100年前のパリの

　この労働憲章を決めたパリの国際労働法制委員会と日本の代表（岡実ら），後進国日本へのインパクト，国際労働会議への日本の労働代表選出問題，そして治安警察法第17条と労働組合法案，労働問題・労働行政の農商務省から内務省社会局への移管，河合栄治郎の「官を辞するに際して」「社会政策の分岐点」等を検討し，あわせて福田徳三の国際労働問題への関わりも含め，これらの営為の後世への遺産を考察したい。

This article investigates how Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area began forming a movement in the 1990s and early 2000s that demanded the Japanese government to issue an apology and reparations to the victims of the war crimes committed by the Japanese military in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the early 1990s, protesting the Japanese government’s revision of history textbooks and some Japanese leader’s denial of the Nanjing Massacre, Chinese Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area began commemorative events for victims of Japan’s invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s. These activities of collective remembrance led to the formation of an organrzation called the Alliance for Preserving the Truth of the Sino-Japanese War. As its name straightforwardly indicates, the organrzation aimed to excavate, maintain, and educate “the truth” of the Japanese invasion in China, while another goal was to demand that the Japanese government issue an apology and reparations to the victims. The members who had experienced or whose parents experienced the atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the war actively engaged in public education and support of academic research, and created a global network among organizations with the same goals by forming the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia in 1994.

The organization’s endeavors for public education bore fruit in the political arena when a conference by the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia inspired California State Assembly member Mike Honda to introduce Assembly Joint Resolution (AJR 27), which urged the Japanese government to formally issue an apology and reparations to the victims of the war crimes. Honda, a Sensei who experienced the Japanese American internment during World War II, explained that based on the success of the Japanese American redress movement he had learned that an apology and reparations would heal victims’ wounds. He also emphasized the significance of this process of healing to the Asian American community in his district, which was divided by divergent memories of the war. Similarly locating AJR 27 within the history of Asian American activism, such as the Asian American movement and the Japanese American redress movement, other members of the community, including those who formed the “Rape of Nanking” Redress Committee (RNRC), supported Honda and his resolution. AJR 27 was passed in both California State Assembly and Senate in 1999.

Formed by Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans and emphasizing its Asian American panethnicity, the RNRC not only demanded the Japanese government to issue an apology and reparations to the victims of the war crimes, but also criticized U.S. foreign policy for blocking the demand toward the Japanese government based on the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Its criticism was clearly articulated when it organrzed with the Asian American studies program at the University of California, Berkeley a counter-conference against the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the treaty supported by both the Japanese and U.S. governments in 2001. Whereas Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka and Secretary of State Collin Powell celebrated the treaty for providing peace and prosperity in Japan and the Pacific alike, the participants at the conference posed an opposite view that the treaty had harmed international relations in the region. In addition, they demanded that the Japanese government issue an apology and reparations to the victims and the U.S. government to stop supporting the peace treaty.

Thus, Asian American in the San Francisco Bay Area advanced a movement to demand the Japanese government to issue an apology and reparations for war crime victims by placing their endeavors in the tradition of Asian American activism and developing a panethnic Asian American identity.