Japan Press Weekly

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2008 April 16 - 22 [EDUCATION]

Okinawa urges government to reinsert the fact of ‘military coercion’ in textbooks

A delegation of Okinawans concerned with the question of history textbooks on April 16 requested the prime minister and the education minister to have the passages about the historical fact of the “Japanese Army’s coercion of Okinawans” to kill themselves in mass suicides during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945 be reinserted.

The action came in the wake of an Osaka District Court decision that acknowledged the involvement of the Japanese military in “mass suicides.”

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Ono Matsushige met the petitioners at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence and said that the request would be conveyed to the chief cabinet secretary and to the prime minister.

Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Vice Minister Ikenobo Yasuko said, “The textbook case is still pending, and the ministry has no intention to make changes in the textbooks.”

Nakazato Toshinobu, the chair of the organizing committee of the Okinawans Rally Demanding the Education Ministry Revoke its Decision, said, “Now that the ministry no longer has any legitimate rationale to order the deletion of the descriptions, the ministry should withdraw its opinion to that effect.”
- Akahata, April 17, 2008