The RCEF Blog 博客

Village children hang around watching the visitors.

This weekend, I went with a group of Japanese and Chinese activists to a county in northern Shanxi that was a stronghold of the Japanese army during World War 2. We visited village girls, wives, and mothers who had been raped by Japanese soldiers. The girls are old women now. Every year more pass away, taking their secrets to the grave. But over the last twelve years, due to the persistence and help of the Japanese activists, some of the rural women have also testified about the horrors they experienced. In doing so, they contributed to the fight for truth and justice against those who revise history and deny the atrocities that the Japanese army inflicted on rural women during the war.The Japanese activists were on one of their twice-yearly visits to the survivors’ homes. Every spring and summer for the last 12 years, this eclectic group of lawyers, journalists, business people, professors, and school teachers have used their personal funds to travel to Shanxi. They are united in a common passion to make history more accurate, to correct distortions in Japan, and do what they can to help the Chinese survivors.

The reunions were like those between relatives. In home after home, the visitors shed their shoes and piled onto a big kang (earthen bed) to embrace eighty-something-year-old grandmas with wrinkled faces and tiny feet. Since the 1990s, the activists have worked with local Chinese to find survivors and witnesses, gain their trust, collect testimony, help them sue the Japanese government, and provide reimbursements for medical costs. They have published a book in Japanese and Chinese about their findings to raise awareness and provide evidence for the historical record. The book is called Sexual Violence in Yu Xian: Their War is Not Over (发生在黄土村庄里的日军性暴力-大娘们的战争尚未结束）.

I was impressed by their dedication and knowledge. In one of the villages, a Japanese woman walked around

Women were held in a house behind the site of the current primary school.

pointing out where the old Japanese officer headquarters were, where the women were held, and where specific survivors lived at the time. A group of school-aged girls followed several meters behind peering at us from a distance. One Chinese professor told me that the younger generations don’t know much if anything about the terrible things that had happened in their village and in the nearby hills. It’s understandable. How would you go about facilitating a “Community Research” class on rape and murder in your village? Even few adult scholars and journalists investigate this history first-hand and it was taboo in the community.

However, I often wonder how a curriculum might be designed to engage Chinese and Japanese middle school students in moral discussions about war. Japanese schoolchildren usually aren’t taught in school about the scope and details of war crimes that their country is responsible for. Many Japanese textbooks downplay, twist, or omit facts. This outrages Korea, China, and other countries where atrocities occurred. On the other hand, Chinese students learn about the atrocities but are mostly left with a blanket hatred for Japanese people. Many would be surprised to know that there are Japanese who devote so much personal time and energy to correcting the historical record.

Facing History and Ourselves is a NGO that has developed curriculum for teaching about the Holocaust, Rwanda Massacre, and other war crimes. Its mission is “to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.” So far, I haven’t found a curriculum like this about the “Pacific Holocaust” (of Japanese aggression in Asia) aimed at Chinese and Japanese students. Have you heard of any? Any ideas on this topic?

Be Sociable, Share!

•