Schools should teach facts  Quite simply if a school in Japan is going to teach about World War II then it should include the darker side of the Japanese involvement in the conflict. Japans acts such as the Nanjing bombing and the occupation of Asian countries were horrific and must not be glossed over. Not covering such actions is quite simply misrepresenting the facts through omission.  No one would consider teaching about Nazi Germany without mentioning the horrors it committed. Learning about, for example the road to war may be interesting, and potentially be useful in drawing lessons on how to prevent a war. Appeasement is still regularly used as an analogy in international relations discussion as meeting almost any aggression with negotiations is seen as appeasing the enemy with Munich as the analogy [1] for example in negotiations with North Korea. [2] It is however a pointless exercise if the person learning knows nothing of what happened in the resulting war. Why should they want to draw on the lessons of the failure of appeasement if they do not know about the millions killed and the suffering inflicted?  [1] Dallek, Robert, ‘The Tyranny of Metaphor’, Foreign Policy, November 2010,   [2] Rogin, Josh, ‘Senate Republicans accuse Obama of North Korea ‘appeasement’, The Cable Foreign Policy, 16 March 2012,