Ministry does about-face on textbooks regarding Okinawa

By -
The Yomiuri reported:

The Education, Science and Technology Ministry approved Wednesday the reintroduction of wording in high school history textbooks referring to the role played by the Japanese military in the 1945 mass suicides in the Battle of Okinawa after the books' publishers filed correction applications.

The approval of corrections to textbooks that had already been approved is unprecedented.

While the Textbook Authorization Council, an advisory panel to the education, science and technology minister, recommended the corrections be approved, it also came to the conclusion that there were no direct orders from the military to carry out the mass suicides, and it therefore refused to allow the reinsertion of wording such as "coercion by the military" that the council had objected to before the books were authorized. This marked the first time the council expressed this view of what it believes happened.

According to this opinion, "From the viewpoint of residents, they were driven to commit suicide due to various circumstances and factors," adding that involvement of the Japanese military was a major factor in the mass suicides.

However, on the point of whether direct orders were issued by the military to commit suicide en masse, the council concluded that "it cannot be confirmed at this point."

This basic view was conveyed to the six textbook publishers. As a result, the publishers revised the phrasing they used in their correction applications.
To sum up, it's historian's consensus that there is no Army's order for suicide. The demonstration organized by Okinawa's left party was in vain.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A troubling position on 'comfort women'

By -
The Yomiuri Shimbun's editorial criticizes the EU Parliament's resolution: The Japanese government must lobby other governments to persuade them not to follow in the footsteps of the European Parliament in adopting a resolution that sullies Japan's standing. The European Parliament has adopted a resolution condemning Japan over the "comfort women" issue. The resolution calls for the government to apologize, saying the Imperial armed forces coerced young women in Asia to work as "sex slaves" before and during World War II. The latest development resembles the resolution adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives over the comfort women issue in July. This matter has now spilled over to Europe. The parliaments of Canada and the Netherlands also have adopted similar resolutions. However, interest in the comfort women issue has not necessarily been high in Europe. The European Parliament's resolution was advocated by the minor Green Party and fewer tha
Read more

Norimitsu Onishi, a liar

By -
The most influential source of lies is Norimitsu Onishi , the Tokyo bureau chief of NY Times . He was born in 1969 in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and moved to Canada when he was four. He graduated from Princeton University and joined the Times and covered Africa, Afganistan, and other foreign countries before he came to Japan in 2003.
Read more

Asahi Shimbun fabricated "comfort women"

By -
Image
All these things began with a wrong article. "Comfort women" or  "military abduction" weren't discussed before it. The Asahi Shimbun reported in the front page on 11 January 1992 that the historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered documents that proves the Army's "commitment" to comfort women in the archives of Japan's Defense Agency.
Read more