Photo: Ms. Yuko Tojo with her grand father, the war criminal
Tojo Hideki.
Tojo's grand daughter : "My grandfather has been
maligned as a war criminal"!
She might be more than an embarrassment to the Japanese
democrats who are engaged in the race for the upper
house election partial renewal this July. She is
supported by unknown friends, powerful and rich.
Nostalgic and dangerous fanatics some say, she is the
top of the iceberg of the new neo fascist forces and
intolerant generation of politicians ready to deny
historical evidences.
Tojo's grandfather was prime minister from 1941
through 1944. His granddaughter is running as an
independent for the 2007 Upper House election. She is
among 20 candidates vying for five seats in the Tokyo
constituency.
Tojo was responsible for ordering the attack on Pearl
Harbor that brought Japan into a disastrous war.
Hideki Tojo was found guilty of war crimes by the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East and
sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tokyo's Sugamo
Prison in 1948. His grand daughter, over 60's, is
considered to have almost zero chance of winning a
seat in the face of expected strong showings among
candidates from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party,
Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan) and New Komeito.
"This is a great opportunity for me to express my
views and say what must be said in public," she added.
Because of her name-recognition, Tojo was tapped in
2001 and 2004 to run in Upper House elections. She
met with officials of one of the conservative parties
in 2001 and geared up for a run with full party
backing. However, she eventually abandoned the
attempt because of opposition to her running.
"We should never be afraid of generating controversy,"
she says. "It is quite natural to express our sorrow
and sympathy for those who sacrificed their lives for
the country. We should reject such interference in
our domestic affairs. I feel chagrined at Abe's
ambivalent attitude."
If she wins a Diet seat, Tojo said she would call on
the Emperor and the Prime minister to publicly visit
Yasukuni Shrine. "Japan did not commit a war of
aggression. We fought a 'right' war," she said,
echoing the rightist belief that Japan was liberating
Asia from Western colonialism.
"My grandfather was responsible for losing the war,
not starting it," she said. Tojo also vowed to lay to
rest controversies over historical perceptions. She
insists that the death toll in the Nanking Massacre
was exaggerated by China and that the Japanese
government was not directly involved in rounding up
"comfort women" to work in front-line brothels during
the war. She said she would also press for a Diet
resolution criticizing the United States for its 1945
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Photo: Japanese wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo stands
trail for his crimes during World War Two at the the
International Military Tribunal for the Far East
(IMTFE) in 1948.
Tojo also wanted pacifist Article 9 of the
Constitution amended so that Japan can have
full-fledged armed forces. "We cannot protect our
country by ourselves, so how can we call this country
a 'nation'?" she asked. On a final campaign note, she
said that if she is elected she would establish an
official organization to repatriate the remains of
Imperial Japanese Army soldiers from overseas.
Turning once again to her family heritage, she said:
"My grandfather has been maligned as a war criminal. I
want to restore his honor and redeem the honor of
Japan."
Tojo told a news conference at FCCJ that one of her
primary goals in office would be to settle issues from
World War II that remain deeply controversial. On
Japan's mobilization of tens to hundreds of thousands
of "comfort women" to serve in front-line brothels,
Tojo said the government was not directly involved, a
commonly held belief among Japanese conservatives
despite evidence to the contrary. She also said the
often-cited death toll from the Rape of Nanking — as
many as 300,000 — has been grossly inflated by the
Chinese and it must be corrected. Today in Asia -
Pacific
Tojo said the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki went "beyond all the savage acts that
occurred in history up until that time," and accused
the United States of being racially motivated.
(Ms. Yuko Tojo Photo FCCJ)
She claimed the U.S. would not have dropped such
bombs on other "white" nations. Japan, meanwhile,
went to war to "liberate people of color from the
white nations in the world" who were colonizing Asia
at the time, she said. Tojo's positions received
attention because of her family legacy.
Tojo's grandfather, Hideki Tojo, Japan's prime
minister from 1941 to 1944, is widely remembered as a
warmonger who was behind Tokyo's invasions of its
Asian and Pacific neighbors. It was Tojo who also
ordered the Pearl Harbor attack that killed 2,388
American troops and brought the U.S. into World War
II."
Western Courts in Europe and USA might not appreciate
Ms. Tojo views on races and on her ways to express
her horrendous views.
Photo: New Guinea, 1943. An Australian soldier, Sgt
Leonard Siffleet, about to be beheaded with a katana
sword. Many Allied prisoners of war were summarily
executed by Japanese forces during the Pacific War.
[ Definition of Historical revisionism : It is the
attempt to change commonly held ideas about the past.
In its legitimate form (see historical revisionism) it
is the reexamination of historical facts, with an eye
towards updating historical narratives with newly
discovered, more accurate, or less biased information,
acknowledging that history of an event, as it has been
traditionally told, may not be entirely accurate.
"Historical revisionism" (also but less often in
English "negationism") describes the process that
attempts to rewrite history by minimizing, denying or
simply ignoring essential facts.
Perpetrators of such attempts to distort the
historical record often use the term because it allows
them to cloak their illegitimate activities with a
phrase which has a legitimate meaning.
In some countries historical revisionism (negationism)
of certain historical events is a criminal offense.
Examples of historical revisionism (negationism)
include: Japan's comfort women, Holocaust denial, and
Soviet history.
Negationism relies on a number of techniques such as
logical fallacies and appeal to fear. Examples of
negationism and its effects can be found described in
literature, for example Nineteen Eighty-Four by George
Orwell and is used by hate groups on the Internet. ]
Click the link to read the add that a group of Japanese
politicians and academics took out in The Washington
Post, mid June 2007.
More to come about Nippon Kaigi.
(Author text and agencies)