Wartime Mass suicide-experienced Okinawan village protests government textbook screening that denies forced ‘mass suicide’

   The Zamami Village Assembly in Okinawa on May 29 convened an extraordinary session and unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the central government to revoke the controversial text screening policy.

   The education ministry earlier ordered textbook publishing companies to remove from high school history textbooks to be used from 2008 an account that the Japanese Army had forced Okinawans into “mass suicide” during the Okinawa Battle around the end of the Pacific War.

   In March 1945, when U.S. forces landed on the Kerama Archipelago, located about 40 kilometers southwest of Okinawa’s main island and which includes Zamami and Tokashiki islands, many residents committed “mass suicide.”

   Survivors testified that they had been forced or encouraged to commit “mass suicide” by the Japanese Army.

   The Zamami Village Assembly resolution criticized the education ministry’s textbook screening for “attempting to deny the validity of a number of testimonies and the historical facts.”

   The ministry ordered the removal of descriptions of the Army’s involvement in the “mass suicide” from textbooks on the grounds that an ex-commander of a Japanese Army unit deployed to Zamami stated in a court trial that he had not ordered “mass suicide.”

   The resolution pointed out that the education ministry adopted the claims of only one party in the pending lawsuit.

   More than half of local assemblies in Okinawa Prefecture, including Tokashiki Village where “mass suicide” had occurred, either already adopted or plan to adopt similar resolutions.　　　　　　　　　- Akahata, May 30, 2007