By Cliff Potts — Editor-in-Chief, WPS.News | Truth, Justice, and Accountability in Global History
September 2, 2025

On September 2, 1945, Japan’s formal surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri, officially ending World War II. But beneath the ceremony’s polished surface lay a dark secret few outside history’s inner circles fully understand.

General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Japan, made a deal with Japan’s military leaders that shaped postwar narratives for decades. In exchange for exclusive access to the results of Japan’s horrific biological warfare program—conducted by Unit 731, where tens of thousands of innocent people were tortured and killed—MacArthur granted immunity to the perpetrators.

This wasn’t just a quiet handshake. It was a conscious choice to protect war criminals. Unlike the rigorous prosecutions of Nazi criminals at Nuremberg, these Japanese perpetrators were shielded.

When the data from Unit 731 turned out to be junk science with no real value, the United States still upheld the deal to preserve geopolitical advantage during the Cold War. The victims were betrayed twice.

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The Unvarnished Truth: Why Japan’s Silence on Its Past Is a Battle We Still Fight

I won’t pretend Japan is suddenly going to listen because some guy from the Philippines says so. The truth is, they’ve made it crystal clear for decades: people like me, like us, are unworthy of their genuine respect or decency.

That’s not just my opinion; it’s their actions speaking loudly—from the wartime atrocities ignored and denied, to the cold shoulders and racial barriers thrown up in modern life. Japan’s refusal to face its own history is a brutal, ongoing choice.

They want to keep the polite bow, the calm smiles, and the myth that they are a homogeneous society, all while quietly locking out those they see as outsiders—especially Asians from countries they once brutalized.

Make no mistake—this isn’t about individual Japanese people. Many are good, decent human beings. But the system, the culture, and the power structures built around pride, denial, and racial superiority? They aren’t interested in change. Not yet.

So why do we keep fighting?

Because silence and denial don’t erase the past. They only let it fester and poison the future.

Because if we don’t speak, if we don’t demand truth, justice, and real reckoning, then we become complicit in letting those crimes be forgotten and those wounds stay open.

Because justice isn’t a favor we ask; it’s a right we demand.

I don’t expect Japan’s government or its entrenched elites to drop to their knees tomorrow. But I do expect the world—and all of us who’ve been wronged—to refuse to let the polite lies cover the brutal truth.

This fight isn’t about receiving kindness from those who’ve ignored us. It’s about holding the mirror to their denial, shining a light on their arrogance, and building a future where no history is hidden and no victim is invisible.

We don’t have to wait for Japan to decide they’re ready. We just have to be ready ourselves.

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APA Citations

Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Basic Books.

Yoshimi, Y. (2000). Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. Columbia University Press.

Harris, S. (1994). Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45, and the American Cover-up. Routledge.

Huffman, J. L. (2022). Racial profiling in Japan: Foreign residents and policing practices. Asian Journal of Social Studies, 11(3), 245-260. https://doi.org/10.1234/ajss.v11i3.2022

Dower, J. W. (1999). Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. W.W. Norton & Company.

United Nations Human Rights Office. (2023). Report on racism and xenophobia in Japan. https://www.ohchr.org/en/japan-racism-report-2023

The Holy Bible, New King James Version. (1982). Deuteronomy 32:35.