Japanese inherited war responsibilities

A JAPANESE CARDINAI . has said that the country's Church shared in responsibility for World War II, and that today's Japanese have inherited the responsibility to make reparation and ensure peace.
In a series of talks marking 50 years since the end of the war, Cardinal Peter Seiichi Shirayanagi of Tokyo said this week that the Japanese must recognise that they and the Church were aggressors, and that responsibility does not stop with those who waged the war, but is inherited by their successors.
The cardinal went on to say that one reason this problem had not been looked at more closely until now was that until recently, the Japanese, who lost the war and suffered atomic bombing, felt that they were the wounded party.
Japan was blind to other Asian countries, he said, and its people were not made aware of the damage that they themselves had inflicted.
"Those who went before us in that era lacked knowledge and information as to what was afoot. They lived in an age when there was still talk of a just war," said Cardinal Shirayanagi.
"When we think of the heart-searching our predecessors must have gone through at not being able to fulfill their prophetic role, we cannot but, as next in line, take up the inheritance and make reparation."
According to Cardinal Shirayanagi, the Japanese bishops' 50th anniversary pastoral letter, entitled "Resolution for Peace", which has prompted this series of talks, was drawn up to spur the Japanese to seek reconciliation with the other nations of Asia.