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David [REDACTED]

Ms. Mann

English 2

17 October 2018

The Corruption of History

Everybody knows that looking back into history can help you learn things about the

present. One thing that has been blatantly obvious in the past is that ultimately, people will

always pursue self-interest. It is in everyone’s self-interest to make themself look better to

others. This is also true for people in government, who may actually be impacted more by this

fact of humanity, as they have to make sure people still like them so they can stay in power.

The Armenian Genocide was the “planned systematic genocide of 1.5 million Armenians

during the First World War at the hands of the Ottoman government”(Adalian). Turkey is the

“successor state of the Ottoman Empire”(Adalian), and thus it has a cultural tie to the events of

the Armenian Genocide, which is why they have such strong feelings about it. Turkey currently

has a policy of “denying the Armenian Genocide and in increasingly more strident steps sought

to suppress discussion of the Armenian Genocide in international and public forums”(Adalian).

This is just one example of a government trying to hide something that, even though they are not

the same government responsible, they feel that it shines a bad light on them as a people.

Another example of someone hiding how bad conditions were can be found in the book

Night. Right before Elie was to leave Buna, the Blockälteste told them to clean up their

barracks. When asked why, he said: “‘For the liberating army,’ he told us. ‘Let them know that

here lived men and not pigs.’”(Night, 84). The command was likely meant to hide the fact that
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they lived in horrible conditions, almost as animals. Whether it was a command from the Nazis

in charge of the camp or just from the Blockälteste is unknown, but still shows an instance where

someone used their power to make a situation look better.

Japan has a similar story of hiding a horrific catastrophe that they were responsible for in

their past. Nanking was captured by the Japanese Imperial Army on December 13, 1937. Based

on a post-war Allied investigation, there were “more than 200,000 killed and at least 20,000

women and girls raped in the six weeks after the city fell”(Guttentag and Sturman). After the

initial attack and rape, “Japanese soldiers began rounding up women and forcing them to serve as

sex slaves in so-called comfort stations”(Guttentag and Sturman). Most historians treat this

horrific event as a fact. However, in Japan, a large group of conservative leaders led by Shinzo

Abe, current prime minister of Japan, denies that the Japanese military forced women into sexual

slavery(Guttentag and Sturman). The Yushukan, a museum in Japan, has exhibits on what they

call the Great East Asian War, or World War II to the majority of the world. In there, there are

claims that Franklin D. Roosevelt forced Japan to go to war in an effort to get the U.S. out of the

Depression. Additionally, there are claims that the Japanese entrance into other Asian countries

was simply an effort to purge them of Western colonization, claiming the Japanese leaders tried

for war crimes as heroic. Most of the reason why Japan denies the Nanking Massacre is because

of Japan’s fierce nationalism, and it reflects poorly on their nation as a whole. This is yet

another example of a government trying to deny what really happened in their history, actively

changing the story and making an official story of the events that occured, all in an attempt to

make themselves look better.

When it comes down to it, people will always try to do things that would be in their self-

interest. For most people, it is in their self-interest to make themselves look better to others.
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This basic principle impacts everyone, even people in governments and positions of power.

People in positions of power may be impacted more by this, because they have the power to

make changes and an increased number of people paying attention to what they are doing and

have done.
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Works Cited

Adalian, Rouben Paul. “Turkey, Republic of, and the Armenian Genocide.” Turkey, Republic of,

and the Armenian Genocide, www.armenian-genocide.org/turkey.html.

Guttentag, Bill, and Dan Sturman. “Revisionism Tokyo-Style.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles

Times, 18 Jan. 2013, articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/18/opinion/la-oe-guttentag-japan-

nanking-20130118.

Wiesel, Elie, and Marion Wiesel. Night. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

2017.