INTRODUCTION

My buddy from Fort Rouge in Winnipeg met me in London where we had planned to go on leave. I had a letter from a friend of mine who was with the Winnipeg Grenadiers. It was postmarked Kingston, Jamaica. My buddy with the Grenadiers was having his little joke. He knew I had joined with the Royal Winnipeg Rifles and I had sent him a copy of the Canadian Army newspaper - The Maple Leaf. It had a harrowing story of how we had undergone devastating bombing while we waited in one of the Channel ports. My friend was saying in the letter that he felt sorry for me because I would soon be facing the Germans whereas he would be spending the rest of the war on an island in the Caribbean. Some joke!

I received a letter from his mother several months later telling me that my chum was probably getting ready to fight the Japanese in some far off Pacific hell hole.

Such is the luck of the draw when it comes to volunteering to fight for Canada.

I don't have to tell most of the former military from World War II who got the best of that deal. The Germans were great fighters but when it came to mistreating their prisoners, the Japanese certainly took first place.

JAPANESE IMPERIALISM

At this time we are asked to express regrets regarding the use of the atomic bomb by the Americans.

This requires us, of course, to search out the origins of Japan Imperialism.

Japan started developing imperial ambitions in the late 19th century. It began with the enforcement of establishing prefectures in place of feudal domains on July 14, 1871. This resulted in the expansion of Japan from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to administrative modernization and subsequent rapid economic development.

Japan had little natural resources of her own. It needed overseas markets, and sources of raw materials. This fueled the drive for imperial conquest which began with the defeat of China in 1895, Taiwan, ceded by the Qing Empire, became the first Japanese colony.

The two main reasons for Japanese Imperialism:
The first reason is defence. It rose to imperial status after facing colonization by the West. Japan was afraid to lose its National Sovereignty, so it acquired territories in a ring around its main island to act as a defensive perimeter.
The second is that it was anti-western. Japan wanted to liberate Asian territories from Western dominance.
Imperial expansion was the last chance to win Western respect and ensure security and survival as a nation.

The Japanese government turned expansion into a systematic goal for security, national pride, resources for industrialization, settlement of overpopulation, and for markets for manufactured goods.

Japan was ruled by an Emperor who is often described as a God-like figure - meaning that he was no mere mortal as the rest of us are.

This apparently gave him the strength to commit the Japanese empire to a war which cost the lives of 6 million.

BUSHIDO

I need not discuss the horrors inflicted by the Japanese except to tell the story of the code of Bushido.

The code of Bushido is of ancient Japanese origin and it borrowed heavily from Zen Buddhism and Confucianism. The code emphasized loyalty to one's superior, personal honor, and the virtues of austerity, self-sacrifice, and indifference to pain. In the 17th century, it became the standard of conduct for the samurai under the shoguns and was taught in state schools as a prerequisite for government service. After 1868, it was the basis for the cult of emperor worship taught until 1945.

The code of Bushido requires Japanese soldiers to fight to the death - "it was better to die than to surrender." The Japanese believed that surrender meant disgrace, and often preferred suicide to capture.

During World War II, the doctrine was the Bushido code which extolled the offensive, created a lust of battle and condemned weakness. It demanded bravery, loyalty, allegiance to orders and forbade surrender. It was believed that death in combat was honorable. In combat, this code was used to rally troops into suicidal banzai charges, or to encourage encircled troops to take their own lives with grenades before they could be captured. Surrender was disgraceful not only to the soldier, but to his entire family.

Basically this means that a soldier of Japan will lay down his life for his country and in doing, ignore the rules of warfare. In fact under the code of Bushido it was a criminal act to surrender.

For this reason, troops taken prisoner by the Japanese were considered as fair game. In other words it was not only customary but in fact mandatory for Japan to kill its enemies taken prisoner in time of war. The code of Bushido cost the allies many hundreds of thousands of deaths - and in the well traveled road, mercy simply did not exist.

This created horrific conditions practiced in the Japanese labour camps.

ATOMIC BOMB

We come now to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Firstly many people talk of Hiroshima and conveniently ignore the Potsdam Declaration and the second atomic bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. On July 27, 1945, the Allied powers requested Japan in the Potsdam Declaration to surrender unconditionally, or destruction would continue. It was made abundantly clear to the Emperor, who ruled Japan with an iron fist, that the Japanese people would never surrender. It was in this scenario that the so-called ‘Big Three' - Truman, Stalin and Churchill, with our own ruling politicians, came easily to the conclusion that it would be justifiable to drop the atom bomb even if it meant incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese people.

The estimated casualties, if the Americans had attacked Japan, was expected to take the lives of 200,000 additional American troops, over and above those who had already lost their lives. This applied not only to America but other countries forced to defend themselves against the Japanese, including India and Great Britain and, of course, Canada.

Was the dropping of the bomb justifiable? Of course because Japan ignored the Potsdam Treaty which gave them 10 days to assess the likely damages in human lives.

On August 14, however, Emperor Hirohito finally decided to surrender unconditionally.

ROLE OF GENERAL MacARTHUR

General MacArthur was the military Governor in the Philippines prior to the war but was retired by 1941. He was recalled to active duty as U.S. Far East Commander after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was really on the losing end of the battle against the Japanese in the Far East until the tide turned at the start of 1944. In 1945 MacArthur defies the American Government and takes command, forcing the Japanese to surrender on the Battleship Missouri on the 2nd of September.

In 1946 MacArthur wrote a constitution for Japan. Manchester says MacArthur intended to install himself as the leader of the Japanese people. This all came to an end in 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. By that time the damage had been done. MacArthur's new constitution outlawed war for the Japanese people and replaced it with millions and millions of dollars in so-called reparations. This was the start of Japan as an economic power but even MacArthur could not foresee the dominance of that Far East country which is still in evidence today.

If there had been no General MacArthur, it is likely that Japan would have been reduced to an agrarian state and would never have risen to the position where it could compete against American and European interests. MacArthur must bear the blame for allowing the Japanese to get away with murder which is the best name to give their activities in World War II.

HIROHITO

Hirohito was in reality a stupid, silent man who ruled because the Japanese slavishly accepted his word as God. William Manchester in his book American Ceasar about Douglas MacArthur describes Hirohito in the following terms:

"Hirohito was a very ordinary man - a short, absent-minded 44-year old who had inherited his father's position 19 years before World War II and had been struggling ever since to make a success of it."

Manchester states, however, that the Japanese people believed Hirohito to be the 124th direct descendant of ancient Japanese warlords. Manchester says of the Japanese - none would have dreamed of forming an opinion about anything the Emperor said, even when they understood him, which was seldom.

He finished the war with a quote which we should all remember ourselves, it is as follows:

"I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer. Ending the war is the only way to restore world peace and to relieve the nation from the terrible distress with which it is burdened."

Many thought he should have been hung. He was quite aware of the drastic sins committed in his name. He was unable to apologize consequently he had to live with the cries of the wronged - some of them silent - ringing loud and clear on his conscience. When his sentence was revoked one can only imagine that he was condemned to live with the horrible knowledge carried out in his name. We must remember that he was not forgiven and lived out his life as a person accused of wrongdoing.

THE COMPENSATION CLAIM

The compensation claim found him guilty in the court of world opinion.

Japan violated the Geneva Convention on at least 90 different counts. I was privileged to work with the leaders of the Hong Kong Veterans Association and took the claim to the United Nations.

Bill Graham, the current Minister of National Defence, heard the evidence when he was Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs. It is common knowledge that he made a very strong recommendation to the Liberal Government that Canada should pay the claim and then go after Japan. This proved to be successful and resulted in compensation payments of $24,000 tax free to all living veterans of the Hong Kong force or their widows.

Do the Japanese people feel shame? I personally have visited the memorial at Hiroshima. Outwardly it looks as if the memorial condemns Americans who dropped the bomb - the faces of the Japanese express sorrow for their own dead. There is no mention in their memorial that their Emperor committed the greatest crimes of the 20th Century.

The great philosophers of the world have been in agreement that it is only the victim who can forgive. If this is true, whether you and your loved ones forgive the shameless acts of cruelty inflicted upon you, is entirely a personal decision.

The Japanese Government committed terrible crimes under the Geneva Convention. We need only look at the judgements of the United Nations to know this is true. Many Hong Kong veterans and their families were part of the compensation claim. World opinion weighed heavily against Japan. Concerning financial compensation, those who suffered at the hands of the Japanese were compensated at least insofar as cash payment could be made. Many Hong Kong veterans - and this is their right - say that only an apology would right the wrongs. Perhaps it is small comfort, but compensation was paid. We are well aware that the payment was made by the Canadian Government with the stipulation that the responsibility to underwrite the compensation claim could only be exercised by your own Government. My suggestion is that in the final analysis it is probably our own politicians who failed us but only you have the luxury of deciding whether this is true or not.