Four months later, the invaders forced some 70,000 American and Filipino troops to march 65 miles on a trail of torture, starvation, and brutality. Japanese officers burned prisoners with cigarettes, decapitated them with bayonets, and forced many of the dying captives to dig their own graves. There were no helping hands for the suffering. A brave but small number of Japanese and non-Japanese scholars have documented the massacre, but Japanese and American schoolchildren remain largely uninformed of the history. Japan, of course, is not alone in its commission of wartime atrocities through the ages.
Barbarism knows no cultural bounds.
By not acknowledging these crimes, we fail to grasp the complete picture of our own national character We, therefore, gain a reputation for emphasizing our role as a victim without ever reflecting upon our own violent aspect. Japan's reluctance to honestly confront its recent history continues to be an insult to its victims and a grievous disservice to its own people. Over the last year, several scholars and journalists have noted an alarming resurgence of historical revisionism among younger Japanese. Kids around the globe will outgrow Pokemon soon enough. Ignorance, denial, and stubborn historical amnesia are not so easily shed.