I went to bed at shortly after 2am in preparation for the Crim! paper. Hoping to wake up at 12 and have 3 hours for revision before meeting up zmel for lunch, I actually managed to fall asleep within 10 mins. Until 2:39:54am. I kenna an SMS and woke up with a shock. Since then, I've been unable to sleep. It's 4:21am now.
What to do. What to do.
Might as well read the online papers via Channelnewsasia.com.
One of the articles which really hit me was the one with the heading of "Majority of Japanese dissatisfied with Chinese demands: poll". I've been pretty pissed at the issue of Japan refusing to own up for their war crimes. If that wasn't enough, they had to hide the truth and glorify the lies, proclaiming how wonderful their emperor was and how little harm the Japanese did in their bid to expand their territory. Little harm. Pfft. All along I've wanted to release some steam regarding this issue, but well. No time really. Except now. Perhaps it's time to share my tiny views on this whole issue. To be frank, I was pretty happy that the Chinese reacted in this way. Though it kinda reminded me of terrorism and like how these acts were done in furtherance of making Japan own up, if no killings were involved, by all means. It's time Japan started evaluating their past instead of distorting and burying it. If it takes acts of terrorism to probe them into action, I guess it is for the greater good and this matter truely should be settle before Japan joins the UN. Then again, what do I know? :/
It comes as no surprise that very little Japanese actually know what went out during the occupation of various territories by Japan in WW2. History textbooks have downplayed it so much that the recent edition which provoked Chinese (and Korean) outrage were that they even omitted the numbers killed to the extent of 'many Chinese were killed'. Or something to that extent. The younger generation in Japan have no idea about their gory past and perhaps certain institutes even glorified and advocated it, blaming their failure on the intervention of a foreign bully; aka America.
In this case, it saddens me that in a survey of 808 people conducted by the influential Asahi Shimbun newspaper on Sunday, 71 percent said they "did not understand" the Chinese demand for action. Mayhaps more education is in order for the Japanese? Should the people in this case not question why the majority are pressing them on this issue and start asking themselves the essential question: Did we fuck up somewhere along the line and somebody's not telling us?
In my long post regarding Shanghai, I mentioned my visit to the Nanjing Massacre Site and had the opportunity of taking shots of the memorial there. It was pretty depressing and I guess that's where the anti-Japanese sentiments (regardin war crimes only, I still love their anime) were brought up after they subsided with the end of my History lessons in Secondary 2. With the improvement of my picture blogging skills, plus my inability to sleep, here's a peek some of the photos I sneakily sneakily took (not supposed to take actually...) whilst visiting the memorial and mass graves...
As one can see, the period of the occupation is engraved/inscribed on this cross which stands tall at the entrance of the memorial. It was really kinda silly and touristy to take pictures at a memorial, but well... I'll probably only be there once. So...
The day we were there, it was quite near to the anniversary day, hence there were quite alot of schools having their school outing and all... part of their moral education on making sure their young know about the country's past and all I suppose. Every single group was required to have a 5 minute memorial / moment of silence ceremony before proceeding to visit the mass graves. This was but one of the many groups present that day.
Proceeding up the steps into the memorial proper, we were greeted with this inscription on the wall. A stark reminder of the amount of people killed during the occupation. I am so damn lucky to be born after the war. Though the number might have been exaggerated by 100,000; it's still pretty sad knowing at least 200,000 had died and many more suffered during the war.
The first burial chamber was a little room virtually surrounded by bones. It was sort of like a glass enclosure like at the underwater world or the zoo, but the ceiling was covered and all the walls were filled with human remains stacked up and packed nice and tight on top of one another. I wouldn't say 'nice' exactly, but you can see that they were pretty cramped up:
See da human skull in the middle? Might be a little small. But well, this is but 1/5 of a side of the enclosure. It was awfully quiet in there and it's really nice that even the loud and obnoxious chinese were all shush when greeted with this sad sight. Silence as a form of respect. Somebody should tell that to the Mini FongSeng Kids. Anyway... moving on...
We next visited the 10,000 people mass grave. Direct translation, please bear with me. Obviously this was a bigger mass grave than the previous one visited. The previous one was more like a 'pit' compared to this. The chinese government excavated the remains of this 10,000 people mass grave by uncovering it layer by layer, macham like excavating the ruins of dinosaur fossils. They left the bodies intact and one can pretty much see incisions on bodies, missing limbs, cracked jaws (s.377) and various other atrocities like a child skeleton with his head on his tummy/between his legs. I'll point it out as we go along... it's not gory coz it's only skeletons left, so shouldn't be a problem ya?
This lil one has its legs cut off. They didn't bury the legs together though. I think if I recall correctly, this was supposed to be a female skeleton and her jaw was forced open for s.377 purposes. Hence the gaping condition of the jaw. Can see? Not that obvious from the size I guess. But there were writings available on the injuries of all the skeletons there...
This is like an overview of part of the grave. See the number tags beside each body? That corresponds to the writings I mentioned earlier. Yellow tags indicate a child skeleton. There were many. Too many of them to count.
There are a few yellow tags in this picture. Also from the picture, you can see skeletons with multiple incisions. Missing limbs, hands, feet. Some have fractured skulls, crushed ribcages and missing heads. I wonder where all those went...
Moving out of the mass grave, we chanced upon some of these... shrine-like things. I can't remember what they're called. Sheesh. Apparently an old lady from Japan visited the site and was so filled with guilt that she made this (employed people to make ok?) and sent it over as atonement. We need more people like her. There was also one from Singapore I recall. But I didn't take a picture of it. Not as significant as this one.
Stepping out of the sombre place, we were gonna leave the memorial and well, this was like screaming at us from the parade square of the memorial so I had to take a picture of it before we left. Direct and bad translation: Don't forget the past, it becomes the guide to the future, use history as a foundation, to build the future. It sounds SO bad. Hopefully some A'level higher chinese person can correct me. I'm like distorting it. Hur hur hur.
Basically that was my trip which enlightened me to the full extent of WW2. Our sec 2 history text wasn't nearly enough and seeing it for myself really touched me. I'm happy now that things seem to be progressing well for Japan - China relations. Though Japan's apology at Jarkata (was it Jarkata?) didn't seem to please everyone as it was like quite ambiguous and didn't really sound very sincere, but it's a start. Hopefully through arbitration, both sides can work something out and we'll probably never need to face something like this again.
So ends the silly long post on Insomnia, Japan and China. It's 5:31am and I still can't get to sleep.
Dammit.
