Okinawans rally against history textbook revision

   About 3,500 Okinawans took part in a rally which 63 organizations in Okinawa jointly held in Naha City on June 9 in opposition to the Education Ministry textbook screening policy of removing from history textbooks accounts that during the Battle of Okinawa the Japanese military had forced civilians to commit “mass suicide.”

   A university student representing a high school and college students’ peace group expressed strong protest against the ministry order, saying, “I wonder if Education Ministry officials have ever listened to the testimonies of those who experienced the land battle. The removal of the accounts will hide the truth about the war.” His group has listened in the past three years to the stories of Okinawans who witnessed the land battle and carried out a signature collection campaign in protest against the education ministry policy.

   Zukeran Choho, 75, spoke about his wartime experience:

   “I was 13 years old in 1945. On May 23, Japanese solders drove us out of our air-raid shelter. Then, we wandered about the southern part of Okinawa where the fierce land battle took place.

   At that time, schools and communities taught us that being captured by brutal U.S. solders was the greatest humiliation to us, the ‘emperor’s children.’ Japanese solders gave hand grenades to residents, telling them to kill themselves in order to avoid being captured. Hand grenades were important weapons for the Japanese Army.

   On June 17, we were hiding in a dugout in today’s Itoman City. A middle-aged man I knew was given two hand grenades. He handed me one of them. The 17 people in the shelter were determined to commit suicide together if U.S. solders come to our shelter. Fortunately, they did not come.

   On June 19, a Japanese person who had been captured by the U.S. forces came to our shelter to persuade us to get out of there. He was killed by Japanese solders right in front of us.”

   Zukeran said, “We must raise our voices against the government attempt to distort history.”

   Japanese Communist Party House of Representatives member Akamine Seiken in his speech drew attention to the Japan Conference that calls for constitutional revision, prime minister’s regular visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and “better history textbooks.”

   He pointed out that the Japan Conference, in which 15 out of 18 Abe Cabinet members are members, had denounced some history textbooks, claiming that they were writing false accounts.

   Citing as an example of false accounts, the Japan Conference ten years ago said, “Some textbooks criticized the Japanese military for ordering civilians to commit mass suicide during the Battle of Okinawa in the ‘Great East Asia War’.”

   Representatives of the Democratic, Social Democratic, and Okinawa Social Mass parties also spoke.

   Almost half of the 41 municipalities in Okinawa have already adopted resolutions calling on the Education Ministry to withdraw its order to revise history textbooks.

   In Higashi Village, 14 students of a junior high school third-grade class submitted to the village assembly a petition calling for the withdrawal of the ministry order.

   The petition said, “If descriptions about the military role in forcing residents to commit suicide are deleted, the realities of the war will become obscured.”

- Akahata, June 10, 2007