Posted on : Aug.8,2006 11:10 KST
Han Sung Dong, Senior reporter at the Hankyoreh
It was on August 6, 1945 that an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. 140,000 people out of a population of 350,000 died before the year was out. Some say the number was 160,000. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 70,000 in a city of 240,000. Many were victims of radiation, and some who survived in Hiroshima went to Nagasaki and suffered radiation in Nagasaki. Some who did not suffer directly from either bomb entered the area within two weeks of those events and were contaminated with radiation
On August 6, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi went to ceremonies to remember the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and said, "War must not happen again. Expressing condolences for those lost in war creates no problems." He was referring to his obsession with worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine, an obsession that has not changed. "Any time is a good time to go [to Yasukuni], but I will determine an appropriate time," he has said.
The day before, he had retraced the footsteps of Shoin Yoshida, and the day before that he visited the grave of Shinsaku Takasugi, a student of Yoshida and later a Meiji hero. Yoshida was one of the first to call for the invasion of Korea, calling for Japan to first devour Okinawa and Korea and then, after conquering China, that it should advance into India. Hirobumi Ito, Taro Katsura, Kaoru Inoue, Masatake Terauchi, and many others who called for the invasion of Joseon Korea were his direct ideological descendants. Yamaguchi used to be named Choshu, and it is the hometown of Shinzo Abe, the current chief cabinet secretary and Koizumi’s potential successor, as well as Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, former prime minster as well as Class-A war criminal.
Meiji was to the Japanese a glorious point in history, but to Japan’s neighbors it was a humiliation. It was with Meiji that modern Japan’s war crimes began. What is Koizumi really thinking when, on the anniversary of the atomic bomb, he goes to the home of the Meiji Restoration to honor Yoshida, and reaffirms his intention to worship at Yasukuni?
