"A dangerous stalemate between Japan and South Korea" by Daniel Sneider, Washington Post, Oct 31.
Daniel Sneider is associate director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and co-director of the center's Divided Memories and Reconciliation project.

"Relations between U.S. allies Japan and South Korea have descended to another low, fueled by issues of wartime history and still-poisonous legacy of Japan's harsh colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945. The two countries' leaders have not met since May 2012, and polls shown that three times more Koreans view China favorably than Japan.

"Unfortunately for U.S., the reality is that neither Japan nor South Korea seems capable of finding a path toward reconciliation on it's own. In addition, U.S. bears a historical responsibility for the unfinished nature of the postwar settlement and the subsequent Cold War system that blocked reconciliation.

"The biggest issue on the agenda should be compensation for all individual victims of the system of forced labor the Japanese empire used during wartime - beginning with the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including "comfort women" who were coerced into sexual servitude.

"In July, two high courts ordered major Japanese firms - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Nippon Steel and Sumimoto Metal Corp. - to pay Koreans who were forced to labor in their factories and mines during the war. Korean historians believe that about 1.2 million Koreans were forced to work during the war and that some 300 Japanese companies still in operation used such workers.

"Japan should follow the model of the German Fund for the Future, formally known as the Foundation "Rememberance, Responsibility, and Future." The 5.2 billion euro fund, founded in 2000, is a joint project of the German Government and the German private corporations that used forced labor during World War II. In cooperaton with international partener organizations,
it has compensated more than 1.6 million survivors in almost 100 countries. The foundation continues to conduct research and education programs.

"Senior Clinton administration officials , led by then-deputy Treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, played a central role in the complex negotiation with multi-nation governments and citizen groups that led to the formation of the German fund and a similar one in Austria. Their involvement was prompted in part by lawsuits filed against German firms in U.S. courts. U.S. officials saw it as in the country's national interest to reduce tentions with Germany and resolve the issue for all forced laborers, not just those filing suit.

"This would, of course, be bold and politically difficult step for all nations involved. The U.S. must abandon its position of neutrality on wartime history issues, as it is not really a neutral party, and step forward. Japanese leaders must break with the habits of defensiveness about the past and take the initiative. And Japan's wartime victims must be ready to relinquish the use of history as potential weapon."
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The first step seems to sue the Japanese firms among those 300
firms, which are operating in U.S. Then U.S. Treasury may assemble a Japan fund to resolve our past. Anyone willing to step up to change history?