China Voice: Why Nanjing Massacre at the core of Japanese rightists' war crime whitewashing?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's remark on persuading the Japanese government to face its wartime crimes during her visit to Japan on Monday sent a good warning to the Japanese public that they are influenced by political bias.

Merkel said on Monday that her country was lucky to be reintroduced and accepted by the international community after the horrible days during the Nazi rule and the Holocaust. "I think it was possible first because Germany did face its past squarely."

Unlike German, Japan has never fully admitted its aggression history.

The Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese nationwide daily, has run a series of reports since February on whitewashing the Nanjing Massacre quoting several war veterans who allegedly "recalled" that the city of Nanjing was an "empty city" when Japanese troops entered it in 1939, and it was "so peaceful" that no bloodshed ever happened.

The reports run by the newspaper with nationwide influence are meant to raise doubts about one of the three world-recognized massacres that happened during World War II.

The newspaper's provocation has carried on the Japanese rightists' denial of wartime atrocities following their efforts to remove all descriptions of the crimes from textbooks and classrooms.

Why the holocaust acknowledged as a historical fact by the international community has been at the core of Japanese rightists' whitewashing the country's wartime crimes?

During the six weeks after Japanese aggressors first occupied Nanjing on Dec. 13, 1937, 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers were slaughtered, together with countless cases of rape, looting and arson, and one third of the city was burned to the ground. The incidents were judged to be war crimes by the post-war International Military Tribunal for the Far East held in Tokyo.

The occupation of Nanjing and the ensuing massacre was the most-discussed war atrocity at the Tokyo Tribunal where Japanese war criminals were convicted. The tragedy took up two chapters in the 1,218-page written judgement of the trial after evidence and testimony were presented in court giving irrefutable proof that the massacre happened.

However, the trial did not thoroughly expose Japanese militants' overall crimes and the nature of their invasion of China.

The inadequate adjudgement of the trial has left "loopholes" taken as leeway by Japanese right-wing politicians in denying crimes such as the Nanjing Massacre, said Zhu Chengshan, curator of the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing City, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

By denying the most prominent crime that happened during the war, the right-leaning Japanese government has tried to play down the tyrannical image as the war crimes, particularly the massacre, have pinned Japan on the position of "invader," "defeated country" and "peace breaker" during WWII.

However, Merkel has given Japan a good advice. The only way of winning international respects is being honest to its past wrongs. This year coincides with the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. The world hopes Japan would learn from the lessons of its war crimes so the country will never wage war again. Endi