JCP Shii promises to make efforts to block distortion of history in solidarity with Okinawans

   Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo on October 16 met in the Diet Building with representatives of Okinawans, including Prefectural Assembly member Iha Tsunehiro (Liberal Democratic Party) and former House of Councilors member Shimabuku Soko.

   The Okinawans requested the JCP’s support in their demand that the government retract its instruction to remove from history textbooks references to the military’s role in forcing civilians to commit “mass suicides” during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

   “I would like to express my heartfelt respect to the Okinawans’ struggle,” Shii said at the beginning.

   The government is refusing to redress the textbook screening policy, claiming that it should avoid “political intervention” in the textbook screening process although it claims to seriously take Okinawans’ demand.

   Pointing out that such a government stance is the number one problem, Shii stressed that it is an Education Ministry official that first made the unjustifiable “political intervention” in the screening process by recommending the removal of the account in question as JCP Akamine Seiken revealed in the October 11 House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting.

   “Japan has two issues of distorting historical facts depicted in textbooks, one about the Battle of Okinawa as a domestic issue and the other about the wartime sex slavery as an international issue,” Shii said.

  He went on to say, “These two issues come out from the same current of glorifying the past war. We will strive to block any distortion of history by promoting solidarity between the residents in the mainland and in Okinawa.”

- Akahata, October 17, 2007