Post by EXO on Feb 4, 2021 14:33:45 GMT 8
JAPANESE ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF MANILA
Few Japanese are aware of the horrors of that occurred during the 1945 Battle of Manila. This is partly because little has been written about it in the mainstream Japanese media. When, in August 2007, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), aired a long special documentary on the battle, many Japanese learned for the first time of the atrocities committed in the battle.
History, unfortunately, has become a tool, not a way to record the past, but a way to shape the future.
In 2014, Prof. Rico Trota Jose, whom I consider the sine qua non of an accurate history of the Imperial Japanese occupation in the Philippines, gave me permission to publish his article "Gyokusai (Honorable Defeat) or Gyakusatsu (Massacre): Japanese accounts of the Battle of Manila" as part of a book that he, Peter Parsons and I were hoping to see commercially published. Our hopes were to set right many of the false narratives which had been pestering the history of the battle since 1950, and otherwise misinforming the public mind.
The book ultimately had to be self-published, which most unfortunately put it in a price bracket that discouraged all but the most keen scholars and aficionados. Eventually I made it available as a downloadable pdf file, and as an e-book. This week, I felt that, what with another anniversary of the Battle of Manila upon us, and what with me not being able to fly there to do anything about it, I can at least republish Prof. Jose's article here, so that serious scholars can learn from it.
The link: battleofmanila.org/Jose/Japanese-Accounts-of-Battle-of-Manila---Prof-Rico-Jose/index.html