What are Japanese children taught about WW2?

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Sampiro

I’ve been listening to an audio version of Stephen Ambrose’s posthumously published To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian. In the book he praises America (and Germany for that matter) for owning up to past injustices and atrocities. He also makes a claim similar to the following (the wording may not be precise, but the context is identical):

To this day Japanese high school students are taught that World War 2 began for their nation when the United States for no apparent reason began dropping atomic bombs on Japan.

This seems a rather bold and incendiary statement: is there any truth to it or is it a complete exaggeration?

Just curious-

I live in Japan and I’ve encountered some pretty wild versions of history from students, but I haven’t run into that one yet.

Here’s the view of 20th century history that I find it most common in Japan:

“In the 1930’s, Japan was expanding its colonial sphere of influence just as England, France, the US, and other colonial powers had been doing. Since this was unpopular in Europe, Japan had to ally itself with Germany so that it could enjoy the same imperial rights the Europeans had been enjoying for centuries. To provide a pretext for attacking Japan, Roosevelt allowed the Japanese Navy to attack Pearl Harbor. A couple of uninteresting things happened in the intervening years. Then, in 1945, when Japan was utterly helpless, the US dropped 2 bombs on them for no reason whatsoever. Many women and children died, and people still suffer the effects to this day. Today Japan is safe and secure from all external threats because of its peaceful attitude toward other nations.”

That’s a paraphrase of what they generally say about it. To be sure though, we Allies have not owned up to our own atrocities in WW2 such as the bombing of Dresden and other population centers in the war. And it’s true that the A-bomb was dropped for no other reason than it cost a billion dollars to build and had to be used, the US wanted Japan to surrender to the US only and without conditions, and Truman wanted to scare the pants off the Russians. We knew that Japan had no warmaking capability and that they were making secret overtures for peace to the Russians.