Japan marks 80 years since WWII surrender amid mounting concerns about fading memory

TOKYO (AP) — Japan paid tribute to more than 3 million war dead Friday as the country marked its surrender 80 years ago that ended World War II, as concern rapidly grows about the fading memory of the tragedy of war and bitter lessons from the era of Japanese militarism.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the war a mistake and expressed “remorse” over the bloodshed, marking the first time a Japanese premier has used the increasingly taboo word since 2013, when then-prime minister Shinzo Abe shunned it.

Ishiba, however, did not directly mention Japan’s aggression across Asia or apologize, an omission which signaled a growing revisionist trend regarding Japan’s Axis-era past.

“We will never repeat the tragedy of the war. We will never go the wrong way,” Ishiba said.

“Once again, we must deeply keep within our hearts the remorse and lessons from that war,” he continued.

In a national ceremony on Friday at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall, about 4,500 officials alongside bereaved families and their descendants from around the country observed a moment of silence at noon, the time when the former emperor’s surrender speech began on August 15, 1945.

Separately, just a block away at Yasukuni Shrine — seen by neighboring Asian countries as a symbol of unbridled militarism — dozens of Japanese right-wing politicians and their supporters came to pray.

Ishiba stayed away from Yasukuni and sent a religious ornament as a personal gesture, instead of praying at the controversial shrine.

But Shinjiro Koizumi, the agriculture minister considered as a top candidate to replace the beleaguered prime minister, prayed at the shrine. Koizumi, the son of popular former prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, whose Yasukuni visit as a serving leader in 2001 outraged China, is a regular at the shrine.

Right-wing lawmakers, including former economic security ministers Sanae Takaichi and Takayuki Kobayashi, as well as governing Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight Koichi Hagiuda, also visited the shrine on Friday.

The shrine honors convicted war criminals among millions of war dead. Victims of Japanese aggression, especially China and the Koreas, view visits to the shrine as an endorsement of Japan’s wartime past.

Japanese emperors stopped visiting the Yasukuni site since the enshrinement of top war criminals there in 1978.

Emperor Naruhito, in his address at the Budokan memorial on Friday, expressed his hope that the ravages of war will never be repeated while “reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse.”

Naruhito reiterated the importance of telling the war’s tragic history and the ordeals faced during and after the war to younger generations, as “we continue to seek the peace and happiness of the people in the future.”

As part of the 80th anniversary remembrance, he has traveled to Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Hiroshima, and is expected to visit Nagasaki with his daughter, Princess Aiko, in September.

Hajime Eda, whose father died on his way home from Korea when his ship was hit by a mine, said he will never forget his father and others who never made it home.

In his speech representing the bereaved families, Eda said it is Japan’s responsibility to share the lessons — the futility of the conflict, the difficulty of reconstruction and the preciousness of peace.

There was some hope at the ceremony, with a number of teenagers participating after learning about their great-grandfathers who died on the battlefields.

Among them, Ami Tashiro, a 15-year-old high school student from Hiroshima, said she joined a memorial marking the end of the battle on Iwo Jima in April after reading a letter her great-grandfather sent from the island. She also hopes to join in the search for his remains.

As the generations who experienced the war rapidly die off, Japan faces serious questions on how it should pass on its history to the next generation, as the country has already faced revisionist pushbacks under Abe and his supporters in the 2010s. The right-wing premier was assassinated during his term in 2022.

Since 2013, Japanese prime ministers have stopped apologizing to Asian victims, under the precedent set by Abe. Some lawmakers have stirred controversy with outright denials of Japan’s role in the mass civilian killings during the Battle of Okinawa, as well as the Nanking Massacre.

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