On the Right - Good Soldiers, Bad Soldiers.(World War II: remembering the war dead)(Brief Article)

NEW YORK, AUGUST 14

If you want a problem for which there is no solution-zero solution-it is the problem of the war dead. Twenty Koreans, protesting the appearance of the Japanese prime minister at a military shrine, actually severed the tips of their little fingers. That is a pretty vivid form of protest, not to be flirted with by aspiring violinists. Once upon a time I was seated next to the Philippine president at dinner in Manila and he told me of visiting Japan, a necessary diplomatic duty after his election. It was very difficult to do because Ferdinand Marcos had suffered grievously at the hands of the Japanese who invaded the Philippines. He arrived in Tokyo and was taken to the great banquet hall. After dinner he was whisked away to an adjacent chamber. "I saw there fifteen or twenty shriveled old men and suddenly I knew who they were: former generals and admirals of the hated Japanese military." The moment had come for the symbolic offering. "The Japanese prime minister told me to point to any one I liked, and his little finger would instantly be chopped off, as an indication of the sincerity of their repentance."

Marcos prevailed on his hosts to do something else by way of demonstrating national remorse, but that is the kind of thing the current prime minister walked into early in the week. He had promised, seeking his party's endorsement as leader, to honor the war dead on August 15, which is the day the Japanese surrendered to the United States. Objections immediately were registered-to "honor" that day meant to keep aflame the nationalist fires that consumed Korea, much of China, and the Pacific. So what did the prime minister do? He visited the shrine two days earlier. By such millimetric measurements are political abysses hurdled.

The whole business of the war dead is a recurrent problem. President Reagan ran square into it in 1985, when he found that his ...