War without end? Japan sends troops to Iraq and Germany debates a Holocaust memorial--and both nations struggle with the legacies of their World War II conduct.

• Author: Onishi, Norimitsu
• Position: International

Japan's decision last summer to send troops to aid the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq seemed natural enough since Japan and the U.S. are such close allies. But Japan has not sent soldiers into a combat zone since the end of World War II in 1945. As the troops now begin to arrive in Iraq, there is concern in Japan that any casualties might reignite the ultranationalism that fueled Japan's wartime militancy.

In Berlin, Germany's capital, a memorial is being built to the victims of one of history's greatest horrors: the murder of 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. But last fall, Degussa--a German chemical company which was to provide antigraffiti protection for the memorial--was identified as the affiliate of a company that made Zyklon B gas pellets, poison used by the Nazis to murder millions of people in concentration-camp gas chambers.

The foundation responsible for the construction of the memorial at first decided not to use Degussa's product. But Degussa, by all accounts, has an exemplary record in examining its wartime past and making restitution to Nazi victims. And so a debate erupted in Germany over where to draw the line: At what point has a company made up for its past behavior?

JAPAN: MILITARISM TO PACIFISM

For many Americans, World War II is the stuff of the History Channel. But for Germany and Japan, the legacy of barbaric war crimes against civilians and soldiers still lingers: Questions of guilt, forgiveness, and remembrance related to the war--which by conservative estimates claimed more than 35 million lives--are still debated in the two countries whose aggression in Europe and the Pacific started the war.

In Japan, the government's decision to send troops to Iraq has run into an intense Japanese squeamishness about combat that is rooted in World War II, and the militaristic nationalism that led up to it.

Japan sent 2 million soldiers to their deaths during the war and, especially toward the desperate final stages, used its men as if they were ammunition. The military code issued to soldiers in 1941 forbade retreat or surrender, leading to kamikaze air attacks and large suicide missions.

After the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, Japan surrendered almost immediately. After the war, the country embraced a U.S.-imposed Constitution, whose Article 9 contained a "peace clause," which prohibits the use of force in the resolution of disputes.

But with its dispatch of troops to Iraq, Japan seems to be...