By MARTIN FACKLER Associated Press Writer
TOKYO (AP) -- She wants a simple ceremony.
Like many who visit Pearl Harbor, she will lay flowers
at the memorial
to the battleship Arizona, which sank with 1,102 sailors during the
Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941. Then she will bow her head in a
moment of silence.
But Yuko Tojo will be no ordinary visitor. She is the granddaughter
of
Gen. Hideki Tojo, who ordered the surprise raid that plunged the
United States into World War II.
She said her visit to the memorial on Tuesday will fulfill a dying
wish of the wartime leader, who was hanged by the Allies after Japan's
surrender.
"In my grandfather's will, he said he wanted to hold a ceremony to
honor all the war dead, regardless of which side they fought on," she
told The Associated Press. "On behalf of the Tojo family, I'm going
to carry out my grandfather's wish."
By paying her respects at the Arizona, the quintessential symbol for
Americans of Japan's wartime aggression, Tojo is attempting to gain
international recognition for her efforts to rehabilitate the memory
of her grandfather.
Whatever Americans may think, her message that her grandfather was a
patriot -- and not a war criminal -- has already won growing
acceptance in Japan.
Experts say a long recession and frustration at what many see as
Japan's lack of respect in world affairs have made more Japanese
receptive to calls for national self-assertion.
"There's a tectonic shift in which the center is moving in a more
nationalistic direction," said Ivan P. Hall, a Japanese historian and
author.
Gen. Tojo, Japan's prime minister from 1941 to 1944, has been widely
remembered both at home and abroad as Asia's answer to Adolf Hitler,
a
dictator who unleashed a savage war of aggression on its Asian and
Pacific neighbors.
That's not the real Gen. Tojo, says his granddaughter.
She contends the general had no choice but to go to war. Japan's very
survival was threatened by a U.S. oil embargo, which she called a
jealous attempt by the larger Western power to strangle an emerging
Asian rival.
"Tojo was totally different from Hitler. Hitler murdered his own
people. Tojo fought to save his," she said.
And while most blame Gen. Tojo for the deaths of millions of innocent
people, his granddaughter embraces the view of a growing number of
revisionist historians here that Japanese military atrocities have
been grossly exaggerated.
She says the image of her grandfather as a butcher was largely a
fabrication of the Tokyo war trials, which she says wrongfully
sentenced him and six other Japanese leaders to death in 1947 for
crimes against humanity.
She concedes that she might have difficulty bringing Americans around
to her way of thinking. But she says just being able to defend her
grandfather in public is itself a small victory.
For most of her life, the 59-year-old said she has been afraid even
to
use her family name.
The hardest time was just after the war. School teachers refused to
teach her and her brother. Merchants chased her mother from their
stores. Her father lost his job at an insurance company.
"Our father made us promise never to talk back, no matter what was
said to us," she said. "Silence became our family's creed."
She didn't break that creed until 1992, when she published a memoir
of
her grandfather. The book became the basis for a movie last year,
"Pride," that broke old taboos by portraying Gen. Tojo as the victim
of vindictive Allied judges during the Tokyo war trial.
The growing popularity of such views here can be seen by the crowds
that lined up to see the movie, making it one of the top-grossing
domestic films of last year with proceeds of $169 million.
By contrast, only a handful of theaters dared to show "Nanjing
1937," a Chinese film released at the same time that portrayed
Japanese soldiers as engaging in an orgy of violence in the Chinese
city that left up to 300,000 dead.
Right-wing protesters slashed the screen at a Tokyo theater where the
film was shown.
Since the release of "Pride," Tojo says she's been suddenly
inundated by invitations to speak and requests for media interviews.
The attention, she says, is proof that the time has finally come for
Japan to discard the negative image of her grandfather and other war
dead.
"In America, it's normal to revere those who died for their
country," she said. "In Japan, we can't even do that. There's more
respect paid for the Japanese soldiers at the Arizona memorial than
at
museums here in Japan."
> AP-NY-03-27-99 0418EST
