Symposium: The Second World War in Asia: Justice Efforts, War Memory, and Reparations
Memory-Making on the Ground:
Peace Boat and Japanese World War II Narratives
by Lim Jia Yi (Research Fellow, Singapore War Crimes Trials Project)
Published on 7 October 2022
No one country is ever simply either a victim or an aggressor… What is immoral remains so, irrespective of whose action it is.
This quote, taken from Peace Boat’s comments in a publication for the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, illustrates the complexity of Japan’s World War II (WWII) history. The country’s wartime victimhood is well-documented, with significant research on the devastation caused by the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6th) and Nagasaki (August 9th), as well as the continued suffering of survivors and their families. Much is also known about Japan’s wartime aggression, with historical wounds from the Japanese invasion of territories across Asia and the war crimes left in its wake continuing to fester today.
Japan’s attitude towards its WWII actions has been subject of significant criticism. There have been statements from Japanese governments directly acknowledging the country’s war responsibility. For instance, in 1993, the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono explicitly stated Japanese responsibility in creating the comfort women system, and in 1995 the Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama recognized the suffering caused by Japan in the region. That said, subsequent governments have walked back on these acknowledgements. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made multiple statements over his tenure that vaguely acknowledged general Japanese wartime responsibility at best, and denied responsibility for issues such as the comfort women system at worst. The government’s contradictory position on such issues is not isolated; politicians maintain their views despite significant international pushback due to persistent domestic support for such stances. Within the country, inadequate WWII-related education (whether in schools or museums) as well as the prevalence of right-wing groups dedicated to denying Japan’s wartime atrocities and attacking those with opposing views have made it difficult to challenge the prevailing narratives.
However, challenges to the government’s position have also come from within Japan. In contrast to the government’s hand-waving, several civil society groups in the country are considerably more active in addressing the complicated narratives and encouraging related conversations. Such groups seek to educate the wider Japanese public and change the governmental stance from the bottom up. A major organisation in this regard is Peace Boat.
Peace Boat was founded in 1983 “by a group of Japanese university students” in response to governmental censorship in local textbooks “regarding Japan’s military history in the Asia-Pacific.” The first voyage organised by Peace Boat was a “12-day expedition to visit Ogasawara, Iwo Jima, Guam and Saipan”, in order to learn “first-hand about the war from those who experienced it”. Since then, Peace Boat has developed into a “Japan-based international non-governmental organisation” promoting “peace, human rights and sustainability” via global and regional ship voyages. The organisation seeks to combine sustainable tourism with education and advocacy, in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, and aims to empower participants and encourage borderless cooperation. Its programmes focus on topics such as historical memory, social justice, environmental sustainability and disarmament.
Peace Boat has pioneered a model of public disarmament education to effectively promote its goal of peace and understanding. The model centres on people-to-people interaction and communication, giving participants the opportunity to “hear first-hand testimony of those directly impacted by various social, economic and political issues.” It comprises three prongs of education: (1) understanding the humanitarian impact of armed conflict and developing empathy (i.e. learning directly from and interacting with affected people); (2) identifying present-day threats and contextualising these dangers (i.e. learning about the continued impact of historical conflicts); and (3) learning related tools and methods to take action. As a result, participants are ready to confront inconvenient histories, being aware of shared global issues, and willing (as well as able) to take action.
Through that model, Peace Boat seeks to educate participants on disarmament issues, such as the suffering caused by armed conflict as well as problems faced by disarmament activists, and also to provide a neutral space for frank discussions. This is especially necessary in the Asia-Pacific region, considering the violent WWII history between Japan and its neighbours, as well as simmering geopolitical tensions that threaten to one day boil over into another outbreak of armed conflict. Attempts at addressing these tensions on a governmental level have proven inadequate, whether due to the Japanese government’s non-committal statements in terms of war responsibility or the fact that state-level post-WWII reparations do not directly address the communities and individuals involved (e.g. the rejection by most former comfort women of “atonement money” delivered via the Asian Women’s Fund).
In this context, Peace Boat’s disarmament education aims to address the relative silence on a state level, from the ground up. Specifically with regard to WWII memories in the region, programme participants are pushed to confront shared histories, recognise the inadequate nature of government actions on both sides, and address the secondary victimhood resulting from top-down actions. Through this, Peace Boat intends to encourage participants and their communities to take steps towards effective reconciliation.
A key programme illustrating the implementation of Peace Boat’s public disarmament education model in relation to WWII history is the “Global Voyage for a Nuclear Free World: Peace Boat Hibakusha Project”. The term hibakusha, which translates literally to “bomb-affected person”, is defined by Peace Boat to include “anyone who has experienced the consequences of nuclear weapons and/or radiation”, covering victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and also “victims of nuclear testing, uranium miners and workers at nuclear weapons factories”.
Since 2008, the Hibakusha Project is an annual voyage that invites hibakusha within and outside Japan on a global journey to share their stories of nuclear-related suffering, and call for a nuclear-free world. The ship itself functions as a platform for communication, facilitating conversations between hibakusha as well as between the hibakusha and other passengers. For the hibakusha, the project is an opportunity to break free of the “psychological isolation” of keeping their experiences buried, whether due to societal discrimination in Japan or, for overseas hibakusha, the lack of a community that understands what they had experienced. The project also allows hibakusha and participants alike to develop various methods of telling the hibakusha stories, with examples including theatre, ventriloquism, and songs. The frank discussions that resulted have helped to refine and contextualise the project’s larger aim of arguing for disarmament.
The stories of the hibakusha bring us back to the complex issue of war memory in Japan. A historical focus placed firmly on the hibakusha rightly emphasises Japan’s WWII atomic victimhood and the needless suffering of Japanese civilians in the pursuit of a quick end to the war. That said, victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings also include Korean forced labourers and Allied prisoners of war. Moreover, conversations of Japan’s WWII suffering must also include the suffering inflicted by the Japanese Imperial Army on its colonies/occupied territories in Asia and the Pacific. This is especially so in the context of Peace Boat’s disarmament and peace-related conversations in former Japanese territories. Peace Boat and the hibakusha participants recognise and address this need for contextualisation to the best of their abilities, either by explicitly acknowledging Japanese actions in the region as they share their own stories, or by jointly campaigning for official recognition of non-Japanese hibakusha and other victims of the Japanese war effort. In this way, Peace Boat’s model of disarmament education is a unique method of recognising and disseminating the difficult and diverse WWII narratives in the region, with the aim of educating participants on issues related to Japan’s war history.
That said, given its status as a Japanese (albeit non-governmental) organisation, global receptivity to Peace Boat’s message for peace and disarmament is arguably weakened by the Japanese government’s non-committal statements and/or outright denials of war responsibility. Peace Boat noted that it also faces some domestic opposition, especially with regard to statements/campaigns related to Japanese WWII aggression (e.g. comfort women and government censorship of history textbooks). The organisation aims to overcome these challenges by focusing specifically on education, whether through its own programmes or in partnership with coalitions of activists/academics.
In line with its belief that change on a governmental level can be achieved from the grassroots, Peace Boat seeks to contribute to the development of an active civil society through educational programmes. This would provide participants exposure to diverse perspectives and the tools to challenge narratives. Besides, the organisation believes that the resulting conversations and activism may hence contribute to social change.
By facilitating frank discourse on Japan’s WWII history and providing a platform for related activists to share their stories/campaigns, Peace Boat arguably provides some form of recognition to affected communities and spotlights their calls for justice via an informal platform as well as at the grassroots level. It also works with fellow activists and academics to campaign for change in the governmental treatment of history. Through its educational programmes, Peace Boat seeks to lay the groundwork for stronger regional ties, a new generation of activists and, in the long term, the creation of a true global community that transcends (but does not ignore) historical wounds.