[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]

The U.S. has been complicit in all of this. General MacArthur exonerated Emperor Hirohito of war crimes in the early days of U.S. occupation of Japan. Hirohito was at least as guilty as Tojo, who as along with other war criminals were forced by MacArthur's staff to offer false testimony and perjure themselves before the international war crimes tribunal. At least one general was hanged for a crime at which he was not even present, taking the fall to protect Hirohito's uncle Prince Asaka, the butcher of Nanjing. He also freed all the indicted war criminals locked up in Sugamo Prison. One of them was Nobusuke Kishi, Shinzo Abe's maternal grand father, who was jailed on charges of looting China. He later became Prime Minister and one of the founders of the LDP.

MacArthur, a reactionary conservative himself, also exonerated the big Japanese banks and zaibatsu financial cliques that supported and bankrolled the war. On the other hand, he clamped down on labor and jailed all demonstrators, for fear Japan might turn to communism.

In all, Japan got off lightly for its war crimes. While Germany paid some 30 billion pounds sterling in compensation and reparations over the years, Japan only paid 2 billion pounds.

Japan plundered Asian countries under its occupation of currency, gold, platinum, silver, gems, jeweler, art and religious artifacts, with a total value of at least $100 billion. But that loot was never systematically investigated, let alone returned to its proper owners. Documents show that treasure looted from China was put into gold bullion accounts in the name of General Douglas MacArthur and another in the name of Herbert Hoover. (See Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, The Yamato Dynasty, Bantam Press, 1999).

Question no. 2: Will Shinzo Abe and the Japanese Right accept the peaceful rise of China?

Answer: That is actually a question posed by China's Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai. I have stated earlier that as China rises and its economy overtakes Japan, the Japanese people's national psyche will be shocked.

Abe and the Japanese Right's first response is to cry "China threat." Their first move is to strengthen their military alliance with the United States, using the latter's strategic rebalance to the Asia-Pacific to bolster their own position. A Chinese saying goes: "The fox borrows the tiger's awesome strength." They provoked conflict over the Diaoyu Islands in part to disrupt China's peaceful rise.

In short, Shinzo Abe and the Japanese Right want to disrupt the world order resulting from Japan's defeat during the Second World War. Will the world's citizens allow that to happen?

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.jhzsvip.com/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.