Emperor Voices ‘Deep Remorse’ for Japan’s Wartime Past

Date: 15 August 2020 - 21:48

News ID: ۸۱۷۶۱

TOKYO (Dispatches) -- Japan’s Emperor Naruhito on Saturday expressed "deep remorse” for the nation’s wartime past in marking the 75th anniversary of Japanese surrender in World War II without mentioning U.S. nuclear bombings of the country that killed over 200,000 people.
"I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never again be repeated,” Naruhito stated at a ceremony for war dead.
As he spoke, two Japanese cabinet ministers marked the occasion by paying respects to the war dead at a controversial war shrine in Tokyo that neighboring countries regard as a symbol of Tokyo’s past militarism.
Praying for world peace, the 60-year-old Naruhito -- the grandson of Emperor Hirohito in whose name Japanese troops fought the war -- also expressed hope his country could come together to surmount the coronavirus pandemic.
The emperor, who ascended the throne last year after his father Akihito abdicated, had been largely absent from public view since Japan’s COVID-19 outbreak deteriorated earlier this year.
Visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo for the first official visit since 2016, Japan’s Education Minister Koichi Hagiuda stated that he did so along with Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi to pay tribute to the war dead.
The war shrine honors nearly 2.5 million war dead that perished during the country’s wars since the late 19th century, but it also enshrines senior military and political figures accused and convicted of war crimes by a U.S.-led tribunal following the Second World War.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also sent a ritual cash offering to the Yasukuni Shrine to mark the ceremony on Saturday but was not expected to visit in person, according to local media reports.
Abe last visited the shrine in December 2013 to mark his first year in power, triggering anger by Chinese and Korean officials and sparking a rare diplomatic reprimand from Washington -- Tokyo’s closest ally – that maintains a vast military presence in the country.
Just last week, Japan marked the 75th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of its southern port city of Nagasaki, with the city’s mayor demanding for a ban on nuclear weapons.
After the first bombing, Harry Truman, the then U.S. president, told the Japanese to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”
The U.S., which claims to be against the weapons of mass destruction despite continuing to renovate and upgrade its nuclear arsenal, has never apologized for its most heinous crime.
U.S. leaders have even justified the bombings, claiming that they in fact helped bring the war to a stop and prevented more deaths and destruction.