09/28/2007THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
NAHA--Tens of thousands of Okinawans are expected to turn out Saturday to protest Tokyo's decision to drop references in high school textbooks to the Imperial Japanese Army's role behind wartime civilian suicides in Okinawa Prefecture.
Organizers hope to mobilize at least 50,000 people in what would be the largest such rally in this southernmost prefecture since 1995, when 85,000 people gathered at a park in Ginowan to vent their anger at the huge U.S. military presence after a 12-year-old girl was raped by three U.S. servicemen.
"Whatever we do, we need to bring together at least 50,000 people. Otherwise, the central government probably won't take our request very seriously," Toshinobu Nakazato, chairman of the Okinawa prefectural assembly, told member groups of the rally's organizing committee in a preparatory meeting last week.
The committee consists of 22 groups, including labor unions and an association of bereaved families of the war dead.
Saturday's rally, to be held in the same Ginowan park, is expected to adopt a resolution calling for a retraction of the government's decision on textbook screening. It will be submitted to the education ministry and other entities on Oct. 16.
Among those scheduled to give speeches on Saturday are Yoshikatsu Yoshikawa, 68, who will give an account of a mass civilian suicide he witnessed on Tokashikijima island during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.
Okinawa Governor Hirokazu Nakaima will also address the crowd.
Two local high school students will present their opinions on behalf of classmates who will be forced to use the history textbooks starting next spring.
Similar rallies will also be held Saturday on Miyakojima and Ishigakijima islands, where combined, some 5,000 people are expected to participate.
In its latest screening of textbooks, the education ministry instructed publishers to rewrite passages that referred to Imperial Japanese Army soldiers ordering islanders to commit mass suicides in 1945.
The education ministry cited conflicting documents on the army's role as a reason for making the change.
An estimated 120,000 islanders, about one-quarter of Okinawa's population at the time, perished in the only ground battle fought on Japanese soil that involved civilians during World War II.
Witnesses say many people took their lives because they were instructed to blow themselves up with hand grenades provided by Japanese soldiers rather than becoming POWs.
Calls to rescind the government's decision mushroomed after the Tomigusuku municipal assembly passed a statement in May. Forty other municipal assemblies in Okinawa Prefecture eventually followed suit.
Despite reservations among some ruling Liberal Democratic Party members, the prefectural assembly unanimously adopted a statement on June 22, on the eve of the anniversary of the end of organized fighting by Japanese in the Battle of Okinawa.
Okinawan political leaders, from the vice prefectural governor to heads of local governments and assemblies, called on the government to retract the decision.
So far, the government has refused to budge on the issue.(IHT/Asahi: September 28,2007)
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