Delegates from a Japanese association has made their 24th annual visit (on Mar 31) to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall for their tree planting project as an apologetic gesture for the Nanking Massacre.
The Chinese claims that 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers were brutally killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the confrontation in 1937.
The association started planting trees around the memorial in 1986; and over 1000 delegates (including some ex-soldiers) have visited the place since then, with some 60,000 trees being planted in the area [image from NJ1937 (Cn)]
Besides being apologetic, the association also hopes to spread their anti-war message and to teach younger Japanese generations about the part of war history that are often neglected (sometime twisted) in Japanese text book.
Nanking Massacre will always be a pain for the Chinese; I am not suggesting that they should forget or forgive the Japanese for what they did, it’s out of my business. I hope that the Chinese could be reminded though, that there are at least some Japanese people that are working to amend the damages from their past.
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i dont understand why the younger generation has to “amend” for something the previous generation did. the people who did it are the one at fault, not their children or families. those people who are probably dead by now are the ones who should make amend from their graves. Just because someone’s father is a killer, does that make that person a killer and shoulder the responsibility too?
The younger generation should not be held responsible for what their parents (or ancestors) did, that I agree.
Should the younger generation not care about what their parents did, good or bad? There’s a different story, with plenty of rooms to debate obviously.
It’s not something that they are obliged to do, but a matter of conscience and courtesy.