By Parliametary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, in Petaling Jaya on Thursday, August 18, 1994:
DAP Calls on Japanese Prime Minster Tomiichi Murayama to agree to make adequate compensation to the Malaysian victims of Japanese Imperial Occupation and atrocities during his visit to Kuala Lumpur later this month
Japanese Prime Minister, Tomiichi Murayama must be commended for expressing repentance on Monday for Japanese atrocities in World War Two.
However, his gesture of repentance had been nullified by six of his ministers who, on the same day, defied his request and visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japan’s militarist past, which enshrines Class-A war criminals condemned by the Tokyo War Crimes trials, including wartime Prime Minister general Hideki Tojo.
On Sunday, a Cabinet Minister resigned because he said the war “led to independence, te popularization of education and increased literacy in Asia.” In May, another Japanese Minister resigned after claiming that the 1937 Nanking massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese occupying troops never happened.
It is clear that significant and influential segments of the Japanese society feel no real repentance for the war.
For this reason, in his forthcoming tour of South East Asian countries later this month, Tomiichi Murayama has the added task of convicing Asian countries and peoples which had suffered under the Japanese Occupation and atrocities that the Japanese Government is prepared to make proper atonement for their atrocities to the Asian peoples during the Second World War.
DAP calls on the Japanese Prime Minister to agree to make adequate compensation to the Malaysian victims of Japanese Occupation and atrocities during his visit to Kuala Lumpur next week.
This is the only way for the Japanese Governmetn and society to being to close the book with regard to Japanese atrocities to Asian peoples during the Second World War.