Japanese Reparations for Taiwan?

Politics International Politics
1

Interesting story broke today about Japanese colonization of Korea. Seems to have opened up a pandoras box.
As Taiwan was also a part of the Japanese colonial empire, does anyone have any thouhts is the same might happen here on the island?

Declassified documents anger victims’ families, stir up potential lawsuits <— clickable link to article

"Confidential documents drawn up between Seoul and Tokyo when normalizing diplomatic ties four decades ago were unveiled to the public yesterday under a court ruling, stirring up long-buried dust on victims of Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of this nation.

The government’s partial release of its “X-files,” consisting of about 1,200 pages, awakened memories of past victims and their families - and incited new claims for compensation.

“The documents will inevitably become a catalyst for compensation lawsuits from victims of the colonial rule,” an official at the Foreign Ministry said. “And with more files to be disclosed in the near future, we are expecting increasing public voices on what was settled forty years ago.”

The foreign ministries of both countries have each been holding in safe storage a total of 161 sets of documents of the South Korea-Japan Treaty signed in 1965. But Japan has yet to officially open up its own files.

A total of 57 sets are records relating to victims’ compensation issues, and the Seoul Administrative Court in February ordered the government to make five of them public following a 2002 lawsuit by a group of 99 alleged South Korean victims who demanded their right to review the documents. "(excert from a rather tasty article)

[Thread title changed by moderator based on request of OP]

2

Hell yes I hope it blows up in the face of the ‘feel-good-and-forget-we-raped-your-women-and-tossed-babies-on-bayonets’ wave of feeling that threatens to bury history. The Japanese are in severe denial of their past as is evinced no mention of the Comfort Women in school texts. The Japanese empire was one of the cruelest I have yet read about. :fume: According to one biography I’m reading they even prohibited the Chinese from eating rice in areas they controlled! I’m sorry, but you touch my burger and you have to die. :America: It’s very similar to what the Turkish have done to forget about their massacre of the Armenians. The Japanese glorify a militaristic past which in many cases amounted to little more than piracy.

3

That’s right those nasty Japanese should be punished to the end of time. Yeah, right.

Or is it, what is done is done and now it’s time to move on with our lives wave of feeling?
Strange I don’t see Americans volunteering to relocate to anothe country so the place can be returned to the Indians or maybe the Australians should all move back to England or where ever so the natives can have it back.
I believe the map of Europe has changed quite a bit in the last few hundred years…which one would you like us to go back to?
Just because the Japanese refuse to wear guilt like a proud badge like the Germans doesn’t mean anything sinister, hell it’s probably a much healthier attitude.

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[quote=“Vannyel”]That’s right those nasty Japanese should be punished to the end of time. Yeah, right.

Or is it, what is done is done and now it’s time to move on with our lives wave of feeling?
Strange I don’t see Americans volunteering to relocate to anothe country so the place can be returned to the Indians or maybe the Australians should all move back to England or where ever so the natives can have it back.
I believe the map of Europe has changed quite a bit in the last few hundred years…which one would you like us to go back to?
Just because the Japanese refuse to wear guilt like a proud badge like the Germans doesn’t mean anything sinister, hell it’s probably a much healthier attitude.[/quote]

“…be punished to the end of time.” No, not in my opinion, but when a criminal or a nation refuses to acknowledge past misdeeds, to allow that condition to go uncorrected is to invite a repeat performance.

There is less of a concern that Germany will engage in activities such as occurred in the 1930’s and 40’s because they acknowledge and regret the actions - especially those who weren’t even born then. The same is true for the US and the treatment of Native Americans. The whole bloody unjust history is laid out and available for students to learn from in US history books. The majority of Americans would not - I hope - allow that to happen again.

In Japan the history books teach that Japan engaged in freeing Pacific Rim counties from unjust Western influence. Further they say, Japan engaged in acts of liberation and stabilization. Because these acts were incorrectly viewed by some foreign nations as expansionist, war was perpetrated against Japan, which Japan, while fighting nobly and valiantly, eventually ‘lost.’ The prime reason Japan ‘lost’ the war was because other national powers were morally unrestrained in their use of horrible engines of destruction, the atomic bomb, against Japan

5

That is true. Years ago (about 1981) I was teaching English to some engineers in Beijing. I was trying to explain that the most revolting thing I ever tasted was an acorn. The students didn’t know the word acorn, or oak, for that matter. So I tried to explain what an acorn is. Suddenly one grey-haired senior engineer realised what I was talking about. He said that when he was a kid living near Harbin (in Manchuria) under the Japanese occupation, the grain the Chinese farmers produced was expropriated to feed the Japanese army, so the Chinese had to try and get by on acorn flour.

6

While I don’t disagree that Japan ought be reminded from time to time of its horrendous colonial record. It’s on a par with the British’s own excesses like herding Aborigines and running them over cliffs or Hitler gassing millions.

And that aside, on a strategic basis, I’m of the camp that believes there is an active policy, promoted largely by the Chinese, to keep Japan submissive. They would prefer Japan’s military be subverted and a lot of this rehashing of Japan’s colonial past is part of this.

7

It isn’t a question of someone reminding Japan. With your English and German examples citizens of those countries can access information on those errors in history books, radio, and television. In Japan there is denial that the events ever transpired. It is the twisting of facts and the denial of responsibility that forms the foundation for the continued insistance that Japan own up to its past deeds. That isn’t an attempt to keep a country submissive, it’s an attempt to keep history from repeating itself.

If Japan’s actions are, as you say, on a par with England’s and Germany’s, don’t you think those actions should be in the history books of Japanese students as they are in England and Germany?

OOC

8

with the peace treaties ending WW2 weren’t any future claims for damages nixed? seems “war reparations” ala that thrust on germany after WW1 and clauses for indemnities (such as western powers/japan assessed on china were remembered by those who sagaciously left them out of the peace treaties.

9

OutofChaos,

I don’t disagree, but that is nothing new and the world seems to tick over all the same. In Australia, the law to this day, says that Australia was Terra Nullius (devoid of inhabitants) when the British colonized it. There have been numerous legal challenges to this notion of madness but none have succeeded.

Japan should be held accountable for its past, as should every nation on earth. The Australian Aborigines probably committed many atrosities in their own past too. It is the nature of the beast. As that is pretty much an unavoidable reality, I think it is reasonable to question the motives of those who use the past to frame the future, especially, if I’m in the firing line.

10

Interesting. That’s a rather strange thing to say. What is the effect of this law? In other words, generally laws do not simply make statements of “fact” but rather say “Given that [STATEMENT OF FACT], therefore [RULING/LAW]”. Is it primarily an issue of property law (i.e. ownership of any given parcel of land belongs to John Smith settler because nobody owned the land before he claimed it)?

11

check this out re: the japanese view of the same topic:
jiyuu-shikan.org/e/faq/faq3.html

china renounced right to claim war reps. from japan circa 1951.

12

:astonished: Interesting theory. So

[quote]Or is it, what is done is done and now it’s time to move on with our lives wave of feeling?
Strange I don’t see Americans volunteering to relocate to another country so the place can be returned to the Indians or maybe the Australians should all move back to England or where ever so the natives can have it back.[/quote]
I think what is most nauseating is the denial of historical events. No one plays ‘cowboys and Indians’ anymore because most Americans have been educated about most of the atrocities and barbarities committed there (i.e. Jim Crow laws and lynchings, massacres of Indian tribes, etc.). The same with Germany. For a country to move ahead it must understand the best and worst of its history and not whitewash it like the Japanese have done. In one of my classes a Korean student brought up the Comfort Women and a Japanese student vehemently denied it even though most of the other students knew something about it. The same happened when an Armenian student brought up the Turkish massacre of Armenians in the early 1900’s. To deny your culture’s ability to commit atrocities is to deny part of your own humanity. That the Japanese government has still not acknowledged that the Comfort Women existed must be one of the most offensive insults in modern times. Whether reparations should be repaid is a separate issue. I don’t feel that African Americans in the US should get reparations simply because so much time has passed. The same with the Native Americans. However I think the surviving Japanese who were interned during World War II should be recompensated.
Just how is the Japanese denial of history an admirable quality?

13

Well said sbmoor. Great post :bravo:

Just one question: When you said: “I think the surviving Japanese who were interned during World War II should be recompensated.” – do you mean that they should be compensated again?

Please do not misunderstand me here. I am not trying to pull some kind of cutesy grade-school insult here (i.e. “Haha you said ‘recompensate’ and you really meant ‘compensate’ nya nya nya!”) I am honestly curious about whether you mean (a) that you agreed with the reparations that were made, or if you are saying (b) that they should get a “second round” of reparations involving larger dollar amounts? (As I recall, back in 1988 each Japanese American who was interned received an apology and around $20,000 – which really is not that much, so interpretation (b) does not seem like an outrageous position to hold, imo)

-H

14

International law then (and now) held that if a land could be declared devoid of inhabitants, there was naturally no treaty requirements.

Treaty requirements involve some sort of negotiated land settlements and what’s more they can be revised.

The British claimed Australia as Terra Nullius and then went about exterminating the vermen. This notion has been contested but has always been upheld in Australia until recently. There was one landmark case known as the “Mabo” case. It was fought by the Murray Islanders, or rather one old guy called Eddie Mabo. It was the first time native title was recognized in Australia. That was in 1992. The case did result in changes to native title Australia wide. However, I think it is still very difficult for Aborigines to establish native title in most areas of Autralia. Somebody else might be better informed on this than me.

15

Well somebody else might or might not be better informed, but I found your post very helpful. Answered my question perfectly. Cheers Fox.

16

The Japanese government has acknowledged and apologised for comfort women - whether it is doing enough in terms of reparations and remembering what happened is a different question. A little bit of googling found the official Japanese policy on comfort women:
mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/policy.html
Also some links to various apologies (not just relating to comfort women):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa … d_by_Japan

17

Interesting.

Well, let me be the first to raise my hand and say mea culpa for basically accepting the conventional wisdom without going and reading up on the current status of the subject. I had no idea that they had made this apology.

Thanks david, well done.

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[quote=“david”]The Japanese government has acknowledged and apologised for comfort women - whether it is doing enough in terms of reparations and remembering what happened is a different question. A little bit of googling found the official Japanese policy on comfort women:
mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/policy.html
Also some links to various apologies (not just relating to comfort women):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wa … d_by_Japan[/quote]

[i]Right.[/i] They set up a private fund. Not the same as an official apology and official reparations, now is it? Kinda like the “war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”*

[quote]The Korean Council conveyed its reaction to the Japanese report in an open letter to Prime Minister Miyazawa in October 1992. The letter described the report as a mere enumeration of data and expressed a strong opposition to the establishment of a relief fund for former comfort women being considered by the Japanese government It urged Japan to first clear up the comfort women issue and wartime and post-war responsibility before seeking to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

From the Korean perspective, acceptance of such money allows Tokyo to avoid legal responsibility fot the state’s complicity in establishing and maintaining the comfort women system.[/quote]

online.sfsu.edu/~soh/comfortwomen.html

And this from March 29, 2001.

[quote]Japanese comfort women ruling overturned

TOKYO, Japan – A Japanese appeals court overturned an earlier ruling that orders the government to compensate women who were forced to serve as sex slaves during World War II.

A U.S.-based lawyer, Michael Hausfeld, who filed a class-action suit against the Japanese government called the order “a step backward,” and added that Japan had yet to understand the human rights issues involved.

“The court’s decision is inconsistent with the current thinking and decisions that have been made in international human rights law,” he said. [/quote]

edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiap … .women.02/

*From Hirohito’s address to Japan.

mansell.com/pow_resources/pi … ender.html

19

It’s the pot calling the kettle “black”.

The Japanese may have killed millions of Chinese (not sure how many, 5 million, 10 million?), but that pales in comparison to how many Mao managed to kill after he came to power. Estimates are from 40-60 million. I guess Japan should apologize to China when the Chinese communists apologize to China.

Then there’s the little issue of the 2 million Koreans China killed in the Korean War. Wonder why the Koreans aren’t demanding compensation for that?

cheers,
DB

20

I’m not claiming that they’ve done everything they should have - in particular it seems to have taken them 50 years before they’ve done anything (in which time of course, a large number of the victims have died of old age without any apology/reparation). However, I’m not sure what you mean by an official apology. Is the apology in the link I posted not official?

In terms of reparations: it seems the fund paid 2 million Yen each to 285 recipients - which seems a remarkably small number. Most women would be in their eighties now, so many will have died of old age - but the estimate is of 200,000 comfort women (20,000 in Taiwan), so I’d expect thousands of claims at least. Did Japan make it difficult for people to claim?

Last year 7 Taiwanese women lost their compensation claim:
channelnewsasia.com/stories/ … 92/1/.html

[quote]It was the second judicial defeat for the women, who were appealing an identical ruling by the Tokyo District Court handed down in October 2002.
Originally, the case started with nine plaintiffs, but two of them died while the district court was handling the case.
…
More than 50 damages suits have been filed against Japan over its wartime sexual enslavement of women, mainly from South Korea and China.

Japanese courts have said a 20-year period for demanding compensation had expired or that internationally recognised treaties provide for reparations to be made to states, not individuals. [/quote]
To throw out a claim like this because you’re “too late applying” is ridiculous