Posted on 11/19/2006 7:56:32 PM PST by davy
Japan's controversial Yasukuni shrine is to review a controversial display that says the US provoked Japan into entering WWII, Japanese media reports.
The US government complained about the exhibit, which claims that a US economic embargo forced Japan into war.
The Yasukuni shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan's past militarism, has soured ties with its neighbours.
It is likely to overshadow a fence-mending visit to neighbours that New PM Shinzo Abe begins on Sunday.
He will visit China - the first Japanese premier to visit Beijing in five years - before moving on to South Korea.
China had refused to meet his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, because of his annual visits to the shrine.
Mr Abe has not said if he plans to visit Yasukuni himself.
Japan denied reports out of China that he had promised not to visit the shrine "for the time being".
The Yushukan museum, based in the Shinto shrine, was changing or deleting the reference to the US at the request of US officials and others who had questioned its accuracy, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
Reuters news agency quoted a statement from the shrine that said it was reviewing all the museum's exhibits - and would be seeking the opinions of experts - in line with the fifth anniversary of its renovation.
"In order to make the exhibits more substantial, we will also review the historical accounts," the statement said.
Controversy over Yasukuni centres on the fact that 14 Japanese war criminals are venerated at the shrine, alongside its war dead.
The Russian counterattack in front of Moscow started December 6th, the day before the Pearl Harbor attack. If I remember correctly, the German unit [from Kluge's 4th Army?] spotted the Kremlin on the 5th.
If you want to see how liberals think in the worst way, check out http://www.democraticunderground.com. A Haz Mat suit is recommended.
Welcome to Free Republic and thanks for the interesting post.
And people are all nuts over us still being in Iraq. We haven't even left Japan yet.
Hey the cesspool of rotting fecal matter behind my house is asking for an apology!!!
Actually, in some ways, the claim is absolutely correct.
FDR went out of his way to harm the Japanese economy with our own efforts against them there. FDR WANTED Japan in the war so he would have an excuse to attack the Nazis.
He thought Japan would be easy to defeat and he could move on the Hitler, whom FDR thought the real threat (not that Hitler wasn't a threat, of course).
Of course, the economic avenue would not have been successful if the Japs had not been so militaristic and aggressive in the Pacific Rim in the first place. Sure, FDR wanted to defeat Japan, but it wasn't because Japan was so mean to it's neighbors. He just wanted a way at the Nazis that he could get past US voters who put him back in office NOT to go to war (he promised he would stay out of the war, and lied the whole time as he was constantly LOOKING for a way in).
FDR was one of our worst liars ever to hit the White House. Even worse than Clinton.
I see... so we Americans, through our intrigue and plotting, tricked the Japs into WWII??? With all due respect, WTH are you talking about?
I believe it's true.
There were 10 years of depression. The New Deal had basically failed. Of course FDR wanted the conflict.
You don't move your Navy some 3000 miles closer to Japan and not expect them to get worried.
you overate the place :)
DU is a reference to the Democrat Underground site. They are also referred to, fondly, as DUmmies! :)
Why would he want to have a war on two distant fronts. I've always heard this said about FDR but never believed it. Why not just get Italy to offend you in some way ?
--I suppose China provoked Japan into slaughtering untold numbers of Chinese as well.--
Don't forget mean ol' Korea. They provoked Japan into destroying Korea at least two times.
Because Japan was already butting heads with US interests. Italy was not. We had a built in way to get to Japan. Not to Italy.
I didn't get around to entering college until I was 38, and damned if the world history prof wasn't teaching that as gospel, right here in good old Florida. Why are you surprised that they teach it in Japan? Everything is our fault, don't you know?
Hell, maybe we ran out of nukes too soon!
The oil embargo was placed to stop Japan from invading every country in Asia.(It didn't work, they did it anyway)
If they were looking for the roman letters "Pearl Harbor", I would be surprised if they did find such roman letters in an index for a history book in Japan, just as I would be surprised to find any kanji or kana properly indexed in one of our textbooks.
From the exchange students that I have met, I don't think most English-speaking exchange students would be capable of looking in a standard Japanese text for such phrases as 真珠湾奇襲 or 真珠湾攻撃. Japanese texts from what I have seen tend to be serious volumes that don't use a lot of roman letters.
In fact, by odd coincidence a complaint that I just heard from someone who studied history in Japan was about the "katakana-ization" of foreign words in university history texts, and gave an excellent example which now escapes me.
But as a simple example, America might be katakan-ized as アメリカ, though in a serious history book I would be unsurprised to see the kanji 米国 used more often.
But Japan can never do anything credible to deny their lack of humanity in the war they "now" want to beleive they were forced into! There is no justification for their forced prostitution, rapes, and murder of entire population centers, treatment of POWs, and their own commander's fanatical death-to-themselves attacks. The very thought that a Rising Sun Japanese soldier would consider taking a prisioner if yet another entirely different thought, for which the likes of today's revisionist Japanese scholars cannot not answer, honestly.
FDR's fault
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