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Japan is working hard at forgetting. Its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, suggests in code-talk that Japan was the victim of World War II — no war criminals at all, thank you — and its influential conservative press, with a wink from the government, is determined to whitewash the country's use of sex slaves during the war. This sort of thing can be catching. Maybe others will forget why they consider Japan a friend.
日本正为遗忘而忙得欢。安倍表示，日本是二战的受害者，日本的主流保守媒体应暗承政府之圣意，坚定的洗白战争期间的慰安妇问题。这种遗忘可以传染给其他人-或许其他国家可以遗忘掉日本是个值得信赖的伙伴。
Certainly the task will be harder when the film "Unbroken," directed by Angelina Jolie, hits theaters on Christmas Day. The movie, like the book by Laura Hillenbrand , is the story of Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner whose plane crashed in the Pacific during World War II and who wound up spending two and half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. He was horribly brutalized by his captors — starved, tortured physically and psychologically, worked nearly to death, and so often beaten viciously and capriciously that the sickening thud of a kendo stick on a human skull will trail you for days.
当然，日本的企图会变得更难一些，就在这个圣诞，安吉丽娜·茱莉执导的新片-坚不可摧-将会上映。电影根据Laura Hillenbrand的小说拍摄。电影讲述了Louis Zamperini的经历：飞机在二战时坠毁，在日本人的战俘营关押了两年半。他受尽了日本人的折磨-饥饿，拷打，精神折磨，极度劳累，经常被无故殴打以至于你会感到日本人的大棒打你头的声音会余音绕颅三日不止。
Men died from such abuse, but not Zamperini. He lived long enough to cooperate with both the book and the movie, dying just this year (July 2) at the age of 97. He reconciled with the Japanese. That's more than what Japan has done with its past.
很多人被折磨致死，但是Zamperini得以幸存。他的经历后来就变成小说的电影，这位老兵今年去世，享年97岁。
The country has much to atone for. Japan mistreated prisoners of war and even established a medical research team — the infamous Unit 731 — that conducted experiments on captured enemy soldiers, most of them Chinese. Among other atrocities, the unit performed hideous vivisections without anesthetic on living men, removing organs or limbs for some concocted medical purpose. Dr. Mengele might have turned away in horror.
日本待赎罪的多着呢。日本人非人道的残忍的对待战俘，甚至进行药物试验-如臭名昭著的731部队，对战俘，其大部分是中国人，进行生化试验。731的暴行罄竹难书:活体解剖，摘取器官，切割肢体。其残忍程度甚至会吓坏纳粹的死亡天使Dr. Mengele。
It is not my purpose here to revive anti-Japanese sentiment, which in war-time America commingled with racism to produce the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps. But certain important Japanese figures seem intent on reviving the past by revising it. With an implied nod from Abe, they have put enormous pressure on the Asahi Shimbun newspaper to retract stories exposing Japan's conscription of thousands of women to serve as sex slaves for the military during the war. Increasingly, this historic fact is being denounced as a fiction. Too many witnesses — not to mention victims — insist otherwise.
本文作者在此并无意于挑动反日情绪，反日情绪在二战时导致了美国的日裔美国人集中营。但是一些日本精英看来就是要跳动反日情绪，复活军国主义。仗着安倍的暗中支持，他们向朝日新闻施压，撤销关于慰安妇的报道。变本加厉的是，铁一般的历史事实被诬蔑为虚构。好在另一边还有大量的受害者的证人坚持说出历史真相。
This is a serious matter. First, it is unspeakably ugly to once again deny these women their humanity by saying they were volunteers — prostitutes — and not sex slaves. Second, the attempt to erase the whole sordid "comfort women" episode is part of a ferocious attempt to rewrite history. Before becoming prime minister and at least once since assuming office, Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where many World War II figures, including war criminals, are memorialized. To the Chinese, the Koreans and other Asians who fought and were brutally occupied by Japan (the Rape of Nanking is a particularly gruesome chapter), the honor accorded the Yasukuni dead is horrendously offensive.
这是严重的问题。首先，一而再的说当年的受害妇女是志愿成为慰安妇，称她们为妓女，这是极其丑陋恶心的行为。其次，这种清除慰安妇历史的企图是日本人改写历史重写历史企图的一部分。成为首相之前，安倍就多次参拜靖国神社。对于中国人，韩国人，以及其他受过日本侵略的国家而言，靖国神社里的恶灵得到的供奉和荣耀就是挑衅。
One of the most startling parts of Hillenbrand's book is her recounting of what happened to the POWs once Japan surrendered. Some were executed, but the liberated ones were allowed to amble out of their camps and into nearby towns and cities. The Japanese police who, just moments earlier, might have shot a POW on sight, were soon engaged in the hunt for U.S.-designated war criminals. Japan did an instant 180; Emperor Hirohito had ordered surrender and cooperation. Japan surrendered and cooperated.
Hillenbrand小说中令人吃惊的是日本投降之后战俘们的遭遇。一些战俘被处死，被释放的战俘走出战俘营，来到附近的城镇。而日本警察，前一刻还在枪毙战俘，下一刻就在追捕美国政府指定的战犯。日本完全换了张面皮，天皇宣布投降，接着日本投降了。
These sudden reversals have been a feature of Japanese culture ever since Commodore Matthew Perry forcibly opened the country to U.S. trade in 1854. The nation, both humbled and instructed, swiftly modernized and by 1905 had beaten mighty Russia in a war that Western conventional wisdom thought it would lose. Japan similarly adopted U.S.-style democracy after World War II and literally rose from the ashes (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the often-overlooked incineration of Tokyo) to become so substantial an economic power that China supplanted it as No. 2 only recently. These were breathtaking achievements.
这种突然转变是日本文化的一大特性，打从佩里武力打开日本国门时就是如此。日本民族保持着谦卑，听着天皇训诫，急速的现代化，并于1905年打败强大的俄国。二战后，日本照搬了美式民主，从废墟上崛起为经济强国（直至最近才被中国超过）。这些是巨大的成就。
Now, though, a more ominous reversal may be underway. With Japan's economy once again showing weakness — it has recently fallen into recession — the mythologizing of the past may well accelerate. This would only aggravate the insult to Japan's victims and further unsettle its neighbors, China and South Korea in particular. Japan's revisionists have their eye on the past. Others wonder what this means for the future.
现在，一个不祥的转变又在形成中。因为日本的经济颓势，日本的军国主义可能会加速。但这只会加重的侮辱日本的受害者，更加使中韩等邻国不安。日本的军国主义者痴迷于过去，中韩等邻国则警惕于未来。
