Japan's new PM rejects WWII 'war criminal' label
Afp, Tokyo
Japan's new premier Shinzo Abe risked new controversy yesterday ahead of a fence-mending visit to Asian neighbors, insisting World War II leaders tried by US-led forces were not "war criminals." The conservative leader, who has come under repeated grilling over his views on history, rejected the "war criminals" label one day after making more conciliatory remarks about Japan's past. "The people who are said to be so-called Class-A criminals were tried and convicted as war criminals at the Tokyo tribunal, but they were not war criminals under domestic laws," Abe said during a parliamentary session. "That also was the case for my relative," he added. Abe, 52, is a grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, who served in the wartime cabinet and helped supervise the industrialization of Manchukuo -- the puppet state Japan set up in northeastern China. After the war, Kishi was jailed by US forces as a top war criminal although he was not tried. Kishi later served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Abe, Japan's first prime minister born after World War II, is seen as holding more hardline views on history than his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. But Abe is set to visit China and South Korea from Sunday in a bid to mend sour ties. The two countries, which suffered under Japanese rule, refused to invite Koizumi due to outrage over his repeated visits to a shrine that honors 2.5 million war dead and 14 "Class-A", or top, war criminals. Abe has refused to say if he will visit the Yasukuni shrine as prime minister. On Friday, he said that war criminals should have been freed when Japan signed the 1951 San San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the US occupation of Japan. "Japan achieved independence by daringly accepting the condition of not freeing those imprisoned unless it has permission from the Allies, even they should have been freed under international law as soon as a peace treaty was signed," Abe said. "Japan was not in the position capable of lodging objections over its relations with other countries when signing the treaty," he noted. "These people were not tried under Japanese laws," he said, referring to war criminals. "It's a fact that I, as prime minister, must not decide whether they are war criminals or not."
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