Vietnam: War crimes as policy

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Thu May 10 07:58:23 PDT 2001



>The Kerrey story was almost certainly repeated many times in Vietnam, as
>"...all those who have been trying for decades to stop this war" know.
>(Bruce Franklin's dedication of _M.I.A._) But a focus on the war crimes
>on the ground leads to a blurred focus, and in every incident revealed
>there will be a fog of (alleged) extenuating circumstances. The focus
>might more profitably (in the long run) be on the air war. The B-51 has
>one purpose and one purpose alone: terroist slaughter of civilian
>populations. A lot (perhaps even in part correctly) can be said in
>extenuation for what men in the midst of ground combat may do -- nothing
>can be said in extenuation for the deliberate slaughter of civilians at
>a distance, a slaughter carried out for the most part by commissioned
>officers (officers & gentlemen by act of congress as they used to say).
>By all the rules of international law the North Vietnamese would have
>been quite justified in trying and executing the crew of every B-51 they
>shot down.
>
>Carrol

Focusing on the air war as state terror (as opposed to individual war crimes by individual men) makes sense, but it must be said that there are no extenuating circumstances for rape & torture of the Vietnamese -- which are different from simple murders -- whether they are committed by unranked soldiers or commissioned officers. According to the testimonies collected in "Winter Soldier Investigation" (at <http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html>), Martha Hess's _Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam_ (NY: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994), & other sources, rape & torture of the Vietnamese by Americans & their allies were quite common.

The Japanese government should make restitutions to women raped & prostituted & other victims of its war & imperialism during WW2, and so should the U.S. government to its victims during the Vietnam War & other crimes it has committed. Further, leftists should continue to struggle to have these facts taught in school & other venues. This question is more relevant than ever in Japan today:

***** Textbooks gain approval

With many changes, yet other versions of history and social studies are cleared for use in junior high schools.

The Asahi Shimbun

April 4, 2001

Textbooks on history and social studies with controversial perspectives won approval Tuesday from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for use in public school classrooms in the 2002 school year.

Local education boards can choose which textbooks will be used in their districts, based upon the list of ministry-approved books.

The controversial books approved Tuesday, a junior high school history book and a junior high school civics book, are imprints of the Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho wo Tsukuru Kai (Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform).

When they were submitted last year for Education Ministry screening, the governments of China and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) criticized them as distortions of history.

Despite subsequent changes -- 137 revisions in the history book and 99 changes in the civics text -- the content of the Tsukuru Kai books differs considerably from the textbooks published by seven other companies.

The Tsukuru Kai history book presents Japan as a nation centered on the emperor. Its civics book emphasizes the importance of the nation over the individual.

All the textbooks submitted for the latest review have fewer references to Japan's role as an aggressor in World War II compared with books presented in the 1995 review process. Then, all publishers included references to ``comfort women'' -- a euphemism for women forced to provide sex for Japanese soldiers in wartime -- for the first time. In the most recent authorization process, only three publishers mentioned the issue.

The Tsukuru Kai history textbook was revised to include references to protests in South Korea over Japan's assimilation policy during its colonization of the Korean Peninsula, as well as mob killings of Koreans and Chinese after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923.

Researchers said the general tone of the textbook was intended to present a rationale for Japan's actions....

<http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/0404/asahi040402.html> *****

Also see "Tokyo Comes Under Fire for Distorted History Textbook Justifying Japan's War of Aggression: Asian Countries Warn Resurgence of Militarism in Japan" at <http://www.korea-np.co.jp/pk/158th_issue/2001032810.htm>.

Yoshie



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