Japanese textbook are claiming that they were just trying to "liberate"...

[NNN0LHI]

...other Asian countries during WW II. Now where have I heard that before? I sure am glad they didn't "liberate" us too.

Don

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5639847

Chinese and S.Koreans sue over Japan textbook

TOKYO (Reuters) - A group of Chinese and South Koreans have sued a Japanese regional government over a textbook that critics say whitewashes Japan's militaristic past at a time of frayed ties between Japan and its two neighbours.

Japan's Education Ministry approved the textbook, written by nationalist scholars for junior high schools, in 2001 despite strong protests from China and South Korea and a new version is expected to be approved early next month. snip

"(The textbook) justifies and hides the facts of ... Japan's invasion in Asia and the Pacific Ocean region and distorts history," the
plaintiffs said in the lawsuit on Wednesday . snip

Critics have attacked the history text for downplaying the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, the sexual slavery of women by the
Japanese military, and for depicting World War Two as a war aimed at liberating other Asian countries.

more

[zbdent]

1. You forget, the Japanese tried to liberate the native Hawaiians

from our tyranny. (After watching a History Channel show, you would agree that there was a bit of tyranny - after a faction broke off from the legitimate US govt, almost everything in the palace was auctioned off in a humiliating way for meager amounts of money).

[NNN0LHI]

2. I bet the Japanese forgot to mention that in their textbooks too

Thanks for the reminder.

Don

[ArtVandaley]

3. Hahaha

I'm sure that was their motive. Adolf was trying to liberate the Polish people from the tyranny they lived under too.

[rockymountaindem]

4. That's what the Japanese government said during the war itself.

They called it "The Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", and their motto was "Asia for the Asiatics".

My Japanese history prof. who has spent about half his life in Japan told the class that approx. 1/3 of the population there will defend WWII as a war of self defence and liberation, 1/3 is ambivalent and 1/3 will apologize at every opportunity.

[Lisa]

5. I wish this Japanese prof had won the Nobel Peace Prize ...

I really admire Ienaga Saburo. He sued the Japanese government to protest the erasure of those crimes from school textbooks. It would have been a lot harder for them to pull stuff like this, if he'd received global recognition. (For the record, all 4 of my grandparents were born in Japan ...)

http://www.ahrchk.net/statements/mainfile.php/2001statement/44/

[fujiyama]

6. What will our history books say

50 years from now?

Will they also mislead generations to come that we "liberated" the people of Iraq and Afghanistan?

[megatherium]

7. We have to work on reasons to hate the Japanese again.

We are going to need the oil.