Did the War End? The Politics of Remembrance in Post-WW2 East Asia
A Story All Too Familiar
Almost 80 years have passed since the conclusion of the Second World War. Yet, problems arising from the war persist today. How should we understand “victory” when it comes to the cost of lingering trauma? Source: CNN
“All’s fair in love and war.” The means justify the ends, or so the victors claim. As regimes rise and fall, regional disputes escalate and dwindle, and countries emerge and dissolve, conflict resolution remains one of the world's most daunting challenges. What often gets eclipsed by the celebration of victory is that wars do not simply end when one side surrenders. Instead, countries are confronted by the brutal realities of what happened during the war. In this sense, wartime atrocities shape both individuals’ wartime experiences and the memory-making process in post-war societies.
While the Second World War officially ended in 1945, East Asia is still not free from its legacies. Tensions between China, Korea, and Japan have manifested in political and social dimensions, in which each country co-opt narratives of the war to their advantage. As such, survivors and the post-war generations become entangled in the politics of remembrance. Individual voices are drowned by countries’ emphatic emphasis on heroic sacrifices and renderings of victimhood. When national narratives clash with individual recollections, it raises the question of how we should remember conflicts and wars. Yet, does a “correct” way to commemorate losses and suffering really exist? This article is by no means an attempt to compare people’s traumas. After all, all struggles are valid regardless of how big or small others perceive them to be. Rather, it intends to examine where the “individual” is situated in the three countries’ construction of a national narrative. By selectively forgetting and remembering certain events and social groups, governments establish a diplomatic agenda at the expense of addressing the human cost of the war.
Before diving into analysis, it is important to explain the war from East Asia’s perspective. Instead of 1939, the Second Sino-Japanese War started with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 when Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China, although Japan had already occupied Manchuria in 1931. Korea at this time was under Japanese colonial rule as it had been since 1910, meaning that it was not a major battlefield. The United States’ entry to the Pacific War in 1941 changed the power dynamics in the region, eventually culminating in Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers in 1945. During this period, atrocities took place across China, Japan, and Korea, which resulted in countless casualties and lifelong repercussions. It is in this context that this article focuses on two issues connecting the regions to examine how individuals have negotiated the memory of war with the state, namely the bombings and sexual slavery. It is not an exhaustive analysis of memory politics but an outline of recent debates to welcome readers to engage further with the topics of their own volition. This article recognises that there are many ways to name the atrocities and has chosen the most neutral term to allow readers to come to their own conclusions. Images selected in this article do not contain graphic depictions of violence, both to avoid readers’ discomfort and to challenge conventional portrayals of wars through violence and bloodshed.
Japan: Distilling Memory from the Ashes
Portrayals of memories are intrinsically tied to the art of omission, often reflecting the state’s ulterior motive. The world remembers how the US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, thereby signalling the birth of the nuclear era. Indeed, the Japanese authorities hold annual ceremonies to honour the victims of atomic bombings, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum serves as a constant reminder of the horrors of nuclear warfare. Such emphasis challenges the heroic narrative of a “Good War” and the necessity of American intervention purported by the US (Seldon, 2014). Yet, it also suppresses the equally disastrous, if not deadlier, imagery of the Tokyo Firebombings.
On the night of March 9-10, 1945, the US military unleashed a fury of bombs and napalm on Tokyo, intending to decimate the city. 300,000 incendiary bombs were dropped within 6 hours and levelled 16 square miles, resulting in the deaths of 100,000 people. High wind velocity aided the formation of a firestorm, essentially trapping civilians in an enclosing firewall. The bombing campaign was extended nationwide as the military proceeded to Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe and ended up dropping 9373 tonnes of bombs in a 10-day period. By July 1945, the bomb strikes destroyed 40% of the 66 cities targeted. While there is no official number of casualties, it is estimated that the firebombing took a greater cumulative toll on human lives than the atomic bombs (Seldon, 2014).
However, the firebombings vanished in official post-war commemorations, existing only in civilians’ minds. Both the US and Japan are complicit in the silencing of the firebombings. To the US, the atomic bombs support its claims as an unrivalled superpower, whereas the continuous firebombings reveal its failure in forcing Japan to surrender earlier. To Japan, highlighting the systematic bombings would force Japan to engage in its wartime aggression in East and Southeast Asia and confront its responsibility of bombing Chinese cities like Chongqing. Hence, responses to the firebombings are confined to the private sector to avoid undermining the Japanese government’s preferred narrative of injustice. The most famous example is Studio Ghibli’s Graves of the Fireflies 火垂るの墓 (1988), based on Nosaka Akiyuki’s semi-autobiographical novel about his experience as a child during the firebombings. Research centres also emerged to document survivors’ experiences and to educate the younger generations. In 2024, the accounts of the survivors were put on public display for the first time in the air raid exhibition rotating across different parts of Tokyo. The Tokyo government obtained permission from survivors, their families, and officials the year before. The basic plan was initially devised in 1994 but was delayed for 30 years due to politicians’ prolonged debate about how to pass down Japan’s wartime legacy (Asahi Shimbun, 2024).
Problems of selective memories also impacted the narratives of the atomic bombing. The fates of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as Hibakusha 被爆者 (translated literally as bomb-affected-people), were concealed by the authorities to cover up the long-lasting detrimental effects of radiation. Local Hibakusha associations, along with victims of nuclear weapon tests, formed the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations 日本原水爆被害者団体協議会 in 1956, the name in which was shortened to Nihon Hidankyo 日本被団協. Lobbying both the Japanese government to improve support for survivors and governments worldwide to abolish nuclear weapons, Nihon Hidankyo draws on survivors’ testimonies to empower their campaign. The organisation was awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons” (The Nobel Prize, 2024). In solidarity, civilians speak out against suppression to raise awareness of the humanitarian consequences of warfare.
In short, political dynamics result in complex narratives of the war, which cause the state to highlight “favourable truths” and conceal “inconvenient truths”. More often than not, non-state actors take up the role of preserving these neglected memories for posterity. Yet, are the memories recorded representative of survivors’ experiences when there is no common understanding of the atrocities that occurred?
China, Korea, and the Pacific: Resurfacing Memory in the Name of Justice
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946 took place in Tokyo and found all remaining defendants guilty. Source: The National WWII Museum
There exist varying ways to understand 1945. Not only was it the conclusion to a catastrophic and protracted war, but also the beginning of a tortuous journey for justice. To date, peoples of China, Korea, and Japan still fail to produce a shared historical view of the war (Gi-Wook Shin, 2020). Part of the reason for the failure to compromise can be traced back to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1946 which aimed to try leaders of the Japanese Empire for war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity. In its 1947 verdict after two and a half years of trials, the tribunal did not address crimes concerning sexual violence for it was not widely recognised in international law at that time. Smaller trials were convened over the Asia-Pacific region in subsequent years with the last one concluding in 1951 but also did not highlight violence against women except for the Batavia trial in the Netherlands (Cheah, 2009). Even then the prosecution had no place in international jurisdiction for it was confined to domestic courts. What the tribunals sparked, however, were decades of disagreements over the facts and responsibilities of wartime atrocities.
The following discussion is prefaced with the understanding that each country places different importance on historical events in their respective remembrance of the war. In other words, divergent war memories are the product of national interventions. To illustrate, the Nanjing Atrocities (also known as the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing) became a source of tension between China and Japan. During a six-week period in the winter of 1937-1938, around 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were killed indiscriminately by Japanese troops when they took over Nanjing. Approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred within the city. Chinese and Japanese governments, academics, and media alike have engaged in decade-long debates about the death toll, condemning or denying the atrocities. This instance of debating justice in a numbers game reflects how truth seems irreconcilable especially when it escalates to a national level. No longer is it simply about acknowledging the human cost of the war, but rather it directly concerns constructions of national identities.
The Nanjing Memorial in Nanjing. The Nanjing Atrocities are still a painful and controversial topic in China and Japan. Source: HistoryHit
Such politicisation of war memories is also apparent in the case of comfort women. “Comfort women 慰安婦” is a euphemism used by the imperial Japanese military to refer to women who were forced into sexual slavery by the military from 1932 till after the war. An estimated number of 200,000 women aged 12 to mid-20s from Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia etc were trafficked to Japanese-occupied areas and held in “comfort stations” to boost the morale of Japanese soldiers. Many did not survive to tell their story. Those who survived faced another wave of suppression as they were unable to speak out in the patriarchal society. It was not until 1991 that a former Korean comfort woman, Kim Hak-sun, first came forward to share the details of her experiences with the world. Since then, other former comfort women have spoken up and activist groups have endeavoured to pressure the Japanese government to apologise and compensate the women. Multiple lawsuits were filed, but most were futile as Japan enjoyed impunity under pre-1945 international laws (Marconi, 2021).
Local, national, and international responses to the comfort women issue emerged in the 1990s and continue to today. The “Wednesday Demonstration” in Seoul has been organised weekly since 1992 in which activists demand Japan to redress the issue. Activist groups also formed a transnational movement to pressure governments to act in the interest of comfort women. Yet, on a national level, Japan under the Shinzo Abe administration in the 2010s embraced a more revisionist narrative of downplaying the state’s involvement in the comfort women system (Kim and Tsukamoto, 2019). The Obama administration attempted to mediate tension between Japan and Korea, resulting in an agreement that received backlash from activists. The deal which the governments in Japan and South Korea accepted would require Japan to apologise and South Korea to remove the comfort woman statue outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. This agreement excluded survivors from the negotiation, and the weekly Wednesday rally continued in front of the statue (Kim, 2016). Citing a lack of legitimacy, the agreement was nullified in 2017 by then-president Moon Jae-in. A more recent development happened in a landmark ruling in 2023 when a South Korean court ruled that Japan should compensate comfort women. The fight for justice continues, yet it is clear that diplomatic relations complicate how countries should remember comfort women as Japan and Korea are crucial players in Asia-Pacific geopolitics.
To sum up, governments and civilians each have their own agendas which affect how they choose to construct the narrative of war memories. Tensions arising from wartime atrocities persist today, which complicate the dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region. Breaking the silence, survivors and activists present an alternative interpretation based on their experiences to intervene with the national narratives.
Comfort women endured their trauma in silence after the war. Pregnancy, infertility, and venereal diseases are common consequences of their time in sexual slavery. Source: US National Archives
Taking justice into their own hands, activist groups initiated a people’s tribunal in 2000 to convict Emperor Hirohito and Japanese military leaders for their involvement in sexual slavery. Although the verdict is not legally binding, it is a welcoming judgement for survivors after decades of wrongful treatment. Source: Museum of Social Justice
The Statue of Peace has become a site of political battles among different parties. It remains in Seoul today. Source: Korea.net
And Then There Are None…?
One by one, survivors of the war are passing away. As of 2023, only 9 comfort women are alive in South Korea (Hankyoreh, 2023). As the war approaches its 80th anniversary, the world faces the hard truth that one day there will be no living witness to the atrocities. Amidst the complex web of narratives weaved by governments, civilians uphold their memories to present the war from their perspective and pass it down to the younger generations. This article is not a moral judgement of whose narrative is correct. Instead, it serves as a reminder that these atrocities are more than leverages used by countries and are actual events experienced by people. The war did not end in East Asia as its legacies live on through the acts of forgetting and remembering wartime memories by countries and individuals. In this relatively peaceful era, it is up to posterity to preserve the memories of previous generations and let their stories be known.
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