The generation of our fathers and grandfathers endured two devastating world wars, and much else besides. Military conquerors from earlier periods were often lauded, over conduct that by today’s standards of behavior would be considered despicable.

Japan has just marked the 75th anniversary of the two terrible atomic bombings of its homeland cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, twin catastrophes that forced the nation to surrender and help bring World War II to an end in 1945 in the Far East. 

Unfortunately, the message the annual remembrance ceremony conveys implies that Japan was the victim, rather than the aggressor, as the matter has not been put into the appropriate context. It was widely predicted that Japan would carry on fighting and cause even more carnage on both sides had it not been brought to its knees by the two atomic bombs. So, it can be said that those bombs helped bring about peace.

The Chinese mainland, as well as Hong Kong, had ample painful experience of being at the receiving end of Japanese military aggression. The same was the case with many other unfortunate parts of East Asia and the Pacific. Japan attacked China by invading Manchuria back in 1931. Even in those days, this was described (by the Lytton Commission) as “ethically illegitimate”. The wider Sino-Japanese War, which followed from 1937, continued the military expansion of the then-growing Empire of Japan.

The infamous “Rape of Nanking” (then China’s capital and today known as Nanjing) in late 1937 saw the mass murder, by Japanese soldiers, of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, and of civilians, as well as mass rape and pillage. All in all, Japan’s conduct of the war has been described as “Asia’s Holocaust”. 

Millions of Asian people, including civilians and captured Chinese soldiers died; some estimates put the total death toll at 25 million or more.

In Hong Kong, invaded by Japan in 1941, at about the same time as Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Japanese occupation — which lasted for 3 years and 8 months — is estimated to have resulted in the death of over 10,000 Hong Kong people.

In other parts of China, Japanese military units weaponized deadly infectious diseases, including exposing soldiers and civilians to bubonic plague, botulism, anthrax, smallpox and cholera, causing huge casualties to the Chinese people. 

There was even a secret plan to attack California by germ warfare, which had already been scattered around the fields and cities of China. Inhuman and illicit experiments were conducted on human beings, who were vivisected as part of a chemical and biological weapons development program. Japan did not hesitate to use such banned germ warfare techniques.

The enforced slave labor imposed by Japan on prisoners of war and civilian victims in the territories it conquered remains a byword for cruelty. Many thousands were maltreated, starved or murdered as a result.

By the way, both Nazi Germany and Japan had their own secret research units, tasked with developing nuclear weapons. Had either country not been forced into surrender in time, before these were fully developed, it seems very likely that both countries would have attacked allied countries with these. 

So instead of just preaching against the use of atomic weapons, clearly justified in the context of the situation at the time, Japanese leaders should be laying wreaths of regret at the many places throughout Asia (such as Nanjing) which it conquered and committed many atrocities on the local populations. 

The writer is a seasoned commentator on Hong Kong social issues, who previously lived in Beijing. 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.