Remember Pearl Harbor as well as Japan's aggression in Asia
(From The Japan Times Dec. 8 issue)

日本のアジア侵略と真珠湾攻撃を忘れるな

Just 67 years ago, Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor in Oahu and sank four battleships and other vessels of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, killing some 2,400 Americans. This attack and the landing — one hour earlier — of Imperial Japanese Army units on the Malay Peninsula expanded Japan's war front to Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Despite the historical significance of those events nearly 70 years ago, Dec. 8 usually passes rather quietly.

This year, however, most Japanese were reminded of the Pearl Harbor attack by the former Air Self-Defense Force chief of staff, Toshio Tamogami. In a controversial essay that led to his retirement from the ASDF, he wrote that "Japan was entangled in the mesh of a plot hatched by (U.S. President Franklin D.) Roosevelt and carried out the Pearl Harbor attack." He also wrote that "Japan was a victim dragged into the Sino-Japanese War by Chiang Kai-shek," who he said "was driven by Comintern."

Conspiracy theories like these crop up time and again but are refuted by serious scholars. They blur the true nature of Japan's war. It should be remembered that Japan's military aggression in China, from the early 1930s on, formed the background for Japan's war with the United States, Britain and other countries.

Focusing on the few months just before the Pearl Harbor attack, as often happens in Japan, obscures the truth behind what led to the events that transpired Dec. 8, 1941, and continued through the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan's unconditional surrender.

A revealing book on the Pearl Harbor attack appeared in Japan recently. In Kaisen Shinwa (Myth on the Breakout of War), to be translated into English next year, Mr. Takeo Iguchi, former ambassador to New Zealand, writes that under military pressure, the Japanese Foreign Ministry not only withdrew a proper ultimatum and instead decided to notify the United States that negotiations were over, but also delayed sending the notice to its Washington embassy for 15 hours before the attack. Mr. Iguchi convincingly shows that the ministry left Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura out of the loop on the attack plan. Dec. 8 should serve as a day to sharpen one's eyes on Japan's modern history.

日本海軍は67年前、オアフ島の太平洋艦隊を攻撃、その1時間前のマレー半島での上陸作戦とともに旧日本軍は戦線を東南アジアと太平洋へと広げた。

今年は、自らの更迭を招いた田母神前空幕長の論文が真珠湾攻撃への注目を高めた。日本は「ルーズベルトの仕掛けた罠にはまり真珠湾攻撃を決行」、「蒋介石により日中戦争に引きずり込まれた被害者」で、蒋介石は「コミンテルンに動かされていた」との内容だ。

このような陰謀説は、日本の戦争の本質を見極めにくくする。日本の中国侵略が米英などとの戦争の背景となったことを忘れてはならない。

新著「開戦神話」で井口武夫氏は、外務省が軍の圧力に屈し米国に開戦でなく交渉打切りの通告を決定、ワシントンの日本大使館への通告も遅らせたとべ述た。12月8日は日本の近代史を見直す日にすべきだ。