Why in news?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited to Pearl Harbour this week.
Why the apology has been delayed?
- In the case of Japan, the conservatives have long regarded that any attempt to apologise for Pearl Harbour incident in 1941 as nothing but a betrayal of the national interest.
- In the US view, the horror in Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a close sooner than it might otherwise have been. They have also sought to reject the narrative that the dropping of the atom bomb was a calculated demonstration of U.S. and western military superiority in a Cold War scenario.
Were there precedence?
- Much earlier this year the Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has formally apologized in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident.
- Kniefall von Warschau was a famous incident that happened on December 7, 1970, during a visit to a monument of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by the then German Chancellor Willy Brandt.
- After laying down a wreath, Brandt, spontaneously knelt. He remained silently in that position for a short time apologising for the crimes commited in Warsaw Ghetto.
Why is it significant?
- Earlier U.S. President Barack Obama paid his homage at the peace memorial at Hiroshima.
- Both the leaders have undertaken this bold and difficult journey on behalf of their peoples.
- Conspicuous gestures of reconciliation between nations to heal the deep emotional wounds of wars will have connotations that go beyond the symbolic.
- Abe and Obama have displayed a statesmanlike readiness to rise above partisan accounts.
- They emphasised the need to bridge the gulf that neither history nor geography could have narrowed.
- “The ability to acknowledge a wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry, will go a far far longer way than some percentage of GDP in the form of aid.”
- Prime Minister Abe and President Obama have shown how history can be revisited in a realistic manner.
- It remains for countries grappling with their own complex pasts to draw the right lessons from this.
Category: Mains | GS – II | International Relations
Source: The Indian Express
