General Tojo Hideki's granddaughter insists that Japan fought a war of self-defence
Tojo a scapegoat, granddaughter charges
This article is about the granddaughter of General Tojo Hideki, Japan's war-time Prime Minister, convicted as class-A war criminals and hanged by the Americans in 1945. As the highest ranking politician and military, he was the ultimate responsible for most of Japan's war crimes (if we omit the emperor), and therefore at least the equivalent of Adolf Hitler as head of state of their respective countries (although the Supreme Commanderof Japan was emperor Hirohito, so the responsibility is shared).
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Originally Posted by Japan Times
The Tojo family had kept silent for a long time. But not any longer.
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"Japan didn't fight wars of aggression. Only China now says so," Yuko, president of the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Environment Solution Institute, claimed during an interview with The Japan Times.
Only China says so ? My understanding was that only (some people in) Japan say so, while the rest of the world knows perfectly well that Japan invaded the whole of East Asia and also started war with the United States and its allies, not the other way round.
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She argued that Japan fought a war of self-defense against the United States and other Western powers.
In invading China, Japan only tried to defend interests it won after World War I just as many Western powers were doing in China, she argued.
"You have to start from the Opium War (in the mid-19th century) when you think about this topic," she said.
Again an ignorant ***** that doesn't have the slightest idea about history or wants to distort it to her (country's) profit.
First of all, What does the Opium War between Britain and China in the mid-19th century have to do with Japan attacking the US in the mid-20th century ?
Secondly, it is preposterous to justify Japan's invasion of most of China (already the world's most populous country at the time) to protect a few tiny concessions in such cities as Beijing, Tianjing or Shanghai. It certainly does not justify the invasion of other Asian countries. Even the argument that Japan came to free Asia from the Western powers (if the Japanese really believed it) does not justify their own colonial attitudes in Okinawa, Taiwan and Korea from the late 19th century.
Furthermore, Japan shared concessions in Chinese cities along with Britain, Germany, France, Russia and the US on a similar level. It is very hypocritical to say they were protecting these concessions when they in fact stole other countries concessions and went on to conquer not just the whole of these cities but most of China. It is doubly hypocritical to say that Japan was liberating China from Western power as it benefited from the situations created by Britain after the Opium War by gaining concessions itself !
Tojo Yuko is indignant at the emperor and youths of today...
because they do not seem to care to visit the Yasykuni shrine to honor her grandfather, but strangely, she doesn't either. She is also fighting an uphill battle "not to apologise for her grandfather" as he told her not to.
The woman who will never contemplate surrender
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Originally Posted by The Age, Aug. 13, 2005
Incredibly, she says that when she visits she prays for everyone else memorialised there but not her grandfather, whose spirit she honours at the family plot elsewhere.
She does not trust recent public opinion surveys showing that most people no longer support the Yasukuni Shrine visits by Japan's prime minister. She puts the results down to "survey magic", as though they are somehow rigged.
Nonetheless, she knows first hand how hard it is to motivate ordinary people. It is, after all, 60 years after the end of an inglorious war defeat and the great mass of people are now more interested in economic recovery than upsetting China, a crucial trading partner.
She takes a sidelong glance at the young people around her, eating extravagant pieces of cream cake with strawberries and listening to the jazz soundtrack that is playing. "No, they are not really interested," she says with a crusading "not yet anyway" look on her face.