History, Historiography, and the Art of Denial
Delroy Oberg
Teacher
Boodndall, Australia
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
- Sissela Bok, ‘Secrets,’ 1983
The histories of countries run by totalitarian governments have relied on persuasion of the people, by the people, forthe
people – so they would say. The methods of persuasion may be
brutal, or more subtle and insidious. Limiting information, withholding
education, purveying falsehoods, reinventing language, rewriting
history – all these are ways a powerful minority can use to
persuade the gullible minority that black is white, and two plus two
equals five.
Patriotism
is also a powerful persuader. Yet the demise of such governments in
recent decades testifies to a “People Power” that demands
truth, freedom, respect and equality.
French playwright, Ionesco, states that “It is the enemies of History that, in the end, make it.”(1) Hitler
will never be forgotten for his contribution to world History; and,
despite revisionist denials, historians – even German historians
- would mostly view him in the same light.
However,
writing history is never a simple process. The determination of what is
fact and what is fiction is difficult enough in the present; so who can
be sure what really happened seventy years ago? Some primary sources
will be as deceptive as the known villains who wrote them. Who can be
trusted? What credentials qualify a person to be an historian? What
attributes should disqualify him?
This
is the dilemma of those who, like Iris Chang, seek to understand the
Japanese Government’s paradoxical position concerning its role in
World War II, and especially in the Sino-Japanese conflict. “A people denied history is a people deprived of dignity,”(2)
and the treatment meted out to the Chinese people of Nanking deprived
them not only of dignity but, in 300,000 cases, their lives.
Chang’s book, “The Rape of Nanking,” was her attempt not only to tell the world what happened, but most importantly to convince Allies and enemies alike that it really didhappen; for the official Japanese position is still enigmatic, ambiguous, and unremorseful. The enigma lies in their denialthat
this tragic event in history ever took place, despite much evidence to
the contrary, the subject matter and conclusions of the Tokyo Trials,
and the research and publications of their own historians and scholars.
HISTORICAL REVISIONISM AND THE TOKYO TRIALS
Historical
revisionism is an academic term that should be restricted to
history reviewed in the light of new, concrete and reliable
evidence Instead it is often used to cast doubts on whether
certain events in history actually occurred. Its exponents may have
personal agenda – political, racial, religious, or a combination
of all three. The Ku Klux Klan in the United States fits this
descriptor.
For
the purposes of this essay, we are looking at what is called
“HOLOCAUST DENIAL.”It first related to Hitler’s
persecution of the Jews. Later Harry Elmer Barnes extended
“holocaust” to refer to the role of Japan in World War II.
That is, he denied that the Japanese committed the atrocities that are
attributed to them by eyewitnesses, journalists, the historians, and
victims. Deniers do not just rewrite history;they expunge what they do not want the world to know from the records.
HOLOCAUST DENIAL
In
was in the interests of both the German and Japanese Governments to
deny the atrocities they had committed if they wished to avoid punished
and retribution.. They destroyed as much evidence as possible, but not
everything. Living documents bore convincing and compatible witness.
The
conclusions of the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo did not favour
“the enemy.” The reason why Iris Chang’s book still
needed to be written so long after the Tokyo Trials finished (in 1948)
is that Germany and Japan responded very differently. The former
admitted that what had happened, had happened. The worst criminals were
executed. Others received life sentences.. Furthermore, Germany could
not falsify the facts, for there holocaust denial is a criminal offense. The history books cannot be rewritten to cover up the past.
On
the other hand, Japan emerged from the Tokyo Trials still with a chip
on its shoulder and convinced of its victimization. It saw no need to
apologize or make reparations. Former war criminals were promoted.
Executed Class A criminals were honoured at the Shrine. Ironically they had unlikely support for their denial – and it came from America.
GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR.
Twenty-five
Japanese military personnel and politicians were convicted as Class A
war criminals. They had committed crimes against peace. Of these, only
seven were executed. One of them was IWANE MATSUI, the General with
most influence in the events of Nanking – though his version of
events is hardly to be trusted. He was there from December 17, 1937
and, from his diaries, it is clear that he was aware of the raping and
looting that had already occurred in just four days. He claimed not to
condone it. Why, therefore, did the massacre continue for another five
weeks? In 1940, the Government decorated him for his part in the war.
On December 23, 1948, he was hanged for it at Sugamo Prison in
Ikebukuro. He was seventy-one!
The
Emperor at that time, HIROHITO,had called Matsui out of retirement to
lead the army in the invasion of Nanking. Therefore, if Matsui had
condoned the atrocities, it was logical to assume he was acting under
orders from the Emperor, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the armies.
PRINCE
ASAKA,Hirohito’s son, held a position where he was in charge of
the funds obtained by looting. Again, the Emperor appears to have
quietly condoned both the looting and the mass murders by which the
loot was obtained.
DOCTORSfrom
KYUSHU UNIVERSITY,who performed experiments including vivisection
(without anaesthetic) on a group of American survivors of a plane crash
in May 1945, were also tried and sentenced. Justice appeared to be happening.
GENERAL
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR was presumably assigned to Japan for this purpose. A
much decorated American hero, he had a long and varied experience of
front line conflict, as well as peace time clean-up operations.
Thus he was proactive in the aftermath of the Trials. Some of his
actions and decisions were very strange.
He
overturned many of the sentences set down by the Judges at the Trials.
This included the twenty-three medical personnel who conducted the
vivisections and, if the victims were still alive afterwards, killed
them. All were sentenced: five to death, four to life imprisonment.
MacArthur commuted the death sentences, and all were free within ten
years.
At
times MacArthur circumvented the system entirely. Any Japanese criminal
who surrendered to the Americans and came to his attention was never
brought to trial.
The
most significant group under his “protection” was the royal
family.One of MacArthur’s first acts was to assure Hirohito that
he need not abdicate. . Indeed, he contrived without scruples to ensure
that not one member of the royal family was brought to trial. Assisted
by Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, he aimed “to protectHirohito from the role he had played during and at the end of the war”thus allowing “the major criminal suspects to coordinate their stories so that the Emperorwould be spared from indictment.”(3)
Did
MacArthur have an ulterior motive - patriotic, but nevertheless
perverse? For example, he granted immunity to any of the doctors who
would disclose the results of their experiments with germ warfare to
America. Was this part of his assignment? The fact that he was
hurriedly withdrawn from his position by President Truman in 1951 (one
suggested reason was insubordination) would hopefully indicate that he
was acting unilaterally, and very, very unwisely.
Regardless of motive, the outcome was unsatisfactory. Professor Herbert Bix, author of the book, “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan,” believes
that Hirohito should have abdicated and been tried..In an ABC TV
interview by Jennifer Byrne for “Foreign Correspondent”
(5/09/2000), Bix maintained:
- Hirohito’s wartime record resulted in the rewriting of history and truth;
- the enemies collaborated to change the truth;
- the truth did not come out during the war crimes trials in Tokyo because of the desire to protect the Emperor.(4)
To conclude, Bix believes that there was a “culture of denial,”(5) and America was as guilty of it as Japan.
THE YASUKUNI SHRINE.
This
shrine, now infamous rather than famous, was built in 1869 under the
Meiji regime to honour those who lost their lives in defence of the
Emperor. Their names were written in the “Book of Souls,” and they were considered martyrs.
After
World War II, these records needed updating.. In 1969, the decision was
made that even Class A war criminals deserved to be honoured, and
fourteen of them, including General Tojo, were included. By 2004, 1,068
of the names in the book (out of nearly 2.5 million) were known war
criminals. The Shrine’s pamphlet states that these war criminals
were “cruelly and unjustly tried”by a“sham-like tribunal of the Allied forces.”(6).
Clearly
those who run the Shrine refuse to show remorse or make apology for
Japan’s war crimes. However, it is interesting that none of the
post-war Emperors, including Hirohito, have paid official visits to the
Shrine since the war criminals have been honoured; and even in recent
months the visits of prominent people to the Shrine have caused
controversy. It suggests that there is some hope that the Japanese may
express more explicitly a sense of shame for what they did during the
war. Meanwhile, the unfavourable coverage given by the Japanese media
(and it has come to the attention of our papers also) indicates that
there is a public conscience that needs to be satisfied.
THE SILENCE OF THE TEXTS.
“We need not waste time and effort
answering the deniers and contentions.
It would be never ending to respond to
arguments posed by those who freely
falsify findings, quote out of context
and simply dismiss….of testimony.
Unlike true scholars, they have little,
if any, respect for data or evidence.
Their commitment is to an ideology
and their ‘findings’ are sloped to
support it. “
Japan
did literally rewrite the history books. It proceeded by a process of
scrutiny and selection. One of the early guidelines was to
expunge all references to Nanking, the Sino-Japanese War, and the War
in the Pacific. In the fifties, there were a number of controversies
arising from this censorship and distortion of truth.
For
example, Japanese historian, SABURO IENAGA, wrote a textbook which the
Government, in denial, censored. Ienaga sued the Ministry of Education
on the grounds that his freedom of speech had been denied him. His
integrity was respected much more by those outside his own country. He
was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
Other
Japanese academics have been less ethical, squandering their talents
and their professional integrity in perpetuating the myth of
Japan’s innocence.
KOBORI
KEIICHIRO, Professor at Meisie University and Emeritus Professor of
Tokyo University, wrote the FOREWORD to TANAKA MASAAKI’s book, “What Really happened in Nanking?” and seemsto be on the right path. He damns those “charlatans”who “invent or intentionally misrepresent history and, regrettably, there is little we can do to stop them.”(7) “Some ‘historiographers’,” he tells us, “make no effort to choose words that most closely resemble the truth.”(8)
He
offers a perception of history that is sound, but misplaced and
misleading. As an academic he says the things he ought to say, and says
them very well. As a patriot, he is blind to the fact that every
accusation he levels at other historians is exactly what he himself is
guilty of.
If follows that if he praises Masaaki as an historian (which he does when he describes him as one who “presents judiciously reasoned arguments”(9)
and recommends his book, he is being either very dishonest or sadly
deluded. The Tokyo Trials inspired people to invent history – the
specific period referred to being the Nanking Massacre, which he
described as having been “manufactured”.(10)
The trials were responsible for preventing Japanese freedom of speech.
Now it is time for scholars to have their day. They cannot “sit by in silence while the minds of the people of the world were being clouded by vicious Chinese Propaganda.”(11)
Conveniently ignoring confessions and admissions of atrocities by those
who perpetrated them at Nanking and elsewhere, Keiichiro paints a
pathetic portrait of the Japanese as victims. In highly emotive
language, he claims:
“Wrested of freedom of speech, they were
powerless to object to the shower of baseless
slanders and charges of nonexistent war crimes
that fell upon them. During the Occupation,
which spanned nearly seven years, the sins
committed to Japanese military in Nanking,
products of their inventors’ imaginations, were
persistently and repeatedly broadcast throughout
the world. This propaganda was spectacularly
successful; it was embraced as fact by the
international community, and engendered an
It
is to Iris Chang’s credit that Keiichiro and Masaaka consider her
book a turning point in the public attitude to Japanese propaganda.
Tanaka Masaaki refers to her as a “problem.”(13)
His greatest problem is really his academic ineptitude. His bias
is obvious. His evidence is unconvincing, and his methods of reaching a
conclusion unscientific and contrived. “Would
an officer as honourable and ethical as Gen. Matsui have ordered or
sanctioned the massacre of 300,000 Chinese?”(14)
he asks, rhetorically manipulating his audience into an unthinking and
uninformed “No.” Indeed, as soon as such a device is used,
the writing falls short of history to become emotion and imagination.
Masaaka
paints a poignant description, much better suited to creative writing
than objective history, of the good Matsui visiting hospitals and
bringing cheer to the ill. Matsui, of course, painted the picture first
in his diary, and made sure that it was made public.
Masaaka does not quite call him a saint, but he describes Matsui as “without question, the most illustrious Japanese officer of his time.”(15) When
Tanaka journeys to Nanking at his hero’s request to see how the
town is faring, his report is positive. Of course. In seven months,
there was ample time to clean up and bury the bodies.
UNCOMFORTABLE COMFORT WOMEN
When the academic elite are so biased and deluded, it is easy to understand why denialsucceeds in convincing the hoi polloi.One
still blinkered area continues to be the acknowledgement and
compensation of women who were taken by force and made to work in army
brothels. One method of denial was quite ingenious. Lists of the women
“working” for the Japanese were fabricated to give their
areas of employment as being “nurses” or other respectable
careers. They were not referred to as prostitutes, a term which the
women would have been quick to dispute anyway. They called a spade a
spade, which is to say they called rape, rape. They have written
themselves back into history with their vigorous campaigns to expose
their situation for what it was, but so far have not met with great
success.
CONCLUSION
What
must be determined from the events described is that the debate is far
from being concluded. In war, all sides kill, maim, and do things they
would never have imagined in civilian life. Iris Chang’s book
describes soldiers competing in competitions to see who could lop off a
hundred heads the fastest, with no thought for the human being on the
ground who trembled as he awaited his turn.
The
photographs and Chang’s texts show women and children were not
spared the massacre. The reader could feel the tension that women and
young girls must have experienced dreading the summons to report to the
Japanese, and knowing what that would mean. One cannot even believe the
Japanese then killed most of their rape victims to spare them
suffering. They appear to have done it because they did not regard the
Chinese as anything more than animals. I fact, in wartime an animal is
probably treated better, for it can feed an army.
But then, there are those terrible tales of cannibalism.
Should
any reader find these things absolutely impossible to believe, then
that person is substantiating the need for Chang’s book, and for
the commemoration of the event that, now after seventy years, still
stands as one of the worst blots on the history of mankind.
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