Sir, - As a post-war "babyboomer", it is virtually impossible for me to appreciate the long-term effects of the inhuman acts that were perpetrated on POWs of the Japanese army during the second World War. Clearly the surviving members of the "Forgotten Army" still harbour such a profound sense of injustice that they are prepared to publicly affront Japanese Emperor Akihito, 53 years after their release from that jungle hell, where tens of thousands of their comrades perished as slaves of Emperor Hirohito, Akihito's father.
In order to allow these deeply damaged men and women to spend their remaining years in relative peace, both the Japanese royal family and government should jointly make a full and abject apology, pay proper compensation, and invite all the British survivors to Japan to meet the surviving relatives of the 450,000 civilians who were killed in the Tokyo fire-storms and the horrific atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From my (naive?) perspective, it might also be beneficial (to both sides in the former conflict) if surviving Japanese military personnel who tortured these POWs, were to explain to their victims, face-to-face, what caused them to act in such an inhuman and sadistic fashion.
Frankly, it is relatively easy for governments (and royal families) to be publicly reconciled in the interests of international trade and commerce; but genuine acts of reconciliation, forgiveness, truthfulness and understanding also need to occur at grass roots level where the greatest physical and emotional damage was done, and where the deepest pain manifestly remains to this day. Hopefully, as has been recently happening at the Truth and Reconciliation Committee hearings in South Africa, it will not be long before Northern Ireland's citizens also begin a similar process, so that we too can progress to a more enlightened, peaceful era of harmony and coexistence.
It has been clearly demonstrated by the POW's in London and Cardiff, that the profound hidden damage of war remains long after the buildings have been repaired, international business links re-established and royal accolades conferred. - Yours, etc., Thomas Downey,
Newry, Co. Down.