I would like to tell you a story:

So one day one of my Japanese friends and I were riding bikes down the road and we got to talking about history and WW2 in Japan, obviously, it was a sensitive issue on my side, the American government had unleashed three of the deadliest bombing raids in history on Japan (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and especially Tokyo) and directly indirectly contributed to millions of Japanese deaths in war and starvation. I thought that it would be the same awkwardness for him, I was wrong. This is a modified version of what happened (as I cannot remember it word for word):

Him: “So after WW2, Japan gathered together all of the nations in the world to say ‘Hey, we’re sorry for what we did, and to make sure it never happens again, we promise to push for peace in all that we do’ and since then we have been at peace”

Me: “That’s an interesting view of what happened”

Him: “What do you mean?”

Me: “Well, first off not all the nations of the world were at the peace talks and subsequent treaties… Secondly, Japan to this day has strained relations with all of the countries in East Asia because they (allegedly) never apologized for the war crimes”

“No, we apologized for starting the war…”

“Yeah…”

“So… What are these war crimes you’re talking about?”

“You have to be kidding me”

“Hold on, let me be clear, all sides in war have evil men on them who do terrible things, Japan had them, so did China, Russia, Germany, and the USA, but we don’t apologize for those, we hold them accountable and try to ensure that things like that don’t happen again. But if you are suggesting that Japan needs to apologize for something that no one else has to or will apologize for you, then you are hypocritical.”

“I’m not talking about that, I am talking about the institutional acts of evil that happened and were encouraged by commanders”

“If you are suggesting that we went on a Holocaust then-”

“I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about things like Nanjing.”

“What’s Nannjing”

“What!?”

“I’ve never heard of that”

*Explains what happened at Nanjing*

Him: “That sounds like Anti-Japanese propaganda”

Me: “Why do you think they keep bringing it up?”

*Several seconds of silence*

“Look, in Japan we study history to learn from our mistakes of the past and to not make them in the future, I have been told the story of WW2 at least ten times, why would they leave something like that out of it?”

“To lessen their blame, to erase something that the nation was responsible for, to stir up nationalism and patriotism”

“See, I don’t believe that”

“Look it up, and pray you can recover, you just said we need to learn from our past, you must first know something in order to learn from it”

They aren’t even taught it and the ones who know are skeptical.