| It takes a strong man to say "sorry". Tinpot creatures with puffed up vanity cannot summon up the pride or courage to apologise. Yet, two events this week reminded me of Inder Kumar Gujral's wise restraint during Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1997. While the ultra-patriotic were demanding an apology for Jallianwalabagh, the former Prime Minister retorted sensibly that there was so much to apologise for that it would be invidious to pick on individual incidents. |
| That was my thought on Wednesday as TV covered Kevin Rudd, Australia's chubby new prime minister, uttering his famous "" and, I must confess, moving "" 361 words of expiation. But the huge surge of emotion that swept Australia at Rudd's obvious sincerity will not wipe out the misery of decades when Aborigines were massacred in their hundreds and hunted down like vermin. Clearly, however, Rudd, a former career diplomat who left the service to join the Labour Party, means well. Australia's remaining 470,000 Aborigines expect him to atone to the extent possible for the past. |
| In contrast, a photograph in the next day's newspaper of George W Bush's friend and former business partner, Thomas Schieffer, the current American ambassador to Japan, bowing in apology to the governor of Okinawa, Hirokazu Nakaima, looked like plain theatre. It's when you know that a gesture will have little or no effect on the on the ground that "the apology too prompt", to quote Milton's Paradise Lost, crops up. Americans call it a cop-out. |
| Schieffer's apology was for the alleged rape of a 14-year-old Okinawan girl by an American staff sergeant though how he can apologise for something that is only alleged and not proved, I don't know. The charge is that the girl was offered a lift, kidnapped and raped in the sergeant's car. Amidst mounting tension over the incident, the ambassador flew in from Tokyo and, accompanied by the commander of the 45,000 US troops in Japan, General Bruce Wright, called on the governor, bowed and made his little speech. |
| The episode recalls other ugly memories in Japan's American association. In 2001 a US air force staff sergeant was accused of raping a 20-year-old housewife against the side of his car in the Okinawa town of Chatan. But the incident that is seared into Okinawa's memory took place in 1995 when three American servicemen kidnapped, beat, brutally gang-raped and then abandoned a 12-year-old girl. The three soldiers, all black as it happened, were jailed for up to seven years, though the prosecution had demanded 10. |
| Okinawa's then governor, Masahide Ota, a diehard opponent of US bases, called for the removal of American soldiers by 2015. "Some American troops still believe Okinawa is US territory," he declared. "Okinawa is ours, not yours." In a sense, much of the island does not belong to the 1.2 million Okinawans, being off-limits to them. Although Okinawa accounts for less than 1 per cent of Japan's total area, bases that house more than half the US troops in Japan occupy one-fifth of the island. |
| Will Schieffer's bow and contrite words change this semi-colonial situation? Will Okinawa be restored to Okinawans? Does Japan's Prime Minister, Yasuo Fukuda, even want that for all that he says the alleged rape "can never be forgiven"? And what of the victims? If alive, the 12-year-old girl must be a young woman of 25. I wonder what sort of life she leads. Or even the older woman raped seven years ago. The ambassador said that every American in Japan wants the latest victim to know that they are thinking of her and hope she will soon overcome her trauma. It would more to the point to keep US troops under better discipline, restrict their movements and bring them under the full control of the local civil and judicial authorities. That would serve a more useful purpose than prejudging the case with diplomatic grandstanding. |
| Sadly, though, apologies have become the rage. Japan doesn't demand an American apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but China feels Japanese expressions of regret for the Nanjing massacre are not sufficiently abject. South Korean comfort women want apology and compensation, and the Irish grumble that Tony Blair's comments on the potato famine were far too glib. It's an unending process with no sure means of identifying either the magnitude of crimes or the sincerity of apologies. Given the scope for political opportunism, it would be far better, as Gujral seemed to imply, to draw a curtain across the past and work to secure the future. |
Top Section
Explore Business Standard