1 maart 2007
Where Are Our Primo Levis And Anne Franks?
Of course we know the names of people who left us their touching diaries and/or reflections on ‘man’s inhumanity against man’ trying to come to
terms with the guilt of survival where others perished, but outside our own relatively small circles of families and relations of POWs and civilian
internees under the Japanese they don’t enjoy the same authority or prestige, if they are known at all, unlike the above the world famous survivor
abd author of the Holocaust Primo Levi and the unfortunate teenager Anne Frank who passed away on the verge of liberation do in relation to the
horrors of Nazism and German occupation in Europe.
There are several reasons for this, one major being that for most Europeans, including British people, the war in Asia and the Pacific is basically
an ‘exotic’, far away affair. Even for the British and Dutch as the major colonial powers in Asia, while something closer to home for the Americans,
Australians and New Zealanders; the French position is as usual somehow more complicated. The war against the Japanese became 'the forgotten
war’ of WWII, notwithstanding hundreds of thousand encarcerated who were kept captive in concentration camps and slave labour camps all over
the Far East, including woimen and children.
Another possible reason is possibly the perception, and which is may be more pronounced in the Dutch experience, that most victims of Japanese
occupation were regarded ‘colonialists’ who as the ‘white oppressors’ of the Asian colonial subjects as administrators, military and as managers of
plantations, mines and banks etc had ‘been asking for it’ and got their ‘just deserves’ from the Japanese, say some. Thus their fate when compared
to for instance the fate of the Jewish community under German Nazi occupation was therefore not deserving of any real sympathy, according to
quite a few in the mother country.
This is not my view, but it reflects my experience as the son of FEPOW born in the former colony of Indonesia and as a relative and friend of
people of a similar background. As a historian I know that life is much more complicated and as a human I reject fully the notion that, to keep it
very personal, my father, my uncle, aunt and cousins, and the tens of thousands others had been ‘asking for it’ and got what they deserved.
That is why I made the suggestions at the concluding session of the ‘Researching FEPOW History’ conference last year to include the following
subjects for the conference in 2008: campaigning for a meaningful expression of regret by Japan, similar to and of the same quality as German
apologies, attention for the question as to how the ‘second generation’ was affected and a reflection on how the war in Asia and the Pacific has
been treated in (popular) history and fiction, in print and film.
The first two suggestions may be more appropriate for an organisation like COFEPOW, but in its current mission under its original set up it would not
want to get involved in the first two suggestions from its aims and activities, I understand.
However, the third suggestion would fall totally within the aims of ‘Researching FEPOW History’ and would to a certain extent deal with the issues
thrown up by my first two suggestions, which it cannot deal with.
I was reminded strongly of the need for reflection through factual writing and film making as well as well as through writing or filming fiction and
also of the wish to prevent the ‘forgotten war’ and its victims from further sinking into oblivion after reading the reviews of the latest Stephen
Spielberg produced and Clint Eastwood directed vehicle of Flag of our fathers and its sister film Letters from Iwo Jima for two reasons.
Firstly the only version that we appear to going to leave our (grand) children is that the ‘forgotten war’ was won by the US and as the ‘Pacific
War’ was mainly of US interest. Secondly it gives the impression that the enemy was ‘honourable’ and that there were two moral equal sides of
the coin.
Both are false. From ‘Hollywood’ anyone who would not know better, and that would include the offspring of the ‘baby boomers’, would get the
impression that it was ‘Uncle Sam’ that won the war, and also in Europe, see for instance such classics like the ‘Patton’ films, The Battle of the
Bulge, The Bridge of erRemagen, The Big Red One and a recent US made version of breaking the German enigma code etc etc.
And if WWII was ‘won’ almost nearly exclusively by the US the war in Asia and the Pacific against Japan became to all intents and purposes an
exclusive US effort, see for instance such recent films like The Thin Red Line or Wind Talkers, even Burma, was transformed in an US theatre of
war in the Burma Raiders and I remember a Frank Sinatra vehicle set in Burma. And to make Bridge over the River Kwai palatable for an US
audience it was the William Holden figure as the US merchant marine escapee, complete unhistorical, rather than the Alec Guinness portrayal,
albeit misinterpreted, of a Colonel Toosey inspired figure who became the lead character of the film.
Kwai never achieved the same iconic status that the Great Escape enjoys among the greater British public, but it is interesting to note that a film
about POWs in Nazi occupied Europe is more popular than such British and Anglo-American co-productions like the Battle of Britain, The Longest
Day and A Bridge Too Far etc that do give indeed a more balanced view of the war experience than many made in USA.
But even these films do give in effect only half of the story by focussing on battles rather than to include the experience of living of Nazi German
occupation and questions with all it entails for collaboration and resistance, deportations and ultimately the genocide of most of European Jewry.
Secondly this kind of emphasis on battlefield heroism and sacrifice, or even ‘futility of war’ sentiments, with both sides being given equal moral
value is clearly being seen in other recent Spielberg vehicles such as Saving Private Ryan and the made for TV Band of Brothers and in particular
in one of the end scenes of the latter there is a remarkable, but for me objectionable, scene of a German officer addressing German soldiers
about to surrender that despite their defeat they should be proud because they fought “honourable”; this from the man who made Schindler’s
List! A similar suggestion of the enemy being ‘honourable’ can be detected in Spielberg’s previous treatment of the ‘Pacific War’ in his film version
of Empire Of The Sun.
Such an approach of portraying the collective battle for life over death in both the theatres of war of Europe and Asia between the Allies and
the Axis is wrong, morally and historically. Let there be no mistake the aggressors, were the original ‘Axis of evil’ of Germany, Italy and Japan
nd were basically motivated by racism, either to subjugate those who were considered as inferior or to exterminate them in a final solution.
Real and imaginary grievances by Germany, Italy and Japan, which all considered themselves as victims of the Treaty of Versailles that should
have concluded the war to end all wars, fuelled extreme nationalism founded on racial and religious prejudices and leading to even bolder
militaristic adventurism by the Axis powers being often met by appeasing weakened western democracies led by the US, UK and France until
respectively Germany in September 1939 and Japan in December 1941 miscalculated that they would again not be met with adequate opposition.
(according to my understanding pre-WWII history, both had a dream: Hitler dreamt of the Third Reich, a united Europe modeled after the Roman
Empire. Japan was badly in want of grondstoffen such as oil. They couvered their greed of land with the slogan: Asian for the Asians. However,
the undertone was highly racist, especially towards their brother folk the Chiese (1937, Rape of Nankin). The Hitlerian anti semitics was also fuelled
by the Marxian pamflet: Uber die Judenfrage. The Jewish community in Marx's philosophy, beloned to the capitalist bourgeoisie abd according to
his own dictatorship of the proletariat doctrine, fundamentally evil.
Therefore the world war that started in 1939, even though there is disagreement about a starting date depending on different European historical
traditions, is different from the preceding ‘Great War’ of 1914-18 or the Napoleonic wars for that matter. And even though the concept of ‘Total
War’ was not new and through the ages the civilian population became victims of ‘collateral damage’, whether accidental or more often than not
deliberate, the intensity of ‘Total War’ during WWII both in Europe and† also in Asia made it stand out from what happened before. And what
makes it in particular stand out is not only the racist motivation of the aggression of the Axis powers but also the sheer industrial scale in which
they carried out their racist policies.
Policies whether involving subjugating ‘inferior’ peoples, like the Russians or Chinese, or extermination of the Jews or of the Europeans and mixed
race Eurasians, if the Japanese had had the opportunity to pursue their policies to their logical conclusion. The racist aspect of WWII in Europe
has received at least due a vast and worldwide attention in fictional and factual writing and cinematography, often initially met by a disbelieving
response though.
However, it has made such different persons like the teenager Anne Frank or Auswitsch survivor Primo Levi, who eventually committed suicide as
he could not cope with the guilt of having survived, into symbols (icons) of the way how the events in Europe have been perceived and are being
reflected on in fiction and factually. But in comparison according to my modest opinion (dont make yourself small!!!) the same has been so far
too much, by and large, totally absent and lacking in the writing and portrayal of the war in Asia, despite a substantial corpus of histories and
personal memoir histories.
May be a bit more progress has been made in the Netherlands, compared with Britain because of people having experienced both the occupation
by Nazi Germany and Japan, but then again the debate and reflection has suffered under misguided and fruitless comparisons and grading of
victimisation between the two occupations.
Such a reflection is important for more than a sometimes just ‘pious’ memory of ‘let’s we forget’ or ‘never again’ for several reasons. Firstly
because the experience of FEPOWS and civilian internees in our closest families makes us as what we are, either as children and relatives of
those who died and did not return or as the children and relatives of those who survived and did return. That experience is what unites us, but
it also different and in the latter case could be particularly an unhappy one for some, not my own I hasten to add, but I know for others it was,
and for all of us it has been and still is very highly emotional nevertheless.
Secondly Japan is taking, partly on its own accord in response to its growth in stature economically and politically in the region, partly because
of demands on it from its US protector, a more active role, politically and gradually military as well in the Asia-Pacific region as well as globally.
It aspires like Germany to a seat on a reformed and extended UN Security Council. But why should Japan be allowed to take such a role, or even
be trusted as long as Japan has, unlike Germany not made a meaningful apology for its role in WWII and made any reparations, either to us in the
west and equally important to its Asian neighbours, China in particular? While neonazism is around in Germany, the danger of rising militant
nationalism in Japan, with a society largely ignorant and in denial connived at by the official ethos of the state, is much larger and urgent than
in Germany! Why should Japan still enjoy American protectionism like a disabled and backward child, whereas Germany accepted its responibility
toward the destroyed European countries and their victimized nationals.
Is this a reversed racism which has risen from the philosophy that Germans are 'like us' therefore should not have been as evil as they were during
the Hitler regime, whereas the Japanese are Asian and henceconsidered barbarians and therefore being excused ? Why else should both former
beligernt states were - and still are - treated so differently with a view to their reparation obligtions? Both countries were in ruins, their economies
in a dire sraight and their geo-political situation as to the communist threat more or less smilar. In fact, German's was worse by far, due to the
fact that th Red Army was in the vicinity and stayed put for over half a cebntury.
So why his linience towards Japan? Wasn't the Chinese holocaust, both in China and in other FE countries more insignificant than the Jewish
Holocaust? When the Chinese American historian Irish Chang published The Rape of Nankin, the second holocaust (2001) she hd hoped for a
huge media and public response. However, her book hardly rippled the surface of pulic and political empathy. Althouh half his age, Ms Chang
died in the same year as Primo Levi. She put an end to her life as she was not able to bear the global negligence of a great tragedy caused by
Japan, the agressor which has never been abkle to make itself respectful and who was not obliged to make itself respectful by the former
enemies who collectively signed a Treaty of Peace in San Francisco in 1951. How can the Western Allies ever recognize the genocide by Japan
in all the FE occupied countries? Although abundantly documented, Japan's atrocities,† mass murders, looting and booting have never been able
to create the same mindset, the same upheaval, the same awkwardness as the crimes against humanity by the Nazies. It was the teenager
Anne Frank who - by her moving diary - made the public at large aware of what happened in Europe to Europeans by Europeans........ What was
the reason of the benevolent and linient attitude towards postwar Japan as opposed to the hostility towards postwar Germany. What caused
the blunt denouncement of the unique plight of the Europeans and the community of mixed blood with a European nationality by their own national
states, who spent 3 to 3,5 years in captivity to perish, including women and children? What caused the undersignment of the San Francisco
Peace Trety with Japan in 1951 by all Allied parties- including Britain and The Netherlands - although the treaty waived all
Japan's obligations as beligerent party to compensate any physical and mattial damages (Art. 14b)? 'The handling of the Peace Treaty with the
Japanese in 1951 had been far too nice and had cost the ex internees dear'. (quote from a paper on the Fight for Compensation, Dr. Bernice
Archer, January 2007, Capetown University Summerschool). In a time with hardly any media covering it was apparently easy to hide 'bad news
stories' from the public. Six years after the end of World War II the public was not at all Japan conscious, as the Foreign Office wrote.
The question is, of course, whether the public had ever been Japan conscious, apart from the families nd cloe friends of the FEPOWS. And even
those, as has been the perpetual complaint, were never teally interested in their stories of starvation, forced labour during long hours,
malnutrition deseases, tortures, execvutions, transportations in hell ships and trains. The gruesome stories are told by the victims over and over
again. Apparently they lack the emotional† tinge to arouse the public's awareness and verontwaardiging.
The Allied peace Treaty with Japan should have had political implications for the signing parties. It didn't. After 55 years Japan is still protected
against individual claims by the SFPT and it still has the impertinence to abuse the Treaty as a justification for rejecting any clainms by their
former FEPOW and Inrternee victims. Shaming and naming has no effect whatsoever. According to the Japanese government ...'It is their fault -
we aimn't done nothing.... and - by International Law - we dont owe anybody anything'.
In 1948 the American War Claims Act authorized the payment of 60 US dollar per month for each adult internee and 25 dollar for each minor per
month for the time spent in captivity. Why were these conditions not included in the Peace Treaty?
What secret policy was behind the waiver ? And why does the waiver Article 14 (b) of the Peace Treaty seem to have an eternal duration
whereas the Claim Act went down the drain in 1951 and wasn't heard of ever ince? Obviously for being unfavourable for Japan and its economical
situation. However, a few decades later Japan was ranked the second economy, after the United States. Isn't it high time for the Allies to abolish
the waiver and negociate a compensation payment to their former militairy abd coivilian captives including women and children according to the
Ameircan War Claims Act 1948? Why should Japan still be granyerd freedom of reparation payments to its vintims whereas its formner Axis alley
Germany was compelled to do so, and is still paying its dues to the survivors of the Holocaust. Weren't he captives of Japan also carefully
selected on the basis of race, blood links and nationality? And similar to the Jews and other unwanted catagories they were robberd from
their homes, houses, personal belongings, valuables and small businesses. By restituting the stolen goods and paying reparations Germany
became a respectable nation. Japan, on the contrary, has never been able to understand what the international community means by
respectability. It is even beyond its understanding why Japan is still denied a permnent membership of the Security Council. Undoubyedly,
China will help the FEPOW and Internees organisations to keep Japan out, permanently.
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