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War responsibility -- delving into the past
The Yomiuri Shimbun Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Aug. 15 - Sixty years have passed since Japan's surrender to Allied Forces. Responsibility for waging the war was dealt with by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo Tribunal.
The manner and circumstances in which the tribunal was administered has long attracted criticism and its verdicts were never in the hands of the Japanese people.
Now is the time to verify the miseries of the war on our own account, to identify the responsibility of the war era's political and military leaders"failure to avoid war.
To address this task, The Yomiuri Shimbun established an in-house investigative panel, the War Responsibility Verification Committee, comprised of members of the newspaper's Editorial Board, the Yomiuri Research Institute and senior writers from a range of departments of the Editorial Bureau.
The outcome of this project, undertaken by the team in collaboration with experts from outside The Yomiuri Shimbun, will be published occasionally.
Looking back now at World War II, there arise a number of problems and doubts.
These can be divided into five broad questions in connection with our quest concerning responsibility for the war:
--Why did Japan extend the lines of battle following the 1931 Manchurian Incident, plunging the country into the quagmire of the Sino-Japanese War?
--Why did Japan go to war with the United States in spite of extremely slim prospects for victory?
--What foolishness caused the Japanese military to employ "banzai attacks," or die-but-never-surrender action, and "kamikaze" suicide aircraft attacks, after the rapid deterioration of Japan's position shortly after victories in the initial phase of the Pacific War?
--Were sufficient efforts made to bring the war to an end and was it possible to prevent the civilian devastation caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
--What problems were there with the Tokyo Tribunal in which Allied Forces tried Japanese political and military leaders charged with war crimes?
As the first installment of the series, the following explores the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent expansion of the front of the Sino-Japanese War that eventually led to the outbreak of the Pacific War.
TOKYO--On Sept. 18, 1931, the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway Co.'s line (Mantetsu) were pounded with bombs at Liutiaohu in the suburbs of Mukden (now Shenyang) in northeast China.
A group of high-ranking officers of the Guandong Army, Japan's field army in Manchuria, including senior staff officer Seishiro Itagaki and operations officer Kanji Ishiwara were responsible for plotting the explosion that was the beginning of the Manchurian Incident--the conquest of Manchuria by the Guandong Army.
The Cabinet at that time, headed by Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki, was deeply alarmed by the incident and initially adopted a policy of localizing the affair.
The Wakatsuki administration, however, was unable to hold in check the intensification of military operations by the Guandong Army, proving itself to be incapable of bringing the army under control.
The Manchurian Incident, coupled with the 1932 establishment of a puppet state--Manchukuo--by the Guandong Army, constituted the start of Japan's international isolation.
Why were the government and the top echelon of the military in Tokyo unable to halt reckless acts by the Guanong Army?
It is worth noting that at the time Japan had an array of rights and interests, such as Mantetsu, in Manchuria that had been acquired in the victory of the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War and other armed conflicts.
Ishiwara and his allies espoused the theory that Japan must prepare for a "final war"with the United States and the Soviet Union by harnessing natural resources from Manchuria and Mongolia.
In December 1931, the Lytton Commission was appointed by the League of Nations to determine the causes of the railway bombing.
The five-member commission released the Lytton Report in October 1932, denouncing the Manchurian Incident as an act of aggression by Japan, rejecting Japan's claim that the incident was for self-defense.
In March 1933, following the adoption of the Lytton Report by the General Assembly of the League of Nations in February, Japan announced its withdrawal from the world body.
In an attempt to keep its interest in Manchuria intact, Japan began the North China Separation Operation, aimed at bringing part of northern China under Japanese control.
The operation, however, only served to add fuel to China's armed resistance.
A clash that took place on the outskirts of Beijing between Japanese and Chinese troops on July 7, 1937, known as the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) Incident, triggered the full-scale phase of the Sino-Japanese war.
In the early stages of the 1937-45 war, Japanese troops occupied Nanjing, giving rise to the incident called the Nanjing Massacre that took place between December 1937 and January 1938. There remain disputing views over how many Chinese civilians were killed in the incident, many of whom were believed to be women and children.
The then Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, kept hesitating, unable to hammer out a plan for peace negotiations.
The Konoe Cabinet finally issued a statement declaring Japan was determined "never to deem the Nationalist [Kuomingtang] government [of China] as Japan's negotiating partner."Aims of war ill-defined The Japanese state's purposes for engaging in the war with China were unclear.
A government statement issued in August 1937 said the war was designed to "punish acts of violence committed by Chinese troops,"but did not provide any convincing evidence.
In November 1938, the second Konoe Cabinet issued a statement that set the goal of the war as establishing "A new order in East Asia."
It is widely considered today, however, that the statement by the Konoe Cabinet was nothing but an ill-grounded cover for glossing over Japan's bid to acquire political and economic domination over China.
Why was the extension of the lines of the Sino-Japanese War left unchecked? This is a question of crucial importance in verifying the processes that led to the Pacific War.
In developments after the Manchurian Incident, the Japanese military continued to intervene in politics.
In the wake of two coup d'etat attempts by groups of Imperial Japanese Army officers in 1931, there were a spate of assassinations in 1932 of influential political and business leaders in what became known as the League of Blood Incident.
On May 15, 1932, a group of Imperial Navy officers broke into the official residence of then Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and shot him dead.
Of particular significance to the rise of militarism was a coup d'etat attempt by a group of radical young officers of the Imperial Army on Feb. 26, 1936.
The rebels temporarily seized the heart of Tokyo, killing major figures such as Makoto Saito, land keeper of the privy seal, and Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi.
The event, known as the Feb. 26 Incident, was organized by a faction of officers called the Kodo-ha faction, which was swept away after the incident by its rival faction, the Tosei-ha faction.
Those developments are considered to have paved the way for an evil tendency toward influencing politics by means of terrorism.
The result was an end to government based on party politics, as movements calling for "a single party for a single state" gained force.
In 1940, a totalitarian organization, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, was founded, leaving the Diet utterly powerless.
At the time, newspapers played a key role in instigating Japan's move toward war in the Manchurian Incident, before coming under military-imposed censorship.
In this respect, mass media should not be excluded from being taken to task for helping encourage the emergence of militarism in this country.
The Yomiuri Shimbun Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Aug. 15 - Sixty years have passed since Japan's surrender to Allied Forces. Responsibility for waging the war was dealt with by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, known as the Tokyo Tribunal.
The manner and circumstances in which the tribunal was administered has long attracted criticism and its verdicts were never in the hands of the Japanese people.
Now is the time to verify the miseries of the war on our own account, to identify the responsibility of the war era's political and military leaders"failure to avoid war.
To address this task, The Yomiuri Shimbun established an in-house investigative panel, the War Responsibility Verification Committee, comprised of members of the newspaper's Editorial Board, the Yomiuri Research Institute and senior writers from a range of departments of the Editorial Bureau.
The outcome of this project, undertaken by the team in collaboration with experts from outside The Yomiuri Shimbun, will be published occasionally.
Looking back now at World War II, there arise a number of problems and doubts.
These can be divided into five broad questions in connection with our quest concerning responsibility for the war:
--Why did Japan extend the lines of battle following the 1931 Manchurian Incident, plunging the country into the quagmire of the Sino-Japanese War?
--Why did Japan go to war with the United States in spite of extremely slim prospects for victory?
--What foolishness caused the Japanese military to employ "banzai attacks," or die-but-never-surrender action, and "kamikaze" suicide aircraft attacks, after the rapid deterioration of Japan's position shortly after victories in the initial phase of the Pacific War?
--Were sufficient efforts made to bring the war to an end and was it possible to prevent the civilian devastation caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
--What problems were there with the Tokyo Tribunal in which Allied Forces tried Japanese political and military leaders charged with war crimes?
As the first installment of the series, the following explores the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent expansion of the front of the Sino-Japanese War that eventually led to the outbreak of the Pacific War.
TOKYO--On Sept. 18, 1931, the tracks of the South Manchurian Railway Co.'s line (Mantetsu) were pounded with bombs at Liutiaohu in the suburbs of Mukden (now Shenyang) in northeast China.
A group of high-ranking officers of the Guandong Army, Japan's field army in Manchuria, including senior staff officer Seishiro Itagaki and operations officer Kanji Ishiwara were responsible for plotting the explosion that was the beginning of the Manchurian Incident--the conquest of Manchuria by the Guandong Army.
The Cabinet at that time, headed by Prime Minister Reijiro Wakatsuki, was deeply alarmed by the incident and initially adopted a policy of localizing the affair.
The Wakatsuki administration, however, was unable to hold in check the intensification of military operations by the Guandong Army, proving itself to be incapable of bringing the army under control.
The Manchurian Incident, coupled with the 1932 establishment of a puppet state--Manchukuo--by the Guandong Army, constituted the start of Japan's international isolation.
Why were the government and the top echelon of the military in Tokyo unable to halt reckless acts by the Guanong Army?
It is worth noting that at the time Japan had an array of rights and interests, such as Mantetsu, in Manchuria that had been acquired in the victory of the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War and other armed conflicts.
Ishiwara and his allies espoused the theory that Japan must prepare for a "final war"with the United States and the Soviet Union by harnessing natural resources from Manchuria and Mongolia.
In December 1931, the Lytton Commission was appointed by the League of Nations to determine the causes of the railway bombing.
The five-member commission released the Lytton Report in October 1932, denouncing the Manchurian Incident as an act of aggression by Japan, rejecting Japan's claim that the incident was for self-defense.
In March 1933, following the adoption of the Lytton Report by the General Assembly of the League of Nations in February, Japan announced its withdrawal from the world body.
In an attempt to keep its interest in Manchuria intact, Japan began the North China Separation Operation, aimed at bringing part of northern China under Japanese control.
The operation, however, only served to add fuel to China's armed resistance.
A clash that took place on the outskirts of Beijing between Japanese and Chinese troops on July 7, 1937, known as the Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) Incident, triggered the full-scale phase of the Sino-Japanese war.
In the early stages of the 1937-45 war, Japanese troops occupied Nanjing, giving rise to the incident called the Nanjing Massacre that took place between December 1937 and January 1938. There remain disputing views over how many Chinese civilians were killed in the incident, many of whom were believed to be women and children.
The then Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe, kept hesitating, unable to hammer out a plan for peace negotiations.
The Konoe Cabinet finally issued a statement declaring Japan was determined "never to deem the Nationalist [Kuomingtang] government [of China] as Japan's negotiating partner."Aims of war ill-defined The Japanese state's purposes for engaging in the war with China were unclear.
A government statement issued in August 1937 said the war was designed to "punish acts of violence committed by Chinese troops,"but did not provide any convincing evidence.
In November 1938, the second Konoe Cabinet issued a statement that set the goal of the war as establishing "A new order in East Asia."
It is widely considered today, however, that the statement by the Konoe Cabinet was nothing but an ill-grounded cover for glossing over Japan's bid to acquire political and economic domination over China.
Why was the extension of the lines of the Sino-Japanese War left unchecked? This is a question of crucial importance in verifying the processes that led to the Pacific War.
In developments after the Manchurian Incident, the Japanese military continued to intervene in politics.
In the wake of two coup d'etat attempts by groups of Imperial Japanese Army officers in 1931, there were a spate of assassinations in 1932 of influential political and business leaders in what became known as the League of Blood Incident.
On May 15, 1932, a group of Imperial Navy officers broke into the official residence of then Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai and shot him dead.
Of particular significance to the rise of militarism was a coup d'etat attempt by a group of radical young officers of the Imperial Army on Feb. 26, 1936.
The rebels temporarily seized the heart of Tokyo, killing major figures such as Makoto Saito, land keeper of the privy seal, and Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi.
The event, known as the Feb. 26 Incident, was organized by a faction of officers called the Kodo-ha faction, which was swept away after the incident by its rival faction, the Tosei-ha faction.
Those developments are considered to have paved the way for an evil tendency toward influencing politics by means of terrorism.
The result was an end to government based on party politics, as movements calling for "a single party for a single state" gained force.
In 1940, a totalitarian organization, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, was founded, leaving the Diet utterly powerless.
At the time, newspapers played a key role in instigating Japan's move toward war in the Manchurian Incident, before coming under military-imposed censorship.
In this respect, mass media should not be excluded from being taken to task for helping encourage the emergence of militarism in this country.
