80 years on, Japan's reckoning with war remains unfinished

Without a candid reckoning with its past, Japan risks building its future on an incomplete memory. Peace, after all, requires more than mourning.

HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- On Aug. 6, Hiroshima once again became the stage for solemn remembrance. Bells tolled and doves took flight as citizens gathered in Peace Memorial Park to mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing.

Speeches were delivered, wreaths laid, and the horrors of nuclear war mourned. Yet, beneath the ritual and rhetoric lies a persistent void, an unwillingness to fully confront why the bomb was dropped in the first place.

Public narratives in Japan continue to center on victimhood. Most interviewees at the ceremony, from students to middle-aged visitors, expressed sorrow over the devastation but showed little clarity about its historical context.

"I haven't really thought much about it," said a descendant of an atomic bomb survivor. "We weren't born in that era, so we don't really know."

Several middle school students, visiting Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, echoed similar sentiments. "We heard it's because there were military facilities in Hiroshima," one remarked.

A visitor in his 40s offered a more pointed observation, "I read that the war was nearly over when the bomb was dropped and that the U.S. used it as an experiment. If that's true, it's terrifying."

The voices underscored a national memory shaped more by the narrative of victimhood than by a full reckoning with the causes and consequences of war, which offered a glimpse into how Japan remembers and forgets its wartime past.

While the physical scars of nuclear devastation are meticulously documented in museums and memorials, Japan's aggressive wartime conduct is conspicuously muted in both public discourse and state education.

Outside the official ceremony, anti-militarist demonstrators gathered near the atomic bombing site. Their placards decried Japan's growing defence budget and the possibility of nuclear "sharing" with the U.S.

They were kept outside the formal event by riot police, while right-wing activists tried to drown them out with loudspeakers.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, speaking at the ceremony, reaffirmed Japan's commitment to its "Three Non-Nuclear Principles." Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui urged the public to remember the nuclear devastation and carry forward the ideals of peace.

However, neither official mentioned the historical context behind the bombing of Hiroshima.

On Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, the U. S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, to hasten Japan's surrender in World War II. For decades, the Japanese government has avoided acknowledging its role in the war of aggression, instead portraying itself primarily as a victim of the atomic bombings, with little mention of the suffering it inflicted upon China and other Asian countries during World War II.

Professor Emeritus Kumiko Haba of Aoyama Gakuin University noted that post-war Japanese society was not built on a foundation of deep reflection and rejection of its wartime past.

"Regrettably," she said, "Japanese society still does not earnestly regard its history as one of aggression and colonialism. The history of Japan's invasions of neighboring countries is rarely taught in schools."

Professor Emeritus Atsushi Koketsu of Yamaguchi University said, "The inscription on the Hiroshima memorial reads, 'Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the error,' but it doesn't say whose error it was."

Japan often talks about the war without using a subject, turning responsibility into an abstract lesson, he said.

Without a candid reckoning with its past, Japan risks building its future on an incomplete memory. Peace, after all, requires more than mourning.■