China had applied for documents on the wartime sexual slavery of Japan and the 1937 massacre in Nanjing for world heritage status, but only documents on the Nanjing massacre committed by Japanese troops won UNESCO approval last week.
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While Japan objected to the inclusion of the documents on the Nanjing Massacre, it succeeded in having a few of its own candidates for the memory list included, including details on detainees held in Siberia after World War II.
Inscription of the dossier into the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, created to preserve significant and endangered documents, was announced on the website of the UN’s scientific and cultural body.
“The government would like to ask for fairness and transparency in the Memory of the World program so that it would not be used for political purposes”, Suga said. Japan is now the second highest contributor to UNESCO, following the U.S.
Japan contributed 3.72 billion yen ($31 million) to UNESCO in 2014, or about 10.8 percent of its total budget.
China says there were 300,000 unjustifiable deaths at the hands of Nippon soldiers during the six weeks following their arrival in the town.
“The (Japanese) government believes there is no denying that a few killings of non-combatants and acts of looting took place”, Suga said.
The documents include 11 sets of files on the Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, ranging from film, photographs and text recorded between 1937 and 1948, Chinese state media reports.
China has welcomed UNESCO’s decision.
“According to the reply recently given by UNESCO concerning documents related to comfort women, the issue of comfort women scars not only China but also a few other countries”, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at an October. 12 news conference.
Japan’s protest at UNESCO’s listing of Nanjing Massacre was unreasonable and the inscription will play a positive role in safeguarding peace in human development, experts said.
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A few Japanese conservatives periodically say that accounts of the massacre are a fabrication or exaggerated.
