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JAPAN TO REVISE TEXTBOOKS: "Japanese Soldiers Did NOT Force Okinawa Civilians Into Suicide in WWII"
NHK Network News and Major Japanese News Outlets Just Now ^ | 30 March 2007 | AmericanInTokyo

Posted on 03/30/2007 6:02:02 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo

Just saw this on National live Japanese TV a few minutes ago. Our mouths dropped open in partial disbelief, but also with a cynical sense of "well, there they go again".

The Japanese Government announced tonight that they are instructing all Japanese textbook publishing companies who produce history books for school children, to specifically take out an reference to "Japanese Imperial Army forcing Okinawa civilians to commit mass suicide during the Okinawa Campaign".

This, however, is a historic truth, and well documented by the American military forces and Japanese/Okinawan survivors and eyewitnesses. It is history. But now the current Japanese Administration is going to change it. Outright delete it. New generations of Japanese will not know.

Some upset Okinawan survivors in their 80s were on Japanese TV about 30 minutes ago, shaking their heads in disbelief at this development.

Japanese Prime Minister Abe went on national TV to say that he agrees with the decision and that the procedures to carry it the deletion/revision, to revise the textbooks in this manner, was fair.

As it stands, they will leave in the fact that civilians killed themselves in caves and elsewhere, but will total absolve the Japanese Imperial Army of any hand in it.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Japan; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: abe; caves; coverup; japan; okinawa; revisionism; textbooks; whitewash
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The eyewitness, an old lady in her 80s, said on Japanese TV today "the soldiers came to our village, and they told us we were NOT to be captured if the Americans landed, that we were not to stay on living, and with that they passed out hand grenades telling us to kill ourselves if came to that". Weak and frail, nevertheless, she went on to shake her head, saying there is no reason to take out Japanese school textbook references to any responsibility or direction being issued by the Japanese Imperial military at the time--except perhaps to cover things up.
1 posted on 03/30/2007 6:02:05 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Check it.


2 posted on 03/30/2007 6:02:23 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Do you, your company or your country suffer from "AADD"?: "Asian Attention Deficit Disorder")
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

Ping for the usual lists.


3 posted on 03/30/2007 6:03:24 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Do you, your company or your country suffer from "AADD"?: "Asian Attention Deficit Disorder")
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To: AmericanInTokyo

It doesn't get much more elementary than "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."

Of course this revision is short sighted. It makes the current generation feel a little better by turning it's back on some nasty memories, but hoses over the future generations.

The lesson's already been paid for in blood, why throw away the only value created by discarding the lesson?


4 posted on 03/30/2007 6:10:18 AM PDT by Sax
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To: AmericanInTokyo
The Japanese soldiers also used civilians as shields when in hiding and slit the throats of the babies if they felt their positions would be revealed by their crying.

Excerpt from a pamphlet obtained at the Visitors Center of the Japanese Underground Naval Headquarters on Okinawa.

5 posted on 03/30/2007 6:11:49 AM PDT by N. Theknow ((Kennedys - Can't drive, can't fly, can't ski, can't skipper a boat - But they know what's best.))
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To: Sax
You put it very well.

One asks? Who authorized this? And why? What is their motivitation? What is next on their list?

This Abe chap is sure urinating all over his friends (or at least friends he should keep): various nations around Asia over Yasukuni and very recently (denial of) the Sex Slaves conscripted into the war to service Japanese soldiers, and now this, over Okinawa--deleting references to the hand the Imperial Army had in it, insulting the Americans.

Next thing you know, they will take out any references to the attack at all on Pearl Harbor, or perhaps surmise that we did it to ourselves as pretext to go to war against the Empire. I wouldn't put it past this current crop of buzzards. This is worse than the movie "JFK" for pete's sake.

6 posted on 03/30/2007 6:14:37 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Do you, your company or your country suffer from "AADD"?: "Asian Attention Deficit Disorder")
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To: AmericanInTokyo

Oh wow. Thank you for the heads up.

the revisionism and death of history continues full speed. No one wants the truth anymore. It's all about FEEEELIIIINNNGGGGSSSS!!!!!!!

2000 mg Lithium to all liberals , ISlamofascists, and the elites of Japan, stat.


7 posted on 03/30/2007 6:14:41 AM PDT by Killborn (Age of servitude. A government of the traitors, by the liars, for the sheep.)
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To: Killborn

Yep. Lots of endorphins are being released today within the collective brain of so many Japanese elite who wish to destroy basic, immovable history and fact.


8 posted on 03/30/2007 6:17:59 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Do you, your company or your country suffer from "AADD"?: "Asian Attention Deficit Disorder")
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To: AmericanInTokyo
For a terribly horrible battle, there is one thing that emerged that I kind of liked. THIS:

"When the American forces occupied the island, the Japanese took Okinawan clothing to avoid capture. The Okinawans came to the Americans' aid by offering a simple way to detect Japanese in hiding. Okinawan dialect differs greatly from standard Japanese. With Americans at their sides, Okinawans would give directions to people in the local dialect, and those who didn't understand were obviously Japanese in hiding who were then captured."

9 posted on 03/30/2007 6:22:36 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Do you, your company or your country suffer from "AADD"?: "Asian Attention Deficit Disorder")
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To: AmericanInTokyo

The next thing is that they will bitch about so many of their bombs and torpedoes being ruined by American ships at Pearl Harbor.


10 posted on 03/30/2007 6:27:52 AM PDT by pikachu (Breakfast is the most important beer of the day!)
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To: AmericanInTokyo

That is a very true fact. I knew two Japanese girls in college. One from Tokyo and one from Okinawa. They said things very differently; even I could here it. And the Okinawans are looked down on kind of like Southerners here in the states.


11 posted on 03/30/2007 6:45:09 AM PDT by doodad
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To: N. Theknow

My uncle witnessed this first hand as he was a Marine on Okinawa. He was behind enemy lines for 60 days taking out communication centers. He had to kill several women & children whom the Japanese used as shields/decoys.


12 posted on 03/30/2007 6:57:30 AM PDT by Corvair (Mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird.)
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To: AmericanInTokyo
1945 suicide order still a trauma on Okinawa
 
"...Okinawa's trauma over what happened after 545,000 U.S. troops attacked this small archipelago is still deep. People on Japan's southernmost islands want more recognition from Japanese society for their sufferings. But that conflicts with a growing nationalist effort to airbrush the past.
 
After winning battles to play down Japan's war-era history of forcing Asian women to work in military-run brothels and Asian men to work in Japanese factories and mines, Nobukatsu Fujioka, a nationalist educator, started campaigning two weeks ago to delete from Japanese schoolbooks the accounts of orders from soldiers to civilians here to choose suicide over surrender...."

13 posted on 03/30/2007 6:58:26 AM PDT by Wolverine (A Concerned Citizen)
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To: doodad

So much American blood was spilled taking Okinawa, we should have just kept it as a protectorate.


14 posted on 03/30/2007 7:02:48 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (BTUs are my Beat.)
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To: AmericanInTokyo

We're rewriting our history books in this country to accommodate the minorities. Remember what Adolph said, to paraphrase, give me one generation and I can change history.


15 posted on 03/30/2007 7:04:03 AM PDT by Plains Drifter (America First, Last, and Always!!!)
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To: AmericanInTokyo

And people wonder why we're still in Japan and Germany....

The pure evil there, that had to be defeated at such a tremendous cost, was enough to last for generations.


16 posted on 03/30/2007 7:05:06 AM PDT by rottndog (If you don't believe in the abolition of government run schools, your views aren't radical enough.)
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To: Sax
AMEN

The same can be said for American history.

17 posted on 03/30/2007 7:06:56 AM PDT by bmwcyle (Freep Fox they drop the ball on GOE)
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To: AmericanInTokyo

Japan did to the asian rim attrocities as bas as the Nazis did to europe and the Jewish people... it is unconcionable that they continue to deny their actions, and what little honesty about them their government has admitted on these issues., they now backtrack on.

The Japanese during WWII are probably the closest in terms of cultural indoctrination by an enemy, of what we face in the WOT today.

They should be roundly chastised publicly by the leader of every free nation for this and other abominations regarding their history in WWII.


18 posted on 03/30/2007 7:08:09 AM PDT by HamiltonJay
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To: AmericanInTokyo

The Japanese love to cover up things that are uncomfortable for them. It is part of their culture.


19 posted on 03/30/2007 7:08:48 AM PDT by Kirkwood
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To: AmericanInTokyo

When will the Japanese start demanding that their textbooks say that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked without provocation?


20 posted on 03/30/2007 7:22:44 AM PDT by snarks_when_bored
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