The dispute over the screening of high school history textbooks to be used from April has come down to whether the Imperial Japanese armed forces used "coercion" in the mass suicides of local residents during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. During the process of the first screening, whose results were made known last spring, textbook authors were told to remove phrases that originally said, in effect, that the Japanese forces "coerced" local residents into committing mass suicides.
Toward the end of 2007, however, the education ministry's Textbook Authorization Council approved requests by textbook publishers to reinstate references to a Japanese military "role" or "involvement" in the suicides.
This is an improvement. But the education ministry should feel ashamed of having tried to obliterate references to the Japanese military's responsibility for the suicide deaths of Okinawans during the battle. It must be noted that even in the last part of the screening process, the ministry would not allow use of the word "coercion" to characterize the Japanese military's role. The council holds the basic position that because no evidence of military orders has been found, there was no coercion. Well-informed public discussions should be held over the question of whether and how one can convey the reality of the Battle of Okinawa without using the word "coercion."