Australia Seeks Future More Peaceful Than Its Past

A recently formed security pact forged between the democratic nations Australia and Japan has incited fury amongst many Australians reluctant to forget atrocities of war committed against their ancestors in WWII.

Since Australian Prime Minister John Howard initiated the alliance earlier this month during a trip to Japan, calls have been made by members of the Australian public asking Parliament to recall the two nations’ histories.

During the conflict of WWII, Australian soldiers suffered mightily at the hand of their Japanese enemy. Imprisoned in POW camps, Australians were starved, tortured and denigrated.

The horrors of war have recently been in the media spotlight with several Australian women asking for acknowledgements and apologies from Japan for the treatment of said women during WWII. Used as sources of "comfort" by multiple Japanese soldiers, the atrocities committed against these women goes beyond what most would consider being within the realms of ‘moral’ wartime conduct.

Now, in their later years, these women seek peace in the form of formal apologies. Japan has offered none.

And so further, Australians are enraged – that their Prime Minister would align himself with such a nation.

And yet the fury embodied within these veterans, war sympathises and members of the general public is a concentrated form of ambidexterity.

Many of the most vociferous protesters are one and the same as the strong group who rallied against saying "sorry" to Australia’s own indigenous people, for crimes in our history equally as repulsive as those committed in WWII by Japan.

John Howard was one such person, who became famous for refusing to apologise on Australia’s behalf for stealing children in a thinly veiled attempt at genocide of Indigenous Australians.

The past is the past, many Australians argued. We can be sorry for them but not sorry to them, as it is not the acts of this generation that need repenting.

There are flaws in argument in each side to the story – for the peace sought to be reconciled between Australia and its Indigenous people and that between Australia and Japan.

Do the children stolen from their families deserve an apology? Of course they do. So too do the women who had soldiers forced upon them during WWII.

But should the unease of history affect today’s peace? Surely not.

Indigenous Australians reserve the right to remain resentful about the treatment of their people. Australia is similarly entitled to displeasure about its historical relationship with Japan. No-one is asking that the history books be rewritten and these horrors erased. Yet surely peaceful relationships in today’s world are preferable to the hostilities of the past.

I argue that reconciliations take place not out of fear of returning to yesteryear’s horrors, but in the hope that our descendents will have nothing to apologise for on our behalves.