From Air Force Times

 

Japan fires AF head for World War II essay

By Shino Yuasa - The Associated Press

Posted : Friday Oct 31, 2008 14:46:14 EDT

 

TOKYO — Japan’s defense minister dismissed his air force chief on Friday for writing an essay that claimed the country was not an “aggressor” in World War II and was trapped into getting involved in the conflict by the United States.

 

Toshio Tamogami’s essay will likely upset relations with China and South Korea, who remain bitter about Japan’s wartime occupation and say Tokyo has failed to properly atone for its invasion of the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and parts of China.

 

“His views are different from the government’s. It is not desirable for him to stay in the job,” Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters soon after the essay was made public Friday.

 

Tamogami was not available for comment late Friday and a defense ministry spokesman said the former air force chief had not released a statement. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.

 

In the essay, titled “Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?” Tamogami said it was “certainly a false accusation” to say Japan was “an aggressor nation” during World War II.

 

“The current Chinese government obstinately insists that there was a ‘Japanese invasion,’ but Japan obtained its interests in the Chinese mainland legally under international law through the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and so on, and it placed its troops there based on treaties in order to protect those interests,” he wrote.

 

He also claimed life under Japanese occupation was “very moderate” and cited a rise in the population on the Korean peninsula during Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation as “proof that Korea under Japanese rule was also prosperous and safe.”

 

Tamogami also claimed that Japan was tricked into attacking Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

Japan was “snared in a trap that was very carefully laid by the United States in order to draw Japan into a war,” he wrote.

 

“Roosevelt had become president on his public pledge not to go to war, so in order to start a war between the United States and Japan, it had to appear that Japan took the first shot. Japan was caught in Roosevelt’s trap and carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor,” he wrote.

 

Tamogami ended his essay saying Japan should reclaim its glorious history and warning that a country that denies its own history is destined to fall.

 

Japan renounced its right to wage war in its 1947 U.S.-drafted constitution, and Tokyo has repeatedly expressed remorse to its neighbors for its colonial rule and wartime aggression, including in a 1995 statement by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama to mark the 50th anniversary of the war’s end.

 

But Japan has struggled to convince Asian critics — and victims — of its contrition because of a strong nationalist presence in the Japanese government. Last year, a group of nationalist lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party angered China by saying the generally accepted death toll in the “Rape of Nanking” massacre was grossly inflated.

 

Tamogami’s essay won a writing competition organized by a hotel and condominium developer, Apa Group, which published the prize-winning article on Friday.

I shipped out of Sasebo for 4 years and Yoko for 8, and I've heard alot of different viewpoints expressed by my Japanese friends and acquaintances. I have to admit that I never heard Tamogami’s from anyone I ever met though.

 

It's been my experience that the Asian way of looking at these things differs substantially from the way we do in the West. My wife is a Filipina, and she has what seems like a genetic resentment toward the Japanese fot their occupation of the PI, even though it was long over before she was born, and the offenders are dead and buried. For myself, although I appreciate the fact of Pearl Harbor, and grew up listening to my parents discuss it, it would never enter my mind to hold it against anyone I met or had as a neighbor when I lived in Japan.

 

Passing on animosity from one generation to the next serves no purpose that I can see, but idiots like the guy who was fired make matters worse instead of better if you ask me.

 

Buddha

I shipped out of Sasebo for 4 years and Yoko for 8, and I've heard alot of different viewpoints expressed by my Japanese friends and acquaintances. I have to admit that I never heard Tamogami’s from anyone I ever met though.

 

It's been my experience that the Asian way of looking at these things differs substantially from the way we do in the West. My wife is a Filipina, and she has what seems like a genetic resentment toward the Japanese fot their occupation of the PI, even though it was long over before she was born, and the offenders are dead and buried. For myself, although I appreciate the fact of Pearl Harbor, and grew up listening to my parents discuss it, it would never enter my mind to hold it against anyone I met or had as a neighbor when I lived in Japan.

 

Passing on animosity from one generation to the next serves no purpose that I can see, but idiots like the guy who was fired make matters worse instead of better if you ask me.

 

Buddha

 

True right, passing animosity through an anchronism, much like the sort of tribal societies that have passed on to which it was tied to as a means of ensuring the survival of the tribe by providing a common cause to fight and labor for.

 

I always was curious how other nations see events like the US Revolution and WW2.

My father was from Chicago, but he grew up bilingual, speaking English and German. During WWII, he did some translating for POWs, and although he never spoke much about details, apparently alot of Germans were surprized that the US sided with Great Britain, since we had fought 2 wars against them, the Revolution and 1812. Since we've battled Germany twice and now we're allies, it makes for an interesting situation.

 

Buddha