Japan reaches out to Okinawa over textbook row

TOKYO (AFP) — Japan's government said Tuesday it may rescind an instruction for references to its military's role in forced mass suicides during World War II to be deleted from school textbooks.

The government, under former premier Shinzo Abe, in March ordered references to the military's involvement in the suicides of Japanese civilians to be removed from learning materials for the first time.

The controversial move angered residents in Japan's southern islands of Okinawa, where about 110,000 people staged a rally Saturday in protest.

Education Minister Kisaburo Tokai said Tuesday the government would consider any requests by publishers to put back into textbooks references to the Japanese military's role in the suicides.

"The ministry will deal with any applications for further revisions in a serious manner," said Tokai, who was appointed last month by new Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

"A panel will be summoned to make a fair judgement over the issue if necessary."
In contrast to the hawkish young Abe, who vowed to build a "beautiful nation" more proud of its past, Fukuda is widely seen as a dove who is less eager to erase the legacies of Japan's World War II defeat.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters that the government should "not intervene in the screening of school textbooks."

The 83-day Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them Okinawan civilians.

While many civilians perished in the all-out US bombardment, local accounts say Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa -- a southern island chain and an independent kingdom until the 19th century -- to commit suicide rather than surrender to US forces.

Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima welcomed signs that the government may rescind the order.

"What the Okinawa people have hoped for with body and soul is coming one step closer," said Nakaima, who will meet with Tokai on Wednesday morning during a visit to Tokyo to discuss the matter.

"I appreciate as governor and a resident that the new cabinet has immediately responded to this issue sensitively," he said.

Publishers are now expected to submit their applications for new revisions this month for textbooks to be used for the school year starting in April.

A spokesman for one publisher that was forced to drop a reference to the military involvement in the suicides said authors would need to be consulted before it was decided whether to revert to the original wording.

A textbook prepared by the publisher, Shimizu Shoin Co. had previously said some people "were forced by Japanese troops to commit group suicides" but was changed to, "There were people who were driven into group suicides."

In recent years, nationalist academics have insisted that Okinawa's suicide pacts were voluntary and not due to orders by troops from mainland Japan.

The ministry had said there was enough disagreement that "it is not appropriate to determine that there were military orders."

AFP