Japanese monk visits war memorial, apologizes for wartime crimes

Japanese monk Iwata Ryuzo knelt down and prayed at a memorial for the war of resistance against Japanese aggression Sunday in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

For four times, the 70-year-old monk lit incense, chanted scriptures and prayed for the Chinese victims massacred by Japanese aggressors.

"I apologize to the Chinese people from the bottom of my heart, " he told Xinhua in an interview. "But some Japanese are not willing to do so... Unless we are sincerely introspective and apologetic about our past, the tragedies I see here today would be likely to repeat themselves in the future."

The war memorial in Shenyang is also known as the Memorial Hall of the Sept. 18 Incident in 1931, when Japanese intruding troops blew up a section of the Dalian-Harbin Railway near Shenyang and started a massive armed aggression of northeast China.

Iwata Ryuzo, born in 1936 in Taipei, had voiced his apologies to the Chinese people in nine cities including Shanghai, Wuhan, Changchun and Harbin. He is expected to reach Dalian Monday to unbosom his apologies.

Source: Xinhua