What would we tell a member of a foreign legislature who said that Bush should be blocked from giving a state speech in their nation, because he visits Arlington?
The controversial visits of Junichiro Koizumi to Yasukuni shrine may jeopardise a planned inervention by the Japanese prime minister to Congress during his upcoming visit to the United States. An American MP has asked Koizumi for assurance that he will stop visiting the shrine as a pre-condition for making a speech to a joint session of Congress at the end of June.It's true that Tojo is honored there, but the Yasukuni war shrine is hardly a shrine to Tojo alone. It's a shrine to all Japan's fighting men who have died in her wars since the Meiji restoration in 1867. A visit to the shrine isn't a celebration of Pearl Harbor, but a necessary civic function: honoring those who have believed in your nation, and upheld her cause. Any nation must be able to do that, if it is to be a healthy nation. A people should be able to mourn the destruction of war, while honoring the courage of their fighters and the sacrifice of those who served.
The request was made by Henry Hyde (82) in a letter addressed to the Speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert. “Without this assurance, the visit of Koizumi to Capitol would dishonour the place where Franklin Roosevelt made his famous ‘Day of Infamy’ speech, the day after the surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour (December 1941).” Hyde said “a speech by Koizumi to Congress is welcome because it is made by a representative of the one of the most loyal allies of the United States”. But, he added, “for the generation that remembers Pearl Harbour, a visit by Koizumi to Yasukuni after his speech to Congress would be an affront”. One of the war criminals venerated there is Hideki Tojo, who was prime minister when Japan attacked the United States. Hastert has not yet replied to the MP’s letter.
It would be as if Germany refused to let Bush address their legislature because he visited Arlington, where a few men are buried who partook in the firebombings of Dresden. Do not five decades of peace and friendship soothe, at last, these wounds?
We have fought and beaten both Japan and Germany, and that was long ago. We have also raised them up, and helped them to their feet; and they have been, for more than a generation, allies. Their political systems, once authoritarian, are ever greater democracies -- even the Japanese system, still dominated by a single-party, seems to be approaching the point that a multi-party system will break through. It will not happen in this election, but it seems likely to happen soon.
If we insist on eternal shame from these nations -- if we will not let them honor their patriots, because some among those patriots were our enemies -- how will they ever be capable allies? We carry the main part of the burden of defending the free world. Partly that is because Germany remains ashamed, and its institutions and culture look on the military with horror. Japan, too, is only now beginning to recover its spirit. Even limited to "self-defense" forces legally unable to protect themselves, it has provided loyal friends and support troops in Iraq.
It seems to me we may need allies in the years ahead, with the spirit to fight a new war. We may yet need to defend the ideas of democracy. Iran's letter said that "Those with insight can already hear the sounds of shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems." If they are not indeed to shatter and fall, men must hold them up. American men and British men fight together in that cause, though the British still wear the red coats in their dress uniforms. Japanese men should also be allowed to honor their fighting ancestors, though they were sometimes our foes. We should be able to shake hands with the descendants of the samurai, put aside past differences, and meet our common enemies.
It is time to bury old disputes. There are enough new fights in the world, and the thing that really divided us from Japan and Germany -- the difference between democracy and fascism -- is long gone. Let them honor their war dead, and perhaps remember the virtues as well as the vices of those who went before.
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