Last weekend, more than 110 000 people gathered in protest in Okinawa, Japan. The source of their outrage? The government has ordered that history textbooks be modified to erase claims that at the end of WWII, Japan’s army forced its own people to commit mass suicide.
The protesters were joined by 5000 others on the nearby islands of Miyako and Ishigaki.
The revision order concerned a section in high-school textbooks which stated that when faced with an impending American invasion in 1945, the Japanese army handed out grenades to the citizens of Okinawa, ordering them to kill themselves rather than surrender to the Americans. According to media and civic group reports, about 500 people followed the army’s orders. The accounts of forced group suicides are backed by historical research, including testimonies from the relatives of the victims.
Government propaganda at the time convinced many Japanese that US soldiers who captured them would commit horrible atrocities, and many survivors claim that the military encouraged suicide partly due to fears of what people might tell their invaders, and partly in order to avoid the shame of being taken prisoner.
Hirokazu Nakaima, the governor of Okinawa, told the people gathered not to forget this episode in history: “We cannot bury the fact that the Japanese military was involved in the mass suicide, taking into account…the general background and testimonies that hand grenades were delivered,” he said (BBC).
Saturday’s rally was the largest seen in Okinawa since 1972 when the United States returned the island to Japan. A rally of 85 000 people took place here in 1995 following the rape of a schoolgirl by three American servicemen.
All new textbooks intended for use in Japanese schools must be screened and approved by a government-appointed panel. The publishers of seven textbooks have been asked to make relevant changes and resubmit the books for approval.
This article was published Thursday, October 4, 2007.
