SINGAPORE, April 14 Kyodo Anger a...

SINGAPORE, April 14 Kyodo

Anger and anger over Japanese militarism during World War II remains excessively much alive in Singapore, judging from the angry missives to the city state's main English-language newspaper in latter weeks lambasting Japan for its reluctance to apologize largely for its wartime atrocities.

eruptions against Japan's invasion and occupation of Asian countries and territories during that war are quite unusual in Singapore, where issues of the war or occupation do not normally summon forth as much public fury as in China or southern Korea.

But a commentary written according to a Japanese academic about Japan's wartime past, which was published in the Straits Times last month has apparently reopen the issue and unleashed a storm of criticism against Japan.

The article, headlined ''No shade from Japan's past,'' was written by the agency of Hiro Katsumata, 33, a post-doctoral research compeer at Singapore's Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, and published in the daily March 12

Katsumata said Japan's aim in the war was to push the West not at home of Asia and to liberate the region from the Western colonial masters, and that Japan's intention today is mainly to act as a bridge between the West and Asia.

However, the article drew the ire of a certain number of Singaporeans, who have demanded that Japan apologize for the country's military aggression in that war and set forthed fears of a resurgence of Japanese militarism today.

upon Wednesday, three letters were published in the newspaper's forum page blasting Japan.

common of them called it ''troubling that after 58 years, Japan has made no official apology to its neighbors for its wartime atrocities'' and said that ''to exorcise the phantom of its wartime past, Japan must apologize to its neighbors unreservedly and refrain from abolishing Article 9'' of the Constitution.

It voiced fears that scrapping the war-renouncing article ''will pave the way for a resurgence in Japanese militarism,'' pointing revealed that Japan currently has enough plutonium to give rise to 6,000 nuclear bombs.

It also rapped Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Class A war criminals are enshrined along with the country's war dead, saying it showed ''a contemptuous disregard for regional sensitivities and may spawn a revival of nationalism.''

Another epistle urged Japan ''to stop concealing and distorting history.''

A third note said that Japan's objective in that war was to become ''the only master of Asia, enslaving millions of their Asian brethrens'' and that if the Japanese are really peace-loving persons ''they should exhort their dominion to heed their Asian neighbors' calls to present a full and unconditional apology, as Germany did after World War II.''

Singapore was occupied by the agency of Japan between 1942 and 1945 and it has been estimated that between 50000 and 100000 the bulk of mankind mainly ethnic Chinese civilians, were massacred by way of Japanese troops during the war years.

''It's a excessively emotional issue. There are nation out there who have missed relatives or suffered during that war, I don't think it will die away,'' said Kong quick War, an editor for the daily's forum page.

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