Monday, November 27, 2006

What Does Shimotsuke Shinbun Know That The Big Five Don't? And Are the Networks Carrying This?

Another wartime atrocity story.

The reason The Big Five (Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi, Sankei, and Nikkei) didn't carry it on Nov. 25 though Tohoku, Shimotshuke, Chugoku, and all the other little guys carried it could be because it was a Kyodo Tsushin scoop.

Now it's up to the big boys to decide what to do with this, and I have no way of knowing whether this guy is telling the truth or is just out of his mind. (He does seem pretty credible on the face of it, and I have my own reasons for guessing that, genreally speaking, the Japanese military must have done pretty awful things back in the day.) But our politicians will do well to remember that, if much of the Japanese public remain oblivious to this, the part of the overseas public that give a damn about Japan one way or the other certainly will not be. (it is one of the most emailed stories on the BBC website.)

Yomiuri has done an admirable piece of work with their series on wartime responsiblities. Let's see what they do (or not) with this one.

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