Tags:dad, japan, lipa, philppines, south korea, world war II
Lee Myung Bak, the President of South Korea, has called upon Japanese Emperor Akihito to atone for atrocities committed during World War II by his predecessor Emperor Hirohito, drawing a contrast with German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
“Willy Brandt touched a firm emotional chord with the whole of the Polish people, Europeans and indeed the world,” said Mr Lee.
“That was a turning point in the partnership between the countries of Europe. And the visit of the Emperor of Japan could be a similar occasion when relations between Korea and Japan can really look forward.”
Successive elected Japanese leaders have failed to make what their neighbours in Asia consider to be a genuine and heartfelt apology for the atrocities committed in the name of Emperor Hirohito, the present emperor’s father, in the early decades of the last century.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in Japan’s brutal conquest of China and Korea, as well as the islands of the Pacific and south-east Asia. Many were worked to death as forced labourers, women were forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese military while others died in the massacres of Nanking and elsewhere.
My father is from Lipa City, a town about 50 miles south of Manila in the Philippines. I could tell you some seriously hair-raising stories about the shit the Japanese did in Lipa during the war. Indeed, my father spent the first five years of his life living in a cave with the rest of his family to evade the Japanese, and suffers health problems to this day because of poor nutrition he endured as a youth. On his deathbed, my grandfather recounted how he took my father 30 miles on horseback to the nearest hospital - evading Japanese patrols the entire way - in order to seek medical assistance for my dad, who had come down with some sort of jungle illness.
If anyone could conceivably hold a grudge against the Japanese to this day, it would be my dad. Which brings me to wonder what conceivable purpose a statement of ‘atonement’ from the Japanese Emperor would serve. The whole thing strikes me as a patently facile notion. What happened, happened. An apology from Akihito would not undo the Rape of Nanking, any more than it would undo the occupation of my father’s homeland.
One more story - my family owned and operated a restaurant in Lipa before emigrating to the U.S. My mother recounted to me the time a group of Japanese tourists, visiting the Philippines to honor relatives who had died there during the war, stopped in for lunch at my grandmother’s restaurant. My dad, seeing that things could get ugly, ushered my mom out of there post-haste. The Japanese ordered lunch, ate in complete silence as everyone in the restaurant - my family included - watched them suspiciously, and then left. I think everyone there expected some sort of lynching, but in the end nothing happened. The Japanese went about their business, and so did Lipa.
Ah, delicious kimchee. It’s such a staple in Korea that in Seoul there is a museum dedicated to it (guess where my next vacation will be?). But right now the world is demanding cheaper, Chinese-made kimchee, causing a big fat trade deficit for Korean kimchee:
North Korean spy Won Jeong Hwa, who was 
Everybody loves puppies, right? Well, one woman loved her dog so much that she actually took those crazy South Korean scientists up on their offer to clone people’s dead pets for like a zillion dollars. But it turns out that her decision has unearthed a metric ton of weird shit.
