The University of Pennsylvania (UPENN) in Philadelphia recently finished a major renovation of the Arts, Research and Culture House (ARCH) building making use of a $15M anonymous contribution.  The ARCH building was originally built in 1928 by the Christian Association, which owned the building until 1999 when it was acquired by UPENN.  In the renovation, many stained glass windows with symbols representing foreign lands were kept.  One of these symbols is the Rising Sun symbol which is the military flag of Japan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_Flag).  This has led to a controversy initiated by Korean students on campus because the Rising Sun symbol is associated with the Japanese military which inflicted massive and inhumane atrocities all over Asia during WWII.  UPENN’s position is that this stained glass symbol was put there in 1928 before WWII.  The opposition’s position is that although the Rising Sun symbol might not be offensive in 1928, it is definitely offensive after 1945, and even more so today because the Japanese government is still denying the existence of those atrocities.  Furthermore, the Japanese military already began its imperialistic aggression toward China and Korea starting in the late 19^th century.  The controversy at UPENN is still going on:  http://www.thedp.com/article/2014/03/arch-rising-sun.

Well-known American film director Oliver Stone’s talk on 8/6/13 in Hiroshima in which he compared Germany and Japan, and chastised Japan’s leaders for their revisionist policy with respect to what Japan did in WWII. His talk can be seen here:

http://english.sina.com/2013/0812/618220.html

A 65-year-old mysterious mass-murder case in Japan that may be related to Unit 731’s biological weapons, but now we may never know the truth:

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/10/20/man-who-sought-truth-in-mass-murder-teigin-case-dies-in-tokyo/?fb_action_ids=10151751847208562&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=[555889681143014]&action_type_map=[%22og.likes%22]&action_ref_map=[]

New book Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves by Pei Pei Qiu, Su Zhiliang, and Chen Lifei just published by University of British Columbia Press, 2013. This book features the personal stories of the survivors of the devastating system of sexual enslavement. Offering insight into the conditions of these women’s lives prior to and after the war, it points to the social, cultural, and political environments that prolonged their suffering. Through personal narratives from twelve Chinese “comfort station” survivors, this book reveals the unfathomable atrocities committed against women by Japan during the war.

http://www.alpha-canada.org/historical-issues/testimonies-from-chinese-comfort-women-published-by-ubc

In 1995 around the 50^th Anniversary of the end of WWII, General Sweeney gave a testimony before the Committee on Rules and Administration, U.S. Senate at a time when there was a movement to rewrite history by depicting Japan as the victim, and not the aggressor, of WWII.  General Sweeney argued that when the facts are considered, President Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only justified by the circumstances of his time, but was a moral imperative that precluded any other option.  For more information on General Sweeney’s testimony, see:  https://eahnc.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/senate-testimony-of-major-general-charles-w-sweeney-may-11-1995/.

This document is a record of a war crime trial by the government of the Netherlands in Batavia (now the Indonesian capital Jakarta).  The document describes in detail how Japanese military officers took 35 Dutch women who were detained at concentration camps in Semarang on the Island of Java and forced them to serve as sex slaves at four camps in the state.  This document was supposed to be among the proof that prompted a 1993 statement by then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono,  in which Japan acknowledged and apologized for its military’s involvement in the sex slavery.  For more information, see:  http://www.alpha-canada.org/historical-issues/released-document-shows-japans-forced-mobilization-of-comfort-women.