美籍在華專家：逃離陰影 日本需就南京大屠殺真心致歉

英文《中國日報》12月13日刊登美籍記者蘭迪•賴特（Randy Wright）撰寫的文章《反思南京大屠殺：逃離陰影》，文中痛斥日本二戰時在南京犯下的滔天暴行，呼籲日本向德國學習，承認錯誤向中國真心致歉。

以下爲雙語全文：

It's with a somber heart that I find myself today contemplating the 80th anniversary of the infamous rape and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese in Nanjing by invading Japanese troops in the winter of 1937-38.
12月13日是中國南京大屠殺死難者國家公祭日。回想80年前，侵華日軍攻佔南京並對幾十萬無辜的中國老百姓犯下屠殺、姦淫等血腥暴行，我的心情十分悲痛。

That collective atrocity - made up of thousands of individual atrocities committed over several weeks - shows at a breathtaking scale the nature of the beast at the heart of the human race and the danger of unchaining it. The Nanjing Massacre is among the ugliest incidents in world history, though far from unique in its depravity.
南京大屠殺是一起集體暴行，侵華日軍在長達數週的時間裏犯下數不清的暴行。這一慘絕人寰的事件以驚人的規模展現出人類內心隱藏的獸性以及放任獸性發展的恐怖。南京大屠殺是人類歷史上最醜陋的事件之一，充斥着人性的邪惡。

I never served in uniform (an unfortunate gap in my life's experience), nor in combat. Yet my years of reading military history have taught me something of the horrors of war, the greed of nations, of man's inhumanity to man, the fragility of peace and the value of life. And the cycle continues.
我從來沒有當過兵（這是我人生經歷中一段不幸的空白），也沒有參加過戰役。但多年來閱讀軍事歷史書籍讓我知曉了戰爭的可怕、國家的貪婪、人性的殘酷、和平的脆弱，以及生命的價值。如此循環生生不息。

In the ominous words of Plato: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."
古希臘哲學家柏拉圖有一句警世之語：“只有死者才能看到戰爭的終結。”

I wish it were not so. Across millennia, emperors and assorted tyrants have murdered for land, treasure, religion or political power, and spun the rhetoric of hate and blame to achieve their ambitions. The result, sooner or later, is always the same: a river of blood - often the most precious.
我真希望不是這樣。縱觀歷史，君王霸主爲了土地、財富、宗教或政治權力而互相殘殺，用仇恨憎惡的言語實現個人的野心。而結局，或早或晚，總是相似的：血流成河——死去的往往是社會的精英。

It's easy enough to see this pattern. But it's even easier to look away. A searing event like Nanjing is uncomfortable. It's hard to absorb. It's scarring. But to avert the eyes is to relegate history to mere abstraction, to conveniently forget that the victims of atrocities were real people.
看到這一規律很容易，但是無視它更容易。如南京大屠殺一般的慘案令人不安，它令人難以承受、留下創傷累累。逃避和漠視的態度相當於把真實發生過的歷史降格爲純粹的抽象概念，相當於選擇性地忘記遭受這些暴行的那些活生生的人。

Remembrance is the beginning of healing. In fact, the bitter dregs of truth have curative value for the soul - especially for past aggressors like the Japanese, who, in dehumanizing their victims, only dehumanized themselves.
銘記纔是治癒的開始。事實上，真相的苦澀可以治癒人類的靈魂，對於那些曾經的侵略者，比如日本人，更是如此。他們對受害者施以非人的暴行，使他們自己也失去了人性。

Some in Japan seem to have difficulty with deep reflection. They just want the war to go away, and have chosen a path on which the goal is to save as much face as possible. What Japan has styled as apology over the years has been half-hearted, not full-throated; and that, in turn has allowed bitterness to linger.
在日本，有一些人似乎很難進行深刻反思，他們只想要戰爭的陰雲散去，並且選擇了一條儘可能地保存顏面道路。過去這些年來，日本人口口聲聲的道歉根本不是真心實意的，而這，只會讓痛苦繼續。

Instead, it should follow the spirit of former German chancellor Willie Brandt, who knelt humbly in the rain in 1970 at the Warsaw Ghetto, acknowledging the evil Nazi Germany brought upon the Jews. It should adopt the posture of Angela Merkel, the current German chancellor, whose stance was unequivocal when Israel's leader tried to shift blame for the Holocaust to an Islamic cleric: "All Germans know the history of the murderous race mania of the Nazis that led to the break with civilization that was the Holocaust," Merkel's spokesman said. "This is taught in German schools for good reason. It must never be forgotten. ... We know that responsibility for this crime against humanity is German, and very much our own."
日本應當向德國前總理維利•勃蘭特看齊。1970年，勃蘭特冒雨在猶太人紀念碑前下跪，承認納粹德國給猶太人帶去的深重苦難。日本應當學習德國現任總理默克爾的姿態，當以色列領導人試圖將猶太大屠殺的罪責轉嫁給一名伊斯蘭教士時，默克爾態度明確地表示：“我們全體德國人都非常清楚，納粹的種族狂熱導致文明崩塌，即猶太大屠殺。”默克爾的發言人說：“我們在德國學校裏教授這段歷史是有充分理由的。這段歷史永遠不能遺忘……我們知道，這一反人類罪行的責任在於德國，並且都是我們自己的罪責。”

Likewise, the massacre in Nanjing is very much Japan's own.
同樣，南京大屠殺的發生也都是日本的罪責。

Are these just empty words, bleached of meaning by the passage of time? I don't think so. Nor is a Japanese apology merely a question of making China feel better. Japan itself will never escape the shadow of its past until it can wash itself clean through honest, forthright acknowledgement of its sins.
這些空洞的語言會隨着時間的流逝而褪色嗎？我不這麼認爲。日本道歉也不僅僅是讓中國好受一點的問題。日本要走出歷史留下的陰影，必須坦誠、坦率地承認自己犯下的罪行以淨化自身。