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14
May, 2001
REINVENTING
HISTORY --
ON BOTH SIDES OF THE PACIFIC
It's no revelation to say that history belongs to those who tell it. Everyone's version of events can vary depending on the perspective of the witness.
| The "Junior High School Social Studies New History Textbook" approved on April 3 by Japan's Education Ministry has sparked protests. |
For instance, few Americans know anything about the Japanese American internment.
Many people - including Asian Americans, and sometimes even Japanese Americans - have learned about internment through popular culture. I had read Bill Hosokawa's "Nisei" when I was in high school, and that was my introduction to the fact of internment. But the 1976 TV movie, "Farewell to Manzanar," based on the book of the same name by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, was the first time I saw a re-creation of the internment experience by Hollywood. I recall that it moved me deeply, although it is no longer available on video (I hear it is shown at film festivals). Then there was a second Hollywood attempt to show internment, through a romantic tale in the 1990 movie "Come See the Paradise." In 1999 there was the movie version of the best-selling book "Snow Falling on Cedars," which I thought was a beautiful looking but somewhat confusing morality tale wrapped around the internment years. It showed some of the heartbreak and hardships of internment, but it wasn't really about internment.
More recently there have been various documentaries about internment, such as "Children of the Camps" and "Rabbit in the Moon," but I fear these films make the rounds of film festivals and Asian community screenings, and seldom receive the wide enough distribution needed to affect the American consciousness in general.
It's left to Hollywood to educate people about internment partly because so few Americans are taught anything about it in their history classes while they're growing up. Even today, textbooks that cover World War II often give only a moment's attention to the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese origin, including patriotic, US-born second- and third-generation Japanese Americans, solely because of their ethnic heritage.
In Jared's National Geographic Society-produced high school world history text, many of the events leading up to and during WWII are covered, including Japan's aggression against much of Asia. A full page is given to the events surrounding the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There is even a reproduction of the famous photograph of a Chinese-owned store in California with a huge sign saying "I am American" hung out front to avoid racial abuse. There is sympathetic text about the racism that Americans showed toward Japanese Americans during the war. But there is not one single mention of the number 120,000, or of the word "internment."
That mystified me, although perhaps Jared's right when he says this is a World history book, not an American history book. I will duly await his junior year to see how the public school system handles this tragic and little-acknowledged part of my country's past.
Such omissions and revisions of history happen all the time - it's hard to get everything into one textbook, right? Plus, it's a natural inclination of people - and even governments -- to gloss over their embarrassing moments and present themselves in the best light.
Such a revision of history is stirring up a controversy in Japan this spring, and the controversy is affecting Japan's already unsteady relations with its neighbors including Korea and China.
Like Jared's 10th grade textbooks, Japanese textbooks are screened and approved by government education officials.
But the "Junior High School Social Studies New History Textbook" approved on April 3 by Japan's Education Ministry, has sparked protests both official and on the streets for its perspective on Japan's Asian aggression of the 20th century. The book was written by a group of educators who feel that Japanese students are not patriotic enough, and that this lack of patriotism is leading to a breakdown in Japanese society. Critics worry that the new book will simply fan the flames of ultra-nationalism, similar to the emotional culture that led the country into its pre-WWII predicament.
According to news reports from across the Pacific, the book ignores the enslavement of thousands of Korean women by the Japanese army to serve as sex slaves for troops - it claims such accusations are false and it never happened. It also denies responsibility for the well-documented "Rape of Nanking," when up to 400,000 Chinese men, women and children were raped, tortured and murdered by invading Japanese troops on a violently bloody killing spree. The book uses terms such as "expansion" instead of "invasion" to describe its influence over what was called the "East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere," a term banned for decades until its reappearance in the textbook. The book claims all these actions were forced on Japan by embargoes by the US and European countries, and that its troops were "liberating" other Asian countries from their longtime European imperialist oppressors.
In addition to wary comments from around the world including China and the West, the book caused South Korea to recall its ambassador to Tokyo and canceled official visits, and lawmakers in Seoul called for a boycott of Japanese goods. Street demonstrations erupted outside the Japanese Embassy in South Korea.
Similar textbook controversies have cropped up before in Japan, a reflection of the country's internal conflict over its need to forget the ravages of the war and its inability to accept responsibility for many of the atrocities it inflicted. As of now, this book is due to be distributed to classes this fall. We'll have to see if such a blatant re-write of history can be accepted by the population at large. But there is an increase in nationalistic feelings by both individuals and groups such as these educators, who are reacting to the country's avoidance of debate about the war.
That avoidance was forced upon them by Americans more than 50 years ago, when the US Occupation Forces ordered changes to the Japanese educational system and obedient students spent many weeks obediently blacking out with ink passages and whole pages in their textbooks that were deemed too nationalistic or violent.
I guess history belongs not just to those who tell the story, but also by those who control the historians.