Unfortunate Incidents
Japan's record of atrocities in the Second World War has been glossed over. In Japan itself, schoolbooks are censored, spokesmen speak of war crimes as unfortunate incidents and very few war criminals were ever prosecuted.
But now Japan's increasingly assertive neighbours in south east Asia are demanding that it should face the facts. Newly discovered documents prove, for example, that the Japanese authorities forcibly abducted countless thousands of young
Korean girls to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. Seiji Yoshida , one of the men responsible for rounding up these "comfort women", has a recurring image in his mind: "The mother holds her baby. One of my men grabs the woman from behind. Another tears the baby away. It's thrown like a football. The mother is crying and screaming. Then we drag her into the truck."
Korea is now demanding enormous sums in reparations, and the situation is paralleled in many other neighbouring states. Tonight's film contains powerful and compelling testimony from both victims and aggressors.
Gordon Brewer also explores the trauma the discoveries are causing within Japan, and asks whether Japan will be fit for world political leadership before it has come to terms with its own recent history. Producer Jonathan Lewis
Editor John Morrison