Repairing trust under fire

While North Korea Tests, South Korea And Japan Walk A Narrow Bridge To Restore Relations

By Daniel Sneider, Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP member

Oriental Economist, October 14,2022

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, perhaps emboldened by his embrace of Russia’s war in Ukraine, has unleashed a wave of missile tests, with a possible nuclear test to come. The Pyongyang regime claims to be developing tactical nuclear weapons and to be responding to recent joint military exercises by the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Ironically, the most immediate impact of North Korea’s relentless pace of missile testing, highlighted by the flight of an intermediate range missile over Japan on October 4, has been to draw Japan and South Korea closer together, and to give life to U.S. entreaties to its two allies to join in closer trilateral security cooperation. The most significant sign of this shift was visible two days later in the waters between Korea and Japan.

In those seas, two American guided missile ships were joined by two Japanese Maritime Self Defense destroyers and the Korean navy’s most advanced destroyer in carrying out a first ever trilateral ballistic missile defense exercise. During the same week, the three countries carried out joint air exercises as well.

This was a highly symbolic move toward, as the US Indo-Pacific Command put it, “the interoperability of our collective forces.” The exercise involved detection, tracking and interception of potential incoming missiles, with almost instantaneous sharing of information among the three navies. This kind of quiet cooperation on missile defense has been going on for several years, with Korean providing tracking data on North Korean launches to the de facto joint US-Japan Air Defense Command set up at Yokota airbase outside of Tokyo.

“North Korea's unprecedented series of ballistic missile tests, its newly legislated nuclear doctrine and threats to carry out preemptive nuclear attacks, and the prospect of a seventh nuclear test (and more to come) have served as a powerful reminder to Tokyo and Seoul of the common danger they face,” observes former senior U.S. State Department official Evans Revere. “That danger has encouraged the ROK (Republic of Korea) and Japan to work together, and with the United States, to confront their shared threat by strengthening defenses, increasing readiness, and enhancing bilateral and trilateral security cooperation.”

The creation of a more formal trilateral missile defense structure is the logical next step, though it faces considerable political hurdles in both Korea and Japan. This possibility has alarmed not only the North Koreans but also the progressive opposition in South Korea.

The leader of Korea’s Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, made headlines by denouncing the trilateral drill as a “pro-Japanese act” that was heading towards the creation of a military alliance. “We cannot imagine the day when the Japanese military invades the Korean Peninsula and the Rising Sun Flag again hangs over the peninsula, but it could come true,” railed Lee, who narrowly lost the presidential election earlier this year to conservative Yoon Suk-yeol.

The ruling People Power Party (PPP) quickly denounced Lee’s inflammatory remarks as a “a frivolous take on history.” But President Yoon is struggling with sagging popularity ratings which makes him vulnerable to the Democratic Party, which continues to control the National Assembly and is sharply critical of the President.

“The Korean public is generally supportive of improved relations with the U.S., cautious regarding China, generally supportive about Japan,” says Scott Snyder, who heads the Korea program at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Overall Yoon is doing what South Koreans want to see in foreign policy but increasingly he is in danger of not getting credit for it and is in danger because of his own unpopularity.”

Despite those problems, Yoon’s efforts to make a breakthrough with Tokyo have broad backing in Korea. In their recently published annual poll of Japanese and South Korean opinion, Japan’s Genron NPO and the Korean East Asian Institute found a significant shift in positive views toward each other.

It was the largest improvement since the survey began a decade ago, with the most marked change in South Korea. In particular, the Genron-EAI poll showed a growing fear of China in Korea, beginning to echo what has been the case in

Solving the forced labor problem

Trilateral security cooperation, even with the North Korean threat to propel it, still depends on solving the wartime historical issues that arose out of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea. While Japanese and Korean officials, and their American counterparts, emphasize the need to look forward, all also understand that the history problems are a sword of Damocles, always threatening to send Korea-Japan relations back into a deep freeze.

Attempts to resolve the issue of compensation for the Koreans forced to work in Japanese mines and factories during the wartime period remain stalled, with a looming threat by Korean courts to seize the assets of Japanese companies which used that labor.

Publicly Japanese officials continue to insist that they are waiting for Korea to make a concrete proposal to resolve the forced labor problem. According to multiple Korean official and other sources engaged in this issue, however, a proposal is on the table and is being actively discussed at the director-general level of the two foreign ministries, most recently on Tuesday in Seoul.

Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa and Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, who have a long-standing and friendly personal relationship, have held detailed talks, most recently in New York at the United Nations.

The Korean proposal emerged out of the advisory group that was formed in the summer under the leadership of Korean Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong.

The Korean idea is to compensate up to 300 South Korean victims with payments made through an existing fund – the Foundation for Victims of Forced Mobilization by Imperial Japan – set up by the Korean government in 2014. The fund already has a significant contribution by the Korean steelmaker POSCO which benefited from Japanese economic assistance provided under the 1965 Japan-Korea Claims Agreement which accompanied the normalization of relations between the two countries.

Using this fund indirectly acknowledges Japan’s insistence that compensation was settled by that 1965 agreement. The amount of money already in the fund is more than sufficient. But the victims who filed suit in Korean courts, and their legal representatives who participated in the advisory committee meetings, insist that the Japanese companies also contribute to this fund.

Park proposed two steps to be taken by Japan, according to a senior Korean official who has been working on this issue for many years. “One is that the Japanese government and the related companies have to express regrets,” he told this writer. “The other is that the Japanese government should allow the private sector to contribute voluntarily to the compensation fund.”

At this moment, the Japanese officials involved in the talks have not ruled out this solution. “The Japanese side does not show a negative attitude toward the voluntary contribution of Japanese firms,” says Amb Wi Sung-Lac, a former senior foreign ministry official and a foreign policy advisor to Democratic party leader Lee. To that degree, “bilateral consultation is moving forward,” says Wi, who is actively involved in these efforts.

Korean officials are concerned about the lack of apparent readiness on the part of Prime Minister Kishida and his advisors to grasp this moment. For the Korean government to be able to sell this proposal within Korea, where it will undoubtedly face fierce attack by the progressives, it is essential that Japan take a step forward.

“Money itself is not a problem,” says the senior Korean official. “Rather it is a matter of pride and emotion. But the Japanese government seems to be very reluctant to agree on a deal to resolve the issue.” The Japanese have yet to budge from their standing position that this issue was settled by the 1965 agreement and is reluctant to reopen it in any way.

The largest obstacle to this agreement remains the domestic politics of both countries. “The political weakness of Yoon and Kishida is a factor that influences the process,” says Professor Park Cheol-hee, one of the most influential Korean scholars on Japan and a close advisor to the Yoon government.

The opposition Democrats in Korea are poised to oppose this bargain. Amb Wi has proposed the creation of a bipartisan group that might include Democratic party leaders who back the deal and has been publicly urging Yoon to take this approach.

But it is equally crucial for Prime Minister Kishida to be prepared to offer the kind of gestures that might make it possible to garner broad public support in Korea. Japan needs to go beyond its overly legalistic stance, argues U.S. Korean expert Scott Snyder. “The Koreans need some kind of reciprocating gesture from the Japanese side in order to make it sustainable,” he told Toyo Keizai.

Unfortunately, Kishida remains imprisoned by the rightwing of the Liberal Democratic Party which deeply distrusts the Koreans. And that is compounded by his own political weakness, which increasingly mirrors that of Yoon.

Domestic politics, not the absence of a viable compromise proposal, is the real obstacle on this narrow pathway to restoring normal ties between Japan and Korea.

“Going forward, Yoon and Kishida are likely to move slowly to avoid getting out too far ahead of the respective publics,” says Revere, who has long experience as an American diplomat in both countries. But the window of opportunity may not be open long – the Japanese and Korean officials now holding talks are looking to make a deal by the end of the year. In that timeframe, he says, “North Korea can be counted on to remind Seoul and Tokyo that they have a strong common interest in working together.”

Japan and the U.S. Differ

Beneath The Surface, Cracks Widen Between Japan and The U.S. Over Burma, Korea

By Daniel Sneider, Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP member.
Tokyo Business Today, February 18,2021

In the early weeks of the Biden administration, Japan and the United States have gone out of their way to present a united front. Senior Biden officials, from the President on down, have made clear that the alliance with Japan stands at the center of their broader strategy to meet the challenge of China.

In numerous calls, they have offered Tokyo many sought-after assurances of American security guarantees from the Senkakus to nuclear deterrence and echoed Japan’s favorite idea, the creation of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP).

But beneath the surface, there is growing frustration in the White House with Japan, cracks over key issues that could widen in coming weeks and months. Behind the scenes, there are differences in how to deal with the military coup in Burma and the corrosive relationship between Japan and South Korea. And those tensions are tied to the bigger question, how to forge an allied response to China.

The military takeover in Burma (Myanmar) is an early crisis for the Biden administration, with the Chinese backing the coup while the United States condemns it and has moved to impose sanctions against the coup leaders. Japan has joined the protest but it has been pointedly cautious about taking punitive steps against the military, worrying that it will undermine Japan’s considerable investment in Burma and simply drive the military into the arms of Beijing.

The emerging Biden administration strategy toward China rests heavily on drawing a line overvalues, framing the “strategic competition” as a contest between democracy and authoritarianism.

“Burma is the first test of Biden’s commitment to democracy and to allies,” says a former senior U.S. official with close ties to the administration. In this test, “right now the number one head-butting issue with Japan is over Burma.”

Japanese officials are privately lecturing their American counterparts about how “Asians are different,” the former official reports. He compares it with the differences in the 1980s, which culminated in the response to the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing when Japan resisted American pressure to impose sanctions on China.

“Their attitude toward Burma looks like the same pattern,” a veteran Japanese foreign affairs journalist observed to me. “They claim that too much pressure won’t help the process of democratization.”

Japanese and American officials are doing their best to bridge these differences. Secretary of State Antony Blinken got on the phone last week with Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu to try to find a formula for cooperation and Motegi signaled a readiness to join public statements. But the Japanese Foreign Minister was more interested in talking about the Chinese Coast Guard.

The Korea Questions
The most serious gap between Tokyo and Washington is not, however, over Burma. It is how to manage relations with South Korea. Within days of taking office, the Biden administration sent a gentle but clear message to their Japanese and Korean allies to move quickly to repair their broken relationship.

In phone calls with their Japanese and Korean counterparts, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken made a point of the importance to the U.S. of restoring “trilateral U.S.-Japan-Republic of Korea cooperation.”

They repeat this at every opportunity – in his call with Motegi last week, Blinken “welcomed further regional cooperation, including through U.S.-Japan-ROK trilateral coordination and the Quad.”

Behind this lies the growing fear in Washington that the breach between Japan and Korea will blow a massive strategic hole in the Biden plan to strengthen regional security networks, including the Quad.

China and North Korea are “targeting that fissure” between Japan and South Korea, says a former senior Obama administration defense planner. Without restoring some functional trust, the idea of a regional security structure may never be realized, Biden officials worry.

Relations between Japan and South Korea are at “their lowest levels in decades,” a recent report on U.S.-Japan relations issued by the Congressional Research Service concluded. While the administration of Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide gives its nod to the idea of trilateral security cooperation, it is resisting the American push to improve relations with Seoul, particularly when it comes to the battles over wartime history issues.

“On trilateral security cooperation, we also believe it is crucial if we want to pressurize North Korea as well as China on the issue of North Korea denuclearization,” a senior official in the Prime Minister’s National Security Secretariat (NSS) told me. But security should be completely separated from those historical issues, which are matters that “basically need to be addressed between Japan and Korea.”

This reflects what American officials heard from Suga himself in his first telephone talk with Biden after he took office. “The call was great except Suga pushed back hard on Biden’s desire to see Japan-ROK relations improve,” the well-informed former senior official told me. The Japanese leader told Biden that the Koreans have effectively broken the 1965 treaty normalizing relations between the two countries and “they have to make that right first.”

While Tokyo is rebuffing the Biden administration, President Moon has taken a different tack. Last month, Moon surprisingly shifted his tone and signaled an interest in warming up relations with Japan.

The Korean leader reaffirmed that the 2015 agreement on “comfort women” remains intact as an official pact and expressed unhappiness with a Korean court decision demanding that Japan pay compensation to survive women. He also indicated a desire to put off the liquidation of Japanese company assets seized as part of a Korean court decision to grant compensation to Korean forced laborers.

South Korean experts point to several factors behind the shift.

Moon is entering his last year in office and is somewhat desperate to make a breakthrough in his bid to engage North Korea and secure a formal end to the Korean war. The Moon Blue House is worried that the Biden administration will put negotiations with North Korea on the back burner and they are looking for ways to revive momentum.

“Bringing Japan into the diplomatic game is being seriously considered under circumstances when summit diplomacy between Trump and Kim Jong Un is gone,” says Seoul National University Professor Park Cheol Hee, one of the leading Japan experts in Korea. Koreans hope the Summer Olympic Games may offer a venue to revive diplomacy with Pyongyang.

Moon and his advisors also anticipated the pressure coming from the new Biden administration to improve ties with Japan and wanted to get out ahead and demonstrate to Washington their willingness to cooperate. “The Moon administration faced a need to show an initiative to ameliorate ties between Korea and Japan before Biden steps in,” says Park, an advocate of improving relations.

All this takes place as Moon’s popularity is declining and the use of anti-Japanese nationalism to boost popularity seems to have worn thin of late. “The mood of the day in Korea is that blaming Japan is no longer delivering wonderful political scores to President Moon and the ruling party,” Professor Park told me.

Despite these factors, Moon’s gestures fall well short of what either Tokyo, or Korean backers of improved relations, feels is needed. On the issue of the ‘comfort women,’ while Moon affirmed the validity of the 2015 agreement, he did nothing to restore it.

The South Korean government moved to freeze the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, which was funded by Japan and provided compensation payments to two-thirds of the surviving women.

The forced labor issue is a far more complicated legal issue and also poses a dangerous ‘red line’ in relations if the Korean courts go ahead and liquidate Japanese assets. The Japanese government has argued since the court decisions were issued, that this issue was settled by the 1965 treaty, which provided compensation in a limited fashion, and which also includes a provision for disputes over claims to be settled by an arbitration panel.

Ideas to settle this issue have been circulating for some months, including a proposal floated by a senior Korean politician to create a foundation similar to the one created by Germany some 20 years ago to provide compensation to forced laborers, with funds provided by both Japanese and Korean firms. [The Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, known as The German Future Fund, grants also go to democracy promotion and human rights]

Privately there is some interest in such ideas in both Korea and Japan – and American officials are also aware of these discussions and may offer to help the process.

But it requires the two governments to show the political will to solve the problem, which so far has not been evident.

“Prime Minister Suga would not take a risk in resolving this issue before he is re-elected as Chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party in September or has an election victory,” former South Korean foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan, an important actor in Korea-Japan relations, told me.

A senior advisor to Prime Minister Suga expressed deep skepticism that President Moon is really ready to act and even if he did, the Japanese worry that he will shift in response to political pressures, “allowing the South Koreans to move the goalpost once again.”

For the Biden administration, this is an early lesson in how grand visions – in this case of an Indo-Pacific regional partnership and revived alliances – can founder on the rocks of domestic politics.

Repeating Past Mistakes in Japan-Korea Reconciliation

by Tom Le and Daphne Yang, Pomona College
Tokyo Review, January 30, 2020.

The Japan-South Korea reconciliation process continues to be hindered by the same three mistakes: a lack of victims’ voices, a lack of ambition, and a lack of long-term commitment. Several agreements, the first dating back to 1965, have failed to sustain positive relations between the two democracies. Only half a year ago, Japan and South Korea entered a costly trade war and considered ending the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). According to a poll conducted before this latest spat, of those holding a negative view of the other side, approximately half of Japanese and three-quarters of Koreans do so because of the “history issue.”

The “Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act” proposed by South Korea’s National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang – the same Moon who was forced to apologize for demanding the Japanese emperor apologize to comfort women – is the most recent attempt to settle the legacy of Japanese colonization. The bill proposes that private corporations in South Korea and Japan would contribute to a foundation to pay victims of forced labor in accordance with the November 2018 South Korea Supreme Court rulings. It is likely to do little to improve relations between Japan and South Korea, far less settle the legacy of WWII finally or irreversibly.

Since relations between the two countries were normalized in the 1965 Treaty of Basic Relations, Japan has issued dozens of apologies and several agreements have been passed to address its wartime atrocities, most notably the 1993 Kono Statement, 1995 Asian Women’s Fund (AWF), 1995 Murayama Statement, and 2015 Comfort Women Agreement. The Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act repeats the same mistakes that not only prevented the 1995 AWF and 2015 Comfort Women from settling the “history problem” but will likely lead to the same backlash among both the publics of both nations once it fails.

The primary public complaint about the 2015 agreement was the lack of representation of comfort women; the new proposed bill repeats this mistake

First, the bill does not include forced laborers in the establishment or operation of the foundation. As outlined in a Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs report, the primary complaint of the public concerning the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement was the lack of representation of comfort women at the negotiating table. Immediately after the 2015 Agreement came into force, Koreans took to the streets in protest, and despondent comfort women in media-filled rooms railed at government officials for ignoring their voices. The new proposed bill has similarly been submitted to the Korean parliament without input from civil society. Moreover, the bill seeks to silence the voices of victims, who would give up their right to litigation if they accept a payout from the foundation. The proposed fund effectively splits the voice of around 1,000 victims involved in or planning to take legal action.

Second, like the 1995 AWF, funding for the foundation will be on a voluntary basis from public and private corporations. One of the main criticisms of the 1995 AWF was that it was not financed by Japanese taxes, and thus, could not be considered official compensation. Although donations may be a good reflection of what Japanese society today believes, by allowing and encouraging South Korean corporations and civilians to voluntarily donate as well, the bill removes the direct historical responsibility of the Japanese government and corporations from the reconciliation process.

Third, the Memory ⋅ Reconciliation ⋅ Future Foundation Act is billed as a “catch-all” proposal that will address all the issues concerning Japan’s wartime atrocities through financial compensation. The Korean public was furious at the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement because it sought to settle one single issue “finally” and “irreversibly.” One can expect a stronger reaction when it is the Korean government that is using similar language. In a poll conducted immediately after the act was announced, the majority of the South Korean public opposed the bill in every age group except for respondents over 60. According to a poll run by the Korea Institute of Research (commissioned by Moon Hee-sang’s office), 82.3% of South Korean citizens did not believe that Japanese companies would step up and provide the funds.

From Japan’s side, there is little incentive to reach an agreement that the other side can simply abandon so quickly

Government leaders have failed in the reconciliation process due to a combination of personal failings and circumstances beyond their control. Both governments have inherited decades of failed treaties and ineffectual apologies and face significant pressure to “win,” which may not actually involve an agreement or reconciliation. Yet, their solutions continue to be elite-driven, non-transparent, and short-sighted.

Following the collapse of the 2015 Comfort Women Agreement, “apology fatigue” was at an all-time high in Japan. There are no incentives to come to an agreement if the other side can choose to abandon the resulting agreement after less than a year. The legacies of WWII can only be addressed in an education-based and future-oriented agreement that includes victims at the negotiating table.

Moreover, inter-generational trauma requires solutions that last well beyond the date where foundation funds run dry. Beyond financial compensation, the governments should establish a foundation to educate the public on the decades-long reconciliation process that has been costly for both sides. This would mean Japan should offer a grand gesture to show remorse, possibly a memorial of its own acknowledging the victims – while for South Korea, it requires a reevaluation of the homespun narrative that Japan has never issued a “genuine” apology and an acceptance that it too has played a significant role in failing to come to terms with the past.

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Tom Le is as an Assistant Professor of Politics at Pomona College, specializing in Japanese security policy, war memory and reconciliation, East Asia regionalism, and militarism norms. Le's work has been published by the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs and the Journal of Asian Studies, as well as in popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Hill, and The Diplomat. Le received a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Irvine and BAs in History and Political Science at the University of California, Davis. He is a research associate at the PRIME Institute at Meiji Gakuin University, a CSIS US-ROK NextGen Fellow, and an AFIHJ Next Generation Fellow. His work has been supported by the Fulbright Program, the Japan Foundation, The Korea Foundation, CION Trust, and JASSO.

Daphne Yang is a senior at Pomona College majoring in International Relations with an Economics minor. She studies East Asian security issues with a socioeconomic lens, and has published works in Diplomatic Courier, The Korea Times, and International Policy Digest.

Glimmers Of Hope For Japan-Korea Relations

by Daniel Sneider, Lecturer, International Policy at Stanford University and APP Member
Toyokeizai Online, January 2, 2020

This past year marked the lowest point in relations between Japan and its neighbor, South Korea, since the two countries established diplomatic relations more than a half century ago. As the new year dawns, however, there are glimmers of hope that the tide is slowly turning.

The meeting in China between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in China at least demonstrated that channels for dialogue remain open. Before that, trade officials met in Tokyo to discuss the export control measures imposed by both sides, followed by a small step from Japan to ease restrictions on key exports to Korea related to semiconductor manufacture.

And with the threat of a court order to seize the assets of Japanese companies looming, Korean legislators are discussing a compensation plan for former forced laborers that might offer a way out of that difficult issue of wartime justice.

This is a fragile process that could break down in the blink of an eye, but informed actors in both Korea and Japan see reasons for guarded optimism.

“Our bilateral relations now cannot get worse and there is a growing consensus among our people that Korea cannot afford to let its relations with Japan break down completely,” former South Korean Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Tokyo, Yu Myung Hwan, told me. “I think we have passed the lowest point,” says Yu, who has been a key figure in Japan-Korea relations.

Still, Yu warns, “one time-bomb is left – when, and how, the seized assets of Japanese companies might be cashed in.” For now, Korean courts have only taken preliminary steps to sell those assets, but if they actually move to do so, “Abe will have to respond likewise and that will surely provoke another downward spiral in relations,” he predicts.

The lawyers for the Korean laborers who brought the suit claiming compensation remain in a dialogue with the Moon administration, delaying the next steps. But this will not last forever – “I am not fully optimistic at this point,” Yu told me.

A veteran Japanese journalist specializing in foreign affairs takes a somewhat less upbeat view of where things may be headed. “I hope this bilateral relationship has hit the bottom, but I don’t find a solid reason to say so,” the senior editor told me. “I am one of the guys who predict that this cold war between Abe and Moon is likely to go on in a mild way next year.”

The political dimension
For now, there is a cease-fire in this crisis. But neither Moon nor Abe are highly motivated to find an early solution.

The impact on Japan from the economic boycott in South Korea, most visible in the dramatic drop in Korean tourists coming to Japan, is still minor. Combined with pressure from the U.S. to ease tensions, “Abe has some incentive to move,” says Tokyo University Professor and foreign policy expert Ryo Sahashi. But there is very little potential political upside in improving relations for the Japanese leader, especially among conservative voters and lawmakers.

“Diplomacy with South Korea only costs him political capital,” Sahashi told me, “he doesn’t gain anything from it.” Still, Abe seems unlikely to take further steps to provoke a Korean reaction, as happened with the export controls imposed last summer.

Moon, for his part, faces crucial elections to the South Korean National Assembly in April. The possible return to serious tensions in relations with North Korea potentially undermines support for the ruling progressive party which has put North-South Korea engagement at the top of its agenda. A possibly unpopular move to reach a compromise with Japan on the forced laborer issue might be too much of a risk for Moon. But a worsening of relations would also not help Moon, observers believe.

“The upcoming parliament election in April 2020 will be an Armageddon for the government party since it will be a sort of midterm evaluation of the incumbent Moon administration,” observes Yu, a veteran diplomat. “And the worsening of the relationship with Japan would not help before the election unless Japan provokes further in a nasty way. But I think Abe wouldn't do that again. I believe that after the general election next year the Korean government will be more flexible in dealing with Japan.”

Until then, however, Moon continues to be very cautious. He has not embraced the effort to find a compromise solution to the forced laborers problem led by South Korean National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang. Speaker Moon introduced legislation to establish a foundation formed by voluntary contributions from both Korea and Japanese companies, and individuals, to compensate the former laborers.

The proposed fund is modeled on the German Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation, formed in 2000, which paid compensation to all those forced to work in German mines and factories during the war. It was funded by both the German government and by the German firms who used that labor, just as Japanese companies did during the war.

The model is cited by many experts, but the decision of the Moon government to dismantle a similar fund created to compensate the so-called Comfort Women in the 2015 agreement between Japan and South Korea undermines the viability of this proposal.

The new proposal does not yet have the support of those who filed suit in Korean courts, and their lawyers. The Abe administration has also been cautious toward this proposal, even though it does not demand either official Japanese funds or a formal apology to the victims.

“Speaker Moon's idea is not perfect,” notes Tokyo University’s Sahashi. “It would be better if the fund was divided equally between South Korean companies, the South Korean government and Japanese companies. But even this solution would face domestic criticism in both countries. Still, I can’t imagine any other option.”

South Korea’s former foreign minister Yu, who played a key role in setting up the Comfort Women foundation, agrees with this assessment. “Speaker Moon's proposal is not a bad idea at all if it can be passed as a bill in the parliament and Japan is willing to participate in ‘donating’ money to the Fund,” he says.

But Yu worries that the Assembly leader does not yet have sufficient support in the legislature to pass the bill and may have higher priorities, such as passage of an election law and a reform of the prosecution system. “I wonder whether he can spare some of his political assets to push through his idea to resolve the ‘war-time forced labor issue’ once and for all,” he told me.

Behind this lurks the status of the 1965 treaty which normalized diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea and dealt with the problem of compensation for forced laborers and others through a large transfer of Japanese grants and loans. Those funds were used to finance the industrialization of South Korea, though limited individual compensation was also paid out.

The progressives in South Korea have long challenged the legitimacy of this treaty, arguing it was forced on Korea by the United States and was the creation of a ‘pro-Japanese’ regime led by military leader Park Chung-hee.

The Japanese government continues to insist this issue was settled by the treaty and proposed to deal with the current crisis through a third-party arbitration process set out in that treaty. The Moon government has so far sidestepped whether they still feel bound by the 1965 treaty, carefully avoiding triggering the question of renegotiating the entire treaty.

Even Korean scholars who have been critical of Japan question this ambiguous position taken by the Blue House. The Korean government should clearly communicate through official channels that it will respect the treaty, Professor Chung Jae-jeong, the former head of the Northeast Asia History Foundation, said in a recent interview. “This will facilitate negotiations on how to resolve the current disputes,” Professor Chung said. “I think we as a country have passed a stage where we approach state-to-state conflicts emotionally. They should be handled with professional judgment and knowledge.”

The geopolitics of the Japan-South Korea dispute
The prospects for improvement in Japan-South Korea relations will undoubtedly be affected by the broader geostrategic environment in Northeast Asia. If tensions rise again with North Korea, that may drive Japan and South Korea closer together, though it will not in itself overcome the underlying historical issues.

American policy makers have persistently urged the two countries, both allied to the U.S., to focus on their shared security interests. And that pressure at least yielded some results in the Korean decision to back off from abandoning the defense intelligence sharing agreement. But the forces of nationalism in both countries tend to overwhelm those appeals to joint security interests.

The withdrawal of the U.S. from its traditional leading role as the guarantor of security in Northeast Asia has left Japan and South Korea increasingly on their own in managing out these long-standing tensions. And it has left open the door for China to assert its leadership role, as took place at the trilateral summit in Chengdu. President Moon, speaking at the summit, evoked the “common destiny” binding the three countries together.

“This is a new trial for both countries to explore their own capability to sustain and develop the East Asia order which has long kept the stable environment since the end of World War Two,” comments the senior Japanese foreign affairs journalist.

“In that sense, the trilateral dialogue framework of Sino-ROK-Japan should have more and more implication for the future to come. I have no doubt Japan’s bond with the US will stay firm and solid regardless of whatever chemistry will emerge in the Sino-Korean-Japan relationship. But when it comes to South Korea’s position, frankly, I am much less certain.”

Monday in Washington October 28, 2019

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WINNING THE SECOND WORLD WARS: HOW THE FIRST GLOBAL CONFLICT WAS FOUGHT AND WON. 11/13, 9:00-10:00am. Sponsor: Project on Military and Diplomatic History, CSIS. Speaker: Victor Davis Hanson, Author, Senior Fellow, Hoover.

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AT THE TURNING POINT: ECONOMICS, SECURITY, AND AMERICAN POLITICS. 11/13, 12:30-5:00pm. Sponsors: Economists for Peace and Security and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. Keynote speakers: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA); Heather Hurlburt, New America; William Hartung, Center for International Policy; Matthew Duss, Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Sanders.

PREPARING MILITARY LEADERSHIP FOR THE FUTURE. 11/13, 1:00-5:00pm, Coffee. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Rudy de Leon, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, Former Deputy Secretary of Defense; General (Ret.) James Cartwright, USMC, Chair, Defense Policy Studies, CSIS; Moderator: Ray DuBois, Senior Adviser, CSIS.

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RELIGION AND FOREIGN POLICY: EXPLORING THE LEGACY OF "MIXED BLESSINGS". 11/13, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsors: Human Rights Initiative, CSIS; Georgetown University. Speakers: Shaun Casey, Director, Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University; Liora Danan, Former Chief of Staff, Office of Religion and Global Affairs, U.S. Department of State; Rebecca Linder Blachly, Director, Office of Government Relations, Episcopal Church; Eric Patterson, Research Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University; Moderator: Shannon N. Green, Director and Senior Fellow, Human Rights Initiative, CSIS.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AS SEEN BY BARBIE AND MICKEY. 11/13, 6:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Intellectual Property Law Program, George Washington University Law School. Speaker: Jane Ginsburg, Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law, Columbia Law School, Columbia University.

UNRAVELLING THE KASHMIR KNOT. 11/13, 6:00-8:00pm. Sponsor: World Affairs Council. Speaker: Aman Hingorani, Author, Lawyer and Mediator, Supreme Court of India.  Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Horizon Ballroom. 

The Apology

Screening: THE APOLOGY

Documentary by Tiffany Hsiung 

on 

Comfort Women, sex slaves to Imperial Japan’s military, 

from China, Korea, and the Philippines

2016 | 1 h 44 min

Ms. Hsiung will answer questions about her 
documentary after the screening

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

6:30 to 9:00 PM 

SAIS, Johns Hopkins

Rome Auditorium 

1619 Massachusetts Avenue, NW 

Washington, DC 

Sponsors 

US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS 

Sejong Society of Washington, DC, and 

Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, Inc. (WCCW)

Free, but registration required HERE 

THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Some 70 years after their imprisonment in so-called “comfort stations,” the three “grandmothers”– Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines – face their twilight years in fading health. After decades of living in silence and shame about their past, they know that time is running out to give a first-hand account of the truth and ensure that this horrific chapter of history is not forgotten. Whether they are seeking a formal apology from the Japanese government or summoning the courage to finally share their secret with loved ones, their resolve moves them forward as they seize this last chance to set future generations on a course for reconciliation, healing, and justice.

Watch the interactive web project based on this documentary, The Space We Hold

Seventy years after their imprisonment in so-called "comfort stations," Grandma Gil in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Grandma Adela in the Philippines are facing their twilight years. After decades of living in silence and shame about their experiences of institutionalized rape and sexual slavery, in THE APOLOGY they give first-hand accounts of the truth. They are seeking an apology, and hope that this horrific chapter of history will not be forgotten.

To bring THE APOLOGY to the screen, director Tiffany Hsiung enlisted an all female team (including Mary Stephens, editor of Lixin Fan's film Last Train Home). Hsiung drew on devastating personal experience as well as six years spent documenting the lives of survivors of military sexual assault during WWII.

"An incredibly moving, emotional film. The plight of the so-called 'Comfort Women' who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II has seldom been told so powerfully."—Yalda Hakim, BBC News

"A landmark film for its subject matter and the sensitivity with which Hsiung approaches it, THE APOLOGY is one of the best films ever produced by the NFB."—Patrick Mullen, POV Magazine

"They should sell Kleenex instead of popcorn at theaters showing Tiffany Hsiung's [THE APOLOGY]. This powerful documentary is alternately harrowing and uplifting, and always emotionally devastating."—Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

"It's not unusual for documentaries to infuriate viewers, but THE APOLOGY may be one of the most difficult and maddening films to screen over the years."—Sarah Gopaul, Digital Journal

Monday in Washington, March 20, 2017

LEARNING FROM PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER. 3/20, 9:00-10:30am, Washington, DC. Sponsor: AEI. Speakers: Bret Baier, Fox News, author Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission; Marc A. Thiessen, AEI.

BUILDING A FLEXIBLE PERSONNEL SYSTEM FOR A MODERN MILITARY. 3/20, 9:00-11:00am, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Bipartisan Policy Center. Speakers: Leon Panetta, Former Secretary of Defense; Jim Talent, Former Senator, Missouri; Gen. Jim Jones, Former National Security Adviser; Kathy Roth-Douquet, CEO, Blue Star Families.

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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA 2030 AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: AREAS FOR US-JAPAN COOPERATION. 3/20, 10:00-11:30am. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Abigail Friedman, Senior Advisor, Asia Foundation, Founder, CEO, Wisteria Group; Christina Kwauk, Postdoctoral Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Center for Universal Education; John McArthur, Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development; Yumiko Tanaka, Senior Advisor, Gender and Development, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA); Moderator: Mireya Solís, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies, Brookings.

ADDRESSING THE NORTH KOREAN THREAT. 3/20, 11:30am-1:00pm. Sponsor: Hudson Institute. Speakers: Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC-2), Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman, Subcommittee on Readiness, Armed Services Committee; Rebeccah Heinrichs, Fellow, Hudson Institute; Arthur Herman, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute.

FROM SCARCITY TO SECURITY: WATER AS A RESOURCE FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACEBUILDING. 3/20, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Judaic Studies Program, Elliott School, GWU. Speakers: Gidon Bromberg, Israeli Director, EcoPeace Middle East; Marina Djernaes, Director, EcoPeace Center for Water Security; Moderator: Ned Lazarus, Visiting Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School, GWU, Teaching Fellow, Israel Institute.

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THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’S SPIRIT: RELIGIOUS REVIVAL, REPRESSION, AND RESISTANCE UNDER XI JINPING. 3/20, 12:30-2:00pm. Sponsor: Georgetown University. Speaker: Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst, East Asia, Freedom House; Moderator: Dennis Wilder, Professor, Asian Studies Program, US-China Dialogue, Georgetown University.

CYBER DRAGON: INSIDE CHINA’S INFORMATION WARFARE AND CYBER OPERATIONS. 3/20, Noon-1:00pm. Sponsor: Heritage. Speakers: Author Dean Cheng, Senior Research Fellow, Asian Studies Center, Heritage; Phillip C. Saunders, Director, Center for Study of Chinese Military Affairs, National Defense University; Catherine B. Lotrionte, Director, Cyber Project, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; Moderator: Walter Lohman, Director, Asian Studies Center.

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WHY PEACE PROCESSES FAIL: NEGOTIATING INSECURITY AFTER CIVIL WAR. 3/20, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Georgetown University. Speaker: author Jasmine-Kim Westendorf, Lecturer, International Relations, La Trobe University, Australia. 

WOMEN’S AND FAMILY HEALTH. 3/20, 2:30-5:00pm. Sponsor: Taskforce on Women’s and Family Health, CSIS. Speakers: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME); Rep. Daniel M. Donovan, Jr. (R-NY-11); Former Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL); Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-13); Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL-5); Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH); Lisa Carty, Director, U.S. Liaison Office, UNAIDS; Steve Davis, President, CEO, PATH; Christopher Elias, President, Global Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Ezekiel Emanuel, Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, Chair, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, University of Pennsylvania; Patrick Fine, CEO, FHI 360; Michael Gerson, Senior Adviser, ONE Campaign; Asma Lateef, Director, Bread for the World Institute; Afaf Ibrahim Meleis, Dean Emerita and Professor of Nursing and Sociology, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing; Diane Rowland, Executive Vice President, Kaiser Family Foundation; Moderators: Helene Gayle, TaskForce Co-Chair, CEO, McKinsey Social Initiative; J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President, Director, Global Health Policy Center, CSIS.

GENDER, DEVELOPMENT, AND ARMED CONFLICT. 3/20, 6:00-7:30pm. Sponsor: Clovis & Hala Maksoud Memorial Lecture Series, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. Speaker: Jennifer Olmsted, Professor of Economics, Director, Middle East Studies, Drew University, Former Gender Advisor, UN Population Fund. 

RECONCILIATION AT WATER'S EDGE

How Defense Minister Inada's Yasukuni undermined reconciliation

By Mindy Kotler, APP Director

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s tour of Pearl Harbor highlighted reconciliation and putting an end to Pacific War history. However, Abe’s Cabinet officials were of a different mind. While Abe was in the air returning from Pearl Harbor, his Reconstruction Minister and good friend, Masahiro Imamura, paid homage to the war deities at the Yasukuni Shrine.

Shortly after returning to Japan, Defense Minister Tomomi INADA, who had accompanied the Prime Minister to Pearl Harbor, also visited the Yasukuni Shrine. She is said to be Mr. Abe’s preferred successor. When she was the LDP’s policy chief, she initiated a reevaluation the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. She now administers this on-going investigation. Reportedly, she once said “Yasukuni is not a place to pledge not to repeat the horror of war again. It is a place to promise that 'we will follow in your footsteps if a contingency occurs in our homeland.'"

Yasukuni is not Arlington, nor is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific that Prime Minister Abe visited in Hawaii. Yasukuni visits have been used in recent decades by Japanese politicians to be naughty. It is a cost-free way to demonstrate independence from the US. The irony is that the visits so antagonize the Chinese that the US is compelled to reaffirm its defense of Japan soon after, drawing Japan closer to the US.

The Meiji Emperor created Yasukuni to militarize a religion (Shinto) in service of the state and to de-legitimatize his enemies (they cannot be enshrined there). It is not a cemetery and it represents only one religion. There are no bodies buried on the grounds. It is for the spirits of the military dead who died fighting for the Emperor who can be identified (the unidentified have their ashes at a non-religious site not far from Yasukuni) and who are not from the under-classes.

Those approved are apostatized--they become gods, one with the Emperor. There are many convicted and otherwise war criminals turned into gods at the Shrine. The Shrine is also only for the Imperial era, which ended August 15, 1945. No one after that date is enshrined. The park surrounding the Shrine has many small memorials to military units that served in the Pacific War, including the Kempeitai (SS-like military police).

The Ministers’ appearance at the Yasukuni Shrine does lessen the impact of PM Abe’s visit to Pearl Harbor. It undermines through deed, his words at Hickam Field, barely 12 hours before. That PM Abe did not fire Inada—who visited Yasukuni as Defense Minister not in her personal capacity—suggests that he condoned her actions.

Abe’s tortured prose lingered on expressions of gratitude toward US treatment of defeated Japan. He interpreted reconciliation as American “tolerance” and posed Japan as being passive in its appreciation. It is as if a thesaurus was consulted for a politically acceptable word meaning compassion, mercy, and humanity.

Unsaid, and maybe unintended, was the contrast of American “tolerance” toward its conquered people to Japan’s own conduct of its war in China and the Pacific. Imperial Japan’s conquests were impressive military victories. They were, however, followed by unjustified and horrific violence against noncombatants, POWs, laborers, and the dead.

Condolences are what Mr. Abe gave to those military dead who died in combat at Pearl Harbor. He did not apologize or justify. The visit was framed as if he was going to Yasukuni to honor and pacify the spirits of warriors.

Standing tall at the water's edge does not turn Pearl Harbor into a symbol of reconciliation. It is not a tolerance for an enemies soldiers and sailors. Reconciliation is how today’s Japan answers to Imperial Japan’s wartime atrocities committed against the unarmed. It is no surprise that the trauma of these cruelties is intergenerational.

As Abe ended his remarks, he acknowledged this by promising to continue to make his “wish a reality.” It is something that still needs work. And something that is a responsibility of the Trump White House.

Abe at Pearl Harbor

Japanese PM Abe hugs survivor

Abe offers ‘everlasting condolences’ at Pearl Harbor as Obama praises partnership in peace

BY ERIC JOHNSTON, STAFF WRITER

Japan Times, December 28, 2016

HONOLULU – Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historic visit to Pearl Harbor wrapped up Tuesday with addresses from the Japanese leader and U.S. President Barack Obama on the power of reconciliation and its ability to transform once-hated enemies into close friends and strategic partners.

Seventy five years after the “day of infamy,” on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, Abe and Obama recalled the past but also focused on the importance of the present postwar U.S.-Japan strategic alliance. Abe’s visit and meeting with Obama, who leaves office in less than a month, was an attempt to gird the legacies of both leaders in the Asia-Pacific region in the face of uncertainties surrounding the fate of bilateral relations under President-elect Donald Trump.

In a meeting between the two leaders, Abe thanked Obama for his efforts to work with Japan on a number of issues ranging from dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program to his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, despite opposition by congress and large portions of the American public, as well as Trump, who has announced he will cancel the TPP on his first day in office.

For Abe, the hope is that his trip to Pearl Harbor also sends a message to the U.S., and especially to Trump, that the long-standing postwar relationship should continue, and that the military alliance in particular needs to be strengthened in order to deal with a host of challenges relating to regional security.

While U.S. veterans of Pearl Harbor invited to attend Tuesday’s ceremony appreciated Abe’s visit, how it will be received by the larger American public remains uncertain. Some groups expressed disappointment that Abe offered no apology for the attack, or suggested his administration needs to make similar efforts at reconciliation with not only the U.S. but also other nations victimized by Japan during the 1930s and 1940s.

In a carefully worded address that avoided an apology for Japan’s decision to go to war with the U.S., Abe spoke about the necessity of never repeating the horrors of war. [TEXT]

“As prime minister of Japan, I offer my sincere and everlasting condolences to the souls of those who lost their lives here, as well as to the spirits of all the brave men and women whose lives were taken by a war that commenced in this very place, and also to the souls of the countless innocent people who became victims of the war,” he said.

Abe, who favors revising Japan’s postwar pacifist Constitution to allow for a more proactive military, added that since World War II, Japan has resolutely upheld its vow to never again wage war.

“To the souls of the servicemen who lie in eternal rest aboard the USS Arizona, to the American people, and to all peoples around the world, I pledge that unwavering vow as the prime minister of Japan,” he said.

Obama, who hosted the prime minister in Pearl Harbor seven months after Abe hosted him at Hiroshima, called the visit a historic gesture and also spoke of reconciliation and Pearl Harbor’s historical legacy. [TEXT]

“We cannot choose the history that we inherit. But we can choose what lessons to draw from it. The fruits of peace always outweigh the plunder of war. This is the enduring truth of this hallowed harbor,” Obama said in his remarks following Abe’s address.

In a veiled reference to concerns both in and outside the U.S. created by Trump’s election, Obama also referenced the Japanese phrase otagai no tame ni — doing things with and for each other — as words to follow when resisting the urge to demonize others or turn inwards.

“Over the decades, our alliance has made both of our nations more successful. It has helped to underwrite an international order that has prevented another world war and that has lifted more than a billion people out of extreme poverty. And today, the alliance between the United States and Japan — bound not only by shared interests, but also rooted in common values — stands as the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia Pacific and a force for progress around the globe. Our alliance has never been stronger,” Obama said.

Following their statements, Abe and Obama shook hands and exchanged greetings with three survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack, who are now in their 90s. All three welcomed Abe’s visit.

“Apologize for the attack on Pearl Harbor? What for? There’s nothing to apologize for. The U.S. and Japan are friends now,” said Everett Hyland, who was on board the USS Pennsylvania when the attack began and was severely injured by a bomb.

Total U.S. casualties for the Pearl Harbor attack were 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded.

Abe received a brief tour of the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center before proceeding to the Arizona memorial and holding a separate meeting with Obama. He then addressed a crowd that included large numbers of U.S. military personnel and Japanese-American residents of Hawaii.

The visitors center includes displays and explanations of the political situation in the U.S. and in Japan in the 1930s, describing the decisions, especially by Japan, that led to the attack as well as details of the attack itself. It also describes the impact it had in the U.S. as a whole and on Hawaii’s Japanese-American community.

The center’s chief historian, Daniel Martinez, told Abe that “The exhibits reflect the voices and views of people who were involved in the attack or the war, not the opinions of academics.” Abe was accompanied by Defense Minister Tomomi Inada — who in the past has espoused revisionist views of Japan’s wartime history — and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

Abe’s gesture was widely welcomed in Hawaii and among Americans and Japanese who deal directly with each other. Its impact in the U.S. as a whole, three-quarters of a century after the attack, is less clear. For most Americans, Pearl Harbor was a long time ago — a different century.

However, for those concerned about historical reconciliation issues in the Asia-Pacific region, there were calls to continue the reconciliation process, especially with Japan’s Asian neighbors.

In an open letter released on Christmas Day, over 50 international historians, filmmakers — including director Oliver Stone — and others asked the prime minister about his views on Japan’s history and about previous public statements he’d made.

“You state that you are going to visit Pearl Harbor to ‘mourn’ the 2,400 Americans who perished in the attack. If that is the case, will you also be visiting China, Korea, other Asia-Pacific nations, or the other Allied nations for the purpose of ‘mourning’ war victims in those countries who number in the tens of millions?” the group asked.

They added that in Diet questioning on April 23, 2013, Abe, as prime minister, indicated that the definition of what constitutes “aggression” has yet to be established in academia or in the international community.

“Does that mean that you do not recognize Japan’s war against the Allied and Asia-Pacific nations and the preceding war against China as wars of aggression?” the scholars asked.

Jan Thompson, president of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, said she was impressed by the sincerity of Abe’s speech, saying it took moral courage. She said she knew that he would not apologize for the Pearl Harbor attack but encouraged him to visit other Asian countries as well.

“It’s taken 75 years for us to get to this point where a Japanese prime minister can come to Pearl Harbor and make that kind of a speech. However, while some people are saying that his visit means reconciliation with the wartime past is over, it’s actually only one step on the road. Reconciliation is cross-generational,” she said.

Week of the Prisoner of War

On November 11th, Veterans Day, Dan Crowley, 94, will join President Barack Obama for his annual breakfast for representatives from America's Veterans Service Organizations. He will represent the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society.

Mr. Crowley was sent to the Philippines as an enlisted member of the Army Air Corps in 1941 untrained and unarmed. When the Japanese attacked the Philippines on December 8, 1941, he fought in an improvised air defense at Nichols Field near Manila. After the Field's destruction, the airmen were moved to Bataan to join the US Army Infantry in the Battle of the Points repelling three waves of the Japanese invasion. He avoided the Bataan Death March after Bataan's surrender by swimming and clinging to life rafts to Corregidor Island fortress where he engaged in shore defense with the 4th Marines. He was surrendered on May 6, 1942.

As a POW he worked on the infamous air field on Palawan Island. He was shipped to Japan in early 1944 to be slave laborer, thus missing the Palawan Massacre of 150 of his fellow POWs on December 14, 1944. First taken to a Hitachi copper mine, he was liberated in September 1945 from another copper mine near Tokyo owned by the Furukawa Company, today a major multinational. Its US subsidiary, Furukawa Rock Drill, is in Kent, Ohio. Kent is barely 100 miles from Port Clinton, Ohio. Company C 192nd Tank Battalion sent to the Philippines in October 1941 was a unit whose core was comprised of men from the Port Clinton area.  The 32 Port Clinton men were soon engaged in the Defense of the Philippine Islands. Only 10 of the 32 local men survived the Bataan Death March and three and a half years as POWs.

In 2014, he participated in a Japanese reconciliation program began in 2010 for former American POWs to visit Japan. Representatives from Furukawa refused to meet with Mr. Crowley. However, he was able to visit the mine where he toiled as it is now a museum and amusement park. There is no mention of the American and Allied POW labor at the mine.

You can find out more about Mr. Crowley at the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project.

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Mr. Crowley will give two presentations open to the public, among the many veterans programs this week.

 LAST RING HOME. NOVEMBER 9, Noon-2:30pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: US Navy Memorial Foundation and Asia Policy Point. Author Minter Dial II discusses his new book The Last Ring Home: A POW’s Lasting Legacy of Courage, Love and Honor in World War II (Myndset Press, 2016) and documentary on his grandfather, Lt Minter Dial who commanded the USS Napa from September 1941 until March 1942 when he was ordered to Corregidor. Lt Dial's Annapolis Naval Academy ring, miraculously made its way home 17 years after he was killed as a POW of Japan on the Philippines. After his remarks, there will be a special advance screening of the new PBS documentary The Last Ring Home based on Dial's book.

Dan Crowley, a former POW of Japan who fought on Corregidor will be a special guest. After the Dial presentation, over a lite lunch. Mr. Crowley will offer his observations on Japan's invasion of the Philippines, the battles that followed, the historic surrender of American troops by their officers, and his over three years as a POW of Imperial Japan.

THE BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINES 75 YEARS LATER: A VETERAN'S TALE. NOVEMBER 10, 1:00-2:30pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Sigur Center, George Washington University and the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society. Speaker: Dan Crowley, veteran of the Battle for the defense of Philippines with the US Army Air Corps, Army Infantry, and Marines; former POW of Japan in the Philippines and Japan, slave laborer for Hitachi and Furukawa. Location: Sigur Center, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, 1957 E Street, NW, Chung-wen Shih Conference Room, Suite 503.

Mr. Crowley is a life member of the VFW.

VFW NATIONAL COMMANDER BRIAN DUFFY will give a press conference on NOVEMBER 10th at 10:00am at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. . He will discuss the needs of the nation’s 20 million veterans and the plans of veterans’ groups to move President Obama's successor and the next Congress to improve the delivery of promised benefits. The VFW, which traces its roots to the Spanish-American War, requires its members to have served in combat zones overseas.

Putting Mr. Crowley's POW experience in historical perspective will be the following program.

PRISONERS OF WAR. NOVEMBER 14, 6:45-8:45pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: Smithsonian Connections. Speaker: Judge Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, circuit judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Location: Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive, SW.

War has always resulted in prisoners, and their treatment has always been problematic. The settings in which they have been held extend from the Revolutionary War’s prison ships to the Civil War’s infamous Andersonville camp, Japanese slave labor camps and German concentration camps during WWII, and North Korean brainwashing centers through to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Just as war has changed dramatically over the years, so has the treatment of captured prisoners.

Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, finds that how a country treats—or mistreats—captured enemy prisoners is a key gauge of its values as a society and its views of international human rights. He discusses the history of prisoners of war, how POW status is defined in modern warfare, the current required treatment of prisoners, limits to their interrogation, and potential domestic and international legal sanctions for their mistreatment. 

Wallach is a circuit judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He served as a combat engineer in Vietnam and Cambodia and in the Pentagon as a U.S. Army judge advocate during the Persian Gulf War, where he was responsible for prisoner of war issues and wrote the Army’s investigation of Iraqi war crimes including mistreatment of coalition POWs.

A New Kind of Reconciliation in East Asia?

Obama's bow at Hiroshima

Harry & Helen Gray Senior Fellow, Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) and APP member Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman discusses in this essay the current opportunities for reconciliation in East Asia in light of President Barack Obama's May visit to Hiroshima.


President Obama noted in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun before his visit to Hiroshima that his presence was an example of reconciliation: “I will point out that Prime Minister Abe and I coming to Hiroshima together shows the world the possibility of reconciliation—that even former adversaries can become the strongest of allies.” Six weeks earlier, in an interview with Asahi TV, Secretary of State John Kerry also referenced reconciliation to characterize Japanese-U.S. relations: “Well, no matter what people feel about [the dropping of the atomic bomb], we are now friends and allies. We have worked through a remarkable reconciliation.” The visits of Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama to Hiroshima in April and May 2016 came at the same time as Franco-German commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the battle of Verdun, providing an opportunity to reflect on reconciliation in Europe and in East Asia.

The current international salience of reconciliation has not been missed by foreign policy experts. For example, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the State Department, Ambassador Wendy Sherman, recently identified the global need for reconciliation—what she calls “political forgiveness”—as a political priority.

This essay looks at the nature of the reconciliation suggested by President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, and how it compares to the iconic reconciliation pursued by Germany over more than seventy years. The path of Germany’s foreign policy of reconciliation (with France, Israel, Poland, and Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic) can be described in terms of timing, motives, actors, mechanisms, opposition, and consequences. The argument here is that, while there are many similarities in the elements that make up reconciliation across the two cases, U.S.-Japanese reconciliation as exemplified at Hiroshima is more of a pragmatic kind, lacking the deep moral basis of the German and European experience.

Timing

Germany’s official policy of active reconciliation started early, in the 1950s with France and Israel, whereas Obama’s visit to Hiroshima took place a long 70 years after the dropping of the atomic bomb. Nonetheless, not all issues were settled speedily in the German case, as evidenced by the agreement on World War II slave and forced labor, which occurred only in 2000. And in the Japanese case, the framework for a new relationship was outlined soon after war, in the San Francisco Treaty of September 1951.

Motives

Germany was driven by both pragmatic motives (the return of considerable sovereignty in exchange for facing the past) and a moral imperative (compensation and contrition were the right thing to do). The dual motives were also present for Germany’s victims.

Obama’s motives for going to Hiroshima were pragmatic: to augment the U.S. relationship with Japan; to help stabilize East Asian security at a time of perceived growing threats from China, both economic and military. Obama also framed the visit in moral terms, but not like the morality in the European experience. By emphasizing the universal immorality of using nuclear weapons, Obama removed U.S. agency. He referred to a “shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.” German officials from Adenauer to Merkel have accepted German responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust. In the Obama visit, there was no Japanese acceptance of responsibility, and no explicit American accusation.

History and memory, often the expressions of moral composure, were general but key terms for Obama: “[T]he memory of the morning of August 6, 1945 must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.” Yet, specifics were lacking.

There is a danger in this treatment of history that it will become a footnote in Japanese-U.S. relations rather than a touchstone for constant dialogue. Obama’s view of history fits with Prime Minister Abe’s. Abe insisted, in the recent “comfort women” agreement with South Korea, that there be no more discussion of the issue. For Germany, commemoration has taken place repeatedly at the same sites for 70 years. It is unclear with Hiroshima whether this visit by a head of state will be the first and only such visit, or the beginning of symbolic gestures by heads of state and government and cabinet members at sites where the war in the Pacific can be remembered with regularity. In the European context, these visits often have been additionally powerful when the German representative has been accompanied by a representative of the other country. Joint visits (as with Obama and Abe in Hiroshima) both confirm and contribute to reconciliation.

Actors

In the German and European example, civil society actors were catalysts for reconciliation, beginning soon after the war and even before the Federal Republic was founded. U.S.-Japanese postwar relations similarly have been shaped by non-governmental relations in many societal arenas from economics to culture, from town twinning to educational and academic exchange. The European societal activities typically have been coordinated with official initiatives. At first, in the planning for the Hiroshima visit, American POWs were led to believe an American POW would accompany the President, but in the end this amplification of the visit did not materialize.

Another aspect of the nature of actors in these bilateral relations is the distinction, and common experience, of being both victims and perpetrators. While carefully avoiding the idea of an apology or reexamination of the decision to drop the bomb, Obama’s presence and words at Hiroshima importantly validated Japan as victim, albeit not singularly but as part of a universe of victims: “We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women, and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.” Yet, Americans were Japan’s victims at Pearl Harbor and thereafter, which went unrecognized in the Hiroshima visit.

Germany recognized early on its role as perpetrator of World War II and the Holocaust, but Germany and its victims have underscored in the last 25 years that Germans—those expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia—were also victims, without suggesting a moral equivalence between Germans and other victims. Obama carefully avoided a victimhood vocabulary, but Abe said nothing to dispel the impression.

Mechanisms

In addition to symbolic gestures and civil society initiatives mentioned above, in a variety of policy arenas bilateral institutions have expressed policy preferences between the two sides in the European example. So, too, economics (constructing interdependence as an antidote to past conflict and as a bulwark against new conflicts) and defense (making war between the two impossible) have been prominent in the U.S.-Japanese case.

The key mechanism shaping European reconciliation has been the moral practice of acknowledgement of grievances, including but not limited to apologies, statements of regret, treaty language. The moral nature of acknowledgement is seen in its early and repeated use. Seventy years after World War II, Germans have no pragmatic need to acknowledge their conduct in the war and the Holocaust, but they continue to do so for reasons of moral compunction. Apology, or a variant thereof, has three basic requirements: a recognition of the suffering of the victims; the assumption of full responsibility by the perpetrator for his/her acts; an indication of the material or spiritual compensation for the loss. Only the first, a recognition of suffering, was present at Hiroshima, distinguishing morally the U.S.-Japan case as practiced at Hiroshima from Germany. Obama wanted to avoid the appearance of delivering an apology.

Opposition

European reconciliation teaches us that there is often opposition to the process, usually from domestic forces. Obama’s caution at Hiroshima was prompted by veterans’ rejection of the need for an apology. They felt it would call into question the decision to use the atomic bomb and would upend Truman’s reasoning that the bombing brought a speedy end to the war and avoided a massive loss of life. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center poll, 56 percent of Americans believed the use of the bombing was appropriate. Among those over 65, the figure for acceptance was 70 percent.

Despite Obama’s conviction that his visit to Hiroshima might advance his most profound commitment to a world without nuclear weapons, making victims but not contrition important, he inevitably has received the political criticism he anticipated. Supporters of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee called Obama “weak” and the visit unnecessary because Japan was the undisputed aggressor. For Obama’s nuclear agenda, and for his policy of making Japan the Asian leader against a rising China, this first act of reconciliation was essential. The test now is whether it will hold and be reciprocated.

Consequences

Bilateral reconciliation in Europe contributed in the postwar world to the stability of Western Europe as a whole. A new round of reconciliation after 1989 contributed to stability and solidarity in Eastern Europe, although Putin’s hyper-nationalism and nostalgia for the Soviet era have put both in question. Greater stability in East Asia could be a consequence of Obama’s trip if the President were to move vigorously on three fronts:

1. insist on a visit by Abe to Pearl Harbor (both sides need to acknowledge history). The Japanese defence minister visited in November 2015, but an equivalent to the President’s Hiroshima gesture is necessary;  
2. increase the number and intensity of civil society connections between Japan and the U.S. and include China and South Korea. There are many disparate non-governmental initiatives, but increasing, consolidating, and profiling them would provide a critical mass for a new push to reconciliation; 
3. be willing to mediate between Japan and China and between Japan and South Korea over history issues. 

Before the Hiroshima visit, the U.S. did not have the moral authority to push Japan toward regional reconciliation because of the use of the atomic bomb. Japan perceived and presented itself as victim. Now that its victimhood has been validated, both sides are liberated to look at reconciliation with fresh eyes. Such a willingness would assume that the Hiroshima visit was a demonstration of strength and courage, not the weakness the President’s critics are intent to claim.