Consortium News: Why US Shields Japan's WWII Denials

Why US Shields Japan's WWII Denials

By Jerry Meldon
February 24, 2007


Editor's Note: Over the years, we have written a number of stories about Rev. Sun Myung Moon's influence-buying schemes inside U.S. conservative political circles – and the federal government's odd refusal to aggressively enforce laws when Moon's operation is caught in legally questionable activities.

In this guest article, Jerry Meldon examines the mysterious roots of the money that has funded right-wing Asian politics since World War II and that has sometimes spilled over into the United States:

On Feb. 19, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso took exception to a U.S. congressional resolution introduced by Rep. Mike Honda, D-California, calling on Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility” for coercing 200,000 Asian women into slavery as “Comfort Women” (wartime prostitutes) for 3.5 million Japanese soldiers. Mr. Aso said he considers the accusation groundless and extremely regrettable.

Six decades after World War II, can it really be that Japanese officials are still distorting history and insulting the Chinese, Koreans, Philippinos and others across Asia whom Hirohito’ s forces savagely brutalized and robbed?

And why does Washington turn a deaf ear?

The answers may be rooted in what transpired behind closed doors in Tokyo when Japan was occupied by the U.S. military in the post-war years .

Sterling and Peggy Seagrave suggest a motive in their eye-opening – and at times stomach-turning – 2003 book, Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold. In the war’s immediate aftermath, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander-in-chief of Allied occupying forces, secretly joined hands with Japanese war criminals.

Rather than convict, imprison and throw away the keys, MacArthur coddled those responsible for one of history’s bloodiest wars of aggression. When the U.S. occupation ended in 1952, he released all those who were still in custody.

And it may have gone a lot further than that. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/022407b.html

the Japanese were brutal conquerors, and history shows that. No need for US to shield it as it's well known. This article suggests we are victims of a sneaky nudgewink scheme by Japanese/US officials hiding something while meanwhile, this FACT that the Truman gov ignored efforts by Japan to surrender until they could a)test the A-bomb and send warning to Stalin and b) teach them yellow bastards a lesson they never forget, is given whistle-by-graveyard treatment....
If this is true, it must be one of the grossest war crimes in human history
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taken from Gore Vidal’s ‘Dreaming War, Blood For Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta pg 77/78:
“…But let me quote from a letter by the historian Kai Bird, which, to my amazement, the New York Times published (usually they suppress anything too critical of themselves or their Opinion makers):
‘Twice the reviewer dismisses as “silly’ Vidal’s assertion that Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary because Japan had been trying for some months to surrender.
Such assertions are neither silly nor….a product of Vidal’s ‘cranky politics’ Rather Vidal has cleverly drawn on a rich and scholarly literature published in the last decade to remind his readers that much of what orthodox court historians have written about the Cold War was simply wrong. With regard to Hiroshima, perhaps Vidal had in mind Truman’s July 1945 handwritten diary reference to a ‘telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace’..."
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Hiroshima was bombed on august7