Ambassadors Blow-Out Aso

[Mulboyne]

Telegraph: Diplomats snub 'stunt' over PoWs in Japan
A proposal by Japan's nationalist foreign minister for a service to commemorate PoWs who died in Japan was in tatters yesterday when it emerged that ambassadors from Allied nations would not attend. Taro Aso, whose family firm used British and Australian PoWs as slave labour during the Second World War, is understood to have invited the British, Dutch, Australian and United States ambassadors to the Juganji Shrine in Osaka for a ceremony on Monday. But yesterday his office rescinded the invitations, apparently because of accusations that the event was not a genuine show of remorse but a stunt to soften his hawkish image and boost his campaign to succeed as prime minister when Junichiro Koizumi stands down in September.

[Catoneinutica]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19672247-31477,00.html

Apparently, thousand of dead Koreans don't matter, but when news got out that Allied prisoners also died at the Aso works in Kyushu, Aso went into full-tilt damage-control mode, inviting the ambassadors of Australian, Canada, the US, etc., to a visit to Juganji Temple in Osaka, where there remains of some Allied POWs were apparently held for a time. When this visit seemed to be devolving into a PR debacle, Aso uninvited them and said he was paying a "personal" visit.

[Mulboyne]

SMH: Downer faces ghosts of war

THOUGH they are foreign ministers, they are also sons, and between them they span the opposite sides of a war. Alexander Downer, the son of a prisoner of war, will on Wednesday meet Taro Aso, whose family mining company worked prisoners of war to death. This will be their first meeting since Mr Aso withdrew the Australian ambassador's invitation to a service for prisoners of war after historians and others questioned it. His sincerity was doubted because the Buddhist temple where the service was to have taken place had been emptied of Allied soldier remains at the end of World War II, and because Mr Aso's family, which built its wealth from its mines, has never apologised to victims. Herald reports, which aired views including that Mr Aso was engaging in a propaganda effort to assist his faltering prime ministerial campaign, have been followed in Japan where there is scant knowledge of his family history. Ultimately Mr Aso made a lone vigil to the temple.

[Buraku]

Foreign Minister Taro Aso expressed his displeasure on Monday at the U.S. Congress for introducing a draft resolution urging Japan to apologize over the wartime sex-slave issue.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070219p2a00m0na013000c.html