francene--blog. Year 2013
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Dec 26th

12/26/2013

 
Picturewww.bbc.co.uk
Japanese history lessons barely cover the facts about WW2. Read one Japanese woman's startling facts about the few references to the event in her country from BBC.  She left Japan at 14 years to continue her education in Australia. In Japan, only 19 of the history book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945. From Homo erectus to the present day - more than a million years of history are covered in just one year of lessons.

For instance, the Nanjing Massacre:  A six-week period of bloodshed, after the Japanese captured of the city in December 1937.  The International Military Tribunal for the Far East set up after WWII, estimated more than 200,000 people were killed, including many women and children. Dispute over the scale of the atrocity remains a sticking point in Chinese/Japanese relations. Some Japanese question whether a massacre even took place.

She said that students have no time to dwell on a few pages of war violence even if they read them in their textbooks. Now, Japan's Asian neighbors—especially China and South Korea—accuse the country of glossing over its war atrocities.

Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has criticized China's school curriculum for being too "anti-Japanese". He wants to change how history is taught, and is considering revising Japan's 1993 apology over the comfort women (prostitutes or slaves) issue. If and when that happens, Japan's Asian neighbors might raise a huge stir. And yet, many Japanese have no clue why. It seems to me that war, brings about more war, which continues on and on and on.

Yet times of tumult make the best stories. Consider the great emotions stirred during the American Revolution and WW2 in films like Gone With The Wind and Casablanca.


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My husband and I watched both epic productions yesterday, as those of us without family are prone to do.

Gone With The Wind lasted over 4 hours. I don't remember most of it. Perhaps I'd previously seen a version where whole sections were cut. What a great story of human love and selfishness, emotional hardness and sacrifice. Every human sentiment the characters displayed tore at my heart. And all that killing. I don't know if the end justified the great cause of ending slavery. Hope I got my facts right and that's what the civil war was trying to achieve.


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Casablanca showed a time when the Germans were marching into Morocco in 1942, the year of my birth. My husband and I both had the wrong idea about its location. I thought it was East Africa, and he said Close to Portugal. Casablanca is actually on the coast below Portugal in the West of the African continent. The great stars acting in the movie showed love, bitterness and sacrifice. What a classic.

War. Everyone needs to learn the correct facts, which could be hard long after the events occurred. Perhaps knowledge will prevent further aggression, suffering and hardship. I doubt it, though.


Alana link
12/26/2013 06:14:40 am

Ah, epic movies. I remember watching Lawrence of Arabia as a girl. Gone With the Wind was a fantastic book, too. As for the Japanese occupation of China, I knew an adult woman back years ago (living in Iowa) who was a survivor, as a little girl, of the Japanese occupation of China. I'm not even sure what happened is taught much in our schools here in the United States.

Cher link
12/27/2013 01:16:42 am

Aww gone with the wind, couldn't believe that was on - love it :)

Sophie Bowns link
12/27/2013 06:08:20 pm

Argh! I can't believe that I missed "Gone With The Wind" on TV!
Can you believe that I am 21 and have never seen that film!


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    Author

    Francene Stanley, author of many published novels. If you like my writing, why not consider purchasing one of my books? You'll see them on the sidebar below.
    Born in Australia, I moved to Britain half way through my long life.

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