That’s the theme of an essay contest in Japan won by Toshio Tamogami, a former Air Force chief who until recently also served as a commandant at a Japanese military training school. Tamogami’s “perspective” on history is pretty warped, because in his essay, he suggested that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because of a “trap” set by FDR and that many Asian countries took a positive view of Japan’s actions before and during WWII. Wow. I bet that’s news to most of Japan’s neighbors. In the essay, he also stated that it was “certainly a false accusation to say Japan was an aggressor nation.”
Needless to say, Japan’s government immediately dismissed him, but now there’s a furor over the fact that he’ll likely retire with a $600,000 bonus. The government wants him to give up the bonus, but he’s not going quietly into the night. He testified in front of the Upper House of parliament, calling for overturning Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which prohibits Japan from engaging in war, and also indicating that he has no plans to give up his bonus.
WTF is wrong with this guy? Actually, not only is it not odd for a Japanese military man to hold such views, it’s actually not altogether uncommon within the Japanese government. Revisionist history regarding Japan’s actions before and during WWII is nothing new. With each new government comes the usual controversy over whether the new leader should visit the Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to 2.5 million Japanese who died fighting for Japan, including about 1,100 people who are convicted war criminals. There was also Japan’s attempt last year to change its school books to wipe out any mention of the fact that the Japanese military ordered civilians on Okinawa to commit suicide instead of surrendering to US forces. Officially, the Japanese government has apologized for conquering and occupying its Asian neighbors, and it retains the apology as official policy, but its words and actions indicate that some within Japan’s government have a more favorable view of Japan’s colonialism in the early 20th century compared to, oh, the rest of the world. Japan’s current Prime Minister said that Japan did a lot of good things while occupying the Korean peninsula. Japan’s last PM backed off of prior apologies to the hundreds of thousands of “comfort women”, who were forced to become sex slaves for the military’s needs during WWII. Japan’s Supreme Court acknowledged the slavery.
It’s sort of ironic that PM Aso is condeming Tamogami so harshly, when it seems that the two really don’t differ in their views of Japan all that much.
Source: Wikipedia
TAGS: China, colonialism, Japan, Korea, nationalism, Pearl Harbor, sex slaves, World War II
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