More than half a century ago, 80 Korean laborers died of abuse and malnutrition as they built an airfield for the Japanese military in World War II. Koichi Mizuguchi helped to find the graves and also helped to build a six-foot memorial at the site to honor those Koreans who were buried there. It has never been easy for Japan to come to terms with their militarist past, and tried to set aside the issues raised by war as it rebuilt itself into the peaceful nation it is today. Pressure to erase the darker episodes of its wartime history has intensified recently with the rise of a small, aggressive online movement known as the Net Right. The Net Right are organized cyber activists who were once dismissed as radicals on the far margins of the Japanese political landscape, but they have gained outside influence with officials who share their goal of ending negative portrayals of Japanese history.
A shift in Japanese political culture which has emboldened the ultra-naturalists to target the acts of historical contrition that Japanese society previously embraced has been one result of the events that have taken place according to Sakaguchi and other experts.
Fackler, Martin "Pressure in Japan to Forget Sins of War" New York Times 29 October 2014: A4, A9. Print.
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