Hitoshi Motoshima Quotes

The 20th century was a century in which human rights were infringed upon in numerous parts of the world, and Japan also bears responsibility in that regard. I believe that we have to look at our own history with humility and think about our responsibility.

I would like to offer my apologies and tell you that I have reflected deeply on the problem of the comfort women.

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.

We must differentiate between guilt and duty. The soldier on the front, like the common man, who does his duty everywhere, should not be held responsible for the actions of a few who also called themselves Germans.

I have to express sympathy from the bottom of my heart to those people who were taken as wartime comfort women. As a human being, I would like to express my sympathies, and also as prime minister of Japan I need to apologize to them.

The world has gone back a half a millennium in its conduct of international relations in time of war…. no nation has to bear a greater blame for this than our own ….As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of us think it was shameful. Are we Christians? We act like pagans.

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.

The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot.

Whereas religions may serve a benign purpose by letting many people feel comfortable with the level of morality they themselves can attain, no religion holds its members to the high standards of moral responsibility that the secular world of science and medicine does!

We have begun to repay the Japanese for their brutalities and their mass murders of helpless civilians and prisoners of war. We will not quit until they are completely crushed. You have an important part to play in their defeat. There must not be a letup!

Germany remains among the few countries in Europe to acknowledge, officially and nationally, its responsibility for the crimes it led against our people.

Germany is a nation that created an enormous amount of suffering on the planet. The German people also themselves have suffered, because it always goes together.

He could have a thousand faults, but I do not blame anyone in particular and I despise brutality with which the Nazis acted against Israelites; but the fault is not only of Hitler, but a group of high-ranked dignitaries.

Hitler gave us orders - and we believed in him. Then he commits suicide and leaves us to bear the guilt. He should have remained alive to bear his share.

Providence punishes national sins with national calamities.

Police officers and firefighters simply have no right to recuse themselves from having to protect persons of whose activities they disapprove for religious (or any other) reasons

It is natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is presumably necessary that I be judged so that the circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world be assured. Therefore, with respect to my trial, it is my intention to speak frankly, according to my recollection, even though when the vanquished stands before the victor, who has over him the power of life and death, he may be apt to toady and flatter. I mean to pay considerable attention to this in my actions, and say to the end that what is true is true and what is false is false. To shade one's words in flattery to the point of untruthfulness would falsify the trial and do incalculable harm to the nation, and great care must be taken to avoid this

What will you tell them at your impeachment? That you had a weapon that would end the war immediately and you didn’t use it?

The Spanish Inquisition sought to avoid direct responsibility for the burning of heretics by handing them over to the secular arm; to burn them itself, it piously explained, would be wholly inconsistent with its Christian principles. Few of us would allow the Inquisition thus easily to wipe its hands clean of bloodshed; it knew quite well what would happen. Equally, where the technological application of scientific discoveries is clear and obvious — as when a scientist works on nerve gases — he cannot properly claim that such applications are "none of his business," merely on the ground that it is the military forces, not scientists, who use the gases to disable or kill.

We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.

The ends do not justify the means. The means are the ends.

Don’t be shameless, Mr Blair. Don’t be immoral, Mr. Blair. You are one of those who have no morals. You are not one who has the right to criticize anyone about the rules of the international community. You are an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favor with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet. Go straight to hell, Mr. Blair.

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

For the first time in the history of relations between people, a precedent has been created by which a great State [Germany], as a result of moral pressure alone, takes it upon itself to pay compensation to the victims [the Jews] of the government that preceded it [Nazi Germany].

No man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibility for accomplishing the purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and look his countrymen in the face.