Oh My News has an interesting interview with Yuko Tojo who is the daughter of World War II era Japanese leader and convicted war criminal General Hideki Tojo. Here is her reason that Tokyo fought World War II:
We should properly explain the international situation at the time, and what the Tokyo Trials were all about. How terrible the situation was. We were surrounded and facing attack. We had no oil, or steel and all our assets abroad were seized. How were we to protect all those millions of Japanese except by standing up for ourselves? The media — the Asahi, Yomiuri, all of them were fanning the flames, saying “What is Tojo up to? Why doesn’t he fight back? The media can’t say it was not involved. The people were also involved. Even fifth-grade elementary students were asking: what will we do without steel or oil? And now they talk about the Emperor’s responsibility. It is terribly saddening.
The embargo on Japan would not have happened if Japan would have stopped their conquests of other nations. But to Japanese revisionists they were “liberating” these countries from the westerners. I’m sure the Koreans didn’t feel to liberated.
Here are some of the Korea related questions she answered:
You don’t think there are a lot of similarities between North Korea today and wartime Japan?
Absolutely not; please don’t make that comparison. That is an insult to those who died in the war.
I would agree Imperial Japan was not similar to today’s North Korea because North Korea is a gangster state ruled by fear but Imperial Japan people did fanatically fight and die for the emperor willingly.
But the Emperor himself admits he is Korean.
I know nothing about his roots, but I was astonished that he said such a thing. His majesty (it is clear here that heika refers throughout to the Showa Emperor, not the current occupier of the Chrysanthemum Throne) would never have said such a thing. He knew the limits of what to say. The current Crown Prince (Naruhito) chatters away about everything. As the national essence (kokka genshi) he has to know what to say. He has to maintain the dignity (igen) of the Imperial Family.
I never heard this before but that is a surprising comment.
So do you think that China and Japan should cooperate to create history textbooks?
No, history recognition is impossible because each country’s stance (tachiba) is different. Even when the truth is the same, the interpretation by China and Japan is often completely the opposite. For example, for Koreans the man who assassinated Ito Hirobumi (1841-1909 — first Prime Minister and drafter of Meiji Constitution) An Chung-gun is a hero, but to us he is a criminal. That’s the kind of thing I mean. It’s completely impossible.
I can’t imagine the countries in northeast Asia ever agreeing on history textbooks because the dispute is a great nationalism card for the politicians to pull out when they need to unite public opinion on something.
Here are her views on America:
Do you resent America?
Not even a little. If I resented America I wouldn’t be happy that my daughter was married to a citizen of that country, would I? (Her daughter is married to a U.S. citizen who works for Boeing Corp. and lives in the U.S. Tojo says her son-in-law is soon to take a job in Iraq. When her daughter said she was worried about this, her mother told her it couldn’t be helped because “one had to defend one’s country.”) My grandfather admired America and said we could learn from it. And his American lawyers defended him and said the most amazing things. Other lawyers strongly criticize the actions of the Allied Forces. Those people treated my grandfather with great respect and he respected them, even as enemies.
Read the rest of the interview because it is an interesting read even though I can’t agree with many of her assertions.
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5:39 pm on February 18th, 2007 1
The interviewer seems a person who lacks even slight knoledge about the Japan and its history. I think he read this article and jumped to the conclusion “But the emperor himself admits he is Korean” like a dementia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,625427,00.html#article_continue
No, the emeperor did not say “his blood root is a Korean”. His following statement is not a “new found story”. He was just literally following the sentences written in the Japan’s ancient history book “Nihon Shoki”:
“I, on my part, feel a certain kinship with Korea, given the fact that it is recorded in the Chronicles of Japan that the mother of Emperor Kammu was of the line of King Muryong of Paekche,” he told reporters.
It just means i) many refugees came to Japan from the ancient Korea. ii) some of them were kings and their relatives in the peninsula. ii) and a princess married with a relative of the emperor of those days.
Also, it must be noted that this story was often used in order to support the legitimacy the Japan’s Annexation of the Korean peninsula before the WW II.
It is very ironic that those young Koreans who are idiocy about the their own history really love this kind of “Japanese root is Koreans” rubbish.
They are also ignorant who re-discovered their ancient naval admiral, Yi Sunshin. He was almost forgotten among Koreans before the Russo-Japanese war, because of the obscurantist policy of the Li Chosen Dynasty.
Guess who is it?
5:42 pm on February 18th, 2007 2
Thank you for posting this. Very interesting piece. Good to get the thoughts of those alive at the time. — gunjam
5:57 pm on February 18th, 2007 3
Hey Chosun monkey lurking there, you really cracked me! Tell me what would you say to the Vietnamse?
I really don’t care about Tojo and am not interested in what he did.
I visit the Yasukuni shrine whenever I have a chance to go to Tokyo in order to mourn and thank my grand father who died in the battle against the US Army in Luzon, Philippine, in 1945. Although my grand father did not left anything besides my mother, he once had told my grand mother “meet there if I shall die in the war”. So, I will visit the shrine again and again until I die.
Do you know that the Japanese government is still trying to collect all the war deads’ bones (of course only for Japaneses) of the WW II, in China, Philippine, Malaysia, Indnesia, VietNum, and the Seberia where the prisoners of war taken to the Stalin’s concentration camps?
We, Japanese, never forget our own people who fought and died for the country.
Look at your own government and what it did for the war deads; the South Korean government has not even collected bones of the war deads of the Korean War, just even in the peninsula. Oh, I almost forget to point out that it was the same Korean race who cruetly killed the poor South Koreans in the war. Then, your goverment is now even spitting over your own people who worked very hard to rebuild the country, just because they lived the Japanese Annexation era.
Tell me if you are pround of your country; I think you enthusiasmly believe all the fabricated stories about the long and shining *history* of the Chosun, with no doubt.
Yes, I’m always sneering what your Koreans’ DNA instructs you what to do next. Please let me enjoy forever….
6:04 pm on February 18th, 2007 4
And what’s in a Japanese DNA?
The love of Tojo and the “great things” he did.
http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?no=244047&rel_no=1
Go to the Yasukuni temple and see for yourself what Japanese DNA is all about.
6:10 pm on February 18th, 2007 5
Not totally surprised and unexpected from a Tojo worshipper.
It’s too bad the United States didn’t drop another 16 atomic bomb and eradicate the empire once and for all.
I think it was funny how Tojo got his neck broken with a rope, just like a common criminal. Take that to the bank when you next time feel proud to be in Yasukuni.
5:51 pm on June 12th, 2007 6
I firmly belive that that the Japanese people should have their own constitution with does not have any American influence on it. Having been stationed in Japan for numerous years, as an American (American USN), these are a people that are only now establishing their own on a world stage. It is about time that make their ends known. They have an ecomony very closely marked to the American and European. The collapse of this would be detrimental to the American way of life. The previous remark is complete bullocks. This is a person, who has never lived in Japan, and someone who has never experienced what it is to live in Japan. This is a country of much beauty and enriching culture. There are many parts of the Japanese culture that Americans can learn much from. Before you seek to condemn an entire group, please learn more about their culture.
Cheers!