lanterns as they float on the Urakami river in remembrance of atomic bomb victims on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki, in western Japan, August 9, 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the city. A bell tolled in Nagasaki on Sunday morning as the Japanese city marked 70 years since the dropping of the last atomic bomb on a civilian target in the closing days of World War Two. [Photo/Agencies]

The Swiss-based International Peace Bureau nominated the Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers, or Hidankyo, for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, the third time the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have been nominated.

About 60,000 people who survived the blasts and the radiation and fires are still alive. These survivors are against the ongoing shift in Japan's security policy, which they fear will involve their country in armed clashes overseas, and want the Japanese government to admit the country's responsibility for launching the war of aggression that eventually led to the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In a report issued on Thursday, advisers to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that by expanding its aggression throughout Asia after the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan caused much damage in Asia through a "reckless war".

The report is intended to serve as reference for Abe, who will deliver a speech on Aug 14 marking the 70th anniversary of the end of the war. However, the authors make no mention of what Abe should say to apologize for the suffering his country's past aggression caused.

Some of these advisers, who are supposed to have a deep knowledge of Japan's history, do not even accept Japan was at fault. They claim that international law does not have a definition of aggression, and they say Japan should not be singled out when other nations engaged in similar acts.

Abe reiterated in Hiroshima on Thursday that he upholds his predecessors' previous statements on the war, but it is thought that he will express only "remorse" in his statement, and will not reaffirm his predecessors' "apologies" for the past "aggression".

If he refuses to tell his country and the world what the war was, his "remorse" will mean nothing.

Japan has been painstaking trying to collect the remains of its Imperial army soldiers who perished on foreign soils during the war.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that among the 1.13 million remains that are uncollected, 206,090 are in northeast China and 369,470 in the Philippines.

Japan's revisionists who deny the country's historical aggression should explain to the rest of the world how these Japanese soldiers came to die in those countries.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party policy chief Tomomi Inada presented Abe a written request on July 28 that was drawn up by the party's special panel to "restore Japan's honor and trust".

Abe said he will take the advice seriously and try to correct what he said were "inaccurate foreign views".

The panel calls it a grave problem that a statement of apology made in 1993 by then-chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono over the comfort women issue and a series of what it calls false reports by the Asahi Shimbun have caused the view to spread internationally that Japanese authorities forcibly sent females to wartime military brothels. In the panel's words, the wartime "comfort women" were recruited by civilian agents.

Japan's revisionists, including some politicians, want to change the historical truths about the war of aggression into their truths.

They rub salt into the victims of Japan's aggression. It is also a denial of the sacrifice and sufferings of Japanese civilians during the war.

Japan owes the victims of its past aggression, including its own citizens, a sincere apology.

The author is China Daily's Tokyo bureau chief. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn