Gen. Hideki Tojo

A May 12 story states that 27 conservative lawmakers from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party warmly endorsed the new movie about Gen. Hideki Tojo. The guest list of the 161-minute epic, “Pride: A Fateful Moment,” reads like a “Who’s Who” of the LDP’s right wing who glorify Tojo and portray the brutal invasion of Asia as a just campaign to liberate oppressed Asian neighbors from Western colonial rule.

It sickens me to see that there is no remorse by the Japanese for their rape of Nanjing, where unarmed women, children, babies and civilians were brutally and savagely killed, totaling more than the combined death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I would hope that the U.S. ambassador to Japan would express our displeasure at this false repudiation of any wartime blame for the atrocities committed by the Japanese.

ALBERT SCHOENFIELD

Los Osos

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I was born a U.S. citizen in 1937 in China after my father returned to the States. One day in 1942 my family fled the village and left my grandmother behind. The villagers were hiding in tall grass on the slopes of a mountain when Japanese soldiers sprayed the slopes with machine guns from above. When we returned to the village, we found my grandmother killed outside of the house, and the house was still smoking, with only four walls standing. Having no food or shelter, we struggled to survive. I learned some of my grandmother’s kin were forced to fill up with water, then the Japanese soldiers jumped on their bellies; some were implanted with wicks to use body fat to light the wicks.

There is evidence, including diaries and pictures taken by Christian missionaries, to prove Japanese brutality, including the [1937] massacre in Nanjing. The Japanese right claims the victims in this massacre were mostly soldiers in civilian clothing.

My grandmother and my grandmother’s kin who were killed were not soldiers. The Japanese were simply butchers; they killed, they raped, they burned and they bayoneted babies to death. They practiced brutality anywhere and even for enjoyment. Their claim that the U.S. firebombing and atomic bombing should also be treated as war crimes is beyond one’s imagination that Japan is a civilized country with logical, thinking people. May God have mercy on you, Japan.

JOHN W. WONG

Arcadia

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Your article states the film portrays the “American chief war crimes prosecutor as a vengeful bungler who fails to produce any real evidence against Tojo.”

May I present the following information? The “vengeful bungler” was my father-in-law, Eugene D. Williams. He kept elaborate records of the war crime trials. After his death I gave these records of the daily trial progress to USC.

In the more than a year he was in Japan he was well received by Japanese society and given various gifts, many of which are now in my home. He was quite pro Japanese before WWII and even more so, culturally, after his “tour” in Japan.

HENRY KEHLER

Long Beach