The Declassification of Japanese War Crime Documents Will Have a Profound Effect on Foreign Policy, Pitt Faculty Expert Says

PITTSBURGH-Leading World War II authority Donald Goldstein, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, says the U.S. government's release of 100,000 pages of newly declassified documents related to Japanese war crimes exposes the Japanese to criticism that they have thus far avoided. "China and Korea have never forgiven the Japanese for their atrocities in World War II-specifically the rape of Nanking in China and the covert medical experimentations of Unit 731," Goldstein says. "These declassified documents will provide China and Korea with evidence for atrocities that the Japanese have heretofore denied. These documents will have a profound effect on foreign policy." Finally, according to Goldstein, discussion of World War II is taboo in Japan and hardly taught at all in the schools, let alone accurately. "School children and scholars will now be exposed to what really happened," he adds. Goldstein is a military scholar and a renowned expert on Pearl Harbor. He is the author or coauthor of 25 books, including two best-sellers, "At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" (McGraw-Hill, 1981) and "Miracle at Midway" (McGraw-Hill, 1983).

For a list of Pitt faculty experts, visit www.umc.pitt.edu/m/experts.html.

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