Apologizing for Bataan

On May 30, some of the 73 surviving Bataan Darth March veterans of the U.S. army and former army air corps met at the 64th annual convention of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor. A visitor they may not have expected flew from Washington to be with them on that day. Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Ichiro Fujisaki, came to offer an unusual, in-person apology for the death march. "Today, I would like to convey to you the position of the government of Japan on this issue.As former prime ministers of Japan have repeatedly stated: The Japanese people should bear in mind that we must look into the past and to learn from the lessons of history," said Fujisaki. "We extend a heartfelt apology for our country having caused tremendous damage and suffering to many people, including prisoners of war, those who have undergone tragic experiences in the Bataan Peninsula, in Corregidor Island in the Philippines and other places. Ladies and gentlemen, taking this opportunity, I would like to express my deepest condolences to all those who have lost their lives in the war, and after the war, and their family members.”
Ex-POW, Lester Tenney, leader of the ADBC felt the apology was "momentous", but not all the survivors agreed. Some of them still carry far too many emotional scars from the barbarism they were forced to endure and witness. In what was ruled as a war crime after Imperial Japan's surrender, 75,000 American and Filipino POW's were forced by their Japanese captors in 1942 to march some 65 miles from the Bataan Peninsula to prison camps. Along the way, the prisoners were subjected to incredible brutality. Some incapable of keeping up were beheaded or disemboweled, while others had their throats cut for stopping to help a fallen comrade. Still others were attacked for no discernible reason at all. The death count will likely never be known for certain, but some historians think perhaps between six and eleven thousand men died on the march. These figures do not include the deaths directly resulting from the delayed effect of the deprivations and brutalization of the march that would have followed at the camps.
Perhaps one of the reasons that some of the vets there to hear Fujisaki were less than impressed could be the Japanese government allowing textbooks like the Fushosha text to be used in the country's classrooms. Okayed by the Ministry of Education and its affiliate Textbook Authorization Research Council, the text is published by the right-wing publisher Fushosha and it whitewashes Japan's actions during more than one of its aggressive periods, including the Second World War.
Although the majority of teachers in Japan have, apparently shies away from using the text, the fact that it was given the nod by Japan's powers-that-be is a bone that sticks in the craw of more than just the American vets. I realize that every country's authors would like to present their homeland in a rosy glow accompanied by the faint background sound of celestial choirs, and most do, glossing over whatever incident in their history tends to tarnish that glow. For instance, as a teacher here in the Canadian school system, I never did see a text that addressed the issue of conflict between the First Nations and the invading Europeans with anything other than a Euro-centric bias. Still, the reality of history events is often a far cry from what students are taught in the classroom. It's one reason why videos of survivor interviews would be such an incredibly powerful aid to the teachers of truth. Interviews with the Bataan survivors should be taped and used in classrooms in Japan. Doing that would lend credibility to Fujisaki's words. In like manner, interviews with Holocaust survivors should be taped before they succumb to old age. Interviews with survivors of Canada's residential schools should be taped and used in every Canadian classroom where a history class is examining our country's past. The list goes on, but perhaps the idea of rethinking the common approach to the recording of history is not such a bad one. At the moment, as the saying goes, the winner writes the history books. If we let some of those who survived being on the subjugated side of various conflicts speak to the children of today, maybe the adults of tomorrow would have a little more luck at not repeating history.