APA hotel incident only tip of iceberg of Japan's ultra-right wing's history-revising

TOKYO -- The Japanese APA hotel chain has refused to remove from its guest rooms the untruthful books denying the Nanjing Massacre and the forced recruitment of "comfort women" ever happened, despite the unethical nature of imposing historical and political lies on customers, and the protests from people of countries victimized by Japan before and during World War Two.

The incident is only the tip of the iceberg of Japan's ultra-right wing's efforts to revise the nation's war history, with the Japanese government indulging and even promoting such a dangerous tendency.

The Nanjing Massacre is one of the most outrageous crimes Japan committed in China during the war, and thus, is one of the historical stains that the Japanese ultra-right wing forces are most eager to whitewash and discard.

The historical revisionists here at first tried to claim that the number of victims was not accurate, and then completely denied the massacre happened all together. The Japanese government even slammed UNESCO for adding the Nanjing Massacre documents to its Memory of the World Register.

The fact is, however, that the International Military Tribunal for the Far East has reached verdicts on the issue, and Japan accepting the trial results was a precondition for it to be reaccepted into the international community.

Since the war ended over 70 years ago, Japan has marked the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 respectively, every year, to remember the tens of thousands of people killed in the aftermath.

But when countries victimized by Japan during the war pay honor to their deceased kinfolk and ask Japan to reflect upon its war history so as to prevent the tragedies from happening again, Japan denounced it as making political use of history and aiming at "smearing Japan."

As well as being reluctant to reflect upon the war, Japan also does not want to see or hear its neighbors raise the issue.