Accepting truth to avoid repeating same mistakes

I agree with Tsuchiya that Japan lacks medical morality and past mistakes should be discussed more. I grew up in Japan, went through the Japanese education system and yet have never heard that Japanese researchers “killed thousands of humans in medical experiments.” I learned about how badly Japanese soldiers treated and killed Chinese and Korean people in World War II, and other cruel behaviors of Japan’s military to other countries. So it is not that all past behaviors were not taught. I also learned in Japanese history class that it was not till recent that the true history was taught in school because of the Emperor had been thought as a god-like symbol and therefore it could not been admitted that Emperor made wrong decisions. It took a long time after the war ended to have citizens recognize that the Emperor is a human and not a god.

The fact that it has not been discussed seems to reflect Japanese culture in a way that medical issues are not common topics of discussions. As I mentioned in class the other day, not many people talk about abortion and morality, and abortion is done frequently. I wish that Japan will admit past behaviors and clear up medical ethics in order to not make the same mistakes they made as Tsuchiya explain in his article. When people are under high pressure, people tend to lose common sense and act immorally. During war, not only human experimentation but other cruel things were done to other human beings. The pressure to win a war is very high, because you have to kill or be killed. Japan is not involved in war now and not under the same kind of pressure, but now Japan is under high pressure to lead in medical technology and the development of new techniques. Japan has to reflect what has been done in the past in terms of medical experiments to make sure they do not repeat the same mistakes, as it has been done in terms of war. In the case of Hiroshima atomic bomb, Japan is preserving the building that had a big damage, called Hiroshima Peace Memorial or Genbaku Domu, and has museums to keep the record of cruelty of war. Even though it might be easier to preserve the result of Hiroshima atomic bomb because Japan can blame the Americans for such an immoral action, creating a museum and bringing the awareness of such mistakes are key actions to avoid same mistake no matter how hard it is to accept the truth. Accepting the truth of harsh past should not be as hard as experience of going through the cruel actions.