Japan's high school history textbooks will continue to describe the mass civilian suicides during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa as incidents in which people were "driven into suicides amid the Japanese military's involvement" instead of saying the military "forced" them to kill themselves, sources said.
Textbook authors and critics are demanding the expression "forced" be used, but the chance of that happening became unlikely after five textbook publishers decided to leave the wording alone as instructed by the education ministry. The publishers said it will probably be difficult to get permission to adopt the more direct expression used to describe the mass suicides.
A senior education ministry official said the recently revised wording poses no problem.
"It must be proved that descriptions in textbooks impose troubles to study when we approve revisions . . . there is no problem in the description that the military was involved," the official said.
In March 2007, the ministry told history book publishers to delete or rewrite references to the Imperial army's role in coercing civilians to commit mass suicide and murder-suicide to avoid being captured.