Collective guilt

The anti-Japanese demonstrations in China are both spontaneous and
Government-controlled. They are spontaneous because there is a strong
hatred of the Japanese among the Chinese people, and they are Government
controlled because no demonstration can occur in China without Government
sanction. The strength of the Chinese feeling, so long after the events of
the Japanese massacres of Chinese that occurred before and during WWII,
comes as something of a surprise to most Westerners. But, we must remember
that estimates are that ca. 35,000,000 Chinese were killed from ca.
1935-1945. In Nanking alone at least 500,000 Chinese were raped and killed.
Such atrocities have rarely been seen on this planet.
I learnt about the depth of Chinese feeling when I had a Chinese Fellow from
Taiwan, but originally from the mainland, come to work for me about 20 years
ago at the NIH in Bethesda MD, USA. When he told me where he had rented an
apartment I realized that it was the same place as my then Japanese
post-doctoral Fellow. So I innocently suggested that they share a car
driving into work. The Chinese fellow adamantly refused, he said he would
never drive in the same car as a Japanese. I was taken aback, and I told
him that the Japanese fellow was a very nice person, who was too young to
have been personally involved in any atrocities and I mentioned the question
of "collective guilt." To cut a long story short, after some time, when
they had gotten to know each other, the two became good friends, and they
not only shared the ride to/from work, but the Japanese guy sold his car to
the Chinese one when he left.
This was one of my small contributions to international understanding. But,
what was very disturbing to me was that neither of the two had heard about
the Holocaust, the German-incited murder to 6,000,000 Jews in Europe during
WWII. Naturally I educated them about this. It came up with the Japanese
fellow because he was from Hiroshima, and both he and his wife had survived
the atomic blast as children. His wife had been protected with her
schoolmates by a small hill within the city that shielded their school, and
he had been on an outing outside the city, from where he had seen the
mushroom cloud. All their families had been wiped out by the blast.
Naturally it was a huge psychological barrier for them to come to the US,
and it just so happened that he came to work for me. He was quite amazed by
my stories of the Jewish Holocaust, and I think it gave him some measure of
understanding that things were not all black and white as far as Americans
were concerned (although I supported the dropping of the A-bomb).
It is clear that each group knows its own victimhood intimately, but often
is very ignorant of that of others. This question reoccurred some time
later when the series "Holocaust" appeared on American TV, and provoked a
great deal of comment. The two Japanese fellows I had working for me then
came to see me, and asked me why the German Jews did not fight back. Of
course, I told them that the German Jews wanted to show their loyalty to
Germany, and to fight back would have proven their disloyalty (even though
the orders themselves were illegal). To illustrate the point I remembered
that the Japanese Americans in California had been rounded up in 1942 and
sent to "concentration camps", and there were very few cases of resistance,
even though about one third of them were actually Japanese-born. I said if
the Japanese with their military culture were not able to bring themselves
to resist being collected and shipped away, how much more difficult was it
for the Jews who were not militaristic and were often many generations
German. I think after that they understood better. Of course, neither
group knew what awaited them at the end of the railway line, but at least
the Japanese Americans were not intended to be massacred, while the Jews
were.
After the war very few Jews took revenge on the Germans (and the Poles,
Ukrainians, Latvians, etc, etc.), not only because the Jews are more
civilized and do not subscribe to the concept of collective guilt, but also
they were exhausted by so much blood and killing. However, the Chinese are
not so inclined, and given half a chance they would gladly kill large
numbers of Japanese. The problem is how to finally resolve these
internecine conflicts, so that they never recur. How to do this for the
Indians (Hindus) and Pakistanis (Muslims) and for the Israelis (Jews) and
Palestinians (Muslims). Its basically the same problem, and both sides have
to be prepared to stop the on-going conflict and live and let live. The
kind of boycott that has been recently introduced into Britain, by academics
no less, only tends to exacerbate these problems, and by scoring points for
one side reduces the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.