I WAS interested to learn that survivors of the Hiroshima atom-bombing held a minute’s silence on the 75th anniversary of the bombing, in remembrance of those who died.
As horrific as the casualties were, I find it hard to feel sorry for a people whose troops, when they overran Singapore, stormed into hospitals and deliberately murdered doctors, nurses and bedridden patients.
Unlike the Germans, who have acknowledged, and tried to make up for, the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, the Japanese confine their ‘remembrance’ to their suffering – and rarely apologise for or even acknowledge, the appalling atrocities perpetrated by their Imperial Army.
The 300,000 who died at Hiroshima pale into insignificance when compared with the estimated three to 14 million who died as a result of massacre, medical experimentation, starvation and forced labour at the hands of the Japanese during what is sometimes referred to as the Asian Holocaust.
Japan’s wartime leader, Emperor Hirohito was lucky not to have been tried as a war criminal – unlike 900 of his compatriots who were tried, found guilty and executed.
ROBERT READMAN
Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth
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