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ABSTRACT
This article examines a series of wartime massacres (sook chings) conducted at various Southeast Asian sites with a view to teasing out broader lessons about justice , compensation, apology and the uses of memory both on the side of the victims as well as the nation that perpetrated the crimes. Characteristically, the sook chings of Southeast Asia, occurring in ethnically complex societies with mostly Chinese as victims, displayed a planned character of strictly ethnic and political "cleansing" that meets broad definitions of genocide. This article also considers historical memory. Obviously, as with Japanese war crimes in China, the sook chings of Southeast Asia are remembered locally. But also, as in China, remembrance of the sook chings has been modulated by the state, mostly in the interest of good relations and business links with Japan (with some notable exceptions). But, alongside the Nanjing Massacre, much contested in Japanese historiography, the sook ching massacres remain virtually unknown to the Japanese public, and have not become an issue between Japan and the Southeast Asian countries where these events occurred.
KEY WORDS: Southeast Asia, Japan, Genocide Convention, command responsibility, justice, memory
Of all Japanese wartime massacres, not surprisingly, it is the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 that has been subject to the most scrutiny, even acrimony. This was not always the case as the event was played down in China until the 1980s and it was not until the 1990s that Japan commenced to respond to the allegations. While few in Japan today would completely deny loss of civilian life at Nanjing, the Massacre nevertheless now takes its place as a powerful nationalist narrative in Chinese historiography, just as late post-war discussions on Nanjing have forced officiai Japanese cognizance of the debate, if not to strike a position. But if the Nanjing Massacre has irrevocably entwined itself as a major issue besetting official Japan-China relations, massacres of Chinese in Southeast Asia have hardly reached national attention in Japan. This is surprising because taken together, wartime massacres where the Chinese were victims in Southeast Asia may have exceeded that of Nanjing - if not in actual numbers of victims, at least in the degree of overall planning and co-ordination in prosecuting the massacre.
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