xerxes

Japan to revise books on WWII suicides

Japan to revise books on WWII suicides - Yahoo! News

TOKYO - The government ordered changes Friday to seven history textbooks describing how the Japanese army forced civilians to commit mass suicide at the end of World War II, the country's latest effort to soften brutal accounts of its wartime conduct.

The high school textbooks say the army — faced with an impending U.S. invasion in 1945 — handed out grenades to residents on the southern island of Okinawa and ordered them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans.

The Education Ministry said there was no definitive evidence that the suicides were ordered by the army. The publishers were asked to modify the relevant passages and submit the changes for approval by a government-appointed panel.

"There are divergent views of whether or not the suicides were ordered by the army, and no proof to say either way. So it would be misleading to say the army was responsible," said Education Ministry official Yumiko Tomimori.

Since taking office in September, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promoted national pride and sought to distance Japan from its post-World War II guilt. His conservative government has bolstered Japan's international military role and amended the constitution to require schools to teach patriotism.

On Friday, Tokyo's education board said it had punished 35 teachers for not standing up to honor the national anthem — seen by some as a symbol of Japan's military past — during graduation ceremonies. Three of the teachers will be suspended for up to six months, 12 received pay cuts and 20 were given warnings. The "Kimigayo" song was adopted as the national anthem in 1999, and four years later, Tokyo's conservative government ordered teachers to honor it during school ceremonies.

The battle in Okinawa raged from late March through June 1945, leaving more than 200,000 civilians and soldiers dead and speeding the collapse of Japan's defenses.

Accounts of forced group suicides on Okinawa have been backed up by historical research and testimony from victims' relatives. Historians say government propaganda led civilians to believe U.S. soldiers would commit atrocities, persuading them to kill themselves and their families to avoid capture.

But in recent years, some academics have questioned whether the suicides were forced, part of the wider push by conservatives to soften criticism of Japan's wartime conduct.

Survivors of the battle criticized the revisions.

"If the (Japanese) soldiers hadn't come, people wouldn't have killed themselves," Fumiko Miyamura, a woman who said she witnessed a group suicide on Okinawa, told public broadcaster NHK. "Are they trying to make us forget about the war?"

Abe set off a storm earlier this month when he claimed there was no evidence that Japan's army forced women to work in military brothels during World War II. Historians estimate up to 200,000 women, mostly Chinese and Korean, were forced into prostitution by Japanese soldiers.

Most textbooks approved Friday touched on Japan's wartime brothels but did not discuss whether women were coerced or whether the Japanese military was involved, Kyodo News agency reported.

Abe's comments backtracked from a 1993 government admission that the Japanese military forced women into prostitution. On Monday, he tried to quell the backlash with an apology to the victims, but stopped short of acknowledging that Tokyo forced thousands into sexual slavery.

On Saturday, a private Japanese fund set up in 1995 to help the so-called "comfort women" will expire, wrapping up a mission seen as falling short of expectations.

The Asian Women's Fund, created to heal wounds from Japan's often brutal expansion through the region during the war, provided 285 women in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan with $17,800 each in compensation, helped set up nursing homes for former Indonesian sex slaves and offered medical assistance to some 80 Dutch victims.

But many victims rejected the aid because it neither came directly from the government nor was accompanied by an official apology. The fund will disband Saturday with the dismantling of the nursing home program in Indonesia, its last project.

The head of the fund, Haruki Wada, acknowledged the results of the effort "were rather ambiguous, but it was the best we could do at that time."

"As far as Japan's reconciliation with Asian neighbors is concerned, our achievement was insufficient," he said.

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gunnut

Wish we can do the same to our public school teachers here.

Don't know about forced suicides. But the footage of Japanese civilians jumping off the cliff at Okinawa is well known.

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"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

dave lukins

Gunnut, have seen that film many times, they were taught never to be captured by the "foreign Devils" hence the Banzei mentality throughout; civilian and soldier alike

Ray

Committing harakiri was the most honourable way to ensure that one was not humiliated in defeat.

However, it was an escapist mode!

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

wkllaw

This is ridiculous. I demand Shinzo Abe be impeached. This is another attempt to promote this ridiculous Japanese propaganda to boost nationalist sentiment.

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Those who can't change become extinct.

xerxes

I think it is important for the children to be aware of the sins of the parents, therefore it is important that while they glorify their past militerism, they should reveal all the horrors of it as well, and let the children of Japan decide with a full arsenal of knowledge on their own.

I do think that it is wrong what Japan is doing in regards to its education, but I feel a little bit of sympathy in regards of them glorify their past militerism. After all that was part of Japan history, and it wrong to just erase that as if it did not happen. Doesnt Russia has a great glorious history under the sceptre of Romanov?

astralis

gunnut,

it's a sad day when patriotism has to be mandated with punishments. what happened to you, mr liberterian?

dream on!

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

wkllaw

Shinzo Abe may not be impeached, but he and other people in the japanese government is trying to increase nationalism in Japan.

Gun Grape

The Tokyo courts , in2006, forced the government to pay compensation to all the teachers that had been fined like the ones mentioned in the article.

As for the suicides, not sure if "forced" is accurate. I'm sure that at the end of the war, many okinawans may have said that their relatives were forced but many of the older Okinawanians that I have known talked about people doing it because they were afraid of the Americans not because the Japanese army forced them to.

BTW Mabuni Hill is beautiful and the memorials are well worth the visit.

gunnut

The problem is this: the teachers refuse to honor the nation by standing for the national anthem. These are not normal teachers. These are employee of the government. They should at least show respect for the anthem.

A private school is free to do as they please. There is the market place to punish them if the market dislikes the policy.

I can be dismissed from my work if I share proprietary information with our competitor, or refuse to work on some projects due to some personal opinion, or openly embarrass the management. We should to the same with our public employees.

Gun Grape

But Kimigayo is not about honor to the Nation. It is a song that honors the Emperor.

The song, the unofficial national anthem since the Meiji period, equates the Emperor as deity.

Such a strange anthem for a "Democratic" nation.

Ray

Any idiot who does not stand up for their national anthem should be allowed to emigrate to wherever they find that it suits their liking.

If one has no respect for his nation, then the nation should have no respect for them!

glyn

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Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

wkllaw

I'm all for national pride, but they can't force people to respect the emperor as a deity, if I have my facts correct the religion of shinto says the emperor is a deity and this is the same as forcing some people to worship another religion.