Yomiuri Shimbun Editor-in-Chief Tsuneo Watanabe stressed the importance of people continuing to talk about their wartime experiences in an NHK documentary on war and politics that aired on Sunday.
The public broadcaster featured an interview with Watanabe, who is also a representative director of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings, in its weekly documentary show "NHK special," following the March broadcast of an NHK documentary on the Showa era [1926-1989], which also featured the Yomiuri Shimbun editor in chief.
"Millions of people were killed, and Japan was reduced to ruins. Politics cannot be conducted properly unless those who were responsible are held to account," Watanabe said, commenting on a yearlong series by The Yomiuri Shimbun's War Responsibility Verification Committee in 2005.
"We need to inform young people about the war. I felt that we had to conduct a campaign to establish war responsibility before we could move forward," Watanabe said.
"The whole story of the war hasn't yet been told. That's why it needs to be written down for posterity," he said, stressing the significance of continuing such efforts.
Watanabe talked about his own war-related experiences in the program, including his "resistance to militarism" when he was a high school student and his time in the military, when he was "physically assaulted for no reason."
Referring to postwar prime ministers such as Shigeru Yoshida, Ichiro Hatoyama, Hayato Ikeda, whom he had covered as a political reporter, Watanabe said, "They were all liberals and took an anti-war stance."
Watanabe also talked about Banboku Ono, a former Liberal Democratic Party vice president with whom he had close ties.
"[Ono] was a liberal, anti-war and anti-military even during the war. So we got along well," he said.
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