Welcome to the WWII Forums! Log in or Sign up to interact with the community.

Hitoshi Motoshima

Discussion in 'WWII Obituaries' started by GRW, Jan 26, 2015.

  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

    Joined:
    Oct 26, 2003
    Messages:
    20,815
    Likes Received:
    3,042
    Location:
    Stirling, Scotland
    "Hitoshi Motoshima, who has died aged 92, was a long-serving Mayor of Nagasaki who broke a Japanese taboo by suggesting that the late Emperor Hirohito, venerated by nationalists as a god, bore some responsibility for the war and by accepting the atomic bombings as a due punishment for Japan’s wartime conduct.
    A Roman Catholic, Motoshima made his controversial remarks about Hirohito in December 1988 at a time when the emperor was on his deathbed. “ I think the emperor bears some responsibility for the war, as well as all of us who lived in that period,” he said in answer to a question. Later he told reporters that the United States would not have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki if the emperor had announced Japan’s unconditional surrender at an earlier stage: “As a military instructor, I myself was forced to tell people to die in the name of the emperor.”
    Motoshima’s remarks caused outrage among nationalists who have never accepted Japan’s wartime guilt. A battalion of angry Right-wingers converged on Nagasaki in army lorries and patrolled the streets, flying the Rising Sun flag, blasting military music through loudhailers, and menacing Motoshima with death threats and gunshots at his office windows.
    Motoshima was placed under 24-hour guard by police, but after a year, tiring of the security, asked for the guard to be called off.
    A month later he was shot in the back by a Right-wing fanatic on the steps of the city hall and rushed to hospital for surgery. He survived — just — and his shooting sparked a debate in which he was cast as a national symbol of the right to free expression.
    Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party had responded to his observations about the emperor by withdrawing its support and backing a rival candidate in mayoral elections scheduled for 1991. National party leaders were drafted in to boost the anti-Motoshima campaign. But the heavy-handed interference from Tokyo caused a backlash, particularly among young voters disenchanted with the machine politics practised by the LDP. Moreover Motoshima had been endorsed by Hirohito’s successor Emperor Akihito who had greeted him warmly on a visit to Nagasaki in 1990, conferring an imperial seal of approval on the mayor’s efforts to break the taboo against discussing war guilt. Motoshima was re-elected to a fourth term of office.
    Hitoshi Motoshima was born on February 20 1922 in Shinkamigoto, near Nagasaki. Orphaned as a child, he was brought up by his grandparents as a Catholic in a virulently Shinto society. At the age of 21 he was conscripted into the Japanese Army as an artilleryman, although he never saw action as he was stationed in Japan. He returned to Nagasaki six weeks after the city’s devastation in August 1945. “Nothing familiar to me remained,” he recalled. “There was no greenery at all. ”"
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/11369971/Hitoshi-Motoshima-mayor-of-Nagasaki-obituary.html
     
  2. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2010
    Messages:
    3,278
    Likes Received:
    846
    Good for Akihito! I don't know much about him, but he has been honest about the past and sought reconciliation. Ironic how the people who claim to defend Japan's honor and tradition go against their Emperor.
     
  3. bronk7

    bronk7 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    May 5, 2013
    Messages:
    4,753
    Likes Received:
    328
    Location:
    MIDWEST
    this party that party left wing right wing......humans-always a conflict/friction..Hirohito could've prevented the war,no? seems like he was a yes man
     

Share This Page