ROBIN: Our first caller today is Hugh Frew, who is calling from St. Vincent in the West Indies. Hugh, what do you think of this whole idea that apologies are an essential part of drawing a line under the past?

HUGH FREW, ST. VINCENT.Well, I have got very strong feelings about this, Robin. This government has shown itself to be insensitive to the wishes of those who fought for freedom in World War II.

ROBIN: You are talking about which government, Hugh?

HUGH: I am talking about the new Labour government. If they had not prevailed neither Tony Blair with his cabinet would be in power today. It_s all very well to forgive, but we should never forget the sacrifice of all those who perished at the hands of our enemies. We are told that the Japanese have a vastly different culture to ours. We realised this was true when we saw and heard of the terrible attrocities in the prison camps to our men and women. While we look to the future a look back could have prevented another terrible embarrassment to our government and the Japanese Emperor.

ROBIN: Hugh, do you have any personal involvement in this issue?

HUGH: Yes, a lot of friends and relatives did suffer in those camps in Japan, so I have got very strong feelings about it.

ROBIN And would you feel differently if there were more of an apology, a different kind of apology coming from the Japanese?

HUGH No, an abject apology by the Emperor while he was here would be meaningless now, and no amount of cash by way of compensation could remove the painful memories of the survivors. The pressing need is to educate our government the lessons of history, so the dignity of the veterans can be preserved. They should be taught the epitaphs of the Kohima (phon.) memorial in Burma. _When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.

ROBIN Hugh, thank you very much indeed for that. Sandy, you_ve got e-mails.

SANDY Yes Robin, I_ve got one that actually agrees very much with what that gentleman has just said. And this is from Martin Howard who is twenty-three, British and now living in New Zealand. He says:

People say we should forgive Japan, but how can one forgive when they have shown no true remorse? And it seems that those who rule Great Britain have turned their backs on the British veterans.

So he is echoing very much what our caller has just said. He also says:

Have we surrendered everything to our so-called former enemies in Asia and Europe?

ROBIN Bernard Doran is calling from Hamburg in Germany. Bernard, what do you think?

BERNARD I do believe that apology is very important in order to move forward in relations between those who suffered and the culprits. I also believe that personal apology is more important than institutional apology and that the apology is between the individuals.

ROBIN If it is a government, a state that has committed the wrong no matter how long ago it was isn_t there a point for the successor government to say, we recognise that what was done was wrong. For example, we can take what President Clinton said during his visit to Africa when he talked a about slavery and so on. Does that not have a point in your view?

BERNARD I believe that those forms of government apologies are very important and can endorse peoples_ feelings. As I live in Germany (I_m British), the question of the guilt that the Germans feel towards the Jews is a very important issue in this country still and I feel that what Willy Brandt did, which many people said was spontaneous, in Warsaw when he knelt at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto massacre was a great step. What surprised me most is that many Germans did not agree with that and did not agree that was a significant gesture. They did not think that it was appropriate.

ROBIN Do you think that the way in which successive German governments since 1945 have dealt with the Nazi legacy has been an example to other governments?

BERNARD It most certainly is and I find that most Germans find it easier to talk to a non-German about these things than they do to other Germans. For example, during a long evening in a ski resort, I sat and talked to some German friends who said that they_d never spoken about this before because it_s such a deep issue. However, I still believe that there_s a lack of personal apology about this. Jews are returning to Berlin in great numbers but I still can_t think of a single friend who has apologised to them. That, I think would be a very significant gesture.

ROBIN Bernard, thanks for that. Now let_s catch up with some E-mails.

SANDY The Japanese Emperor_s visit to Britain has inspired a flurry of E-mails. (Haruki Ono) a thirty three year old Japanese living in Malaysia says he grew up being force-fed by school that only Japan did anything wrong in World War Two. Any attempt to be proud of being Japanese was seen as a dangerous right-wing activity. He grew up seeing his politicians apologising all the time and could never feel proud of his nation. On the other hand, Vasu from India asks about British actions and how many times Britain apologised to the non-white populations that it ruled over for hundreds of years.

Fergal, what_s your opinion?

FERGAL I grew up in an Irish educational system that strongly stressed the evils committed by Britain. I think that we_ve grown up a bit since then and political progress has enabled us to do that. However, let_s go back to Japan. I_ve just spent three weeks in that country investigating that very issue of apology and it_s striking the degree to which this issue is pushed under the carpet and simply ignored. I know that the E-mail suggest that Japanese politicians have been apologising for decades. Well that_s simply not the case and education in Japan avoids telling children about the absolute reality of what happened. Until there is a process of education, these protests will continue. And it_s not just the British. If you go to most Asian countries, people are less likely to be voluble in public but talk to them in private and there_s a profound mistrust of Japan.

ROBIN We_ve got a caller from Japan. Catherine Prince from Oita. Catherine do you feel that Japanese individuals are not prepared to look at their own past?

CATHERINE I personally disagree with that. Having spent two years in Japan, I found them to be very open about it. They all talked about the atrocities, they are truly sorry. Also when I_ve been to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I_ve never been snubbed or treated badly. It was the allies who put the atomic bomb there but I get the feeling that they_ve learned from these atrocities in the sense that they_re promoting world peace.

ROBIN Another E-mail from Sandy on this subject.

SANDY There_s an E-mail that agrees with what Fergal was just saying and disagrees with our caller on the line. Neil Taylor in Hong Kong says part of the problem is that the majority of young Japanese don_t even know what atrocities were committed against fellow Asians and POWs as their history books are doctored to show a different story. To some extent the allies are to blame as they failed to hunt down Japanese war criminals with the same fervour as they did German ones.

FERGAL I think that we_ve got to be careful about getting into a Japan-bashing and German-bashing exercise. All nations have deep crimes at the heart of their success, particularly the ones with an imperial record. The key thing is education and real history.

ROBIN Catherine, do you feel that the Japanese that you come into contact with have been taught in school what happened during that period?

CATHERINE There_s been big controversy about that because the company that produces the books has not previously brought up issues such as Korean comfort women and they_re trying to change this.

ROBIN We_re got a caller from Nan Jing in China,Yuanxing Cheng.

Yuanching I_m not happy with the Japanese attitude because they haven_t apologised to all the people in Asia. I grew up in a district of China where during World War Two 300, 000 people were killed by the Japanese army in two weeks.

ROBIN How much difference would it make to people from cities like yours to receive an apology?

Yuanxing Personally, it would not make much difference to me but if the Japanese government admitted that it had done something wrong, we would forgive them and say let_s look to the future.

ROBIN Would it be easier to forge a better relationship if there were to be some kind of open apology?

Yuanxing We have to face the fact that so many people were suffering and are still suffering. They have to acknowledge that this happened and apologise.

ROBIN Sandy, more E-mails.

SANDY Yes, we_ve had more people saying that it_s time to forgive and move on. Su Bodd in the USA says that it_s time to forget this old issue. If we insist on an apology, then the US would be expected to apologise for black slavery and apologies would be expected for groups such as the Australian Aborigines, Hutus, Serbs etc. Let_s make the world a better place to live in without starvation, ethnic cleansing and human rights deprivation.

ROBIN Our next caller is Arminhay Norris who is an Armenian from South Africa. The Armenians have their own past injustices to recall. What do you think?

ARMINHAY I see the Truth Commission here and I don_t think that it will make any difference apart from wasting money and talking but I feel horrified when Turkey don_t accept the fact that they massacred 3 million people.

ROBIN Do you want an apology or an acceptance of what happened?

ARMINHAY I heard on the BBC in France that they_ve brought up the issue of the Armenian massacre and call it genocide. The Turks have the gall to say that it never happened and to make all sorts of threats against France.

ROBIN Elizabeth Verman who_s a German living in Delf in Holland. What do you think?