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Japanese Veteran Criticizes Brainwashing Education of Youth
"Brainwashing Education misled me when I was young and it is still affecting Japanese youth today," a 74-year-old Japanese, also World War II veteran, said while visiting a museum displaying Anti-Japanese war shows in a Beijing suburb.
"Young people in present-day Japan know little about what really happened between China and Japan 56 years ago, so they are indifferent to that," added Sugawara Shigeru who is paying his first visit to the Chinese Mainland.
The eight-year invasion war in China launched by Japan is recorded by only several lines of words in the existing history textbooks in Japan even though more than 35 million Chinese people were killed during the war.
Sugawara joined a Japanese troop, known for carrying out suicide attacks, in 1945 when he was 18 years old. He was engaged in transporting soldiers and materials from Japan to Taiwan for about five months.
"I always thought it was a Jesuitical and holy war for Mikado as I was taught to believe so," he said, "But the death of many friends and family members made me doubt the reasons why we had to fight."
The army ordered Shigeru to conduct a suicide attack in Okinawa- jima, occupied by the U.S. army on August 17, 1945. He was saved as the Japanese Government officially surrendered to the U.S. two days before his doomed-to-death task.
"How about my brothers in arms who were sent to death a week or just one day before the surrender?" Sugawara said in an angry voice. Most of them were the same age as him.
The Japanese Government has refused to apologize to the Chinese people since World War II ended.
"As a Japanese, I was ashamed about that and angry at the lies they told people," Sugawara said, "Youth will be the first victims of such education policies."
A group of young Chinese were watching the shows when Sugawara arrived at the museum. One boy named Li Shulong said, "From the old Japanese, we know that some Japanese have shared correct perspective on Japan's invasion in China."
"We hope there will be no war between the two countries. That's why we ask them to face the truth," said the boy.
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