Interesting Post On History Revisionism
From Zen In Darkness, this link: Remembering The Battle Of Manila, posted by Nontrivial Pursuit. An excerpt:
Just watched Remembering the Battle of Manila, a two-hour documentary on the 1945 battle produced by Japanese television network NHK and aired on the History Channel.
Most troubling about this documentary is that it's primarily meant for a Japanese audience, being translated into English after it was made. If PBS made this documentary for an American audience it would be a soul-searching second look at America's actions in Manila deserving of a commendation. But it's not. The documentary was made by NHK for a Japanese audience, making it an exercise in washing their hands of guilt. Far from just "remembering the battle of Manila", this looks and feels more like a jab at self-vindication, as if saying, "Hey, the Americans killed more Filipinos than we did; we were just defending ourselves." To lay the blame for the destruction of Manila and the death of 100,000 civilians at the foot of the Americans with only passing mention of Japanese atrocities is, to say the least, dishonest.
Click here to read the whole post.
Just watched Remembering the Battle of Manila, a two-hour documentary on the 1945 battle produced by Japanese television network NHK and aired on the History Channel.
Most troubling about this documentary is that it's primarily meant for a Japanese audience, being translated into English after it was made. If PBS made this documentary for an American audience it would be a soul-searching second look at America's actions in Manila deserving of a commendation. But it's not. The documentary was made by NHK for a Japanese audience, making it an exercise in washing their hands of guilt. Far from just "remembering the battle of Manila", this looks and feels more like a jab at self-vindication, as if saying, "Hey, the Americans killed more Filipinos than we did; we were just defending ourselves." To lay the blame for the destruction of Manila and the death of 100,000 civilians at the foot of the Americans with only passing mention of Japanese atrocities is, to say the least, dishonest.
Click here to read the whole post.
posted by pgenrestories at 4:35 AM
2 Comments:
Ever visited Corregidor? They have two tours, one English and the other Japanese....
@dominique: Interesting! I didn't know that.
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