In his famous novel “Magister LUDI,” Hermann Hesse wrote, “History’s third dimension is always fiction.” This book is a case in point. Although the words “Who Was Responsible” are in larger print on the cover, the full English title is “From Marco Polo Bridge to Pearl Harbor: Who Was Responsible?” The original Japanese title was “Kensho Senso Sekinin,” which the Daily Yomiuri translates as Yomiuri Shimbun War Responsibility Committee of Tokyo.

So The Daily Yomiuri, Japan’s answer to Fox News or USA Today, will now reveal to the nation’s English speaking community the identity of the real killer ... and Roger Clemens did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky.

Yes, Dear Reader, the “reexamination” of history has been much in the news, with the Okinawan community challenging the official Textbook Screening Committee over the mass suicides of 1945; the “comfort women” issue finding its way into a U.S. Congressional resolution; the president of Iran denying the Holocaust; and even the renaming of Iwo Jima to Iwo To. The Yomiuri Shimbun team (to save you, Dear Reader, from anticipating a truly revealing conclusion, only to be disappointed) presents nothing new, following the party line set down by General MacArthur’s gang in 1945: “Tojo did it!”

This conclusion is reached in spite of a diagram of the Japanese government’s chain of command during the early years of the Showa Era, which clearly places the emperor alone at the top of the chart, with the imperial government (civilian) and the imperial headquarters (military) located on an equal plane, one level down.

After leading readers down a twisted, but minutely documented, paper trail involving minor officers with bad attitudes, senior army and navy staff fighting each other for the adulation of the nation like jealous drag queens, and serious incompetence in the prosecution of the war, the researchers, originally so meticulous, can ultimately find no compelling recorded evidence of the emperor’s complicity in the “Showa War” (the committee’s term), or any of its less than honorable characteristics: “... Given that Emperor Showa behaved within the bounds of a constitutional monarchy system, we reached the conclusion that he was not seriously responsible.”

This opinion is supported — or challenged, depending on your point of view — by a memorandum of conversation between MacArthur and his political advisor George Atcheson: “General MacArthur told me today that when Hirohito called on him (September 27, 1945) ... the Emperor said that he had not intended that the attack on Pearl Harbor take place before receipt by the U.S. Government of the Japanese declaration of war on the United States; but Tojo had tricked him. The Emperor said that he did not mention this to escape responsibility; he was the leader of the Japanese people and he was responsible for the actions of the Japanese people.” Obviously, General MacArthur had other plans for Hirohito — or, rather, Emperor Showa.

Like many recent revisionist tracts, this book disputes the Rape of Nanking. The committee refers to it as an “incident” and says: “There remain disputing views over how many Chinese were killed.” The committee places the “reliable evidence and estimated number of victims at about 40,000,” which is far more conservative than Chinese or Western estimates of 100,000-200,000. While just three pages of this 416-page tome are devoted to Nanking, there is no mention of the use of biological warfare in Manchuria by the infamous Unit 731.

But, as Mark McGwire once so wisely intoned to the U.S. Congress, “I’m not here to talk about the past.”

1 Comments

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  jeancolmar at 10:14 AM JST - 12th April

  Another load of lies from the Gomiuri.

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