never discuss politics

This morning, remarking about the recent anti-Japanese protests going on in China and Hong Kong, I said that I felt that if Japan just offered an apology, this whole situation might be defused. Otherwise, it seems dangerous. Y replied that the allegations should be proven before Japan apologizes to China. I argued that there was certainly enough proof to render that point moot, and that to claim otherwise is to be like those people who claim that there is no proof that six million Jews were killed by the Germans and their cohorts in WWII. Y refused to acknowledge any similarities, telling me that I simply don't know enough about the situation; that the Chinese claimed that 300,000 were killed in Nanking when the population of Nanking was only 200,000. But there are many more accounts of atrocities beyone that. I was getting angry. The stubbornness of the Japanese is dangerous. What is so difficult about a simple apology? After all, if the late Pope could apologize for hundreds of years of wrong-doing by the Catholic Church, couldn't Japan admit that, in the course of war, it committed violations of human rights?