Do the Japanese not teach their youth about WW2?

Question:

When in high school Japanese students were not allowd to sit in our history class during discussions of WW2. Can someone please explain?

Answer:

Oh, I thought you were asking about the teaching of WWII in Japanese history clases in Japan. Are you saying in your (unnamed) country they Japanese had to sit out the class? That's not right.

Short answer: No. What they do is spend a great deal of time on ancient Japan. The modern era is, logically enough, at the end of the curriculum. So conveniently they run out of time and never get round to covering it. Privately I've had Japanese history teachers tell me that suits them just fine.

Basically the emphasis is on how the Japanese suffered during the bombings, the hunger and deprivation, the 'sneak attack' using nuclear weapons. In other words, Japanese history of WWII focusses on the Japanese as the blameless victims of white aggression. Their version is that they were liberationg asians (Koreans, Chinese, Indonesians etc) from the domination of white people.

Don't jump all over me for saying 'white people' I'm just telling you what the Japanese told me and it's referring to the time before 1945.

Interestingly, this week the Japanese apologized for their treatment of British/Canadian/ANZAC troops in places like Hong Kong. What interesting is that they waited for all of the vets to die (only 86 survivors left in Canada for example), the Emperor (then Hirohito, now Showa) is long dead and nobody much cares. So they can say they did 'apologize' but I think they did it in a completely meaningless way.