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Japanese wartime conduct revised in high school books

In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government announced late on Friday.

The Ministry of Education ordered publishers to delete passages stating that the Imperial Army ordered civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa, as the island was about to fall to US troops in the final months of the war.

The decision was announced as part of the ministry's annual screening of textbooks used in all public schools. The ministry also ordered changes to other delicate issues to dovetail with government assertions, though the screening is supposed to be free of political interference.

"I believe the screening system has been followed appropriately," said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has long campaigned to soften the treatment in textbooks of Japan's wartime conduct.

The decision on the Battle of Okinawa, which came as a surprise because the ministry had never objected to the description in the past, followed recent denials by Abe that the military had coerced women into sexual slavery during the war.

The results of the annual textbook screening are closely watched in China, South Korea and other Asian countries. So the fresh denial of the military's responsibility in the Battle of Okinawa and in sexual slavery -- long accepted as historical facts -- is likely to deepen suspicions in Asia that Tokyo is trying to whitewash its militarist past even as it tries to raise the profile of its current forces.

Some 200,000 Americans and Japanese died during the Battle of Okinawa, one of the most brutal clashes during the war. During the 1945 battle, during which one-quarter of the civilian population was killed, Japanese soldiers used civilians as shields against the Americans, and convinced locals that victorious US soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. With the impending victory of US troops, civilians committed mass suicide, urged on by fanatical Japanese soldiers.

"There were some people who were forced to commit suicide by the Japanese army," one old textbook explained. But in the revision ordered by the ministry, it now reads, "There were some people who were driven to mass suicide."

In explaining its policy change, the ministry said that it "is not clear that the Japanese army coerced or ordered the mass suicides."

As with Abe's denial regarding sexual slavery, the ministry's new position appeared to discount overwhelming evidence of coercion, particularly the testimony of victims and survivors themselves.

"There are many Okinawans who have testified that the Japanese army directed them to commit suicide," Ryukyu Shimpo, a major Okinawan newspaper, said in an angry editorial.
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