
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 5, 1994                   TAG: 9405050149
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Medium

JAPANESE OFFICIAL DENIES WORLD WAR II AGGRESSION

In remarks likely to stir resentment abroad, Japan's new justice minister said in an interview published Wednesday that Japan was not an aggressor in World War II and that accounts of a notorious massacre by Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China, were a hoax.

While the views voiced by Justice Minister Shigeto Nagano to the newspaper Mainichi are espoused by a number of conservative Japanese, it is rare to hear them from a Cabinet minister.

The Foreign Ministry released a statement Wednesday night from Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, who is traveling in Europe, saying he thought Nagano's comment about the "Rape of Nanking" was "not appropriate." Hata said he planned to ask Nagano what he meant by the remarks.

Officials at the Justice Ministry and Nagano's office were not available for comment, and calls to Nagano's home were not answered.

The number of Chinese killed in Nanking remains a matter of speculation. China says 300,000 were killed when Japanese troops entered Nanking - now called Nanjing by the Communist leadership - in 1937.

Some prominent Japanese claim the Chinese death toll is propaganda, but at least one former Japanese officer estimates at least 150,000 died.

"I think the Nanking massacres and other [reports of wrongdoing] are hoaxes," Nagano told Mainichi. He said he based his view on a visit to the city soon after Japan began its occupation there.

Nagano, 71, retired as chief of staff of Japan's army in 1980. He graduated from the former elite Japanese military academy and served in the Imperial Army in the war.

In the quoted remarks, Nagano said Japan's aim during the war was to free Asian nations from European colonialism.

"It is wrong to say the war was a war of aggression," he was quoted as saying. "We thought seriously about the liberation of colonies, to liberate a [greater East Asia] co-prosperity sphere."

by CNB