Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.

One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.

Mr Tamogami is well-educated, knowledgeable and, when I meet him, exquisitely polite. The former chief of staff of Japan's air force believes in a version of Japanese history that is deeply at odds with much of the rest of the world.

But it is increasingly popular among young Japanese, tired of being told they must keep apologising to China and Korea.

Last year Mr Tamogami ran for governor of Tokyo. He came fourth, with 600,000 votes. Most strikingly, among young voters aged 20 to 30 he got nearly a quarter of the votes cast.
"As a defeated nation we only teach the history forced on us by the victors," he says. "To be an independent nation again we must move away from the history imposed on us. We should take back our true history that we can be proud of."
In this "true" history of the 20th Century that Mr Tamogami talks of, Japan was not the aggressor, but the liberator. Japanese soldiers fought valiantly to expel the hated white imperialists who had subjugated Asian peoples for 200 years.
It is a proud history, where Japan, alone in Asia, was capable of taking on and defeating the European oppressors. It is also a version of history that has no room for the Japanese committing atrocities against fellow Asians.
Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather "invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria".
I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?
"I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre," he says, claiming there were "no eyewitnesses" of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians.

Former chief of Japan's air forces, Toshio Tamogami, says that stories of atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre in the 1930s are "lies and fabrication"

It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami's denials are most indignant.

He declares it "another fabrication", saying: "If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?"

Although they may not say it as loudly and as bluntly as Mr Tamogami, this is a version of history that is widely believed by many Japan's nationalists.

Earlier this year at a joint session of the US Congress in Washington DC, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep sorrow for the suffering caused by Japan during WW2.

Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia.

But he has repeatedly said there is no evidence these women were coerced or that the Japanese military was involved in their recruitment and confinement. The implication is the women were prostitutes.

This is a very murky area. Girls from poor families have been sold in to prostitution in Japan, Korea and China for centuries, and the practice was certainly still going on in the 1930s and 1940s.

But that does not absolve the Japanese military from responsibility.

'We were kidnapped'

In a quiet valley an hour's drive from Seoul there is a small care home called the House of Sharing. This is where some of the last surviving comfort women are cared for in their old age. There are only ten left here now.
Lee Ok Seon is a tiny 88-year-old with thick white curly hair and badly-fitting false teeth. She chuckles as I try to cajole her to speak to me in Chinese.
Ms Lee spent 65 years in China, and only returned to South Korea 15 years ago.
She was born in the port city of Busan on the southern tip of modern day South Korea. Her family was poor and she was sent out to work at the age of 14.

"I had to start work as a housekeeper for another family at a young age. It was at that time I was out on the street one day… that's how I got kidnapped," she says.
She said two men grabbed her and put her on a train. "By the time we arrived I realised we had crossed the border into China. I was sent to a place where there were already several comfort women.
"I wonder why they called us comfort women. We didn't go by our own accord, we were kidnapped. I was forced to have sex with many men each day."

Ms Lee spent three years in the brothel close to a Japanese military camp in Manchuria. I ask her why she didn't try to escape.

"Of course I tried to escape several times!" she says. "Each time I was taken back and I was beaten over and over.
The military police would ask me 'Why are you trying to escape?' I would tell them because I am cold and have no food. They would hit me again saying I talked too much."
She says that she lost part of her hearing and some of her teeth from those assaults.

Revisionists like Mr Tamogami say women like Lee Ok Seon have been coached to embellish their stories; that they are tools of a South Korean government that is intent on humiliating Japan and squeezing it for more money

It is certainly true that the comfort women issue is used by the South Korean government for its own political ends. But there is plenty of other evidence that the Japanese military organised the comfort women system, not least from the men who served in the Japanese imperial army in China.

'Ridiculous to deny'

Masayoshi Matsumoto is now 93 and lives with his daughter on the edge of Tokyo. He has a warm open face and the piercing eyes of a much younger man.

Former Japanese soldier Masayoshi Matsumoto: "I call myself a war criminal"
As a 20-year-old he served as a medical orderly in northwest China. "There were six comfort women for our unit," he tells me. "Once a month I would check them for sexually transmitted diseases.
"The Korean women were mainly for the officers," he says. "So the ordinary soldiers attacked local villages screaming, 'Are there any good girls here?' Those soldiers robbed, raped, or killed those who did not listen to them."
Those who were captured were taken to Mr Matsumoto's unit to serve as comfort women.

After the war Mr Matsumoto became a priest to try and atone for his sins. For decades he said nothing of what he'd seen.

But then as the voices of denial grew stronger he was filled with righteous anger, and decided to speak out.

"It's ridiculous... Mr Abe speaks as if this is something he witnessed, but he didn't. I did," says Mr Matsumoto.
"Someone told me this, 'One who fails to look back and perceive the past will repeat their wrongdoing'. But Mr Abe thinks we should erase anything bad Japan had done in the past and pretend nothing happened. That is why I cannot forgive him," he adds.
Mr Matsumoto sits back in his chair and chuckles.
"One day the right-wingers will come and get me for saying such things," he says, drawing a finger across his throat.

That seems unlikely, but Mr Matsumoto and all the other survivors are now in their late 80s or 90s. Soon they will all be gone - while the voices of denial grow louder and stronger

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Us Southernors have trouble accepting what happened over 150 years ago. This isn't something that's going away anytime soon.

Ouze wrote:

 Sinful Hero wrote:
Us Southernors have trouble accepting what happened over 150 years ago. This isn't something that's going away anytime soon.

Yeah no shizz. I read this thread and immediately thought of just a few weeks ago how many people were posting that the civil was was all about state's rights and not really slavery at all.

 gorgon wrote:
"States' rights" is coded language in the South anyway. That's why Reagan infamously invoked them at that county fair in Mississippi in 1980.

But back on topic, most people prefer to think of themselves as good people and their country as a good place. So it all gets rationalized. The citizens say "I wasn't the one pulling the trigger." The soldiers pulling the trigger say "I wasn't the one giving the order." The people giving the orders say "I wasn't the one ultimately in charge." And you construct a reality in an effort to quell all the cognitive dissonance.

 Frazzled wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
"States' rights" is coded language in the South anyway. That's why Reagan infamously invoked them at that county fair in Mississippi in 1980.

But back on topic, most people prefer to think of themselves as good people and their country as a good place. So it all gets rationalized. The citizens say "I wasn't the one pulling the trigger." The soldiers pulling the trigger say "I wasn't the one giving the order." The people giving the orders say "I wasn't the one ultimately in charge." And you construct a reality in an effort to quell all the cognitive dissonance.

Says the Yankee.

Haruspex wrote:
Funny thing is if you read over the speeches and writings of the Confederacy's leaders, you will find that slavery does come up quite frequently. In fact the Confederacy was ideologically dedicated to the notion that the white man was superior and that the laws of the confederacy were morally and logically superior to the laws of other nations. Southern leaders founded the Confederacy in order to preserve the institution of slavery. This was their primary goal, and they made no secret of it. They did not hide their intentions behind flowery language and code-words like the cowardly Southern separatists of today. They did not care about the Constitution. If they did, they would have held onto it instead of rejecting it and starting a new nation.

The Southern states seceded because a prominent abolitionist named Abraham Lincoln won the US presidential election. That's all there is to it. Step into your time machine, go back and ask Jefferson Davis himself. He stated this exact reason repeatedly, and never offered any other rationale or justification for his actions. The South did not want to live in a country with an Abolitionist president. That is why the US Civil War occurred. Anyone who argues otherwise is willfully ignorant of American History and simply enjoys being wrong.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

And going a bit OT: I had no idea some parts of America STILL feel that way about the battles 150 years ago. Damn, that's crazy!

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

And going a bit OT: I had no idea some parts of America STILL feel that way about the battles 150 years ago. Damn, that's crazy!

You have to remember, a lot of those people haven't been dead for too long. And regarding the Nanking massacre, are still alive.

My great grandmother went to her grave cursing carpet-bagging Yankees, and seeing the folks moving in from Chicago and New Jersey I think I can relate.

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

Maybe, but I agree with Killkrazy, Japan at least did what it could to make up for past mistakes and again, the war ended 70 years ago, it should have been more than enough time to bury the axe. The problem is the idea of trying to "erase" history to make it all better. For me, that idea is atrocious, it's as if they are trying to run away from their responsability. (besides that, they are the only nation who so far was hit not only with 1, but 2 nukes! That's a good enough "karma's a bitch" for their massacres)

 Ketara wrote:

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

And yes, Daston, it's amazing how Europe still manages to keep it's relations considering we've been kicking each other's asses since... always

Probably because most wars in Europe between major powers tend to be ultimately based on realpolitik as opposed to along ethnic lines. You get anti-whoever propaganda churned out against whoever the enemy of the day is, but alliances have changed so often over the last 500 years that it rarely sticks.

As such, even after WW2 and the Cold War, us lot here in Britain are pretty amicable towards both Russians and Germans.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:


2) Post-war, it got drilled into Germany that they had crossed a line. End result is that Germans learn that they committed atrocities. Japan did not get this treatment.

Daston wrote:
It is strange how some nations take things differently. England and Germany's relationship is fine.....in fact Englands relationship with a lot of places is pretty good considering the gak we got up to.

We even got over certain colonials giving the V's to the King and going their own way

The 'sanitised narrative' of Hiroshima's atomic bombing
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News
4 August 2015


Hiroshima survivor Keiko Ogura recalls the horror of what she saw
The US has always insisted that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War Two. But it is a narrative that has little emphasis on the terrible human cost.
I met a remarkable young man in Hiroshima the other day. His name is Jamal Maddox and he is a student at Princeton University in America. Jamal had just toured the peace museum and met with an elderly hibakusha, a survivor of the bombing.
Standing near the famous A-Bomb Dome, I asked Jamal whether his visit to Hiroshima had changed the way he views America's use of the atom bomb on the city 70 years ago. He considered the question for a long time.
"It's a difficult question," he finally said. "I think we as a society need to revisit this point in history and ask ourselves how America came to a point where it was okay to destroy entire cities, to firebomb entire cities.
"I think that's what's really necessary if we are going to really make sense of what happened on that day."


Damage in Hiroshima, 1945

A conventional view in the US is that while terrible, the use of the bomb brought an end to the war
It isn't the sort of thing you often hear said by Americans about Hiroshima. The first President George Bush famously said that issuing an apology for Hiroshima would be "rank revisionism" and he would never do it.
The conventional wisdom in the United States is that the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and because of that it was justified - end of story.
Is that really the end of the story?
It's certainly a convenient one. But it is one that was constructed after the war, by America's leaders, to justify what they had done. And what they had done was, by any measure, horrendous.


Damage from US bombing of Tokyo (1945)

It didn't start on 6 August. It had started months before with the fire bombing of Tokyo.
On 9 March 1945, 25 sq km (9.7 sq miles) of Tokyo were destroyed in a huge firestorm. The death toll was as large, or even larger, than the first day at Hiroshima. From April to July the relentless bombing continued in other parts of Japan.
Then came Hiroshima.
'There was no sound at all'
Keiko Ogura had just celebrated her eighth birthday. Her home was on the northern edge of Hiroshima behind a low hill. At 08:10 on 6 August, she was out on the street in front of the house.


Picture of a model showing the target of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima

The bomb was set to explode 500m (0.3 miles) above the ground for maximum destructive effect
"I was surrounded by a tremendous flash and blast at the same time," she says.
"I couldn't breathe. I was knocked to the ground and became unconscious. When I awoke I thought it was already night because I could not see anything, there was no sound at all."
What Keiko witnessed in the following hours is hard to comprehend.
By mid-morning, survivors of the blast began pouring out of the city looking for help. Many were in a terrible state.
"Most of the people who were fleeing tried to go to the hillside. There was a Shinto shrine near our house so many came here," she says.
"Their skin was peeling off and hanging. At first I saw some and I thought they were holding a rag or something, but really it was skin peeling off. I noticed their burned hair. There was a very bad smell."

Eighteen-year-old Shizuko Abe was staggering out of the city, the whole right side of her body burned, her skin hanging off. Now 88, she still bears the terrible imprint of the bomb on her face and hands.
Yoshie Amaha, a patient at the Tokyo Imperial University Hospital, displaying injuries suffered as a result of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on the 6 August 1945.


Many of those who did not die from the initial impact of the bomb were left with horrific injuries

"I was burned badly on my right side and my left hand was also burned from the bomb. Fire was coming closer… We were told to run to rivers when hit by air raids so people jumped into the rivers.
"So many bodies were floating in the river that I could not even see the water," she says.
Somehow, despite the agony, she staggered to a medical station.
"They did not even have any dressing for the wounds. Many injured people lay their bodies down under the roof, so I found a place there as well to lie down. People around me were calling out 'Mother it hurts, Father it hurts'.
"When I stopped hearing that, I realised they had died right next to me."


The crew of the Enola Gay were treated as heroes for dropping an A-bomb on the heavily populated city

Hiroshima was not a military target. The crew of the Enola Gay did not aim at the docks, or large industrial facilities.
Their target was the geographical centre of the city. The bomb was set to explode 500m (0.3 miles) above the ground for maximum destructive effect.
On the ground many survived the initial blast, but were trapped in the wreckage of their homes under wooden beams and heavy tiled roofs. Then the fires began.
Ms Abe remembers hearing the cries for help from beneath the debris as the flames swept forward.
"They were such sad voices calling out for help. Even 70 years later, I can still hear them calling out for help," she says.


Children in Hiroshima, Japan, wearing masks to combat the odour of death after the city was destroyed by the first atom bomb, October 1945.

No-one is sure how many died on that first day. Estimates start at 70,000. More than eight out of 10 were civilians.
If you look up "Hiroshima in colour" online, you will find some remarkable film that is now kept in the US national archives.
A US military team and Japanese camera crew shot more than 20 hours of film in March 1946. It is the most complete and detailed visual record of the after effects of the first atomic attack.
There is high-quality colour footage of the horrific scarring caused by flash burns from the bomb. There are injuries that had never been seen before.
'They should not thank the bomb'
What is all the more remarkable is that the film was not seen in public until the early 1980s. It was marked secret and suppressed by the US government for more than 30 years.
Instead, Americans were told a sanitised narrative of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: that a great scientific endeavour had brought quick victory, and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.


Radiation poisoning, a previously unknown condition, would claim thousands more victims in the weeks after the bombing

Decades later when Ms Ogura travelled to the Washington DC to see the unveiling of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Museum, she was astonished to find this version of history still holding sway.
"Many American people said to me, '"Congratulations, you could come here thanks to the bombing! Without the bombing you would have to do hara-kiri, you know, commit suicide'."
"That is a very awful excuse. We do not blame the Americans, but they should not say that thanks to the bomb so many people could survive."
A lifetime of radiation secrecy
The atomic bombing has left one final legacy that sets it apart from all the other horrors of World War II.
In the weeks after the bombing otherwise healthy people began dying of a strange new illness. First they lost their appetite, then they began to run a high fever.
Finally strange red blotches began appearing under their skin. No-one knew it at the time, but these people were dying from radiation poisoning.
To this day many hibakusha keep their pasts a secret, afraid that their families will be discriminated against because of the fear of radiation.
"I had bad burns and looked deformed so I could not keep it secret," says Ms Abe. "My children were discriminated against. They were called 'A-bomb children'."
Tears fill her eyes as she describes what happened to them.


Rupert Wingfield-Hayes takes a trip on the tram that survived the Hiroshima bombing
"They told me they had to choose a different route to come home from school because they were bullied and chased by the other children. I felt the pain my children had to go through because of their mother, because of me."
Even today some hide the fact that a grandparent is an A-bomb survivor, afraid their children may find it difficult to find a husband or wife.
The human cost
It is said that those who don't know their own history are condemned to repeat it. Japanese leaders are rightly criticised for their continued attempts to whitewash Japan's WWII crimes in China, Korea and South East Asia.


A file photo dated September 1945 of the remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building after the bombing of Hiroshima, which was later preserved as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Atomic Bomb Dome or Genbaku Dome


Today it is known as the A-bomb Dome, a peace memorial to the bombing

It is also true that terror bombing was not invented by the United States. The Nazis unleashed it at Guernica in 1937 and again on British cities in 1940.
The Japanese bombed Chongqing for six years. The British destroyed Dresden and many other German cities.
But no other bombing campaign in WW2 was as intense in the destruction of civilian lives as the US bombing of Japan in 1945. Between 300,000 and 900,000 people died.
As Jamal Maddox put it to me so well, how was it that the country that entered the war to save civilisation ended it by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At least Japan has officially apologised and paid reparations several times.

At least the chinese and korean governments have not commited mass attrocities on the japanese population .