PEACE OSAKA (International Peace Center) — Attraction in Osaka

(This episode I am sharing was from many years ago when we visited the peace center around 2005-6?)

I found it offensive to see the self-pity, or, I got angry to see the manipulation still today that the Peace Center was misleading the visitors, by taking advantage of the language barriers. The contents of the Peace Center is ironically displaying shallowly the sadness of the aftermath of the bombed cities, WITHOUT mentioning why their cities were bombed from the start.

Without this core information being well hidden (and heavily guessed) and not enough facts were displayed anywhere, and, without discussing the humanity based on honesty, but, rather the center, I question being set up to justify "(let's forget the war but) hey, it was not nice we got bombed."

The whole exhibition was corny and very distorted, especially in English Captions, noticing that it was heavily sketchy and beautified, too different from Korean translation.

The English narration encourages readers to sympathize with the bombed Japanese cities and the people of the past, as the sad victims (and naively repeat, let it not happen again, but, conveniently made visitors forget Japan started the War and killed other Asian Country people for decades before Bombing) but, in Korean caption, the Imperial Japan (the Pacific War they started) was mentioned briefly to avoid any conflict.

I called for the curator, for next 1.5 hours to complain about the discrepancy of the translations of the Korean and the English to the Curator, who insisted he spoke English well, then, he pretended he did not understand anything we told him of the two different narrations in each picture throughout the exhibitions.

We started to question that this peace center is perhaps, a propaganda setup.

Please, someone who can read Korean and English check out if the peace center actually has corrected their bad captions, to remove the manipulative English captions and have become more objective toward the history, and, be truthful of their exhibit, remaining under Humanity category, today.

If not, this is the good comparison to Germany. Japan is still in denial for what they did to other human beings after 75 years since they lost war. And, they change their war stories in the recent decades, just like the distorted English Captions in the Peace Center we saw.

They learned no lesson...

The Ōsaka international peace center (ŌIPC) states in its own exhibition guide, that it focuses on air raids on ŌSAKA. Also most of the texts and descriptions are in Japanese.

Hence the ŌIPC is neither international nor about peace.

It shows the hardships of the citizens of ŌSAKA, but only ŌSAKA. Not a single word is said about the background, the reasons which led to all this sorely suffering. No words about the people who suffered from the Japanese people/ armed forces in ASIA at that time. Although the exhibition guide explicitly says so.

Only one small sentence can be read, that confesses "[...] our country has also caused tremendous damage and suffering on people in many countries [...]".

Furthermore the exhibition guide itself states that we should learn from history for the future. But how is this to happen when the foundation is missing? This process of learning is built on sand when the Japanese nation/ people and its society, politicians and scientists as well as the armed forces are not willing to reprocess their (war) crimes and mistakes of the past.

Contrary to the exhibition guide no explanation is given in this museum for all that sorrow of the past (and probably present).

Sadly, nearly 80 years after the end of the war mostly nowhere in JAPAN an effort is made regarding explanation and reprocessing the past.

Therefore this exhibition/ museum can only arouse hatred for the USA and pity for the citizens of ŌSAKA but not peace in the world.

What happens when a nation/ people and armed forces not reprocess their (war) crimes and mistakes of the past, could be seen in 2014 and lately in 2022 using the example of the russian annexion of CRIMEA and the russian...

The museum are focusing on the suffering of the Osaka people during WWII, and the truma that they had. The exhibition did a good job to show the hardship that Osaka people were facing, caused my the Japanese military government.

However, all these war were all started with a decaying Sino-Japanese relationship. The background text that they showed are very troubling, and heavily sugar coated. For example, in 1927, when the Chinese national party were advancing to Bejing, to subduing the Chinese warlords in Northern China, the Japanese were seeking "cooperative diplomacy" with the Chinese National party. The fact is, the Chinese national party were trying to avoid conflicts with the Japanese. The Chinese national party were even sending diplomats, to the Japanese army in Shandong for peace talk. However, these Chinese diplomats were murdered, and the Japanese army started a massacre in Shandong. This is the so called "cooperative diplomacy" by the Japanese.

This is just one of the many examples how the text tone down the violence by the Japanese army towards other Asian countries.

Oh by the way, Korean were heavily affected by the Sino-Japanese war, and played a key role as well, and they were only barely mentioned in the text.

All in all, the museum is about the suffering that the Osaka people had in WWII, which is fine and worth visiting. However, the background information that they provided is the problem. Therefore, I am suggesting visitors to do some homework prior...