Maciamo
先輩
- 17 Jul 2002
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BBC said:When the summit started on Friday, Mr Koizumi said: "In the past Japan through its colonial rule and aggression caused tremendous damage and suffering for the people of many countries, particularly those of Asian nations.
"Japan squarely faces these facts of history in a spirit of humility."
The wording repeats previous Japanese apologies - but analysts say the international setting gives the statement added weight.
Source]
I may be a bit too harsh, but that is hardly what I call an apology. He is just stating facts about the war, then explains a vague feeling of facing these facts with humility.
As for the facts mentioned, I think that they should be much more specific, mention massacres, rapes, slave labour, sexual slavery, the harsh treatment of POW's and biological experiments, and name all the countries that were victim of these. In fact it would be best to list the atrocities individually for each country. For example, Dutch people were tortured or ill-treated to death as POW's, were taken as slave labour, "comfort women", and may have been used in biological experiments (not sure about this last one), but there hasn't been any massacre (murder of thousands of people) id Dutch civilians to the best of my knowledge.