Air Force chief sacked for essay about World War II
General Toshio Tamogami, the head of Japan’s Air Self- Defense Force, has been sacked after writing an essay that downplayed Japan’s occupations of China/Korea and stated that Japan was not an “aggressor” in the war:
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.
In other war history news, a court has upheld the rejection of a libel suit filed by former soldiers and their families angry about Kenzaburo Oe’s book that said the Imperial Japanese Army ordered mass civilian suicides during the Battle of Okinawa.
- Akihabara News – Gadgetry from Japan (Subscribe)
- dannychoo.com – Your portal to Japan (Subscribe)
- Kirainet.com – A geek in Japan (Subscribe)
