This is a serious matter. First, it is unspeakably ugly to once again deny these women their humanity by saying they were volunteers ― prostitutes ― and not sex slaves. Second, the attempt to erase the whole sordid “comfort women” episode is part of a ferocious attempt to rewrite history.
One of the most startling parts of Hillenbrand’s book is her recounting of what happened to the POWs once Japan surrendered. Some were executed, but the liberated ones were allowed to amble out of their camps and into nearby towns and cities. The Japanese police who, just moments earlier, might have shot a POW on sight, were soon engaged in the hunt for American-designated war criminals. Japan did an instant 180; the Emperor Hirohito had ordered surrender and cooperation. Japan surrendered and cooperated.
These sudden reversals have been a feature of Japanese culture ever since Adm. Matthew Perry forcibly opened the country to American trade in 1854. The nation, both humbled and instructed, swiftly modernized, and by 1905 had beaten mighty Russia in a war that Western conventional wisdom thought it would lose.
Japan similarly adopted American-style democracy after World War II and literally rose from the ashes (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the often-overlooked incineration of Tokyo) to become so substantial an economic power that China supplanted it as No. 2 only recently. These were breathtaking achievements.
Now, though, a more ominous reversal may be underway. With its economy once again showing weakness ― it has recently fallen into recession ― the mythologizing of the past may well accelerate. Japan’s revisionists have their eye on the past. Others wonder what this means for the future.
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