* I am indebted to Herbert Bix, Richard Falk, and especially Laura Hein for criticism and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. This is a revised and expanded version of a talk delivered on December 15, 2007 at the Tokyo International Symposium to Commemorate the Seventieth Anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre.

[1] Most discussion of historical memory issues has centered on the Japan-China and the Japan-Korea relationships. However, the controversy that erupted in 2007 over the US congressional resolution calling on Japan to formally apologize and provide compensation for the former comfort women illustrates the ways in which the US-Japan relationship is also at stake. Kinue Tokudome, “Passage of H. Res. 121 on ‘Comfort Women’, the US Congress and Historical Memory in Japan,” Japan Focus. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Japan's ‘Comfort Women’: It's time for the truth (in the ordinary, everyday sense of the word),” Japan Focus.

[2] Fierce debate continues among historians, activists and nations over the number of victims. The issue involves differences over both the temporal and spatial definition of the massacre. The official Chinese claim inscribed on the Nanjing Massacre Memorial is that 300,000 were killed. The most careful attempts to record the numbers by Japanese historians, which include deaths of civilians and soldiers during the march from Shanghai to Nanjing as well as deaths following the capture of the capital suggest numbers in the 80,000 to 200,000 range. In recent years, the first serious Chinese research examining the massacre, built on 55 volumes of documents, has begun to appear. See Kasahara Tokushi, Nankin Jiken Ronsoshi. Nihonjin wa shijitsu o do ninshiki shite kita ka? (The Nanjing Incident Debate. How Have Japanese Understood the Historical Evidence?) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2007) for the changing contours of the Japanese debate over the decades. Kasahara Tokushi and Daqing Yang explore “The Nanjing Incident in World History,” (Sekaishi no naka no Nankin Jiken) in a discussion in Ronza, January, 2008, 184-95, ranging widely across international and joint research and the importance of new documentation from the 1970s to the present. Reiji Yoshida and Jun Hongo, “Nanjing Massacre: Toll will elude certitude. Casualty counts mirror nations' extremes, and flexibility by both sides in middle,” Japan Times, Dec 13, 2007.

[3] I first addressed these issues in Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, China and the United States (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2000).

[4] For discussion of the international legal issues and definition of state terrorism see the introduction and chapter two of Mark Selden and Alvin So, eds., War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 1-40. See also Richard Falk's chapter in that volume, “State Terror versus Humanitarian Law,” pp. 41-62.

[5] The following discussion of the Nanjing Massacre and its antecedents draws heavily on the diverse contributions to Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ed., The Nanking Atrocity 1937-38: Complicating the Picture (New York and London: Berghahn Books, 2007) and particularly the chapter by the late Fujiwara Akira, “The Nanking Atrocity: An Interpretive Overview,” available in a revised version at Japan Focus. Wakabayashi, dates the start of the “Nanjing atrocity”, as he styles it, to Japanese bombing of Nanjing by the imperial navy on August 15. “The Messiness of Historical Reality”, p. 15. Chapters in the Wakabayashi volume closely examine and refute the exaggerated claims not only of official Chinese historiography and Japanese deniers, but also of progressive critics of the massacre. While recognizing legitimate points in the arguments of all of these, the work is devastating toward the deniers who hew to their mantra in the face of overwhelming evidence, e.g. p. 143.

[6] Utsumi Aiko, “Japanese Racism, War, and the POW Experience,” in Mark Selden and Alvin So, eds., War and State Terrorism, pp. 119-42.

[7] Presentation at the Tokyo International Symposium to Commemorate the Seventieth Anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre, December 15, 2007.

[8] Yang Daqing, “Atrocities in Nanjing: Searching for Explanations,” in Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon, eds., Scars of War. The Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001), pp. 76-97.

[9] The signature statement was that of George W. Bush on March 19, 2003: “My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger… My fellow citizens, the dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”

[10] Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2005).

[11] Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare Program,” John Junkerman trans., Japan Focus.

[12] Mark Selden, China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1995); Chen Yung-fa, Making Revolution: The Chinese Communist Revolution in Eastern and Central China, 1937-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Chalmers Johnson, Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962). In carrying out a reign of terror in resistance base areas Japanese forces anticipated many of the strategic approaches that the US would later apply in Vietnam. For example, Japanese forces pioneered in constructing “strategic hamlets” involving relocation of rural people, torching of entire resistance villages, terrorizing the local population, and imposing heavy taxation and labor burdens.

[13] Yuki Tanaka, Japan's comfort women: sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US occupation (London; New York : Routledge, 2002). This systematic atrocity against women has haunted Japan since the 1980s when the first former comfort women broke silence and began public testimony. The Japanese government eventually responded to international protest by recognizing the atrocities committed under the comfort woman system, while denying official and military responsibility. It established a government-supported but ostensibly private Asian Women's Fund to apologize and pay reparations to former comfort women, many of whom rejected the terms of a private settlement. See Alexis Dudden and Kozo Yamaguchi, “Abe's Violent Denial: Japan's Prime Minister and the ‘Comfort Women,‘” Japan Focus. See Wada Haruki, “The Comfort Women, the Asian Women's Fund and the Digital Museum,” Japan Focus for Japanese and English discussion and documents archived at the website.

[14] Peter J. Kuznick, “The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative,” Japan Focus.

[15] Early works that drew attention to US war atrocities often centered on the torture, killing and desecration of the remains of captured Japanese soldiers are Peter Schrijvers, The GI War Against Japan. American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific During World War II (New York: NYU Press, 2002) and John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986). The Wartime Journals of Charles Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970) is seminal in disclosing atrocities committed against Japanese POWs. A growing literature has begun to examine U.S. bombing policies. A. C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities, provides a thorough assessment of US and British strategic bombing (including atomic bombing) through the lenses of ethics and international law. Grayling concludes that the US and British killing of noncombatants “did in fact involve the commission of wrongs” on a very large scale. Pp. 5-6; 276-77. See Herbert P. Bix, “War Crimes Law and American Wars in 20^th Century Asia,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (July 2001), pp. 119-132.

[16] Quoted in Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2000), p. 81. The US debate over the bombing of cities is detailed in Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 23-28, pp. 57-59. Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 20-30, I08-9; and Sahr Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage, Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity After World War II (London: Routledge, 2006). p. 10. For a more detailed account of US bombing see Mark Selden, A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities and the American Way of War from the Pacific War to Iraq, “Japan Focus.

[17] Sherry, Air Power, p. 260. With much U.S. bombing already relying on radar, the distinction between tactical and strategic bombing had long been violated in practice. The top brass, from George Marshall to Air Force chief Henry Arnold to Dwight Eisenhower, had all earlier given tacit approval for area bombing, yet no orders from on high spelled out a new bombing strategy.

[18] The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombing (New York: Basic Books, 1991), pp. 420-21; Cf. U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Field Report Covering Air Raid Protection and Allied Subjects Tokyo (n.p. 1946), pp. 3, 79; The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey study of Effects of Air Attack on Urban Complex Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama (n.p. 1947). In contrast to the vast survivor testimony on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in addition to poems, short stories, novels, manga, anime and film documenting the atomic bombing, the testimony for the firebombing of Tokyo and other cities is sparse. Max Hastings provides valuable first person accounts of the Tokyo bombing based on survivor recollection. Retribution. The Battle for Japan 1944-45 (New York: Knopf, 2008), pp. 297-306.

[19] All but five cities of any size were destroyed. Of these cities, four were designated atomic bomb targets, while Kyoto, was spared. John W. Dower, “Sensational Rumors, Seditious Graffiti, and the Nightmares of the Thought Police,” in Japan in War and Peace (New York: The New Press, 1993), p. 117. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report, Vol I, pp. 16-20.

[20] Retribution, pp. 296-97. Hastings, p. 318, makes a compelling case that the Japanese surrender owed most to the naval blockade which isolated Japan and denied it access to the oil, steel and much more in severing the links to the empire.

[21] The horror felt round the world at the German bombing at Guernica, Japanese bombing of Shanghai and Chongqing, and the British bombing of Dresden would not be felt so intensely and universally ever again, regardless of the scale of bombing in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq … with the possible exception of the outpouring of sympathy for the 2,800 victims of the 9/11 terror bombing of the New York World Trade Center.

[22] “Postwar Narrative,” quoted in Hastings, Retribution, p. 317.

[23] Another important factor is the difference in the character of the two wars. Japan's invasion of China involved very different dynamics from the US-Japan conflict between two expansionist powers. The present article does not explore this issue.

[24] In practice. Sahr Conway-Lanz provides the definitive study of the “collateral damage” argument that has been repeatedly used to deny deliberate killing of civilians in US bombing. Collateral Damage, Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity After World War II.

[25] Marilyn Young, “Total War,” forthcoming chapter in Bombing Civilians, Marilyn Young and Yuki Tanaka eds. (New York: The New Press).

[26] Elizabeth Becker, “Kissinger Tapes Describe Crises, War and Stark Photos of Abuse,” The New York Times, May 27, 2004.

[27] Seymour Hersh, Chemical and Biological Warfare (New York: Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 131-33. Hersh notes that the $60 million worth of defoliants and herbicides in the 1967 Pentagon budget would have been sufficient to defoliate 3.6 million acres if all were used optimally.

[28] In contrast to the Vietnam War in particular, in which critical journalism in major media eventually played a powerful role in fueling and reinforcing the antiwar movement, the major print and broadcasting media in the Iraq War have dutifully averted their eyes from the air war in deference to the Bush administration's wishes. On the air war, see, for example, Seymour Hersh, “Up in the Air. Where is the Iraq war headed next?” The New Yorker, Dec 5, 2005; Dahr Jamail, “Living Under the Bombs,” TomDispatch, February 2, 2005; Michael Schwartz, “A Formula for Slaughter. The American Rules of Engagement from the Air,” TomDispatch, January 14, 2005; Nick Turse, America's Secret Air War in Iraq, TomDispatch, February 7, 2007; Tom Engelhardt, “9 Propositions on the U.S. Air War for Terror,” TomDispatch, April 8, 2008. The invisibility of the air war is nicely revealed in conducting a Google search for “Iraq War” and “Air War in Iraq”. The former produces numerous references to the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Wikipedia and a wide range of powerful media. The latter produces references almost exclusively to blogs and critical sources such as those cited in this note.

[29] Sabrina Tavernese, “For Iraqis, Exodus to Syria, Jordan Continues,” New York Times, June 14, 2006. Michael Schwartz, “Iraq's Tidal Wave of Misery. The First History of the Planet's Worst Refugee Crisis”, TomDispatch, February 10, 2008. The UN estimates that there are 1.25 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and 500,000 in Jordan, 200,000 throughout the Gulf states, 100,000 more in Europe. The United States accepted 463 refugees between the start of the war in 2003 and mid-2007. The International Organization for Migration estimated the displacement rate throughout 2006-07 at 60,000 per month, with the American “surge” accelerating displacement, already more than one in seven Iraqis a nation of 28 million people have been displaced.

[30] Anthony Arnove, “Four Years Later… And Counting. Billboarding the Iraqi Disaster”, TomDispatch, March 18, 2007. Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection. Is the Administration's new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” The New Yorker March 3, 2007. Michael Schwartz, “Baghdad Surges into Hell. First Results from the President's Offensive”, TomDispatch, February 12, 2007.

[31] Mark Selden, “Nationalism, Historical Memory and Contemporary Conflicts in the Asia Pacific: the Yasukuni Phenomenon, Japan, and the United States” Japan Focus; Yoshiko Nozaki and Mark Selden, “Historical Memory, International Conflict and Japanese Textbook Controversies in Three Epochs,” forthcoming Contexts: The Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, Vol I, Number 1; Takashi Yoshida, “Revising the Past, Complicating the Future: The Yushukan War Museum in Modern Japanese History,” Japan Focus; Laura Hein and Akiko Takenaka, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States,” Japan Focus; Aniya Masaaki, “Compulsory Mass Suicide, the Battle of Okinawa, and Japan's Textbook Controversy,” Japan Focus.

[32] Thanks to Laura Hein for suggesting the framing of this issue. On the Reagan decision, reparations and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, see Mitchell T Maki, Harry H Kitano, and S Megan Berthold, Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999); see also the following and Clinton's apology to Hawaiians took the form of Public Law 103-150. The formal apology recognized the devastating effects of subsequent social changes on the Hawaiian people and looked to reconciliation. But offered no reparations or other specific measures to alleviate the sufferings caused by US actions.

[33] Emily Rosenberg drew my attention to the Guatemala quasi-apology. Clinton's remarks were prompted by the February 1999 publication of the findings of the independent Historical Clarification Commission which concluded that the US was responsible for most of the human rights abuses committed during the 36-year war in which 200,000 died. Martin Kettle and Jeremy Lennard, “Clinton Apology to Guatemala,” The Guardian, March 12, 1999. Mark Weisbrot, “Clinton's Apology to Guatemala is a Necessary First Step,” March 15, 1999, Knight-Ridder/Tribune Media Services.

[34] How are we to define power? If no nation remotely rivals American military power, particularly in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union, if the United States military budget in 2008 is larger than that of all other nations combined — before counting the special appropriations for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the striking fact is that the US has fought to stalemate or defeat in each of the major wars it has entered since World War II.

[35] Kerry's testimony, ignored by the mass media but made available through film and other media, is available here.

[36] See the testimony and the historical record here and here.

[37] Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin, “Japanese Popular Culture in East and Southeast Asia: Time for a Regional Paradigm?”

[38] We have underlined the deleterious effects of Japanese nationalism in preventing recognition and apology for atrocities. Reconciliation is made more difficult by exaggerated claims with respect to the Nanjing Massacre by nationalists in China and the Chinese diaspora.