Regarding the Aug. 5 article "Yasukuni in spotlight as Aug. 15 nears": I would like to point out a couple of inaccuracies in an otherwise very informative and balanced presentation by writer Masami Ito. The first and most important one concerns the "1978 enshrinement of the 14 wartime leaders convicted as Class-A war criminals after World War II." In fact, 12 of the 14 were convicted as war criminals while the remaining two died in prison long before the sentences were pronounced.
Yosuke Matsuoka, the former foreign minister, passed away in June 1946, only one month after the Tokyo trial began. Osami Nagano, former navy minister, died sometime in 1947, about a year before the sentences were pronounced in November 1948. Both men were only indicted as suspected Class-A war criminals; therefore, they should be referred to as accused etc.
The second inaccuracy concerns visits to Yasukuni Shrine on August 15 by Prime Ministers Takeo Miki in 1975 and Takeo Fukuda in 1978. The article states that both Miki and Fukuda "stressed that they paid the visits in their capacity as private individuals, not as public figures." That's only true for Miki, who added to his signature in the shrine records that he had visited as a "shijin" or private person, whereas Fukuda added "naikaku sori daijin" (prime minister of the Cabinet) to his name. When Fukuda was questioned by the press about it, he deliberately left it open to interpretation whether his visit was that of a kojin (private individual) or koujin (public figure).
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