Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
December 4, 2002 Wednesday FINAL EDITION
Tokyo -- Saburo Ienaga, a historian who devoted his life to battling government censorship of Japan's wartime atrocities in school textbooks, has died, a Japanese news agency reported. He was 89. Ienaga, professor at Tokyo University of Education, now Tsukuba University, died Sunday. He began his court battles over textbooks in the mid-1960s and led the movement by teachers and their supporters against government textbook screening for nearly four decades.
In his most recent victory, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the Education Ministry unconstitutionally blocked mention of Japanese wartime atrocities in Ienaga's 1983 high school textbook.
The ruling marked the first time Japan's highest court had acknowledged a legal limit to the government's textbook screening. It also boosted efforts to teach schoolchildren more about Japan's aggression in Asia in the first half of the 1900s.
Ienaga lost most of his court battles. He sometimes required police protection from right-wing thugs who believed he had disgraced Japan and the emperor.
by Editor on December 6, 2002 at 6:26 PM