masayuki yoshida wrote:

> "John Yamamoto-Wilson" <john@rarebooksinjapan.com> wrote in message news:<be6hq1$1q55i$1@ID-169501.news.dfncis.de>...
> > masayuki yoshida wrote:
> >
> > > > Even Fukuyama was carpet bombed, with (they include injuries) a casualty
> >  count
> > > > of 80,000. Lack of media or public attention and a focus on the
> >  A-bombings,
> > > > particularly of Hiroshima, has contributed to this ignorance or apathy
> >  among
> > > > Japanese. Many even forget the Tokyo firebombing.
> > >
> > > As far as the majority of contemporary Japanese is a post-war
> > > generation, using the word 'forget' is not appropriate.  You mean
> > > failing to recall person's real experience by the term?
> >
> > Perhaps what Eric means is something like "many teachers forget to teach
> > their students" about such things. I forget what percentage of Japanese
> > twenty-somethings didn't know that Japan had fought a war on the same side
> > as Germany and against the United States in a recent survey, but it was
> > rather depressingly high. And even in this newsgroup there have been
> > numerous gaffes by Japanese people who clearly have a very hazy idea of what
> > actually went on in the 1930s and 40s.
> >
> > Still perhaps that's a tradition in itself - the "floating world" - only now
> > it's a world of karaoke, pachinko and shopping sprees, and the realities of
> > history all seem very far away...
>
> What you and Eric want to say in this thread may be so simple that I
> will rephrase as follows:  Contemporary Japanese should learn what
> their own nation did as an invader during the war times.

That's right.

>  However, how to teach history is not so simple.

Why not? Look at what other nations such as Germany have done. The only problem I can think of with the German view is
that they cannot merely blame Hitler and the Nazis, because they supported them.

> If you tell us what of Japanese
> war history you want to teach Japanese students, it would be
> appreciated.

It's quite simple. Teach the children of Japan, the US, etc. the truth of what happened during less proud times of their
nations' history, without convenient omissions of what Japanese did abroad while focusing on Japanese suffering such as
the Battle of Okinawa or the A-bombing of Hiroshima. Let them hear about what actually happened between the Meiji Period
and the A bombings, and views on why and how it was allowed to happen. I had to learn about slavery as early as junior
high, and an entire year of social studies in high school was devoted to US social problems with a new problem
practically every day. Everything from exploitation of foreign laborers to the Ford Pinto.