Textbook war escalates as China and Korea vent their fury at Japanese rewr

[emad]

Textbook war escalates as China and Korea vent their fury at Japanese rewriting of history
By David McNeill in Seoul
11 April 2005
The Independent

Thousands of Chinese protesters pelted the Japanese embassy in Beijing with missiles and shouted "Japanese pigs come out" and "stop distorting history" over the weekend, dragging Sino-Japanese relations to a new low.

The protests against Tokyo's authorisation of textbooks that many Chinese say whitewash Japan's 15-year occupation is the latest incident to rock the shaky partnership between Asia's leading power and its rising star.

Protests also took place in South Korea, where Gil Won Ok and her elderly comrades gathered at the Japanese embassy in Seoul to plead, pray and bitterly denounce Tokyo. "Who will take away my pain," cried the frail 77-year-old who was barely a teenager when she was forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. "Atone for the past and let me die in peace!"

The pensioners - among the few still alive from up to 200,000 comfort women (sex slaves) of the Imperial Japanese Army, have been assembling at the embassy since 1992 to demand an apology. But neither time nor mortality has dulled the emotional heat of their campaign, which is regularly stoked by what Chinese and Koreans consider fresh insults. The new textbooks, which Korean government spokesman Lee Kyu Hyung said "beautify and justify" Japan's occupation of much of Asia until 1945, have added fuel to the fire.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=628297

[dArKeR]

1. What about the truth of history on Taiwan, (Formosa). Dirty

filthy communist chinese bastards!

Taiwan's History, Present and Future
http://www.taiwandc.org/tpetimes.htm

[Toots]

2. One of the few examples of the loser writing the history of events.

Usually it is the winner that writes history. Maybe the fascists actually won and we just don't realize it.

[emad]

3. Japanese embassy in Beijing is stoned

Telegraph
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
(Filed: 11/04/2005)

China blamed the Tokyo government yesterday for a wave of anti-Japanese attacks that culminated in the stoning of Japan's embassy in Beijing.

Protesters hurled rocks and tiles over the heads of riot police, breaking windows during the protest on Saturday.

Yesterday, thousands of people marched in the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and called for a boycott of Japanese shops and imports.

The immediate trigger for the unrest was the Japanese education ministry's approval of a re-issued history textbook which, it is claimed, plays down atrocities committed by Japanese forces in China during the Second World War.
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/11/wemb11.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/04/11/ixportal.html

[acmavm]

4. So, do you think that the history books will accurately portray the

cruelty and barbarity of the Americans in Iraq? We'll do the same damn thing. Like we did in Viet Nam.

I am not justifying anything. Just pointing out that this is nothing new. The Germans had the same problem with the death camps.