wow. a LOT OF MATERIAL here! I am half brain dead but found this fascinating. Thanks for ping bitt & thread Calpernia.. always enjoy "your stuff"
Old news to us, but absolutely new to the younger citizens of today's Japan. I have worked in three Japanese companies by now, and I can personally attest that:
WWII is simply never mentioned
Japan's role in atrocities is not even on their mental radar
WWII is allotted as little as three pages in Japanese school texts, and is portrayed as a war of liberation waged by Japan against European colonial powers.
When the "Rape of Nanking" was published, I read it and passed the book along to a friendly Japanese colleague. He is now an ex-friendly colleague and his anger was unbelievable. Livid, he screamed (and I ain't kiddin' about the 'screamed' part) that it was a damned Chinese lie!
As far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki are concerned, they very much wish to be portrayed as innocent victims of this horrible nuclear attack. By now, however, very thorough research has shown that by ending the war, we saved several million Japanese lives, not to mention hundreds of thousands of Americans.
After the war, we generated the myth that the Sacred Empreror was not involved in all this, and in general, treated the Japanese far less harshly than the Germans.
BTW, another subject: had the Germans and the Japanese even minimally coordinated their efforts against the Soviet Union, it might well have been a different history that we read today!