Every August Japan is filled with prayers for the 3.1 million Japanese who died in the Pacific War and feelings of resentment against the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This August, which marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, Japanese media have done intensive reporting to remember what happened during the war and immediate postwar years.
Aside from the flood of reports, I was intrigued by two recently published books: "Genbaku wo Touka Suru Made Nihon wo Koufuku Saseru na" (Do Not Let Japan Surrender Until We Drop the Atomic Bombs) by Tami Torii and "Dai Toua Sensou no Shinjitsu" (Truth about the Great East Asia War), edited by Yuko Tojo.
The former describes the circumstances under which then U.S. President Harry Truman approved history's first atomic bombings, while the latter is a compilation of affidavits presented to the Tokyo Trials by wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The latter was originally published in January 1948 but became the first book to be banned by the General Headquarters in Japan, the occupation authorities. Yuko Tojo, a granddaughter of the general, has republished the book.