Most people regard World War II as an increasingly long ago conflagration. People in the former allied countries in Europe and Asia, however, also generally feel that the war was a war in which right and wrong were clearly discerned and the objective seemed more understandable than most subsequent conflicts. For the nations that made up the old alliance, the Nazis were seen as evil, crazed purveyors of the phony master race that created a murder machine aimed at exterminating an entire people. Meanwhile, wartime Japanese were viewed as sinister, bloodthirsty and fanatical soldiers who worshipped a human deity in the name of the Emperor.

Just over fifty years have passed since the world was engulfed in the flames of war. Both Germany and Japan have reemerged as global powers of the first order, though their global roles are much more significant in the economic sphere than the political one.

I have retained a great deal of interest in both countries over the years. I have relatives from Germany and was exposed to their language at an early age. Later I had a chance to study and work in both Berlin and Munich for several years. On the Japan side I have also been party educated here, as well as continuing a professional career related to Japan. And I have been a resident for almost 13 years.

Over the years I have sought in vain to find an expression equivalent to the German word "vergangenheitsbewaeltigung," which roughly translates as "past national guilt complex," which is normally the word used when describing German sentiments about the holocaust and their relationship with Israel.

In Japan, however, there is an annual regularity in which we see top ranking members of the political elite rationalize why the Grater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was merely a means to liberate Asia, a notion you would be hard pressed to find Asians supporting. Japanese leaders have also expressed doubt over Japanese atrocities in China. And when some in the leadership do accept the idea that things such as the rape of Nanking actually did occur, it is usually down played as being a war-time incident, something that happens in a war. A sort of "boys will be boys" conceptualization of mass slaughter.

Many Japanese seems to feel almost flattered at being able to identify with Germany and there are many things in common: both nations possess a high degree and respect for culture, both peoples are industrious workers, both live in highly regulated societies, albeit are today Parliamentary democracies. But very few Germans appreciate the identification with Japan.

Many years ago as a student at the University of Tokyo I discovered that some of the professors seemed more interested in my German background than what I proposed to research. One professor in particular was very proud of a German language library that was housed at the university and wanted me to see it. I recall my shock at seeing the huge number of Nazi era volumes complete with swastikas on the binding. I doubt very seriously that one could find such a collection in all of Germany today.

There is one great distinction between wartime Germany and Japan that comes to my mind. In Germany there was a very large and active anti-Nazi resistance that began before the war and intensified throughout it. Many of these patriots lost their lives. I have never heard of such an organized domestic resistance movement in Japan during the war.

All of the calls throughout the region for a Japanese apology for wartime atrocities have been met with some sort of half-baked insincere response from Tokyo, at least this is the way non-Japanese see it. There has never been a Japanese Prime Minister to fall on his knees in an Asian capital and ask for forgiveness as Federal German Chancellor Willy Brandt did at the site of the Warsaw ghetto in 1971.

In fairness, very few German leaders could have done what Brandt did. During the war he did not fight with the Nazis but against them as part of the resistance in occupied Norway. He even abandoned his German citizenship during those years. With the exception of Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's longest serving Prime Minister in the postwar period who spent time in Sugamo prison because of his opposition to certain state policies, I know of no Japanese premier who openly fought the Imperial Army.

Following the defeat of the Third Reich, Nazism was crushed and new German regimes emerged. Neither claimed the historical legacy of the Nazis, although the east pointed at Bonn as the true inheritor. Very few former top ranking Nazis made it into positions of political responsibility in the national governments of either German state. That was not the case for Japan.

I think much of the differing views toward wartime roles for both nations stems from the occupation. The occupation of Germany was a multilateral affair with British, French, American and Soviet participation. Emerging from the occupation were the multilateral security arrangements such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east with the Soviet zone becoming the German Democratic Republic by 1949. Later in the west, the European Economic Community would be grafted on top of the western security regime.

The Japanese occupation was, in spite of the camouflage of the Supreme Command of the Allied Powers designation, a unilateral arrangement set up by the United States. There were no zones like in Germany and Douglas MacArthur was the "de facto" imperial warlord. This eventually evolved into the largely U.S. dictated Security Treaty that has existed since 1952. The closest thing to a regional economic order in which Japan is a member is APEC, which is a far-cry from the European Union and includes Washington as a member.

The comparative consequences of these two post war occupations and their out growths is that Germany is far more intergrated into Europe than Japan is into Asia. A much deeper trust exists toward Germany...witness the formation of a Franco-German joint military structure just a few years ago. This would have been unheard of in the past and unthinkable for Japan, say with China (and undesirable for the west) at present.

In 1957 indicted class "A" war criminal Nobusuke Kishi would emerge as Prime Minister and remain in that office for three years. He had served throughout the Tojo cabinet as Minister Munitions. His Nazi German counterpart was Albert Speer who spent 20 years in prison from 1946 to 1966. One can only imagine the uproar in Europe had Speer become German Chancellor at any time.

Both Germany and Japan drew lessons from the war that are little understood among the wartime allies and a partial source of friction when it comes to getting Berlin and Tokyo to become involved in international activities such as peace keeping. For Americans, British and French, for example, the lesson of World War II was to prevent and stop aggression. The specter of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlian waiving a piece of paper signed by Hitler and Mussolini proclaiming "peace in our time" on the eve of war is ever present.

To Germans and Japanese, however, the lesson drawn was to prevent militarism before it rises. To stop the rise of a militarist regime requires ever prevent vigilance and even the thought of sending armed forced overseas under any rationale makes leaders in both capitals pause more than their counterparts in other industrialized nations because of this history.

In that sense we can say that there are no dangerous peoples, only dangerous situations.

(1/22/96)

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