TANIGUCHI Akihiro
I happened to see a TV program on the World War II a few years ago in the United States. Although I was not particularly interested in military history, the show was stunning because WWII from an American point of view was different from its Japanese counterpart.
The most striking element in the American WWII documentary was the scene that depicts the day when the Japanese surrendered: American soldiers that returned triumphantly, happy faces of their families, relatives, and friends, and the triumphant parade in New York. These images are filled with joy and pride from the victory.
Most Japanese TV documentaries on World War II, on the other hand, end with everybody's hopeless feelings derived from the sudden end of the war on 15 August 1945 (people were not told that they had actually lost the war until then) and from the loss of the life and property. As their military leaders were sentenced to death, the Japanese nationalism quickly faded and people began to build a new Japan from nothing.
Second, the American TV show described the war solely from a militaristic point of view and did not deal with civilians in the war. In fact, few TV shows on WWII that I have seen ever mentioned the American Air Force's bombing on sixty one cities in Japan, including the two biggest cities, Tokyo and Osaka. Before the Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more than 170,000 Japanese people, most of them civilians, had been killed, but this historical fact is largely ignored in most American documentaries.
Japanese TV shows on WWII, on the other hand, do not deal with military history. The Japanese militaryıs invasions to China and Korea, and many other battles against European countries that colonized many Asian nations, are wiped out from WWII history programs on Japanese TV. There must have been brave military actions of Japanese soldiers. There must have been aggressive and cruel behavior of them as well.
Only the sadness from the war has been told by the TV. I saw many dramas that features the attack of the American Air Force on Tokyo. I saw many documentaries and investigation reports on the atomic bomb. I saw the total destruction of Tokyo and other cities and the death of the people there.
I hope that someday TV documentaries created by the Japanese and Americans are exchanged so that people from both sides can seen the WWII from different perspectives. One may find some culturally biased images. There may be something one never saw before in one country's documents. By taking a various points of view, we will have a deeper understanding and better evaluation of certain historical facts.