Regarding the July 4 article " 'Some' civilian Okinawa deaths won't halt textbook rewrite": Textbook censorship of historical events is not limited to Japan. The long tradition of local control of schools in the United States has meant that 50 different versions of supposedly historical facts are possible. Making matters worse, each of the 15,367 or so school districts in the country is a kingdom unto itself.
The treatment of minorities in textbooks serves as a case in point. Eager to capture their share of the $4 billion a year market represented by state adoption of elementary and high school textbooks, publishers are more than eager to please special interest groups. To read the account of how the American West was won, for example, is to ignore how Native Americans were systematically exploited and deceived.
Education is not supposed to be indoctrination. Yet, in both Japan and the U.S., current practices virtually assure that children will be shortchanged. That's a shared travesty.
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