Forget and Then You Don't Need to Forgive: Why this philosophy just doesn't work

Historical Memory of Japanese, Germans, and U.S.

The author brings up a great point in saying that each of the three nations remember and forget their own wartime atrocities very differently.  The U.S. does portray it's own crimes as those carried out by a select set of blood-thirsty military black sheep and then has gone on to say the war crimes of Japan and Germany were because they sanctioned unfair and inhumane war practices and are savage people.  This is a double-standard the U.S. uses for sure.  But, then again, don't we all think Japan and Germany do the same thing?  It's called nationalism and it's found in public speech, text books, research papers.  It's what any people naturally do when it comes to history, you never want to be the wrong party.  However, at least in this case, the atrocity is not forgotten completely.

I cannot believe that Germany has completely admitted it's responsibility for the Nazi Era.  Just recently, I believe, the chancellor before Merkel said they were not sure it ever happened and many American political analysts we come to call "quack jobs" even still deny its existence to this day.  It's hard to believe but it happens and so we cannot say that Germany has even come clean.  They have done a good job owning up to it but still place all blame on one man and his highly brainwashed posse.

The nation's historical memory that struck me the most was Japan, by far.  The fact that the government is attempting to take the massacres and bombings and Chinese slaughters out of their text books is not only a free speech violation and crazy thought straight out of 1984, it's impossible to believe the Japanese, Chinese, or Korean people would be that gullible.  Forgetting an entire segment of history would be detrimental to the healing process of the Chinese and Koreans and even a detriment to Japan learning from it's past mistakes.  The article 9, as the author rightly connects, seems to show that Japan has reconciled to an extent.  However, as the author suggests, they want to forget but skip the part of realization because maybe they believe they can never be forgiven.  I think that an open admittance and apology would do wonders for Asian relations between Japan and all other nations.

Not only that, this sort of concession and act of repentance of a traditionally stubborn and proud nation would send a ripple effect throughout the entire world.  China might apologize for its mistakes with Tibet, Mongolia, and Taiwan (in the distant future to be sure, but eventually) and, more importantly, equally stubborn U.S. would admit it's historical need to be the world police and keeper of all things democratic and just has kept it from admitting to its mistakes.  The U.S. may apologize to Japan for massive bombings, Iraq for today's situations, war prisoners for their suffering, and other groups much like it apologized to the war camp inhabitants of WWII.  We admitted to stupidity then and received nothing but praise for coming clean.  I understand that the U.S. is afraid it might show weakness on our part to apologize, but, let's face it, what threat do we really have to be scared of nowadays?