http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/international/news/20100827p2a00m0na051000c.html

Railway project bidders must reveal WWII histories under California bill
LOS ANGELES — The California State Assembly approved a bill (AB619) Aug. 25 requiring bidders for an estimated 4 trillion yen high-speed railway project to release information on their transportation of prisoners-of-war during World War II.
As the California State Senate earlier approved the bill, it is set to become law if the governor signs it.
The issue of compensation for wartime atrocities has cast a shadow over the competition between Japanese, French and other companies for the railway construction contract.
As a precondition for participating in the tender for the high-speed railway construction project, the bill stipulates that rail companies that transported POWs during World War II must disclose information on whether they still keep records of that activity and whether they paid compensation after the war.
Even though the bill contains no provision for punishment, such as barring companies that did transport POWs from participating in the tender, it is aimed at urging companies involved to fulfill their responsibility for providing information on their acts and pay compensation to their victims.
The bill was introduced to the state legislature with French national railways’ transportation of Jews to Nazi concentration camps in mind. However, the state senate also deliberated on the Japanese state-run railway system’s transportation of POWs and about 670,000 Koreans.
East Japan Railway Co. (JR East), a member of a corporate alliance that intends to participate in the tender in a bid to sell its Shinkansen bullet train system, could be subject to the law.
The state-owned railway system, which was run by the now defunct Railway Ministry, was reorganized into the Japanese National Railways, a public corporation, after the war, and split into six regional passenger companies including JR East and a nationwide freight company in 1987.
Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Chinese and South Korean companies as well as those from other countries are expected to fiercely compete for the project, which is reportedly worth about $45 billion U.S. or some 4 trillion yen.
(Mainichi Japan) August 27, 2010

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/China-boat-captain-could-stand-trial-for-collision-650838.php

China: Japan trial of boat captain will harm ties

MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer

Published: 12:14 a.m., Thursday, September 9, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/world/asia/09beijing.html

China and Japan Bristle Over Disputed Chain of Islands
By IAN JOHNSON
Published: September 8, 2010

BEIJING — Despite recent efforts to tamp down territorial disputes, China and Japan are jostling elbows over one of their thorniest such conflicts: control of a tiny, uninhabited island chain in the East China Sea.

On Wednesday morning, the Chinese Foreign Ministry summoned Japan’s ambassador for the second time in 24 hours to protest Japan’s response to a Chinese fishing boat that had entered disputed waters.

On Tuesday, two Japanese naval vessels tried to intercept the Chinese boat, but the three collided. On Wednesday, the boat’s captain was taken to the Japanese island of Okinawa for questioning.

“We demand Japanese patrol boats refrain from so-called law enforcement activities in waters off the Diaoyu islands,” the spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, said Tuesday at a weekly news conference, according to the state-run official Xinhua news agency. “We will closely follow the situation and reserve our right to take further actions.”

Territorial disputes are common in Asian waters, with some of the most nettlesome surrounding islands chains between China, Japan, Vietnam and the Koreas. In July, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised Chinese hackles by saying the United States would try to help solve a dispute between China and Vietnam over disputed islands in the South China Sea. China claims full sovereignty over the islands and has insisted that it will resolve any rival claims in one-on-one negotiations with its neighbors.

The islands at issue in the current dispute, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are claimed by both, as well as by Taiwan, but controlled by Japan.

The islands have been a point of contention among those countries for over four decades. In the 1970s, Taiwanese activists landed on the islands, while Hong Kong groups have staged similar forays.

The issue is tricky for Beijing because it needs to balance nationalists’ demands with ties to one of its most important trading partners. In recent years, China has discouraged nationalists from pushing the issue and sometimes censored Internet forums, although some chat rooms on Wednesday had angry calls for boycotts of Japanese goods.

The authorities in Beijing permitted a small protest on Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy by a group demanding Chinese control of the islands.

“This is an issue that no Chinese government can give in to,” said Zeng Jianhong, a researcher on Chinese-Japanese relations at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “But China does not want a conflict with Japan over this issue.”

On Wednesday the normally bellicose Global Times urged restraint, saying in an editorial: “China did not encourage or instigate its people to cruise into the Diaoyu waters. Japan should also refrain from overreacting to civilian boats occasionally entering this area.”

Japanese officials also sought to play down the issue, with the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshito Sengoku, saying the issue would not affect ties with China.

“We will handle the matter firmly in accordance with the law,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “It is important that in Japan we not get overly excited.”
A version of this article appeared in print on September 9, 2010, on page A13 of the New York edition.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100901/ap_on_re_us/us_high_speed_rail_holocaust

French railway faces criticism in US for WWII role
AP

By ANTONIO GONZALEZ, Associated Press Writer Antonio Gonzalez, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 1, 7:12 pm ET

ORLANDO, Fla. – The French national railway’s hope to bid on the first high-speed tracks in the United States is running into resistance from Holocaust survivors because of the company’s role in transporting Jews to Nazi death camps.

One of those leading the charge against the railway is Florida resident Rosette Goldstein, who says her father was taken away by French authorities, shoved in a cattle train and delivered to his death during World War II. Goldstein plans to voice her opposition on behalf of many Holocaust survivors to the railway Thursday when the Florida Department of Transportation holds a public meeting in Orlando on the $2.6 billion high-speed rail project, which would connect Tampa and Orlando.

Goldstein and others — including legislators — want the railway, known as the SNCF, to formally apologize for its role in the war, give full access to its records and make reparations.

“Why does this company deserve my tax dollars when they cooperated with the Nazis and let their trains transport people to be murdered?” said Goldstein, 71, who lives in Boca Raton.

SNCF stands for Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais. The company has argued that it had no control over operations when France was under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944 and was under orders to transport Jews to death camps. The firm also has said the French government has made an apology and offered reparations, although survivors contend the company itself has never made such amends.

“We plan to have a full disclosure of our records and complete transparency,” said Peter Kelly, an American-based attorney for SNCF. “The fact is many railway workers were killed by Nazis, many were bullied and the company was under control of an occupied government.”

Not everybody accepts that explanation.

Rositta Ehrlich Kenigsberg, vice president at the Holocaust Documentation & Education Center in South Florida, said corporations such as SNCF have long used coercion as an excuse. She said SNCF profited greatly from the transports, charging per person and kilometer.

“Being a collaborator and saying you were coerced is not acceptable,” she said. “Nobody bought that at the Nuremberg Trials, Rwanda, Darfur and other genocides. You can’t help murder people and then just say, ‘Well, we were coerced.’”

In California, lawmakers passed a bill last month that forces companies hoping to compete for a piece of California’s $45 billion high-speed rail project to disclose whether they transported Holocaust victims. SNCF is also hoping for that project and said it has no problems with the bill.

(Editor’s note: GA and other activists tried to block the passage /asked for amendment to include Japanese firms whose WWII history involved in similar atrocities in Asia.)

Florida lawmakers are also stepping into the fray.

U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, a Democrat who represents portions of Broward and Palm Beach counties, a district with a high Jewish population, said he was writing a letter to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist asking for some of the same things Goldstein wants.

“This was a company that was taken and used by the Nazis that profited from the deaths of tens of thousands of people,” said Klein, who is also Jewish and serves on the board at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

SNCF employs 175,000 people and operates 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) of high-speed lines in France, and is generally respected as a heavyweight in French industry. But the company has had a hard time erasing its past.

Between 1941 and 1944, 3,000 wagons — originally designed for the transportation of cattle — were used by the SNCF to transport Jews to Nazi death camps, according to a study by French historian Christian Bachelier, ordered by SNCF in 1996. The study points out that there were acts of resistance, but they were sparse, isolated and mostly by workers — not SNCF administration.

SNCF is among about 30 companies hoping to bid for the Florida contract. Transportation officials are going through paperwork the companies have submitted.

Plans for high-speed rails were announced by President Barack Obama in January. Florida would get $1.25 billion in stimulus money and trains are expected to begin operating at speeds up to 168 mph by 2015.

At the very least, SNCF faces big challenges trying to win U.S bids.

“The court of public opinion may already have convicted them, and politicians don’t want to be called soft on the Holocaust or anything,” said Winston Nagan, a professor of international law and human rights at the University of Florida.

Goldstein and others whose families were wiped out have vowed to raise their voices.

Goldstein was 4 years old when she hid with another family on a farm outside Paris as her father enlisted at a nearby labor camp to avoid internment. He often sneaked away at night to see her, then one night he didn’t come.

She said he was transported by an SNCF train — Convoy No. 64 — to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald and finally Langenstein-Zwieberge, where he was killed by Nazis just five days before the camp was liberated by Americans.

“If SNCF had resisted even a little, more people could have been spared,” she said. “What’s worse, is the way they’ve ignored us. Is it so hard to say, ‘I’m sorry?’ I’m one of the youngest survivors — soon there’s not going to be any. We have to make sure people don’t forget what happened.”

___

Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this story.

http://bacepow.net/pr1.htm

Open letter from  Angus Lorenzen, Commander of Bay Area Ex-POWs,

about an apology to Japan for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Who Should Apologize?

On August 6, 2010, U.S. Ambassador John Roos attended the ceremony commemorating the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  This is the first time since Japan’s surrender in 1945 that the U.S. has had an official presence at the memorial, and many Japanese interpret this as an apology for dropping the bombs.  There is further talk that President Obama will also visit the memorial at some future date, thus casting the Japanese people as victims of World War II.

Where is the outrage in America?  Our media passed over the event with little comment, except for a few outlets suggesting that the apology was overdue, as always occurs on this date.  But why do we as a nation have to apologize?  The act saved an estimated million Allied casualties and perhaps millions of Japanese lives, including civilians being trained for total resistance, including suicide attacks against our troops.

How soon we forget history.  Our Euro-centric culture leads us to believe that the start of World War II occurred at the Polish border in 1939.  But many historians believe that the worldwide conflagration started two years earlier when the Japanese created the Marco Polo Bridge incident they used as an excuse to invade China.  The Japanese had already been in an undeclared war with the weak Chinese government for more than 40 years, invading Korea in 1894, taking Formosa in 1895, Manchuria in 1931, and part of China north of the great Wall in 1932.  Then in 1933 they imposed troops into China near Peking to “maintain order”.  The incident at the Marco Polo Bridge in 1937 was simply a cover to give them a legal excuse to declare war on the Chinese government, and they soon controlled all of the large industrial cities and ports.  Their invasion was brutal with bombings and executions of civilians and the infamous slaughter in the Chinese capital of Nanking.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was primarily to prevent the U.S. from thwarting their plans to take over all of Southeast Asia, and they soon controlled an enormous landmass that included China, Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and New Guinea, which provided a rich source of natural materials.  They also controlled a large number of Pacific Islands to provide an outlying barrier to protect their home islands.

When the Japanese cast themselves as “victims” and demand an apology for the bombings, they are ignoring their history of aggression and militancy.  Before demanding an apology from the U.S, they must look inward at their own nations actions, which directly resulted in an estimate of between 25 and 50 million deaths in Asia.  They should think first of apologizing for the Rape of Nanking, the Manila Massacre, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the biological experiments and attacks on China, the brutal conditions under which Allied military and civilians were held, the slave labor camps, the comfort women, and many other atrocities that they committed.

We must not allow any official of the U.S. to act in a way that would imply that we are apologizing to Japan for our actions to end a war that they started.  All thinking Americans must arise with outrage at any indication that our government officials are weakening on this issue.  I say to those who were prisoners of the Japanese, they took our liberty, our health, and our lives, so let us not now let them also take our dignity.

This is a call for action.  If you agree with this statement, please write to President Obama, and your Senators and Congressman.  Doing so immediately will make a strong and timely statement that we are not going to tolerate our government backing down on the issue of an apology to Japan.  Use your own words, or excerpt from this editorial by Angus Lorenzen.   Thank you from BACEPOW.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/indepth/2010-08/21/c_13455167.htm

Japanese war orphans in China
English.news.cn 2010-08-21 09:37:16 FeedbackPrintRSS

Yin Guilan, a Japanese orphan left behind in China when she was only two years old in 1948, is kissed by one of her five adopted Chinese orphans in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.(Source: Shanghai Daily)

BEIJING, Aug. 21 (Xinhuanet) — For Gao Fengqin, the worst horror of World War II happened in the closing days. “I still remember the day my mother took me to a small restaurant to meet my new Chinese mother,” says Gao, now 70 years old. “I had noodles and when I finished, she stood up to leave. I gripped her leg, crying for her not to go.”

It was 65 years ago that Gao’s Japanese mother, Kobayasi, gave her away to the Chinese couple who raised her into adulthood in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province in the northeast.

Gao was one of thousands of Japanese children abandoned in China and adopted by Chinese families after the war.

In late 1931, Japan started its armed colonization of northeast China, which had fallen under its control earlier that year.

Gao’s birth father died shortly after the family arrived in China, when Gao was too young to remember. Later Kobayasi married a Chinese man, and gave her birth daughter away.

Kobayasi’s remarriage didn’t last, and she returned to Japan during the chaos surrounding Japan’s defeat.

By the end of 1945, about 1.66 million Japanese troops and civilians had settled in northeast China, according to the “Investigation and Research on Japanese Orphans” published by China’s Social Sciences Academic Press in 2005.

1 2 3 4 5 6
Editor: An

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-09/01/c_13473332.htm

English.news.cn 2010-09-01 15:55:19 FeedbackPrintRSS

NANJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) — The Japanese government announced Wednesday that it had started to destroy chemical weapons abandoned in China during WWII.

Hideo Hiraoka, senior vice minister of Japan’s cabinet office, made the announcement on behalf of the Japanese government at a ceremony marking the start of the destruction work in the suburbs of the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing.

He said the Japanese government had been working to remove the abandoned chemical weapons in light of the Chemical Weapons Convention and relevant memorandum signed between the Japanese and Chinese governments.

“Today’s move marks a new phase in the disposal of abandoned chemical weapons in China, in which the work has shifted from excavation and recovery to destruction,” he said.

“This is the result of years of efforts made by Japanese and Chinese authorities, and will have far-reaching consequences on the bilateral relationship,” he said.

“The Japanese government will continue to take measures to speed up the destruction process,” he added.

Zhang Zhijun, the representative of the Chinese government and vice foreign minister, said at the ceremony that Japanese troops had committed a serious crime by abandoning chemical weapons in China during WWII.

“To destroy the abandoned chemical weapons as soon as possible will help eliminate their threat to the lives and properties of Chinese people and ecological environment in certain regions, heal the trauma for Chinese people in war-inflicted regions, and promote a healthy and stable development of China-Japan relations,” he said.

Zhang said China had been urging Japan to completely destroy its abandoned chemical weapons in the country as soon as possible, and at the same time, had actively offered assistance to Japan in destroying them.

“Today’s move marks the start of an important new phase in the disposal work,” he said.

“It is hoped that while ensuring personal safety and environmental protection, Japan will continue to increase manpower and material resources to speed up the destruction process and destroy the weapons completely as soon as possible in accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Memorandum of Understanding between China and Japan on the Destruction of Abandoned Chemical Weapons in China,” said Zhang.

Krzysztof Paturej, director of the Office of Special Projects with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, attended the ceremony Wednesday.

After the ceremony, the officials paid a visit to a site and facilities for destroying chemical weapons on the outskirts of Nanjing.

Nanjing is a city where Chinese people have bitter war memories.

Japanese troops occupied Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, and launched a six-week massacre. Chinese records show more than 300,000 people, including disarmed soldiers and civilians, were killed.

This year marks the 65th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in WWII.

Under the Chemical Weapons Convention which came into effect in 1997, all states that possess chemical weapons must destroy them by April 29, 2012.

HIDDEN DANGER

Japanese troops developed and produced a great number of chemical weapons during their invasion of China. They buried or abandoned many of these weapons to cover up their crimes before they surrendered.

These abandoned chemical weapons are often discovered in different places across China, mostly in China’s northeastern regions.

On Aug. 4, 2003, a mustard gas leak from chemical weapons abandoned by the Japanese troops killed a man and injured more than 40 in Qiqihar in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.

In August this year, police found more than 400 abandoned Japanese bombs within half a month at construction sites and abandoned factories in Qiqihar.

“The city was once the headquarters of two chemical weapons units of Japanese troops during WWII,” said Zhang Ronghui, deputy director of the Qiqihar Public Security Bureau.

“Now, it is a heavy burden for local governments to properly dispose of those abandoned chemical weapons,” he said.

Local residents hope the Japanese government can inform of the exact number of chemical weapons buried underground.

“How many? Where are they? I hope Japanese government, together with Chinese side, can give us a clear answer to these questions to reduce the number of casualties,” said Mei Hanjue, a Qiqihar resident.

Chinese scholars expressed appreciation for Japan’s move Wednesday.

“It shows the positive attitude the Japanese government has in handling the issue of abandoned chemical weapons, and this should be recognized,” said Gao Hong, deputy director of the Japan Studies Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The abandoned chemical weapons issue not only injures and kills Chinese citizens but also hurts their feelings, and furthermore, affects China-Japan relations, Gao said.

“The Japanese government’s move to destroy the abandoned weapons can also be seen as an important step in Japan’s reflection on its war past,” he said.

But he warned the cost of destroying the weapons will be even high, saying China needs to see what the Japanese government will do next.

In addition, there is still another issue: compensation.

“The Japanese government’s move is an important step in handling the issue of abandoned chemical weapons. But the issue of compensation for Chinese citizens injured or killed by those weapons should also be addressed,” said Liu Zhiwei, a lawyer at the Heilongjiang Langxin Law Firm.
Editor: Zhang Xiang
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http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100817a1.html

Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2010

U.S. fudges Senkaku security pact status
WASHINGTON (Kyodo) The Obama administration has decided not to state explicitly that the Senkaku Islands, which are under Japan’s control but claimed by China, are subject to the Japan-U.S. security treaty, in a shift from the position of George W. Bush, sources said Monday.
Although the U.S. government has not officially changed its stance that the Japan-U.S. pact applies to the uninhabited East China Sea islets, known in China as the Diaoyu isles, the shift from making a direct reference to them could become a source of concern for Tokyo as it addresses moves by Beijing, the sources said. Taiwan also claims the islets.
The administration of Barack Obama has already notified Japan of the change in policy, but Tokyo may have to take countermeasures in light of China’s increasing activities in the East China Sea, according to the sources.
Japan’s concern over the uninhabited islands was heightened when a Chinese oceanographic research vessel entered what it claims as its territorial waters near the islands in December 2008, shortly before Obama took office.
The Obama administration, however, decided from the start not to state explicitly that the bilateral security pact applies to the islets, the sources said.
Washington is believed to have shifted its position to avoid irritating Beijing amid efforts to ensure continued cooperation with China to keep the U.S. economy’s recovery on track from the financial crisis, the sources said.
In March 2004, then State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters, “The Senkaku Islands have been under the administrative control of the government of Japan since having been returned as part of the reversion of Okinawa in 1972.”
The spokesman added, “Article 5 of the 1960 U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security states that the treaty applies to the territories under the administration of Japan; thus Article 5 of the Mutual Security Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands.”
When Tokyo sought confirmation of the U.S. position in March 2009, the Obama administration said the islands have been under Japanese administrative control since the 1972 reversion and the Japan-U.S. security pact applies to territories under Japanese administration, but it did not directly state that the Senkakus are subject to the pact, the sources said.
Then Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura announced at the time that the U.S. position on the matter remained unchanged.
In response to a recent inquiry, the State Department also said the U.S. position on the issue “is long-standing and has not changed.”
The islets lie on Japan’s side of the median line that Tokyo recognizes as demarcating the nation’s territorial waters. China has been drilling for gas just on its side of the line, but Japan believes the deposits being tapped extend into its territory.

http://www.necn.com/08/15/10/Memorial-service-marks-65th-anniversary-/landing_nation.html?blockID=290656&feedID=4207

Memorial service marks 65th anniversary of end of World War II

Aug 15, 2010 9:45am
(NECN/TVB: Hong Kong) – In Hong Kong, dozens of people attended a memorial service at the Cenotaph in Central to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

Among those present were war veterans and Chinese workers who were forced to work in Japan during the war.
The forced laborers are seeking compensation from Japan for the sufferings they had endured.

Meanwhile, members of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers) Association, the Prisoners of War Association and government representatives were at the City Hall Memorial Garden this morning to pay tribute to those who died defending Hong Kong during the war.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100816a1.html

Monday, Aug. 16, 2010

Moment of silence: Relatives of military servicemen who died in combat during World War II bow their heads in prayer at a commemoration ceremony held Sunday at Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward. KYODO PHOTO
Kan expresses remorse for casualties of war
DPJ chief vows to pursue peace on surrender’s 65th anniversary

By ALEX MARTIN
Staff writer
Commemorating 65 years since the end of World War II, Prime Minister Naoto Kan delivered a speech Sunday expressing deep remorse for the damage Japan inflicted on its neighbors and its own people during the war, vowing to work toward global peace.

In honor of sacrifice: Prime Minister Naoto Kan presents a bouquet Sunday at Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in Tokyo. KYODO PHOTO

“During the war, our nation inflicted great damage and suffering to people of many countries, especially to those of Asian nations,” Kan said in a speech at Nippon Budokan Hall in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, where the surrender day ceremony is held each year on Aug. 15.
“I express my feelings of profound remorse to all the victims and their families,” Kan said.
This year’s ceremony took place on the centennial of Japan’s annexation of the Korean Peninsula, which Kan apologized for in a statement to South Korea last Tuesday.
In a significant turn of events, Kan and his Cabinet also declined to visit Yasukuni Shrine, widely regarded as the spiritual pillar of Japanese militarism. Prime ministers and Cabinet members who visit the Shinto complex usually trigger fierce criticism from the countries that were invaded, most notably China and South Korea.
The way the Kan administration is commemorating these important and emotionally sensitive dates may signal a progressive change in foreign policy. Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan swept to power on the theme of “change” last August, ousting the long-ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party in a historic general election.
After singing the national anthem “Kimigayo” at Nippon Budokan Hall in a ceremony to commemorate the roughly 3 million service members and civilians who died in the war, Kan said it was necessary to reflect on the past and document the lessons for future generations.
“Violent conflicts remain rife in the world,” Kan said. “In order to prevent the horrors of war from being repeated, our nation renews its pledge to work toward establishing lasting global peace.”
Kan was followed by Emperor Akihito, who attended the ceremony with Empress Michiko.
“I am filled with renewed sorrow for the people who have lost their precious lives in the war and their bereaved families,” the Emperor said. “I sincerely wish that the horrors of war not be repeated, and along with the public would like to express our heartfelt sorrow to those who lost their lives in the war, and pray for global peace and further development of our nation.”