About RNRC - Background

According to the 2000 U.S. census, the population of Americans of Asian decent reached 11.6 million or 4.1%, a majority of whom were born and raised in countries throughout East and Southeast Asia. Most of them still carry vivid and painful memories, scars and deep wounds of the Pacific War, 1937-1945.

This historic animosity still defines relationships within the larger Asian American community today where some Filipino American families will not patronize Japanese American businesses, some Korean Americans will not buy Japanese cars, and some Chinese American parents will not permit their children to date or marry Americans of Japanese descent. Therefore were the Japanese Government to issue an unequivocal apology and make due reparations, it will not only build a genuine foundation for trust between Japan and its neighbors but will usher in a new era of healing among the Asian American communities in this country.

Unfortunately the Japanese Government has, to date, steadfastly denied its war-time responsibilities although publicly maintaining it has issued repeated apologies. To substantiate its claim, the government cites the apology offered by Prime Minister Murayama in 1995, conveniently forgetting that after offering the apology, Prime Minister Murayama failed to obtain support in the Diet for an official apology by a margin of almost 2 to1. In the meantime a national campaign organized by a former Education minister gathered 4.5 million signatures against Murayama‚s resolution. Therefore, while it is true that apologies have been offered, they are personal in nature and remain inadequate as a substitute for a formal and unequivocal national apology.

As to demands for reparation, the Japanese government invariably proclaims the fulfillment of its obligations by referring to the San Francisco Peace Treaty and other international agreements. It ignores the fact that these treaties are primarily political documents formulated to resolve issues between governments. They neither absolve Japan of its moral responsibility nor extinguish individual claims brought by victims of its atrocities around the world.

Instead of heeding the example set by postwar Germany, Japan has been stonewalling legitimate demands for apology and reparation, while it escalates its efforts to whitewash or bury this chapter of history and to encourage collective amnesia in Japan. Japan‚s unconscionable stonewalling has united Asian Americans including Japanese Americans in a redress movement to call for accountability from Japan. This movement is informed and inspired by the successful Japanese American struggle for a national apology and reparation from the U.S. government that resulted in the passage of the Civil
Liberties Act of 1988.

To Asian Americans, the horror of the Pacific War is best symbolized by a single episode, the "Rape of Nanking (Nanjing)" in 1937, when some 300,000 Chinese men, women and children in the then capital city of China were indiscriminately tortured, raped, and slaughtered in a six-week orgy unleashed by the advancing Japanese Imperial Army. Thus Asian Americans who founded an organization dedicated to bringing about appropriate and timely redress from the Japanese Government called it the "Rape of Nanking" Redress Coalition (RNRC). The RNRC is an inclusive, non-profit, tax-exempt community-based organization.

The primary purpose of the international conference is to document and educate the international community of the need for the Japanese government to end its fifty years of denial of what happened during the war and to accept its full responsibilities to the victims and victimized.