Hyde to Koizumi: first vow no shrine visit

[AmericanErrorist]

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's contentious visits to Yasukuni Shrine are a matter of religious freedom, the government said Tuesday, rejecting criticism leveled by a powerful U.S. congressman.

The remarks followed media reports from Washington that Henry Hyde, chairman of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, is seeking a guarantee from Koizumi that he will not visit Yasukuni Shrine if he is invited to deliver a speech to Congress during a trip to Washington planned for late June...

"I believe that most congressmen respect the freedom of religion, and such criticism is rather rare," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060517a1.html

[sam sarrha]

1. what is that all about ,i havent heard anything about it

[rpannier]

12. There is a cemetary in Japan to fallen Japanese soldiers

Koizumi goes every year to 'pay his respects.' Among those buried there are WW II war criminals.
This is a very contentious issue here in Korea, as the Japanese committed many war crimes in Korea: genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc
His attendance also creates friction with the Chinese.

I don't know why Hyde cares. I'm guessing it's because there are war criminals there, I don't know. Here in Asia, it's because he chooses not only to honor Japanese war heroes, but war criminals as well.

[Kagemusha]

17. Ok, two things here.

a) The shrine is actually linked to an actual cemetary? So removing the war criminals involves ACTUALLY DIGGING THEM UP FROM THE GROUND? I'd edited an earlier post to root out references to such a thing because I couldn't tell from online sources if that was the case. If so, well, the Japanese aren't asking for the US to dig Truman up, nor should they.

b) Ummm. This is a tangent and all but, why would the Chinese and Koreans etc. not judge the honoring of those *not* convicted of war crimes while serving in the Imperial Japanese Army on their own national soil, to be in itself, a disgrace? Is there some strategic political reason they don't make specific hay out of the *rest* of these soldiers being revered (I think that's a good word for this) as heroes when they participated in things like The Rape of Nanking, even if they weren't giving the orders for it? I find it difficult to believe that the Chinese would approve of visiting this shrine even if the convicted war criminals were removed. I haven't heard reporting to that effect but, I think it's pretty obvious based on known facts.

[saigon68]

2. Henry Hyde is a vicious Ass-Clown

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. What is wrong with these people???

Let me get this straight - Henry Hyde actually thinks he has the right to tell the PM of Japan that he can't go to a shrine in his own country?

So does that mean that once the 9/11 memorial is finished in NY, politicians from other countries can tell our president that he shouldn't go there??

Man these repukelicans are arrogant assholes. I sure wish they would keep their noses out of other countries' business!!

:grr:

[rockymountaindem]

6. I believe the shrine to which he is referring

is the shrine erected to honor Japan's war dead from WWII, and because it doesn't explicitly exclude war criminals, it therefore honors Japanese war dead who committed atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March. Japan's refusal to a) remove the war criminals from that shrine and b) the continuing visits made there by Japanese leaders has been a cause of controversy between Japan and many nations. Henry Hyde isn't the first person to bring this up.

I think there's a big difference between that shrine, which does honor known war criminals, and something like a future 9/11 memorial.

[Kagemusha]

7. I understand the criticisms but I've gotta say for the record...

Removing war criminals from a shrine dedicated to the dead is something I would run far, far away from. I would never breathe such a notion as a politician, or even as a private citizen. There are shrines that specifically do not honor war criminals in Japan; Koizumi just explicitly chooses to worship at THIS shrine, because there is a political point to be made about respecting ALL the Japanese dead, as if that is some crime. Well apparently to some people it is. But just on the.. politics of it, and I'm not saying you're advocating it, rockymountaindem, not going to put words in your mouth, but I would just not try to spit on a nation by asking it to do the religious equivalent of disinterment from a sacred shrine.

(Edited after reading up a little on the shrine. War criminals seem to be honored there on the technicality that they were soldiers on duty when killed i.e. POW's and the shrine honors all soldiers who served the Emperor in war.)

[psychopomp]

8. Have you been there? I have.

Now, by all appearances the shrine is just that; a shrine. However, the "museum" adjascent reveals something of the mindset with which the shrine was established and is promoted. It is a catalogue of materials and weapons used to further Japanese conquests portrayed in a manner that glorifies such exploits.

The war criminals were slipped in after the head priest who had resisted adding them passed away in 1978. http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060429p2a00m0na036000c.html

A simple solution: take them out again.

There is no political will to do so as the current government is extremely right-wing but largely keeping it under wraps with a media-savvy Prime Minister presiding over a cowed press. Sound familiar?

[Kagemusha]

13. I've read up about the subject a bit since my first post

No I haven't been there, but certainly online sources confirm every bit of what you have said. I find the slipping in to be despicable, and the lack of will to do anything to be rather sad.

However.

That does not make it the business of Henry Hyde. If I was an American politician, I wouldn't even DREAM of demanding that names be removed from a shrine, because foreigners have a right to freedom of religion too. Don't have to agree with it. In this case, I cetainly do not. But being seen to be dictating religious policy for a country where there is constitutional separation of church and state would not fail to be seen as tyranny.

Not, mind you, that's what Hyde is doing at all here. But, nonetheless, er.. ok. Let me explain an entirely different issue.

Hyde seems to be saying, he (Hyde) should have the power to dictate the religious worship of the Prime Minister of Japan (Koizumi) because Hyde has the power (he assumes anyway) to block Koizumi from defiling the sacred ground where Roosevelt stood to make his Day of Infamy speech. In other words, one state religion for the goose, another state religion for the gander. Respect America's religion of state by the wise practice of your own or suffer for heresy against the American Way.

That's just as bad. Every bit as bad. This is way out of line for a congressman; to even begin to equate the two - and for that matter, act like this is a state religion issue for Japan, which legally speaking, it sure as hell is not, and ought not be - is to act like, well, a bully, using a potential Congressional invitation as cause to wield a stick to engage in foreign policy, and specifically, to make personal (or if you think it goes that far, which is in dispute, state) religious functions a valid subject for hardball political dictation by a foreigner, Christian, and congressional chairman.

Would have been better to simply not invite him at all than to deliver an ultimatum like this. The shrine thing is Koizumi's taint by personal choice. But to make it America's business to beat him out of it is bad diplomacy to the extreme.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. Thanks for the explanation

It is still a shrine in Japan, right? So I say it is none of OUR business who goes there.

You know I am a big part of the peace movement in my city. There are MANY memebers in our group of peace activists who believe our own el pretzeldente is a war criminal (me included). I have absolutely no intenetion of ever worshipping at the shrine of GWB, should there ever be one. But it is certainly not my right to tell anyone else not to go there.

It just seems like Hyde could be worrying about more important issues. Say, that rising deficit for starters?

[rockymountaindem]

19. I wish Hyde would focus on the deficit too

but we should not underestimate the diplomatic consequences of such a position. While Mr. Hyde's personal views aren't the same as US official policy, his opinion reflects the official opinions of Japan's WWII victims; Korea, the Philippenes, and most importantly China. This is one of the little things that might make China a little more comfortable with the US.

On the other hand, it could just be Hyde's way of saying "don't honor war criminals". Just think "Bonzo Goes to Bitburg", except that the Japanese PMs do this every year.

As to whether or not an American politician has any right to tell Koizumi what to do, we should keep in mind that some of the war criminals honored at this shrine were guilty of crimes against American citizens (such as torture and medical experiments on POWs) and were convicted by tribunals which included American judges and prosecutors. As such, it is my personal opinion that Americans have a right to be offended by such visits to this shrine without being hypocritical, especially those who lived through the war. Whether or not this is good policy/foreign relations is another argument entirely, though, and one I'd be glad to have in another thread.

[allalone]

4. oh come on now

can't having any of that pagan stuff going on. :sarcasm:

[kurth]

5. What a moron

As Hyde was publicly pursuing the impeachment of Clinton, the Internet magazine Salon.com published a story about Hyde entitled "This Hypocrite Broke Up My Family." According to the story, from 1965 to 1969, Hyde conducted an extramarital sexual affair with Cherie Snodgrass. At the time, Snodgrass was married to another man with whom she had had three children...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hyde

[Nomen Tuum]

9. Gee, Henry, Remember your beloved Reagan at Bitburg?

now SHUT UP you adulterous ass! :-)

[gratuitous]

15. That immediately occurred to me, as well

Perhaps Koizumi is merely honoring the war criminals who were, in their own way, victims of World War II as well? Wasn't that the way Reagan put it when he was paying homage to his ideological Nazi forefathers?

[Kagemusha]

16. Were these SS who were individually convicted?

Or just part of an organization blamed for war crimes?

Granted, not much of a difference, but while I know for a fact Koizumi is claiming what gratuitous mentions above, I do know Japanese, and what I've heard of the language used by the shrine to honor these war criminals says quite clearly, these are martyrs of the faith (Shinto - in service of the Emperor). I hadn't taken at face value that this shirne praised and promoted these war criminals as such but, at least in terms of the literal reading of the language used for these individuals, this allegation is, in fact, correct. It's not as if the war criminals are the only ones so extolled but, it's not as if the Japanese authorities involved with this shrine made the slightest effort *not* to extoll, but merely pray for the peace of the souls, of these individual war criminals. So I have to admit, this is one point for the opposition.

There's a good argument that merely honoring all the soldiers is what this shrine should be but, the argument that's what it is, may not be as strong as I would've hoped upon closer observation.

[Ian David]

10. Republicans believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus as savior

[Ian David]

11. Ronald Reagan lays wreath on Nazi SS Graves in Germany

In February 1985, the White House deputy chief of staff, Michael Deaver, made an advance-planning visit to Bitburg. The 32 rows of headstones were covered with snow. Deaver was usually very skillful in carrying out his role as public relations maestro for Reagan, but this time he grew careless. He and his team failed to discover that 49 members of the Waffen SS were buried at Kolmeshohe -- and West German officials didn't mention the fact. A decision was made by the Reagan team not to include a visit to a concentration camp, as had been previously suggested by Kohl. The president said he didn't want to risk "reawakening the passions of the time" or offend his hosts by visiting a death camp, and his aides would later contend that the West Germans were privately pleased with this decision, implying that Kohl had made the offer only as a courtesy. Nonetheless, Reagan would soon learn he was about to reawaken passions that would place his administration in the center of a political firestorm.
In mid-April, White House press secretary Larry Speakes informed the media of the planned visit to Bitburg. When asked who was buried at Kolmeshohe, Speakes said he thought both American and German soldiers were there. Reporters soon discovered, however, that no American servicemen were in the cemetery; in fact, the remains of all U.S. soldiers had long since been removed from German soil. They also learned that a handful of the notorious SS were among the Germans interred at Kolmeshohe. The Waffen SS had been the combat branch of the Third Reich's elite guard, the Schutzstaffel. Created in 1923 to serve as Hitler's bodyguards, and expanded by Heinrich Himmler in the 1930s -- nearly one million men had served in the SS by the end of the war -- the Schutzstaffel included the Totenkopf, or "Death's Head" division, the men who had served as guards at the concentration camps. And a Waffen SS First Division battle group was responsible for the massacre of 71 American POWs at Malmedy, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. It wasn't clear if any of the SS troops buried at Kolmeshohe had participated in that or any other atrocity and, as Bitburg Mayor Theo Hallet pointed out, all German military cemeteries were likely to contain at least a few SS graves. Such distinctions, though, failed to placate those who were opposed to Reagan's visit on moral grounds.

<snip>

Reagan didn't help matters when he announced that he saw nothing wrong with visiting the cemetery because the German soldiers buried there were "victims of Nazism also . . . drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis." Equating Nazi soldiers with Holocaust victims, responded Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was "a callous offense for the Jewish people." Many questioned Reagan's claim that most of the SS soldiers at Kolmeshohe had been teenagers drafted against their will into serving the Third Reich. But further research revealed that, indeed, most of the 49 SS dead were between the ages of 17 and 20. Kohl confirmed that in the last days of the war he was able to avoid service in the SS because he was only 15, "but they hanged a boy from a tree who was perhaps only two years older with a sign saying TRAITOR" because he had tried to run away rather than serve.

<snip>

The political storm caused by the Bitburg visit came at a particularly bad time for the president. Though he had just won a landslide victory in his bid for a second term, Reagan was beset with problems. Despite a hard-sell campaign by the president, Congress rejected any kind of aid to the contra rebels battling Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. The U.S.-USSR arms control talks in Geneva were deadlocked. America's three-year economic expansion showed signs of a slowdown. And Reagan hoped to use the Bonn economic summit to persuade the other G7 nations (Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and West Germany) to negotiate a reduction of trade barriers that posed a grave threat to the world economy. The last thing the administration needed was the distraction caused by the Bitburg fiasco -- a fiasco that had lingering effects, as it left some to wonder whether Reagan, a master of political symbolism endowed with previously impeccable political instincts, was beginning to lose his magic touch.

More:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id342.htm&h=161&w=219&sz=12&tbnid=zBF4mfFWW2YduM:&tbnh=74&tbnw=102&hl=en&ei=ZA5rRLrsNoyE6QH9rPH_Bw&sig2=_THH1eo73z-8GeY4ori7lA&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dreagan%2Bbitburg%2Bcemetery%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN






http://www.union.edu/PUBLIC/HSTDEPT/walker/OldNSChronology/Stackelberg(2002)16.jpg



And Michael Moore was there with a group of Holocaust survivors holding a sign that said, "We flew here from Flint, Michigan to remind you that these people murdered our parents."

[Demeter]

18. Henry Hyde--Our First Embarrassment

Before Reagan, just after Nixon, there was Henry Hyde, a man born of the feminist movement and an affront to Constitutional citizens and intelligent people everywhere. Henry's 82, so he'll be falling off the edge of history soon, just not soon enough for the people he hurts just by being himself.