A member of the Solidarity for the Peace and Reunification of Korea, a progressive civic group, speaks during a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on July 16, 2015, to voice her objection to Japan exercising the right to collective self-defense. Japan’s ruling coalition pushed controversial security bills through the lower house that would allow it to exercise that right the same day. (Yonhap)
It is good to see that this former sailor was able to be reunited with daughter:
The words that Navy veteran James Walker had longed to hear for almost 46 years appeared on his Facebook page Saturday.
“Your search is over .. I am found .. i love you Dad,” said the message from a woman claiming to be the daughter he left behind in Japan when he went off to fight in the Vietnam War.
Walker contacted the person who made the post, Emi McGowan of Sarasota, Fla., and then questioned her mother, Tomie Miller of Mesa, Ariz.
“I called her mother, and she told me things that only her mother would know,” he said, noting that he’s been contacted by numerous scam artists claiming to be his daughter since Stars and Stripes ran a story about his search in March.
“You never know if somebody is trying to pull something over on you,” he said.
Now, he’s convinced that his search is over.
Shortly after his daughter’s birth in 1968, Walker got orders to return to the U.S. from Japan. At the time, he was a petty officer third class at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, near Tokyo.
Walker wrote to the girl many times and made other unsuccessful efforts to track her down, including a trip back to their old neighborhood near Atsugi. He credited the Stars and Stripes article, which was translated into Japanese and widely shared on Facebook, with helping him make the breakthrough.
McGowan, who said she has been searching for her father since she was 18, reported that a friend saw the story and sent her the accompanying photo.
“I looked at the baby in the picture and I was looking at myself in the mirror. My face has really not changed,” she said. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but Walker’s daughter hasn’t had an easy life because she currently has three kids and is homeless.
http://img.yonhapnews.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2015/07/13/AEN20150713007200320_01_i.jpg
This NK News article makes a really good argument that the Chinese government has no creditability to complain about Japanese World War II historical revisionism when they themselves have made laughable historical revisionist claims about their involvement in the Korean War. Here is an excerpt, but I recommend reading the whole thing:
Finally, there is a museum titled the “Commemorative Museum of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid North Korea.” It has exhibits on how South Korea, in collusion with the United States, started the war, how the U.S. made use of germ warfare, and how American POWs held by the Chinese and North Koreans were treated humanely according to the Geneva Convention – including photos of a “Santa Claus” handing out care packages to POWs from the Red Cross. (This contrasts sharply to the reports of POWs repatriated after the war concerning their brutal and inhumane treatment, as documented in U.S. Senate Report No. 848, 83rd Congress, Second Session – Korean War Atrocities.)
Xi Jinping, in his 2010 speech, repeated the dubious claim presented at the museum of the use of germ warfare by U.S forces when he said: “Thereafter, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army constructed an impregnable defense bastion and crushed the enemy’s multiple attacks and their germ warfare.”
In conclusion, the assertion by Xi Jinping in his 2010 remarks that Harry Truman started the Korean War is directly contradicted by the Yeltsin documents. It is thus as controversial as the claim of non-coercion of Comfort Women made in the past by Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Yet, while Abe’s intemperate remarks have caused criticism throughout South Korean society, there is almost no public outcry over Xi’s condemnation of the American president. Yet Truman was one of the leaders of the UN coalition which laid the groundwork for a viable and independent South Korean state. [NK News]
Read the rest at the link.
.@theAsianist explains: The Real Importance of Japan’s New Strategy for the Mekong http://t.co/FBduRVq65O pic.twitter.com/WeJ2645KBx
— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) July 6, 2015
South Korean President Park Geun-hye smiles as she applauds with former Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga, left, during a reception to mark the 50th anniversary of normalizing relations between South Korea and Japan in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, June 22, 2015.
I wonder how USFK would treat a similar case of theft by a civilian in a situation like this?:
On March 6, a large sum of cash was stolen from a slot machine room at the Navy’s largest base in Asia.
This wasn’t the first time money had gone missing from a Navy entertainment facility in Japan. In 2010, $67,000 went missing from a Naval Air Facility Atsugi club. Only a few civilians had access to the cash, but no one was ever arrested.
Navy officials in Japan say that while they can make it hard to steal and even harder to go unidentified, a determined thief is going to have opportunities at entertainment facilities, which are primarily operated by civilians who, unlike servicemembers, do not fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
When crime prevention among civilians fails, the question then becomes whether federal officials will prosecute them. Unless the crime is violent or particularly noteworthy, the answer is probably not.
When criminal suspects fall under the UCMJ, custody and prosecution become straightforward legal matters. If the suspect is a civilian, custody may become subject to international accords and possibly extradition agreements, which can take months or years to find their way through the courts.
Sources familiar with the March theft at Yokosuka told Stars and Stripes that a suspect is a third-country national admitted to Japan. If the suspect is still in Japan and off-base, the U.S. has no jurisdiction to make the arrest and would need assistance from Japanese authorities. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but if the military lacks legal jurisdiction than why was this person allowed on base in the first place?
Anyway speaking of slot machine scams, does anyone remember this case of the Korean woman who made $1.2 million signing people on to post to gamble on Yongsan Garrison? As far as I can tell nothing happened to her either other than losing pass privileges.
The Japanese Defense Reform No One Is Talking About http://t.co/exLP9jm37D pic.twitter.com/OnFXCavn0u
— The Diplomat (@Diplomat_APAC) May 19, 2015
It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. I am willing to bet there won’t be much coming out of this publicly, but behind the scenes a few issues will probably be worked out:
South Korean and Japanese defense chiefs are expected to hold bilateral talks later this month for the first time in four years despite soured ties over historical rows, government sources here said Tuesday.
Defense Minister Han Min-koo plans to meet with his Japanese counterpart Gen Nakatani around the end of this month in Singapore on the sidelines of the regional security forum, the Shangri-La Dialogue, according to a source. The upcoming annual security forum is slated for May 29-31.
If held, it will be the first bilateral talks between the top defense officials in four years, as they have shunned such meetings due to deteriorated bilateral relations over history-related issues, including Japan’s refusal to apologize for its wartime atrocities.
Icy Seoul-Tokyo relations have taken a turn for the worse in recent months after the Abe administration renewed claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo, and attempted to deny its wrongdoing during World War II, such as the forced sexual enslavement of Asian women, mostly Korean, for its soldiers. Korea was under harsh colonial rule by Japan from 1910 to 1945.
“On the table would be issues of mutual interest including how to work closely to deter and counter North Korea’s nuclear and missiles threats and the implementation of the revised U.S.-Japan defense guidelines,” another source said. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link.
Here is an article in the Christian Science Monitor that discusses how South Korean President Park Geun-hye could leave a legacy if she was able to work out a reconciliation with Japan over its World War II past:
Yet the South itself is sharply riven on partisan lines, between right and left. Disagreements are profound on how to interpret most of the past, including the autocratic rule of Park’s father, who served as an officer in the Japanese Army. Not until 2012, for example, could political agreement be gained to open the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which sits prominently at the Gwanghwamun Square rotary next to the American embassy. But inside, one subject does garner agreement: Korea’s unhappy occupation by Japan, a time when Koreans were forbidden to learn or speak their language.
“In 1905 Imperial Japan forced the Korean government to sign a treaty depriving it of sovereignty,” reads an opening script. Partway through is a photo display of the so-called “comfort women,” stating: “Women and girls were even victimized as forced laborers at the various places or as the military sexual slaves at the Japanese military camps.”
In fact, comfort women are just the tip of the iceberg for Korea’s outcry. It is Abe’s entire revision of the basic meaning of World War II that bothers Japan’s neighbors, many of whom see the prime minister as also trying to restore the honor of his own family. Abe’s maternal grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, a minister in Japan’s wartime cabinet who was arrested on war crimes charges and then released.
Indeed, many ideas that purport to restore Japan’s honor and dignity hearken to Meiji era propaganda, which helped form the basis for Japan’s colonial expansion and the war. For example: that Japan in the 1930s was only taking territory to keep it from Americans and other European colonials. That Japan was acting as friend to the nations it invaded. That Japan’s cause was just, and the atom bomb attacks made Japan the war’s victim.
“The problem for us is that Japan’s denial and revisionism is their actual position,” says Choi Jin-wook, president of the Korean Institute for National Unification. “For them it is truth. They have drifted into believing that they were victims of World War II. For Japan, nothing is remembered. For us, nothing is forgotten.”
Prof. Choi points to another factor: Mounting strains between Japan and China mean that Abe cannot be seen as showing any weakness in northeast Asia.
Today, most historians and a UN investigation argue that some 200,000 women in Asia were forced into sexual slavery during the war. Yet Abe has questioned this, despite previous Japanese official apologies and the payment of compensation starting in 1992. Last November, Abe enabled a commission to “consider concrete measures to restore Japan’s honor with regard to the comfort women.”
The new Japanese position has emerged gradually. But its main points are this: Korean women were not rounded up and forced to service Japanese soldiers, as most history texts outside Japan suggest. Rather, the women were volunteers, willing participants – not coerced by Japan but offered up under Korean management. [Christian Science Monitor]
In regards to the revisionism the Japanese use to justify the war, the Koreans are absolutely correct. All one has to do is go to the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. The Yasukuni Shrine gets all the attention because it honors all Japanese war dead to include those convicted of war crimes. Having been there, Yasukuni is nothing compared to the Yushukan Musuem where World War II is called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere War. Those who put the museum together believe that the Imperial Japanese were liberating Asian nations that were being colonized by Europeans and Americans. Much of the history depicted at the museum is laughable.
As far as the colonial occupation of Korea I always recommend that people read Under the Black Umbrella: Voices from Colonial Korea, 1910-1945
which dispels much of the myths about the occupation, like the one repeated in the article about not being allowed to speak Korean. Koreans could speak their native language during the colonial period just not in schools or to hold government positions. People who have spent time in Korea know how much Koreans value education. The Imperial Japanese understood this too and this was how they hoped to assimilate the Koreans into their culture over time.
As far the comfort women issue I always recommend that people read The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)
Considering how repugnant the historical revisionism is in Japan I do not see any way that President Park Geun-hye can reach out to Prime Minister Abe without him first making significant concessions. First of all he should advocate for removing the war criminals names from Yasukuni and come out against the historical revisionism in the Yushukan Musuem. He cannot force change because they are both private entities, but he can advocate for change which would be positive first step to reconciliation. If he doesn’t make a significant first step I don’t see how politically President Park can move forward on this issue.
