japanese try to hide the truth

Toward the end of World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army soldiers coerced the Okinawan villagers into committing horrific homicidal and suicidal acts. In the Battle of Okinawa, soldiers gave the village men two hand grenades, one to try and kill Americans and then one to kill themselves. However, now in the new high school text books, the Japanese government is deleting any stories of these past events and denying that it ever happened. Six months ago, the Education Ministry said that next year's government textbooks would not have any references to Japanese soldiers, but instead say that the Okinawans felt to commit mass suicide for no good reason. One living survivor, Shigeaki Kinjo, gave his story in a newspaper article in the beginning of October. He, of course, is one Okinawan who is angered by hearing this news. He says that his fellow villagers and himself believed that suicide was their only way to avoid harsh fates from the American troops. Kinjo admits that he beat to death his mother, younger brother and sister and that he did not kill himself only because he realized the soldiers were not killing themselves. After living his whole life with the guilt and regret, he must be shocked and hurt that the Japanese are trying to cover up that they ever did something like this. Senior Okinawan politians went to Tokyo to protest the the revising of the textbooks, but were ignored by the minister of education. All of the local government in Okinawa are demanding that the textbooks not be changed.

There has always been a way of shortening the facts of history in order to make one country or group of people look better than they might have been. American's enslaved Native Americans and tortured them, but it is not talked about in great depth. Usually when a country has done something wrong, they only include a small section about it in the books, so as not to draw too much attention to it. I've always been taught that we need to learn history in order to keep history from repeating itself. If real historical are ignored or literally erased from books, eventually no one will believe certain things happened and similar acts could possibly occur in the future. If Japan is going to try and hide what its soldiers did to the Okinawan villagers, why not hide what the Americans did to the Natives and even Africans; better yet, forget that the German Natzis ever had a mass genocide of the Jewish.