Well, this has been working up for a long time and was summarized by Richard Fernandez on the occasion of the American hand-wringing on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
“Given enough time and opportunity," writes Richard, "the masters of the narrative will eventually succeed in making the Pacific War all about American aggression.”And here we are: World War II was a defensive war for Japan against American imperialist aggression. An historian who participated in a conference hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities recorded that in her 30 years of college-level teaching, " I have never witnessed nor participated in a more extremist, agenda-driven, revisionist conference, nearly devoid of rhetorical balance and historical context for the arguments presented."
One presenter specifically wrote about turning down a job offer when he realized that his office would overlook a fleet of U.S. Naval warships, “the symbol of American power and the symbol of our [Hawaiians'] dispossession…I decided they could not pay me enough”…This kind of "thinking" is rampant among American academic historians.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor should be seen from the perspective of Japan being a victim of western oppression (one speaker likened the attack to 9-11, saying that the U.S. could be seen as “both victim and aggressor” in both attacks); that American “imperial expansion” forced Japan’s hand: “For the Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western Imperialism.”
Those misguided members of the WWII generation on islands like Guam and Saipan who feel gratitude to the Americans for saving them from the Japanese are blinded by propaganda supporting “the image of a compassionate America” or by their own advanced age. One author/presenter questioned whether the Americans had saved anyone from anything (Camacho 177, 209), arguing that the Americans could be seen as easily and justifiably as “conquerors and invaders” (199).
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