With regards to the on-going spat between China and Japan over the latter's war crimes, it must be made clear that right-wing elements in Japan have been attempting to whitewash the Imperial Japanese Army crime against humanity from 1930s to 1945 besides glorifying their war criminals.

The issue of Japanese war crimes affects both North and South Korea as well Malaysia , Singapore , Australia , the US , Britain, France, the Netherlands and all parts of Southeast Asia , particularly the Philippines.

While the Korean Peninsula (as well as Taiwan) was colonised by Imperial Japan for some 50 years before the start of World War II, the war itself saw millions of unarmed civilians including women and children form Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines being killed by soldiers from Imperial Japan.

Thousands of Australian, British and American soldiers and commanders were also either killed, maimed, tortured, starved and even cannibalised during the Pacific War.

While thousands of women, both Asians and Europeans, were conscripted as 'comfort women' for Imperial Japan's military, hundreds of Australian, British and Indian prisoners of war were made slave labourers to build the Death Railway over the River Kwai on the Thai-Burma border.

Unfortunately, Japan has never officially apologised for these massive number of deaths and for the suffering of its millions of victims during the Pacific War. Even more unfortunate, are its attempts to now whitewash the dark and bloody past of its militarism by distorting history in school textbooks and to continue to glorify its war criminals.

It is time for Japan to face up to its history in Asia like Germany courageously did in Europe to the Jewish people after WW II.

It is also time for all nations - East and West - that suffered at the hands of the Japanese militarists to unite and demand honesty, accountability and justice from Japan.