WWII shrine glorifies Japan's role in conflict
By Gary A. Warner
THE ORANGE COUNTY (CALIF.) REGISTER: "The Truth of Modern Japanese History Is Now Restored"
– from the Web site of the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo

Imagine a museum in Berlin featuring old Nazi planes, a memorial to the bravery of the Gestapo and a display claiming the Poles welcomed their invaders.

No such museum exists. It would ignite worldwide condemnation. Germany would be accused of whitewashing the truth about its role in World War II.

But a museum offering similar revisionist twists exists in the capital of another World War II axis power.

Yasukuni Jinja in Tokyo is a Shinto shrine whose name means "peaceful country." But it is a place where those who waged war are worshipped as gods.

"Several million spirits are enshrined at Yasukuni, including those of generals and politicians hanged as Class A war criminals after the Tokyo (war crimes) trial," writes historian Ian Buruma in "Wages of Guilt," his exploration of how Japan and Germany have handled the memory of World War II.

Yasukuni is back in the news because of Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister, who has advocated a less guilt-ridden attitude toward Japan's history. Abe worshipped at Yasukuni in April, when he was a front-runner for Japan's top job, drawing criticism from opponents at home and leaders around the world.

Most of the 2.46 million kami who are memorialized at the shrine are the dead soldiers and sailors of World War II. They include the planners of Pearl Harbor and kamikaze pilots who willingly flew their planes into American ships. Schoolchildren who launched suicidal attacks against Marines during the battle of Okinawa in 1945 are kami. So are foreign troops who often unwillingly fought and died on the Japanese side. Military industry workers killed in the American fire bombings of Tokyo and the atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are also deified.

The shrine's supporters are unapologetic about those executed after World War II. The military and political officials "were cruelly and unjustly tried as war criminals by a shamlike tribunal of the Allied forces."

At Yasukuni's museum, Japan's role in World War II is held up as a brave struggle to overthrow Western colonial oppression and unite the peoples of Asia under the enlightened stewardship of Imperial Japan.

Japan's often bloody suppression of China and the rest of Asia is recast as brilliant military campaigns in which people welcomed the Japanese as liberators instead of conquerors.

Visitors to the museum will see a display of an old World War II aircraft, a model of the sunken battleship Yamato and restored artillery pieces. In the courtyard, cherry blossoms are tagged with the names of army regiments and navy ships they were planted to commemorate. A stone tablet extols the Kempeitei, the Japanese secret police who played much the same role that the Gestapo had in Nazi Germany.

Though Yasukuni rarely rates more than passing mention in American guidebooks, it's not the fault of the shrine that it is not better known. Yasukuni does not hide its mission to recast Japan's militaristic traditions in a more favorable light. Many museum displays and guidebooks are in English.

Politicians of many political stripes are urging Abe, the prime minister, to forgo further visits to Yasukuni. But even if he never returns, the debate over the shrine's mission is not likely to die.