Bataan Death March

“Education”, what do you think of when you hear this word? Is it something that people receive throughout school? Is it a minimum state of knowledge for people to know and understand in order to become an efficient member of the society? In the dictionary it says, “The action or process of educating or of being educated; also, a stage of such a process. The knowledge and development resulting from an educational process”. I am currently studying in Linguistics, and I have found that you cannot determine a word by using other words, but by the way people in that language/country use that word in different situations. Any word that is defined using that word itself is not a very good definition. Well that just might be me anyway…

Well know that I’ve got that through, I wanted to talk about the education differences in Japan and the States. Well I know for sure that there are hundreds of differences in teaching methods, schooling hours, even the years of school required to graduate. Most Japanese don’t even know that “School” is until high school in the States, because in Japan it’s only until junior high.

There are a lot of obvious differences as you can see, but I wanted to talk about the differences in the education of world history. Since I moved to Japan when I was in the 5^th grade, I cannot say that I’ve experienced the fullest of American education. Though I remember what I was taught at that time and can talk from those experiences. I can firstly say, that the most astonishing fact that I have found out was that in Japan, they do not teach about Pearl Harbor, nor Bataan Death March. Now I can say this as a fact because in Japan, they do not teach world history until junior high(unless you go to an international school), and I joined before that. Now don’t get me wrong, if you take some kind of class at a university in Japan that concentrates on world history, I’m sure Pearl Harbor will be a topic in that class. What I’m saying is that, unless you want to know about Pearl Harbor or in this case “Bataan Death March” You would have to study or look for the information yourself. I can remember there wasn’t even 1 page about these topics in my history textbook for high school, but there were about 20 pages on the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I am not criticizing the Japanese education system, but there has got to be some balance. To my personal experience in Japan, more people think that the bombing at Nagasaki was the first attack between the U.S. and Japan. Now I don’t know if they teach about what happened at the island of Luzon in the U.S.(sorry for my ignorance), but I did not like the fact that I first learnt about this through the news…50 years later. From a reader’s opinion, I’m probably starting to sound a bit racist, but for those of you who haven’t seen my profile, I am half Japanese. So I can say that I respect both my backgrounds, but I honestly think there should be a little tweak in the education system here in Japan. I only say this because I experienced it in Japan, I’m sure there are some problems in the education in the U.S., it is never a perfect world.

The article I found was a perfect reflection of what I feel. In this article, it says that the Japanese ambassador; Ichiro Fujisaki, has apologized at the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor for the wrong doings in Philippine. “Wrong doings” might be an understatement when 11,000 prisoners died in the act. Former POW Hershel C. Boushey said that Mr. Fujisaki did not sound sincere about his “Apology”, and some people were even confused by the fact about apologizing for an incident that happened 67years ago, especially when we are allies now.

In the end, I guess it depends on ones opinion on how he/she sees the world. But I have found the importance of knowing and understanding “Both sides”. There will always be wars in this stupid world. It is up to us, to educate our descendants with the proper knowledge to prevent future chaos.