Japanese government must confront its wartime past and ensure the truth of that history is passed on to future generations, according to Atsushi Koketsu, a professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University.
Speaking in an interview with China Global Television Network (CGTN), which was aired on Friday, or Sept. 18, Koketsu expressed concern that modern youth know very little about Japan's major war crimes.
On Sept 18, 95 years ago in 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army stationed in northeast China destroyed a section of the railway near Liutiaohu and then falsely accused the Chinese military of causing the explosion. Using this as a pretext, the Japanese then bombarded Shenyang and began the invasion of northeast China.
Six years later, on July 7, Japanese soldiers attacked Chinese forces at the Lugou Bridge, marking the beginning of Japan's full-scale invasion of China and China's whole-nation resistance against the Japanese invaders.
Also, in 1937, the Nanjing Massacre took place when Japanese troops captured the then-Chinese capital of Nanjing on Dec 13. Over six weeks, they killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.
However, Japan's history textbooks have not accurately described these crimes. One publisher's 2002 textbook addressed Japan's launch of the "September 18 Incident" in 1931 and its subsequent invasion of northeast China under a chapter titled "Japan's Aggression Against China." It described the Japanese Kwantung Army as "having brought about the establishment of Manchukuo," wording that implied the Army's hand in steering the puppet state.
In the 2023 edition of a Japanese history textbook, however, both the term "Nanjing Massacre" and China's official figure of 300,000 Chinese victims had disappeared from the book, while the tribunal's statements were demoted to a footnote.
Koketsu said, "Young people now know very little about the Nanjing Massacre, the bombing of Chongqing, the bombing of Jinzhou, or Japan's use of poison gas and biological warfare units. Many of history's most shameful chapters have been buried in darkness. However, we have a duty to pass on the truth of that war accurately to future generations. If we neglect that responsibility of preserving and transmitting its history, and if we deny, revise, fabricate, or distort the history of that war, that is the true guilt."
Japanese scholar urges Japan to confront its wartime history
