Holocaust.
And, believe it or not, there are actually some American academics who sup- port this analogy, thus aiding and giving comfort to a 50-year attempt by the Japanese to rewrite their own history, and ours in the process.
There is an entire generation of Japanese who do not know the full extent of their country’s conduct during World war II.
This explains why they do not comprehend why they must apologize —
for the Korean comfort women, for the Medical experimentation on POW’s which match the horror of those conducted by the Nazi’s, for the plans to use biological weapons against the United States by infecting civilian populations on the West Coast, for the methodical slaughter of civilians, and for much more. In a perverse inversion, by forgetting our own history, we contribute to the
Japanese amnesia, to the detriment of both our nations.
Unlike the Germans who acknowledged their guilt, the Japanese persist in the fiction that they did nothing wrong, that they were trapped by circumstances. This only forecloses any genuine prospect that the deep wounds suffered by both nations can be closed and healed.
One can only forgive by remembering. And to forget, is to risk repeating history.