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Posted: 9/30/2014 10:06:14 PM EDT
The Japanese perspective of WWII history is mind boggling.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — LAST month, I received a startling email from an employee at one of Japan’s largest newspapers, about a development I’d long awaited. The government was about to unveil a 12,000-page, 61-volume official biography of Emperor Hirohito, which a large team of scholars and civil servants had been preparing since 1990, the year after his death.

I was asked if I would examine an embargoed excerpt from this enormous trove and then comment on the emperor’s perspective on various events, including Japan’s 1937 expansion of its conflict in China and its decision four years later to go to war with the United States and Britain; the trial of war criminals; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the American military occupation of postwar Japan.

But there was a condition: I could not discuss Hirohito’s “role and responsibility” in World War II, which would be strictly outside the scope of the newspaper’s reporting. Having devoted years of my life to examining precisely this topic, I politely refused.

Link to full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/opinion/hirohito-string-puller-not-puppet.html?emc=eta1
Link Posted: 9/30/2014 10:08:37 PM EDT
[#1]
At least the German's had the cultural balls to accept responsibility for the evil they did in WW2.
Link Posted: 9/30/2014 10:22:53 PM EDT
[#2]
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Quoted:
At least the German's had the cultural balls to accept responsibility for the evil they did in WW2.
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No they didn't.  Mention the war in front of them and watch them instantly stop talking about anything.  The anti-NSDAP and denazification laws were passed in the shadow of an occupying army.

Die Deustchvolk did a very good job of following orders about what to write on their lawbooks and a poor to nonexistent job confronting the issue themselves.
Link Posted: 10/1/2014 1:54:53 AM EDT
[#3]
Not surprising. They have been in constant denial.

Recently Ashahi Shumbun(newspaper) retracted their report about comfort women(more like forced sex slaves) because it contained some not-so-credible sources.

Nationalists are using that as the evidence of comfort women program ran by Japanese government is false.

I'm hearing some rumors that someone in that newspaper may end up with a few stitches. Not the first time this thing happened. IIRC there was a shooting in Ashahi Shimbun decades ago. 2 reporters were killed.
Link Posted: 10/1/2014 2:05:11 AM EDT
[#4]
The Japanese revising the history of World War Two? Never.
Link Posted: 10/1/2014 2:24:40 AM EDT
[#5]
shocker... well.. no not really
Link Posted: 10/1/2014 2:31:17 AM EDT
[#6]
We needed Japan to counter USSR in the Far East, so Hirohito was given a pass.

Same deal with the war crimes committed by Unit 731, plus we wanted their data.

Same deal with Werner von Braun and his co-workers from Peenemunde.

If you had what we wanted, we would cut a bargain.
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