NGO, STATUS ROSTER
His Excellency Shinzo ABE
Prime Minister of Japan
The Hague, 14 January 2014.
Petition: 230
Subject: Be honest about your past!
Excellency ,
The Board and members of the Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts wish you and your country a Happy New Year. Last year we congratulated you on the occasion of your election victory and your appointment as Prime Minister of Japan. Much of your intentions to create change in Japan you repeated in your present New Year's message. It is regrettable that these intentions appear to ignore Japan's past and do not take in account that Japan's future as a nation must first resolve that horrible past. Japan is part of the global community and must realize that its own well being is dependent on its international relations.
Prime Minister,
The Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts is not a political entity. Its purpose is to care for the Dutch from the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, and resolve the relationship with Japan stemming from the horrible period of Japanese military occupation of the Dutch East Indies during World War Two.It is remarkable that a spokesman from the German Chancellor Mrs. Angela Merkel made the point recently that Japan should deal "honestly" with its World War Two past. Your recent visit as Prime Minister to the Yasukuni Shrine angers many international institutions and countries.It demonstrates that in fact you do not care how the world reacts to these visits. It means too that your other intentions to revive Japan's standing in the world will not be improved. As so well demonstrated by Germany. We demand that you accept moral responsibility for the past. You must realize how the individual survivors suffered and what they lost as a result of the war which Japan started. Make Japan respectable again as a nation of conscience and principals and open an honest dialogue with our Foundation.
We would welcome an acknowledgement of the receipt of this petition by you personally.
On behalf of the Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts,
J.F.Wagtendonk
President
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| The Hague. |
History continued to be a large part of my life. Whenever WW2 is mentioned or there are memorial services held I think about my mother and her sister. I think about our time in these horrible Japanese concentration camps.Locked up for three and a half year, behind barbwire and high fences, terrorized by the Japanese military, starved to death, raped, and experimented on.I discover that there are large parts missing from the stories of World War Two.
Why is it when you ask people about the Holocaust they immediately relate it to the German's Nazi and the Jews in these horrible concentration camps.Nobody seems to know anything about the other holocaust which really started in 1931 with Japan invading China and Southeast Asia. It touches deep emotions inside of me, almost to the point that I become angry. How is it possible that Japan has never dealt with this legacy???
Germany started WW2 with the invasion of Poland in 1939.
Japan started WW2 with the aggression in Asia, which began with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.
This was the holocaust of Asia- and the global upheaval that followed.
1931-1945
Imperial Japan's military inflicted unbelievable violence against the human race.Many Asian people were brutally murdered. This was the holocaust of Asia. Hundreds of millions of people suffered at the hands of the Japanese military. Most of the casualties were innocent Civilians, innocent women, children and men. They were the result of terror, killings, biological weapons, malnutrition,maltreatment, forced labor, sickness and diseases. Many women and young girls were brutally raped and tortured and then killed.
Little understanding has been given to the hardship of Chinese people who suffered by the invasion of Japan
just like Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany.
Read the book of Werner Gruhl in which I read:
A typical example of the state of public knowledge is illustrated in an article in the Baltimore Sun on Sept. 1, 2000 entitled : "War to preserve civilized world won 55 years ago". It lists the World War Two dead of the Soviet Union, Poland, Germany, Japan, and the United States. It remarks on the death camps in Europe and the atomic bombs on Japan. Not a word or count is offered for other Asian War victims who perished in numbers approximating the extraordinary loss of life in Poland and the Soviet Union combined, and eight times the loss of Japanese lives.
The sad part is that of the worlds education all forms of communication about WW2, such as history, books, classroom work, museum exhibits, movies, and the news media, concentrate mainly on Europe and Nazi Germany's past. Imperial Japan's invasion of Asia, is hardly mentioned. Historically Americans have been primarily from Europe.
World War 2 from 1931-1945 was started in Asia by Japan and spread to Europe. The aim of Imperial Japan, fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany (the Axis partners) was to dominate the world.
We would have lost our freedom, which we all enjoyed, if the Axis had won the war.
Japan fought the war in Asia with help from her colonies, Formosa, Korea, while Germany with the help of her six Axis partners, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austria(then part of Germany) and Finland.
The U.S and the Soviet Union provided the largest Allied military forces.The cruelest losses in history during WW2 were those killed defending the Soviet Union from Germany and those in China defending their country from Japan.
The Soviets and Chinese bore the greatest suffering.
I have read many books about history and have come to the conclusion that very few people of today have no idea how close we came to lose our Freedom.
The pain and tragedy of China is not to describe. The deaths in China was extensively and cruel.
We should get a better understanding about the feelings of the Chinese people.How is it possible that Japan is getting away with these murders and killings from the past. Never have they acknowledge their wrong doings.
Why do we as victims still have to demonstrate all over the world, for Japan to acknowledge their wrong doings?
Japan is angry that statues appear every where. Statues which portray the kidnapping of very young girls and using them in brothels for the pleasure of their military.We will keep reminding Japan as long as we can, until they finally will take the blame and admit their wrong doings during WW2.
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| This statue is in Manila. |
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| This statue is in Korea |
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| This statue is in New Yersey |
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| This statue is in Glendale, the latest put there last summer. |
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| We demand sincere apology , justice and compensation. |
It has been a fact that women were never believed if they were raped. It was always the fault of the women. Women were afraid to come forward and men got away with it. Not nowadays anymore.Many girls and young women who survived this horrible ordeal being put in these brothels, where they had to serve sometimes twelve to thirty men a day, were scarred and traumatized for the rest of their lives.Their lives were ruined forever by this miserable regime, used as comfort women in these horror houses they call brothels.
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| My mother before the war.1939 |
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| My mother after the war.1946 |
My mother and her sister were raped by these horrible military men and were ashamed of it the rest of their lives.Only one of my mother's six sisters knew about what had happened to them in those horrible Japanese concentration camps on Java in the former Dutch East Indies and had promised never to tell anybody. In those days it was a very shameful thing, so automatically they never talked about it.Just get on with your life, and try to make the best of it.In those days there were no trauma centers, where you could get help.I am so grateful that my mother and her sister could comfort each other.
I only became aware of it when I was writing my book "I Thought You Should Know" when my mothers youngest sister told me about it in 2009, she was so upset that she broke her promise. She is 87 years old now, my mother passed away in 2003, her sister who was in the same concentration camp as my mother passed away in1991.How they have suffered in those Japanese concentration camps is beyond anybodies imagine.Only those who were there can understand. I and my cousins were very young. My cousins were six and three and I was 5 when we were finally freed from these tyrants.We survived but many never did come home, like my father and my cousins father. Tortured and killed by the Japanese military. Thanks to the A bombs, it saved many lives and gave us our freedom.
We ask Japan to come to terms with their past. Start your Nation with conscience principals and honesty in 2014.
Lest we forget!
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