The Right-Wing Group Behind the Super Patriotic Japanese Textbook that Whitewashes History

David McNeill, in the South China Morning Post (April 23, 2004):

The rain beat down last week on a forest of umbrellas filing through the modern, neon-lit streets of central Tokyo, but the message coming from inside the cavernous Kudan Kaikan Hall was an oddly old-fashioned one, reminiscent of 19th-century jingoism.

"Why are we teaching our children to hate Japan?" thundered one speaker. "America, China and Britain don't teach their kids to hate their countries. We should be telling them that this is an amazing country and that they should love it with all their hearts."

Another said: "Compared with the colonial rule of the European countries and America, Japan's rule of Asia was humane. If we had not colonised Korea, America or Europe would have. We have nothing to be ashamed of."

This is the world of the Society for Textbook Reform, which organised the conference, where Japan was not the brutal aggressor in the second world war but the liberator, fighting to defend itself from the US and European powers, and free Asia from the yoke of white imperialism; where imperial troops were not guilty, as most historians suggest, of some of the worst war crimes of the 20th century, but the "normal excesses" of armies everywhere; where Japan's "masochistic" emphasis on atonement is leading to the "moral decline" of its young.

It's a message not restricted to the 1,200 mostly middle-aged men in the hall, the sort of group that might be called angry white males in the west. After eight years building a grassroots movement to radically change the teaching of history in schools, the society is aiming to go mainstream in high schools across Japan. And with friends in high places, many believe they have a good chance of success.

"We're confident we can change the teaching of history in schools here," says one of the society's leading intellectual lights, Nobukatsu Fujioka, a professor of education at the elite Tokyo University.

So, does this mean Japan should hide its war crimes? "Great Britain committed war crimes," he says. "America, too. Regrettably, many nations commit war crimes. My concern is that Japanese children are taught to hate their country. They're taught that only Japan was wrong in the war. Don't all countries use history to instil pride in students? The aim of history teaching is to prepare people for citizenship. The facts of history are limitless. We can't teach them all, so we have to make choices."

Professor Fujioka's group, led by openly right-wing scholars, dropped off the media radar three years ago after it caused a storm of protest across Asia with its New History textbook. Approved for use by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the textbook was accused of whitewashing history.

The Japanese invasion of Asia was changed to "war in Asia and the Pacific" and the word "invaded" changed to "advanced".

References to Unit 731, a bio-warfare unit that author Daniel Barenblatt recently said may have been responsible for one million Chinese deaths, were dropped.

The infamous 1937 Nanking massacre, when some historians estimate rampaging imperial troops slaughtered up to 300,000 Chinese, was changed to the "Nanking incident" and the number of casualties removed, with the strong implication that China fabricated the episode.

References to "comfort women", or an estimated 200,000 sexual slaves from across Asia forced to service imperial troops, were dropped. The comfort women, said Professor Fujioka in a famous essay, were prostitutes: "There is no need to teach children these kinds of facts."

The 2001 campaign is widely believed abroad to have ended in failure after teachers and local activists blocked the use of the textbook in all but about 10 of Japan's 10,000 middle schools, but that's not how the society or its opponents view it.

New History has sold nearly 750,000 copies commercially since its release and its popularity has forced the makers of the seven other history textbooks in use to tone down their own accounts of Japan's wartime history. The society recently once again submitted its revised textbook to the Education Ministry for approval, and it believes this time around it's got it right. "More and more people share our opposition to instilling self-hatred in our children," Professor Fujioka recently told author John Nathan. "I am confident it won't be that long until New History sets the standard."

But why has this relatively tiny organisation, run by academics and volunteers out of a nondescript building in Tokyo, had such an impact on the history debate?

Yoshifumi Tawara, who runs Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, a group opposed to the textbook, has an answer: "The society likes to see itself as being up against a liberal establishment that controls education in Japan, but much of the establishment backs what it is doing."

The establishment includes up to 100 lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who are sympathetic to the society's goals, the chairman of Japan's largest business federation, the Keidanren, and the mass circulation Sankei newspaper. Thousands of businesses have funded the society's activities, including the free distribution of more than 700,000 copies of a nationalist history book by society member Kanji Nishio to schools across the country. Pitted against this well-funded campaign is a loose network of teachers, trade unionists and campaigners like Mr Tawara.

But the society's campaign to revise Japan's troubled past for a source of national pride has also been fuelled by the rich vein of hypocrisy many in Japan see in the actions of its staunchest post- war ally, the US. Many of its key supporters, including best-selling manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi, slam the refusal of the US to apologise for the 1945 fire bombing of Tokyo, which incinerated an estimated 100,000 Tokyo civilians, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, incidents both he and Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara (who also supports the textbook movement) describe as "racist".

Parallels have been drawn among the textbook movement's supporters to the bombing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the society's emotional message has found an increasingly willing audience among the millions disillusioned with Japan's traditional subservience to Washington.

"America cannot criticise anyone," says 32-year-old graphic designer Chiyoko Fujimoto, who regularly reads Kobayashi's comics. "They bomb and kill when they want. Why should we take all the criticism for what we did years ago?"

Mr Tawara also says there has been a sea change in the popular conscience since Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's failed attempt to mend diplomatic relations with North Korea. "The Japanese media has focused strongly on Japan as the victim of crimes by North Korea, particularly the kidnapping of its citizens, so the memories of what Japan did in Asia is fading. Many young people have little idea of what went on in the past."

This growing national amnesia, which the new textbook threatens to worsen, fuels growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China, which has watched Tokyo wriggle out of hundreds of war compensation claims. "The whole trouble is that Japan has never faced up to the past the way Germany has," says Arthur Titherington, who fought and lost a compensation claim in the Tokyo courts and who is chairman of the Japanese Labour Camp Survivors' Association of Britain.

"I think it's a great shame that Japan is prepared to let its children live in ignorance. They just don't know what they did."

'Historic Act' May Keep Sea Creatures from being History

April 08, 2004
Notebook
The Daily Journal
By Dennis Pfaff

SAN FRANCISCO - Dugongs, by all accounts, are gentle creatures, largely content to munch sea grass on the bottom of ocean shallows.

Once upon a time, dugongs allegedly fooled what were presumably desperately lonely sailors into mistaking them for mermaids. Now, according to environmentalists, at least some varieties of these huge relatives of the manatee are themselves in danger of disappearing into mythology.

Of particular concern is the Okinawa dugong, a subspecies that may include as few as 50 animals, according to a lawsuit filed last fall in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The Okinawa variety is part of a larger population of dugong listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

Dugongs can live as long as 70 years and grow to nearly 1,000 pounds. Most of the world's population lives in northern Australian waters.

That the Okinawa dugong survives at all may be something of a miracle. It inhabits waters off one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate on earth.

More than 200,000 people - half of them Japanese soldiers and the remainder civilians - died on Okinawa in the spring of 1945, making the last major battle of World War II's Pacific campaign also the deadliest. More people may have died there than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few months later.

American military casualties included more than 40,000, including an estimated 12,000 killed, many as a result of a hurricane of kamikaze attacks. Japan in 1945 considered Okinawa - about 400 miles south of the country's main islands - the front line of its home defense. The horrific nature of the battle may have helped convince American war planners to drop the atom bombs rather than invade Japan with conventional forces.

Okinawa was returned to Japanese control in 1972 but the American military maintains dozens of bases there, including about three-quarters of the U.S. forces assigned to Japan.

Having survived the storm of fire and steel, the dugong nevertheless continue to be threatened by military operations on Okinawa, according to those interested in the animals' preservation.

Of particular concern are proposals to move the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma air base from its current cramped location on one part of the island, where it is surrounded by civilian development, to an offshore site. The base, which supports helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, is home to more than 4,000 Marines and sailors.

The primary problem for environmentalists is that the new home of the airfield would be literally right on top of and next to a coral reef. The reef area provides "the most important remaining habitat" for the rare dugong, according to the lawsuit.

To block the Futenma project, a coalition of American and Japanese environmentalists turned to an unusual source of legal firepower, the National Historic Preservation Act. That law, unlike traditional environmental statutes, requires compliance by the U.S. government in its overseas activities, according to attorneys representing the groups.

The NHPA covers "any property listed on the host country's equivalent of the National Register of Historic Places," said Marcello Mollo, a lawyer for Oakland's nonprofit Earthjustice law firm.

The Okinawa dugong is a protected "national monument" under the Japanese "Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties," which is the equivalent of the historic register, according to the lawsuit, Okinawa Dugong v. Rumsfeld, 03-4350MHP.

The lawsuit seeks a court order setting aside plans to build the base until studies are conducted to find out how to avoid harming the animals.

And so the same law that might be used to preserve a Civil War battlefield in Virginia or a saloon in Oakland could be instrumental in saving the dugong. Mollo said it was necessary to turn to the historic preservation law because of the American military's general reluctance to abide by foreign countries' environmental statutes.

Attorneys for the government declined to comment about the case. However, at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in March, Justice Department lawyer Charles Shockey said any actual development at the site is years away.
Okinawa Dugong

"There is no project anticipated any time soon," Shockey said, adding that building the new facility on or near the coral reef is only one of the proposals under consideration.

Documents from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs show that at least by 1996 the construction of a "sea-based facility" to handle the air base's helicopters had support from ranking U.S. and Japanese officials. The offshore strip was considered "the best option in terms of enhanced safety and quality of life for the Okinawan people while maintaining operational capabilities of U.S. forces," according to the report.

The lawsuit suggests plans for the new facility are far along, and Mollo told the judge they call for an 8,000-foot runway that could accommodate helicopters and airplanes.

Also in the works are designs for subsurface seismic testing that could disturb the animals, Mollo said.

More about the government's plans could be released next month, when the Department of Defense is scheduled to file a motion to dismiss the case. Patel scheduled a hearing for August to listen to arguments from both sides.

Until, then, presumably, the dugongs will go about their business, oblivious to the fact they may once again face a military assault from the United States, or that their fate may be in the hands of lawyers and judges thousands of miles away.

More Dugong News

Looking for Friendly Overseas Base, Pentagon Finds It Already Has One

By JAMES BROOKE
Published: April 7, 2004

Washed by a southwesterly Pacific breeze, a line of B-52 Stratofortress bombers stand parked on the hot tarmac here, their tails stenciled with ''MT,'' a reminder that they flew here recently from the snows of Minot, N.D.

Away for more than a decade, the B-52's, the United States' largest bombers, are back in Guam, part of a wide-ranging drive by the Pentagon to make this island, an American territory, a ''power projection hub'' on the edge of Asia.

''We are openly talking about putting a fighter wing there, a tanker squadron there, a Global Hawk group there,'' Gen. William J. Begert, Pacific Air Forces commander, said by telephone from Hawaii, almost 4,000 miles east of here. The Global Hawk is an unmanned surveillance plane.

''Guam, first of all, is U.S. territory,'' General Begert said. ''I don't need overflight rights. I don't need landing rights. I always have permission to go to Guam. It might as well be California or New Jersey.''

Next year, Washington is to decide on a new round of base closings, the first in a decade. Opening the debate, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reported to Congress on March 23 that the military had 24 percent more base capacity than it needed.

Judging by Mr. Rumsfeld's comments after his trip here last November, Guam will be a winner in the base-closing process. This volcanic, 209-square-mile island, with a population of about 160,000, fits the Pentagon's new strategy of creating ''lily pads'' to allow for the rapid deployment of military muscle.

''Rumsfeld keeps saying, 'What about Guam? Let's build up Guam,' '' said an American diplomat in Tokyo, where the defense secretary stopped after visiting here.

The Navy loss its base at Subic Bay, the Philippines, in 1992 after the Philippine Senate refused to extend the lease, and American memories of that remain sharp. The diplomat added, ''We don't want to be somewhere where they don't want us, where they can throw us out.''

At the naval station here, Rear Adm. Arthur J. Johnson, the commander, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had raised Guam's strategic value as the Pentagon realized the usefulness of an all-American outpost in Asia. ''We invested huge amounts of money in facilities we could not use when we needed them, for example, Saudi Arabia,'' Admiral Johnson said. ''Places where the U.S. is autonomous have come greatly to the fore.''

Military officials here declined to discuss how Guam would fit into an American response to the rapid rise of China. But by moving ships and submarines to Guam, the Pentagon cuts ''the tyranny of distance,'' trimming five days off a Pacific crossing from Hawaii, said Richard Halloran, a military analyst based in Hawaii.

''A lot of these moves are intended to deter China,'' Mr. Halloran, a freelance military writer, said from Honolulu, where the United States Pacific Command is based. ''You are not threatening China, not in any way jeopardizing their security. On the other hand, if China becomes belligerent, you are in position to do something about it, particularly with the submarines and an aircraft carrier.''

Carl Peterson, a businessman on Guam, said of Washington's low-key military buildup here: ''It just sort of happens. Why disclose it? Why tell the Chinese what you are going to do before you do it?''

Later this year, a new nuclear-powered attack submarine is to arrive here, the third to make Guam its home port since 2002. While Washington debates whether a carrier should come here or to Hawaii, Guam's outer harbor is being dredged and World War II-era wharves are to be repaired for more efficient munitions handling.

[''Guam's geo-strategic importance cannot be overstated,'' Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, the senior military officer in the Pacific, with 300,000 soldiers, sailors and marines under his command, said on March 31 in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. ''Both Navy and Air Force facilities will continue to figure prominently in Guam's increasing role as a power projection hub.'']

Across the naval station here, new housing is being built, part of a near- doubling of military spending on the island from levels of a decade ago.

''Guam is no longer the trailer park of the Pacific,'' Admiral Johnson said of the new military investment. ''Guam has emerged from backwater status to the center of the radar screen. This is rapidly becoming a focus for logistics, for strategic planning.''

Washington's investment in Guam is most easily seen from the catwalk of Andersen's 13-story air traffic control tower.

Down below, work is under way on an air-conditioned, typhoon-resistant hangar for B-1 bombers, a huge war reserve material warehouse, a new base exchange shopping center, a new fitness and health center and a new base security center. Out of sight, new underground pipes are delivering aviation fuel directly to parking pads for jets, and the first of 60 munitions storage ''igloos'' are being built. To foil terrorists, workers are drilling water wells on base and burying power lines off base.

''This is by far the largest amount of construction I have seen at any Air Force base in my years in the service,'' said Capt. David Vandenburg, a 29-year-old Oklahoman who is chief of base development.

Captain Vandenburg's commander, Col. Paul K. White, said that when he was assigned here a year ago he was leery of Guam because of its sleepy reputation. ''But this is a very exciting time to be here,'' he continued. ''If bases are closed, the units will have to go somewhere.''

Of the Pentagon's new appreciation for Guam, Mr. Peterson said: ''Rumsfeld is high on Guam; he was heard asking, 'How are we going to do Guam?' They are not showing their hand. But through innuendo and comments that we pick up on, everybody is suggesting there is going to be so much going on here.''

While apartments, fitness centers and military support offices are not glamorous, they are essential for increasing what Capt. David M. Boone, a Navy Seabee, calls Guam's ''surge capacity.'' In a military emergency, the island could quickly swell with planes, submarines, and ships.

''The real trick for me is to figure out how many people are going to be living here 10 years from now,'' said Captain Boone, who has command of military construction on Guam. ''It is a moving target.''

Guam has been a supply base since Spanish galleons from Manila stopped here to pick up fresh water and food before crossing the Pacific to Acapulco, Mexico. In the late 19th century, the island was a Spanish coaling station; the United States gained control in 1898 after the Spanish-American War. In recent decades, Air Force pilots dubbed Guam ''the world's largest gas station.''

But it is increasingly being used for military training. The Marines have rented typhoon-damaged structures for urban warfare exercises. Rural warfare training has been conducted in the southern jungles, forests so thick that one holdout Japanese soldier from World War II was captured only in 1972.

About 150 miles north of here, a small island serves as a bombing range. There is also the wide-open sea and the sky above it, with no one to complain about sonic booms.

''In Minot, the nearest bombing range is in Utah, a two-and-a-half hour flight,'' said Lt. Col. Robert Hyde, a 37-year-old Mississippian who commands the base's new unit of six B-52's. Referring to his training here with the Navy, Colonel Hyde said, ''In North Dakota, obviously, you can't work easily with a carrier battle group.''

During the Christmas 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, more than 150 B-52's flew from here. On a recent morning, bulldozers and pavers were upgrading the acres of tarmac that make Andersen comparable to a major international airport.

In this treeless landscape, even B-52's look small. In the shade of one the planes' huge, drooping wings, Master Sgt. Ralph Gillikan, a mechanic last stationed at the North Dakota base, surveyed the surrounding sea of concrete and said, ''The parking here is good.''