ABSTRACT
For many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan is an ex-foe, and in many cases, strong anti-Japanese sentiment persists in the memory of wartime experience, especially the colonial rule and aggression of World War II (Hayase 2007; Fujikawa 1997; Kawasaki 1996). At the same time, the Japanese were not solely aggressors, and themselves experienced severe loss of life in the battles, blitzes, and atomic bombings. Recent scholarship has begun to revisit the complexities of Japanese wartime involvement in Asia and its historical legacies. With regard to East Asian countries, particularly China and Korea, a number of studies have explored textbook descriptions of the Japanese occupation and the wounding of Japan itself (Fujisawa 1998; Historical Science Society of Japan 2004; Saito 2008). In the case of the United States, scholars have initiated studies of how the atomic bombings are taught in schools (Crawford 2003; Kazemek 1994; Stoddard 2009). However, there have been few investigations into Southeast Asian curricula, with regard to the presentation of the Japanese occupation and the atomic bombs.
