The Japanese government’s launch of a new intelligence agency on July 31 shows its disregard for historical crimes Japan committed in World War II, said an American scholar.
Japan launched its new intelligence agency system on Friday, July 31. The numbers that make up the date are reminiscent of Unit 731, a Japanese biological warfare unit that engaged in live human experiments on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war decades ago.
In an interview with China Global Television Network, Professor Josef Mahoney from East China Normal University, said that Japan's ignorance of the historical association shows its failure to remember the crimes it committed in the past.
"So there are these concerns that it marks a return of Japanese militarization. This is certainly a talking point that we hear a lot in China and other parts of the region. And there are concerns about Tokyo's complicity with U.S.-led containment strategies and imperial overreach in East Asia. But I would like to add one thing that, certainly we've seen this being talked about extensively by Chinese netizens and others. That is, the [Japanese] government officially announced July 31 as the launch date. And this date coincides numerically with the wartime Unit 731, a fact that has drawn strong criticism again, from China and from Chinese civil society groups. Now, the [Japanese] government has not addressed this historical association, leading to perceptions of insensitivity, and the broader concern that the government is grossly deaf to the cries of history," he said.
Japanese government's launch of new intelligence agency shows disregard for history
