Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Japan’s just desert

As the Japanese grief over the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the lives lost when two Atom bombs fell on the two cities, many are still wondering whether the events to commemorate the dead and destruction of the two cities meant anything to the Japanese?

Kwok Kian Woon wrote a piece in the ST on 6 Aug titled, ‘A letter to Japanese friends on Hiroshima Day’ in the most friendly way possible to share Japan’s grief and politely asked the Japanese about the same question I asked above. Kwok Kian Woon quoted Kuo Pao Kun saying, ‘I think that of all peoples the Japanese have in their living memory the most profound understanding of the war because the Japanese were at the same time a very cruel aggressor and a victim of the cruelest experience of war….What is there in the Japanese psyche, what is there in the Japanese culture, that stops a people capable of deep, profound thinking coming out strongly as a people, not just a few individuals but as a people, to reflect openly and deeply about the war?

What did Kuo Pao Kun and Kwok Kian Woon wanted the Japanese to reflect about? The pain and destruction from Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not insignificant. But compared to the pain and suffering wrought by the Japanese on the millions of Asians from Korea, China in the North all the way down to South East Asia, to Indonesia, the Philippines and Burma, what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chicken feat. The pain and suffering and the lost of lives and destruction brought about by the invading barbaric forces of the Imperial Japanese Army were abominable. Can Japan and the Japanese people understand that? Can Japan and the Japanese people understand the thousands of Americans that were bombed and killed in Pearl Harbour without knowing what hit them? Can the Japanese understand the hundreds of thousands of American and Allies soldiers that died and maimed to fight them and to drive them back to the Japanese shores, all because Japan started an invasion to conquer and colonise other people?

Despite the polite words of Kwok Kian Woon and Kuo Pao Kun, the Japanese did not understand and did not learn anything about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan under Abe and his militant cabinet is remilitarizing to be the same militant Japanese of pre defeated Japan. They are legitimizing themselves to go to war again. They want the right to go to war, to fight, destroy and kill again. They have burnt their pacifist constitution.

The Japanese did not learn anything from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They do not mind Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated again. Or they do understand what Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant and want to do another Hiroshima and Nagasaki on others, to avenge their defeat and their pain and suffering.

Let me quote Kuo Pao Kun again, ‘What is there in the Japanese psyche, what is there in the Japanese culture, that stops a people capable of deep, profound thinking coming out strongly as a people,….’ What is there for the Japanese people to know that they should not try or attempt to repeat what they did to the rest of Asia and to the Americans, and to live in peace instead of harbouring the ambition to go to war again, as a war mongering nation?

Japan must be warned not to allow Hiroshima and Nagasaki to happen again. They brought it upon themselves. Do they want history to repeat itself by flexing its military might and cherishing for war again?