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

DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994                   TAG: 9405080029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: TOKYO                                LENGTH: Short

JAPAN OFFICIAL RESIGNS IN WAKE OF WWII TALK

Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata accepted the resignation of Justice Minister Shigeto Nagano on Saturday, three days after Nagano called the 1937 Rape of Nanking a fabrication and denied that Japan was guilty of aggression in World War II.

It was the third time since 1986 that a Japanese Cabinet minister has resigned or was fired for making revisionist statements about World War II.

The move came a day after Nagano apologized and withdrew his statements published Wednesday. Hata, winding up a European trip in Brussels, rebuked Nagano on Friday but said he would like to retain him.

On Saturday, however, Hata said that Japan could not afford to allow repercussions in neighboring countries to spread. Demands for Nagano's ouster had also increased at home.

Nagano, 71, a former chief of staff of Japan's postwar army and a member of Hata's Renewal Party, took the initiative in offering his resignation. Hata accepted it Saturday night after returning to Tokyo.

"I apologize from the bottom of my heart for the shock and rage my inappropriate remarks gave to our neighboring countries, and the disturbance and anxiety they caused to our own people," Nagano said Saturday night.

Nagano's initial claim that Japanese troops did not kill tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians and indiscriminately rape women after seizing Nanking in 1937 and his insistence that Japan intended to "liberate colonies" in its 1931-1945 Pacific war inflicted a serious wound on a new foreign policy Japan adopted last August.

by CNB