Forced war suicides excised from books
Saturday, March 31, 2007
JAPAN said yesterday it ordered textbooks to delete references to the military forcing local people to commit suicide in the Battle of Okinawa.
The 83-day battle, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them Okinawan civilians. Local accounts say Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa — an independent kingdom until the 19th century — to commit suicide rather than surrender.
In recent years, nationalist academics have insisted that such suicide pacts were voluntary and not due to orders by troops from mainland Japan.
"There were people who were forced by Japanese troops to commit group suicides," was a sentence in a high school textbook.
The ministry changed the wording to "there were people who were driven into group suicides".
In 2005, protests broke out in China and South Korea after Japan approved textbooks that make little mention of wartime atrocities. China cited the books to block Japan's cherished bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
AFP
The 83-day battle, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them Okinawan civilians. Local accounts say Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa — an independent kingdom until the 19th century — to commit suicide rather than surrender.
In recent years, nationalist academics have insisted that such suicide pacts were voluntary and not due to orders by troops from mainland Japan.
"There were people who were forced by Japanese troops to commit group suicides," was a sentence in a high school textbook.
The ministry changed the wording to "there were people who were driven into group suicides".
In 2005, protests broke out in China and South Korea after Japan approved textbooks that make little mention of wartime atrocities. China cited the books to block Japan's cherished bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
AFP
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