Ex-PoWs deserve apology, says professor

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=371390

A JAPANESE professor who lectures on her country's role in the Second World War says Cambridgeshire's former prisoners of war deserve a full apology for the way they were treated.

Prof Tomoyo Nakao, who teaches at Okayama University in Japan, has interviewed many ex-prisoners about the cruelty they suffered at the hands of her countrymen.



Many hundreds of men from the Cambridgeshire Regiment were locked up by the Japanese army in Singapore prison camps in the early 1940s, and were beaten, starved and forced to work as slaves building the Burma railway.

In the News last week, some of the surviving veterans spoke about how they had never received a "proper" apology from the Japanese government or Japan's emperor - and claimed they probably would never get one.

Prof Nakao, who has visited Cambridge to speak to former prisoners and has written a book about the issue of reconciliation, said: "There are young ones as well as veterans who are concerned.

"I teach my students about the PoW issue, and I quite agree that the PoWs have not been given proper words of apology.

"I have just published a book about the failure of post-war Japan-Anglo reconciliation, in which I tried to explain why those Japanese 'apologies' issued by our prime ministers and emperor were not sufficient, and did not work, in spite of the fact that the Japanese are made to believe - by some books and in the media - that they were successful."

She added: "One of my students told me that after we discussed the issue in class, she had come to understand the importance and weight of the word of apology.

She said to me: 'I do believe that we need to apologise, and that we know what we are apol-ogising for.'

"It sounds easy but I know it is difficult. However, it is most necessary to do so. And it is important that we do not simply issue an apology, but that we make an effort to obtain forgiveness in the real sense of the word."

Prof Nakao said: "In Japan, many are made to believe that reconciliation has been achieved, and that the PoWs are now satisfied. For me, that is hard to believe."

She is a member of the International Oral History Association and has just started a website focusing on dialogue between the UK and Japan - http://powow.asia