Japanese monk continues "apology trip" for Chinese war victims

Kneeling down and praying for Chinese victims of Japanese troops' invasion some 60 years ago, a senior Japanese monk is continuing his trip in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province to express his deep apologies.

Iwata Ryuzo, a 70-year-old Japanese monk, chanted scriptures and performed confessional rituals at a notorious Japanese germ warfare site and a memorial for Chinese war heroes based in Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang over the past two days.

He had visited Shanghai, Wuhan and Changchun to express his sorrow for Chinese victims during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression during World War II before arriving in Harbin on Thursday.

The germ warfare site is located in a suburb of Harbin, where the secretive Japanese detachment Unit 731 conducted biochemical experiments on live people.

An exhibition hall was established on the old headquarters of Unit 73 to show the brutality of Japanese troops.

More than 3,000 Chinese were killed by the germ experiments at that time with some 300,000 others affected by the tests, according to Ma Tianlong, a narrator with the exhibition hall.

Shocked by the exhibits, Ryuzo said it is "inhumane" to perform such tests on Chinese people. "The Japanese invaders are devils."

Ryuzo was born in Taipei in 1936 and went back home to Tokyo in 1945. After 18 years working as a bank clerk, he became a monk at the age of 45.

Before his first visit to China in August 2005 with the aim of praying for Chinese war victims, Ryuzo paid five visits to the Republic of Korea, praying for the war victims there.

His second trip to China began in April this year and will last about two months. His next destinations include Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, and Shanghai Municipality.

A sincere Sino-Japanese friendship could be nurtured only when Japanese government acknowledges the history and genuinely apologizes to the Chinese, said Ryuzo.

The monk said false textbooks compiled by right-wingers in Japan has distorted the history of the Japanese invasion in China and Japan's younger generation now can not learn what actually happened during the war.

He expressed the hope that his actions will help young Japanese people learn about the Japanese army's atrocities on Chinese people during the war and help promote future relations between the two countries.

Relations between China and Japan have been strained in recent months due to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo war shrine that defends Japan's war crimes, as well as disputes over Japanese history textbooks and territorial issues.

Source: Xinhua