The movie, Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altman and Ryan Reynolds as her lawyer, tells the story of how the Austrian Nazis stole the art work and wealth of their Jewish neighbors and refused to return them after World War II. It is estimated that 100,000 works of art still have not been returned to their original owners. There is little "eagerness" to clear themselves, and little "readiness to see justice done." There may be remorse (at having been found out), but no repentance, for repentance means acting to change your behavior. Austria was proud of being staunchly Catholic but they welcomed Hitler's takeover and were morally complicit in his treatment of the Jewish population. It is so easy for cultural Christians to succumb to the emotional nationalism of the moment.

My first recollection of life was August 15, 1945. Over the radio we heard that Japan had surrendered. My mother gave me the dinner gong, that was used to summon guests to meals, and told me I could take it out into the street and ring it. I took the gong and its gavel (a wooden hammer), and proudly banged it for a long time outside. I was four years of age. A week or so later I was dressed in some sort of costume, and, with my sister, who was arrayed as Britannia with a helmet, shield and trident, and entered into the Victory Parade that marched along the street. I remembered being scared by the bagpiper.

The movie Unbroken, tells the story of how Louis Zamperini was treated by a sadistic guard in Japanese POW camps. This guard avoided capture after the war and was never prosecuted for his crimes against humanity. While I have read many books about World War II, I had never read a comprehensive account of the war against Japan until I picked up a copy of Max Hasting's, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. His accounts of the battles for the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the sea battles of the Pacific are searing. What a price was paid by those who fought in them. How anyone came out of these conflicts with any sense of sanity is a miracle. The conditions in China, the POW and intern camps, and the devastation caused by the kamikaze pilots and our own bombing in Japan are as horrifying as any accounts of the Holocaust in Europe. Hasting's conclusions are damning:

"Yet the new Japan proved distressingly reluctant to confront the historic guilt of the old. Its spirit of denial contrasted starkly with the penitence of post-war Germany. Though successive Japanese prime ministers expressed formal regret for Japan's wartime actions, the country refused to pay reparations to victims, or to acknowledge its record in school history texts…Germany has paid almost $6 billion to 1.5 million victims of the Hitler era…By contrast, modern Japan goes to extraordinary lengths to escape any admission of responsibility, far less of liability for compensation, towards its wartime victims….Both the policy of denial and the alternative doctrine of moral equivalency are unconvincing, when Japanese brutality was institutionalized for many years before the Allies commenced their own excesses, if excesses they were…Many Japanese actions, including the torture and beheading of prisoners, reflected a gratuitous pride in the infliction of suffering.

Wartime Japan was responsible for almost as many deaths in Asia as was Nazi Germany. Yet only a few modern Japanese acknowledge as much, and incur the disdain or outright hostility of their fellow countrymen for doing so. The nation is guilty of a collective rejection of historical fact. The treatment of subject peoples and prisoners described in this book is wholly unaccepted by most modern Japanese, even where supported by overwhelming evidence. This sustains a chasm between our culture and ours, which cannot be justified or dismissed by mere reference to differences of attitude between East and West….It seems to me that dismay, indeed repugnance, should concentrate upon the refusal of the Japanese people, including their political, educational and corporate leaders, honestly to acknowledge their history. They still seek to excuse, and even to ennoble, the actions of their parents and grandparents, so many of whom forsook humanity in favor of perversion of honor and an aggressive nationalism which should properly be recalled with shame. As long as such a denial persists, it will remain impossible for the world to believe that Japan has come to terms with the horrors which it inflicted upon Asia almost two-thirds of a century ago." (pp.548-550)

Why this denial? I once asked a Korean pastor why the Gospel has found such a reception in Korea, and yet has had a minimal impact upon Japan. He said that the difference is that the character of the people is different. The Japanese sense of bushido – the Samurai honor code – is so great that they cannot admit their errors. The military at the end of the war wanted to continue fighting despite its futility because they could not face the reality of defeat. It took the intervention of the Emperor to order them to accept surrender. Many on Saipan and elsewhere, at the order of the Emperor, took their own lives rather than surrender. A friend of mine, Joe Reece, recently attended the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. There was only one Japanese who surrendered rather than being killed. The Japanese delegation would not permit him to sit with them because he had dishonored them. The Americans invited him to sit with them. Seventy years later they still cannot accept their defeat.

Consciousness of sin is essential to Judaism and Christianity. Without it a person is self-deluded into thinking that he cannot be wrong. The culture of Shintoism, prevalent in Japan, demonstrates this self-delusion. It can also affect anyone who will not recognize their failures, errors, faults, and rebellion against God. "There is no one righteous, not even one…There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 3:10,23)

The reason many people do not bend the knee to the Savior of the world, and follow him is because they cannot face the facts about themselves. They are self-deluded. Redemption begins with conviction of sin and repentance. There is no other way.

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