Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the war criminal-related Yasukuni Shrine reflect the importance of education in the Western world about Asia's World War II history, a senior Chinese Canadian community leader said on Monday.

"The Japanese prime minister continues to ignore the world opinion and pay tribute at a shrine which houses war criminals. It is totally unacceptable," said Dr. Joseph Wong, chairman of the Association for Learning & Preserving the History of WWII in Asia (ALPHA) in Toronto, in a telephone interview with Xinhua.

Wong, 57, is a co-founder of Canada ALPHA, which works with some 40 other groups globally to promote the Asian Holocaust education and justice for victims of crimes against humanity during WWII in Asia.

"Koizumi's tribute to the Class A war criminals is not only unacceptable to China, to Chinese, but also to anyone in the world who loves peace, to anyone who has any sense of justice at all," said the doctor, who in 1993 was awarded the Order of Canada, the highest civilian prize granted to Canadian citizens for outstanding achievement and service to the country or to humanity at large.

Why does Japan always attempt to distort history and ignore the feelings of its Asian neighbors? It is simply because the Japanese government, under the rising influence of the right-wing militarism, has never learned a lesson from World War II, Wong noted.

After the war, many of the Japanese war criminals escaped unpunished as the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed between the Western powers and Japan, without any input from China and other Asian neighbors.

"That means a criminal has done atrocities but escaped unpunished, and they would not be able to learn the lesson," Wong said. "China and other Asian countries have to express their indignation to Japanese moves in very, very strong terms."

"But just strong condemnation is not enough," he said.

Statistics showed that about 35 million Asian people, 20 million of them Chinese, died under Japanese occupation during the war.

In order to find justice for all the victims, it is so necessary to let the Western world know more about the Asian World War II history, said Wong.

"All the Western world knows about World War II is the bombing of Pear Harbor and the atomic bombing of Japan. In so doing, Japan, instead of an aggressor, became a victim of the war," he said.

The Jews have been doing a good job in exposing Nazi-Germany's slaughter of Jewish people all across Europe, he said.

But in Asia, the people who died in World War II deserve a more decent treatment, Wong said. "They deserve attention from the world, so they will not have died in vain."

"That is why we have been lobbying the Ontario government to include the Asian World War II history in the school curriculum and we succeeded," he said.

In April, the Ontario government agreed to allow the Asian World War II history to be included in the curriculums of the province's secondary schools.

Previously, the Canadian history textbooks only dealt with Europe's World War II history.

"This is a very major breakthrough," Wong said, noting that the Ontario government is the first Western government, national or local, to include the Asian World War II history into the curriculums of secondary schools.

The ALPHA won the lobbying battle with support and help from dozens of high school teachers, mostly white people, who joined the group in visiting wartime sites and interviewing the victims including "comfort women," a term for those forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during the war in China and other parts of Asia.

"All of them came back very dedicated to tell the story to those who do not understand or do not know that part of history, including the Nanking Massacre and other war crimes committed by the Japanese invaders," Wong said.

And these teachers, together with several historians from Toronto and Vancouver, joined the ALPHA's efforts in compiling a guide which aims to help most of the Canadian teachers who even may not know the Asian World War II history.

The 128-page guide, titled "Human Rights in the Asia Pacific 1931-1945: Social Responsibility and Global Citizenship," will be distributed to teachers of about 900 Ontario high schools by the end of October.

And some reference textbooks including Chinese American writer Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking" and a big historical photo album "The Atrocities Japan Committed in 1937" will be also sent to the schools.

Wong's confidence in continuing his mission has been always boosted by the fact that the ALPHA, though with only 10 to 12 members, enjoys support and donations of thousands of people in Toronto alone.

"We will continue to do what we are doing. We are pretty sure we can bring more teachers to China, so they can understand and accumulate knowledge of the Asian World War II history, and also spread it from Ontario to other provinces, to the United States and to Europe," He said.

Source: Xinhua