Peter Stanek of Lucas Valley had already known much about the war in the Pacific, but became passionately engaged after reading "The Rape of Nanking" (1997) by the late Iris Chang, a Chinese American whose book detailed one of World War II's most gruesome atrocities.
Stanek, a retired Lockheed-Martin aerospace engineer, joined the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, a Bay Area organization founded in 1999. Ten years later, he heads the Global Alliance, which has two main objectives: to get an official apology from the Japanese government for atrocities throughout Asia, and to win some kind of reparation for its victims.
So far, nothing. Stanek believes that the United States is complicit in hiding the true story of Japanese cruelties: After the war ended, he said, "there was a deliberate effort on the part of the U.S. government to keep Japan friendly, to provide a fortress against the spread of Communism in Asia."
When he read Chang's book, he said, "My God, we forgot," and began assembling the statistics.
The Pacific war, he said, really began in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchuria, and continued in 1937 with the invasion of mainland China. By 1942, Japanese soldiers occupied territory representing one-fifth of the
Among other victims: the 250,000 "comfort women" taken from Korea, and a like number from China, to become sex slaves for the Japanese army.
Despite pressure on the Japanese government, neither apologies nor reparations have been forthcoming, according to Stanek, who contrasts Japan's silence with Germany's repeated apologies to Jews for the Holocaust and its payment of $50 billion to Israel.
The Global Alliance continues to press for acknowledgment, and regularly has press conferences and educational seminars in this country to inform the public about Japan's wartime affronts. Last year, the alliance took 15 high school teachers to China to learn firsthand about the atrocities, and will take 11 more students and teachers this year.
Ignatius Ding, who works in the high-tech industry in Cupertino, joined the work of Global Alliance in 1994, and says its focus is wide - ranging from trying to regain lost property for people in Taiwan to getting veterans' benefits for people in Korea who were drafted into the Japanese army during the war.
He praises Stanek as a hard-working, passionate advocate for victims of that war. "Like me," Ding said, "he has no personal stake in the outcome; he just thinks it's the right thing to do." Ding is executive vice president of the alliance.
The demand for reparations becomes more urgent each year, Stanek said, as survivors are slowly dying.
Stanek believes that an apology "will bring a sense of peace to the western Pacific which does not exist now. It will bring final closure for people who suffered. It will be a humanitarian expression of Japanese goodwill."
Stanek is married to Jean Bee Chan, mathematics teacher at Sonoma State University for 36 years. From her, he said, he heard his first stories about the war in Asia. Chan lived through the Japanese occupation of her village in China when she was a child.
Read more San Rafael stories at the IJ's San Rafael section.
Contact Beth Ashley via e-mail at bashley@marinij.com