China to publish Japanese war confessions online

As regional tensions between China and Japan remained high, Beijing struck a fresh blow in the propaganda war when it said it was posting wartime confessions by Japanese war criminals online.

China and Japan have been at loggerheads over a chain of uninhabited islands in resource-rich waters in the East China Sea, known as the Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, and there are fears the tensions could escalate.

The Chinese were further angered when Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet took a historic step away from Japan’s post-war pacifism this week by ending a ban that has kept the military from fighting abroad since 1945. China believes Tokyo has failed to atone adequately for its brutal occupation of parts of China before and during the second World War, and these feelings are intensified when senior Japanese politicians visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours war criminals among the fallen.

Tensions

Since tensions in the East China Sea have increased, there has been a greater focus than ever in China on Japanese wartime misdeeds.

The handwritten confessions, along with Chinese translations and abstracts in both Chinese and English, will be published on the website of the State Archives Administration, the deputy director Li Minghua told a news conference.

The archive will publish a new confession every day over a 45-day period. “These archives are hard evidence of the heinous crimes committed by Japanese imperialism against the Chinese,” said Mr Li. Mr Abe was “disregarding historical justice and human conscience, has been openly talking black into white, misleading the public, and beautifying Japanese aggression and its colonial history since he took office . . . this challenges World War Two achievements and the post-World War Two international order.”

After the second World War, China tried and jailed the 45 Japanese prisoners detailed in the documents for serious offences, including the use of poison gas, rape and murder, Mr Li said.

The first 38-page document released described the actions of Suzuki Keiku, who was assistant commander of the 28th Infantry Regiment and later lieutenant-general and commander of the 117th Division in the Japanese army. He ordered troops to “burn down the houses of about 800 households and slaughter 1,000 Chinese peasants in a mop-up operation” in the Tangshan area in January 1942. He “murdered 1,280 peasants in Daizhuang Village, Panjia, Luanxian County by shooting, bayoneting, slashing and burying them alive, and burned down the houses of all 800 households in the village” in October 1942. He “ordered to set up comfort stations in regions occupied by Japanese troops, and lured about 60 Chinese and Korean women to serve as comfort women” in 1945.

There were 1,109 Japanese war criminals in custody in China between 1950 and 1956, according to Mr Li.