MCLC: wartime atrocities documentation face-off

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: wartime atrocities documentation face-off
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Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (6/13/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/13/china-and-japan-face-off-ove
r-documentation-of-wartime-atrocities/

China and Japan Face Off Over Documentation of Wartime Atrocities
By AUSTIN RAMZY  

China and Japan, whose festering relationship has seen their rival
military aircraft buzz each other over the East China Sea, have found yet
another forum in which to duel: Unesco’s Memory of the World Register.

The Unesco program preserves the documentation of important historical
events from various parts of the world. It was started in 1992 and
contains items of whimsy — the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” is one
American entry — and terror, such as the records of the Khmer Rouge’s Tuol
Sleng prison in Cambodia.

This week China announced that it had submitted an application to include
files related to atrocities committed by Japanese forces during their
country’s brutal wartime occupation of China, including forced
prostitution and the 1937-38 Nanjing massacre.

While applications to the register have produced disputes — the United
States protested the inclusion last year of writings by the Argentine
revolutionary Che Guevara — they are generally quiet affairs. But China’s
submission has led to a high-level debate between the two Asian neighbors.

Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said
<http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_chn/fyrbt_602243/t1164973.shtml> the
application had been filed with “a sense of responsibility toward history”
and a goal of “treasuring peace, upholding the dignity of mankind and
preventing the reappearance of those tragic and dark days.”

Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said that Japan had filed
a formal complaint with the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. “After the Imperial
Japanese Army went into Nanjing, there must have been some atrocities by
the Japanese Army,” he told
<http://nettv.gov-online.go.jp/eng/prg/prg3796.html?c=11&a=1>reporters on
Wednesday. “But to what extent it was done, there are different opinions,
and it is very difficult to determine the truth. However, China took
unilateral action. That’s why we launched a complaint.”

Ms. Hua said China’s application had included documents from Japan’s
military in northeastern China, the police in Shanghai and the
Japanese-backed wartime puppet regime in China that detailed the system of
“comfort women,” a euphemism used to describe the forced prostitution of
women from China, Korea and several Southeast Asian countries under
Japanese control. The files also included information on the mass killings
of civilians by Japanese troops who entered the Chinese capital of Nanjing
in December 1937.

China says that about 300,000 people were killed in the weeks-long
rampage, which is also called the Rape of Nanking. That figure comes from
the postwar Tokyo war crimes trials, and some scholars argue that the toll
has been overstated.

While Japan has protested the submission of documents related to the
Nanjing massacre and forced prostitution, it has considered other aspects
of its wartime record for Unesco recognition. This spring the southern
Japanese city of Minamikyushu in Kagoshima Prefecture proposed
<http://okinawa.stripes.com/news/japan-city-seeks-un-recognition-kamikaze-p
ilot-letters> submitting the last letters of kamikaze pilots who embarked
on suicide missions to destroy Allied navy ships. And the city of Maizuru
in Kyoto Prefecture proposed
<http://japandailypress.com/japan-set-to-file-ex-japanese-pows-mementos-for
-unesco-listing-0545272/> including documentation related to Japanese
prisoners of war held by the Soviet Union.

Japan’s National Commission for Unesco rejected the kamikaze letters, but
will include the P.O.W. documents along with records from the Toji Temple
in Kyoto in its next submission for the Memory of the World Register, Jiji
Press reported <http://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2014061201043> on
Thursday. The kamikaze letters could be submitted at a later date, the
news agency said.