There's a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japan's ample history of warfare. But if you visit the plainly named Military Museum, you'll find no reference to the grotesque medical experiments the Japanese army conducted in World War II or the sex slaves it kidnapped.
The Rape of Nanking, when rampaging Japanese troops raped and murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese, is airbrushed into the "Nanking Incident,'' and the facts are said to be uncertain.
Civilian deaths aren't mentioned at all until the Americans begin firebombing Tokyo in 1944.
This is par for the course. In Japanese textbooks, the relentless quest for military domination that so marked that nation's conduct in the 20th century gently morphs into a brave struggle for independence against a hostile world.
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