Faced with strong protests, Japan's education ministry said Wednesday it was partly restoring references in history textbooks to the military's role in mass suicides in Okinawa in World War II. The 83-day Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest in the Pacific war, left 190,000 Japanese dead, half of them civilians on the southern island chain.
While many perished in the all-out US bombardment, local accounts say mainland Japanese troops forced residents of Okinawa-an independent kingdom until the 19th century-to commit suicide rather than surrender to US forces. The government, then led by outspoken conservative Shinzo Abe, in April said it was changing textbooks to delete references to forced suicides, citing conflicting evidence.
But the government said it would compromise after meeting a furious reaction in Okinawa including a rally of some 110,000 people, larger even than most demonstrations against US troops on the islands.
An education ministry panel Wednesday approved textbook publishers' proposal to state that some Okinawans "committed group suicides with the involvement by the Japanese military." The ministry, however, said the textbooks could not describe it as a "forceful" act by the military, saying it could not be proven that soldiers were acting on orders. "We have seriously taken into account the feelings of people in Okinawa prefecture who do not want historical lessons to fade away," said Education Minister Kisaburo Tokai, appointed when centrist premier Yasuo Fukuda replaced Abe in September.