Japan Press Weekly

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2012 February 22 - 28 [HISTORY]

Accounts of ‘comfort women’ and ‘bloodshed’ erased from Okinawa Battle monument

Descriptions of the military’s “comfort women” and “slaughter of people” have been erased from a signboard in a cave used by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Okinawa Battle near Shurijo Castle Park in Naha City in Okinawa Prefecture.

A local paper on February 24, under the heading of “History Sanitized Again,” carried the concerns of residents who experienced the Okinawa Battle and witnessed the massacre by the Army as well as experts’ comments criticizing the deletion of the passages. Hearing the news, citizens rushed to the audience gallery at the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly to witness the proceedings.

Japanese Communist Party member of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly Kayo Sogi at the assembly session demanded that the passages be immediately reinstated.

To this, Okinawan government official Shimoji Hiroshi responded, “Obtaining the governor’s approval, I decided to remove the descriptions and I have no plans to put them back.”

Governor Nakaima Hirokazu also stated, “I gave my endorsement to the deletion.”

The JCP representative said, “The people of Okinawa have fought against the falsification of historical facts. We must preserve Okinawa Battle monuments with a firm resolve to never again allow such a tragedy to occur.”

Regarding the Okinawa Battle, another act of deletion was attempted in 2007. The central government and super-conservative groups demanded the elimination from history textbooks of an account that the Japanese Army had forced, ordered, or led Okinawans into acts of “mass suicide”.

At that time, the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution twice in protest against the attempt of deletion. Some 110,000 people held a rally demanding that textbooks carry historical facts.