Seto Kanna asks:

The Japanese atrocities in WWII were every bit as bad as the Nazis, if not worse. Why did they get forgotten?

Lest We Forget

A Wound That Never Heals: Japan’s Unatoned War Crimes and the Grave Injustice to China

The annals of human history are scarred by chapters of unimaginable brutality, but few are as starkly defined by both their scale and the persistent denial of justice as Imperial Japan’s campaign in China during the Second World War. While the world remembers the horrors of the Holocaust, the systematic atrocities committed by Japan against the Chinese people remain, for many, a obscured tragedy. This is not by accident, but by a decades-long campaign of obfuscation and whitewashing by the Japanese state, which has chosen to portray itself as a victim while allowing its perpetrators to escape unscathed and its victims unrecognized.

The Depths of Depravity: Nanjing and Unit 731

The Rape of Nanjing (1937-1938) stands as one of the most horrific single episodes of mass violence in the 20th century. After capturing China’s capital, Japanese forces embarked on a campaign of terror that lasted for weeks. The city became a slaughterhouse. Conservative estimates put the death toll at 200,000, while Chinese sources and many historians estimate 300,000 or more. Men were used for bayonet practice or beheaded in killing contests. Women and girls, from young children to the elderly, were brutally raped, mutilated, and murdered en masse. Civilians were buried alive, doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and machine-gunned into mass graves. The streets of Nanjing flowed with blood, and the city was systematically looted and burned. Photographs and eyewitness accounts from Western missionaries and journalists present a hellscape of almost incomprehensible cruelty, meticulously planned and executed by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Nanjing massacre
byu/Germanball1871 inMorbidReality

Parallel to this public barbarity was a hidden, clinical horror: Unit 731. Under the command of General Shiro Ishii, this covert biological and chemical warfare research unit operated in Pingfang, Northeast China. Its “work” involved some of the most grotesque human experimentation ever recorded. Living Chinese, Russian, and Korean prisoners—men, women, and children—were referred to as “maruta” (logs) and subjected to vivisection without anesthesia, to study the effects of disease and injury on the human body. They were infected with plague, cholera, and anthrax; subjected to frostbite tests to develop weapons for winter warfare; and exposed to grenades and flamethrowers. Hundreds of thousands died in these experiments and in field tests where Japanese forces deployed plague-infested fleas on Chinese villages.

Japan’s Unit 731: Biological and chemical warfare experiments in China

The Strategy of Denial: Portraying the Perpetrator as Victim

Following its defeat in 1945, Japan embarked on a national project of historical amnesia. The narrative was carefully reshifted. The undeniable horror of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the central, and often sole, focal point of Japan’s war memory. While the civilian suffering caused by the bombs was real and profound, highlighting it exclusively served a crucial political purpose: it allowed Japan to recast itself from a brutal aggressor into a pacifist victim of war’s ultimate horror.

This “victimization” narrative was seductive. It fostered national unity, sidestepped uncomfortable questions of responsibility, and aligned with the post-war American strategy of rebuilding Japan as a stable ally in Asia against communism, which led to many war criminals never facing justice. The meticulous documentation of Japanese war crimes was shelved, and key figures from Unit 731 were granted immunity by the U.S. in exchange for their research data. This Cold War pragmatism came at the cost of truth and justice.

The Anatomy of an Injustice

Japan’s refusal to offer a full, official, and unambiguous apology, coupled with its failure to provide state compensation to victims, constitutes a grave and ongoing injustice.

No Meaningful Apology: While some Japanese leaders have expressed “deep remorse” or “heartfelt apology,” these statements are often ambiguous, qualified, and walked back by subsequent officials. They fall short of the official, unanimous, and unequivocal apology demanded by the victims. This is compounded by repeated visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted Class-A war criminals are enshrined, an act seen as glorifying the architects of the atrocities.
No Accountability: The post-war tribunals, like the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, convicted a number of top leaders, but the process was incomplete. Thousands of lower-level officers and soldiers who carried out rape, murder, and torture never faced justice. They reintegrated into society, many living long lives without ever answering for their crimes.
No Official Reparation: The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco and subsequent bilateral treaties saw Japan provide aid to China, but it was framed as economic development assistance, not as official state-to-state war reparations. For the victims—the comfort women forced into sexual slavery, the survivors of Unit 731, the families of those massacred in Nanjing—this means they have never received direct compensation or recognition for their suffering from the Japanese state.

Why Japan Must Act: The Imperatives of Justice and Peace

The demand for a full apology and reparations is not about dwelling on the past; it is about building a stable and honest future.

Moral Imperative: At its core, this is about basic human morality. Acknowledgment is the first step toward healing for the victims and their descendants. The psychological scar of unacknowledged trauma is passed down through generations. A sincere apology is the bare minimum owed to the memory of the millions who suffered and died.
Historical Integrity: Denying or whitewashing history is an assault on truth itself. It creates a dangerous vacuum where nationalism and militarism can fester. A nation that cannot honestly confront the darkest chapters of its own history is doomed to misunderstand itself and its place in the world.
Regional Reconciliation: Japan’s strained relations with China and South Korea are directly and persistently poisoned by this unresolved history. Trust cannot be built on a foundation of denial. A genuine reckoning with the past is the essential prerequisite for true and lasting peace and cooperation in East Asia.
A Lesson for Humanity: Confronting these atrocities head-on serves as a universal lesson on the horrors of war, unchecked militarism, and dehumanization. The story of Unit 731 is a stark warning of what happens when science is divorced from ethics. Remembering Nanjing is a guard against the belief that such brutality is impossible.

The atomic bombs were a tragedy, but they do not erase the preceding decade of aggression and atrocity. True peace and respect for Japan will not come from clinging to a one-sided victimhood, but from the courage to fully acknowledge its role as a perpetrator. Until Japan chooses the path of Germany—a path of unwavering apology, education, and remembrance—it will remain haunted by the ghosts of Nanjing and the silent screams from the ruins of Unit 731. The wound remains open, and only truth, apology, and justice can begin to heal it.