I cannot tell you how the USS Greeneville surfaced under a Japanese fishing vessel, the Ehime Maru, sinking it with the apparent loss of nine lives. I cannot tell you if the presence of civilians in the sub contributed to the accident or if some piece of equipment malfunctioned or if someone was incredibly negligent. I can tell you, though, that it was an accident and that the United States has apologized enough.
But not for the Japanese. Now the vice chief of naval operations, Adm. William J. Fallon, has joined the group of apologizers. He follows President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, Tom Foley, and the sub's skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle. By now, the Japanese ought to get the message: We are sorry.
And we are. The accident was a tragedy. Most of those on board the Ehime Maru were students. It was a training vessel. Some of those missing and presumed dead are students. Their parents are in agony; they have suffered an incalculable loss. They are permitted to say anything they want, to demand anything that will salve their grief. That includes the demand to raise the Ehime Maru and recover the bodies of the dead.
But other Japanese -- everyone from editorial writers to opportunistic politicians -- are demanding more than they are entitled to. The constant calls for more and more apologies. The implications that, somehow, the Americans are unfeeling and cavalier about the loss of Japanese life. These are calumnies. The collision was a tragedy, but it was an accident. The Greeneville was not even in Japanese waters -- it was off Hawaii. If the Greeneville was being reckless, it was more than likely that American lives would have been in danger.
This constant call for one apology after another may well reflect a cultural difference between Japan and the United States, but it also smacks of epic hypocrisy. It took the Japanese forever to acknowledge that approximately 200,000 Asian women were forced to become the sex slaves of the Japanese military during World War II. Only grudgingly did Japan compensate some of them and even more grudgingly did it offer remorse. As far as some of the surviving "comfort women" are concerned, no apology has ever been forthcoming.
It has been the same story when it comes to other examples of Japanese war crimes before and during World War II. The Japanese have been extremely reluctant to own up to such barbarities as the so-called Rape of Nanking. That Chinese city was seized in 1937, and anywhere from 100,000 to 350,000 Chinese civilians were slaughtered, mutilated and raped by the Japanese Imperial Army. Once again, no apology has been forthcoming. Even the facts have been disputed.
The United States, in contrast, has become the most apologetic of nations. We are sorry for just about everything. Bill Clinton apologized in Africa for the enslavement of that continent's black peoples -- and he should have. We have apologized to the Indians of this continent and to this or that group which, in the past, was once a victim of discrimination and injustice. If you're wrong, you say you're sorry.
But it's hard to apologize for an accident. You're sorry it happened and you're sorry a boat's at the bottom of the ocean and you're sorry -- really sorry -- that people were killed. But there was no intent to harm anyone and no one was acting in an irresponsible fashion because he did not value the lives of non-Americans. This was Hawaii, for crying out loud.
Yet in Japan, the accident has been conflated with the behavior of some servicemen on Okinawa, a Japanese island. It has also been conflated with the remarks of U.S. Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston referring in an e-mail to Japanese lawmakers as "nuts . . . and a bunch of wimps." Put it all together and the newspaper Asahi Shimbun recently wondered if the security provided by the United States is worth all the trouble. "We cannot help asking whether security must come at the expense of people's lives," it said in a recent editorial. I cannot help asking if it ever heard of an accident.
So, one more time: We're sorry. All of America is sorry. Something went terribly wrong on the Greeneville and of course we apologize for the loss of the Ehime Maru and the apparent deaths of nine persons aboard. But we are the same guys who have provided Japan with a security shield ever since World War II, helped rebuild the country and have been its steadfast ally and best friend.
Don't make us sorry.
Richard Cohen
