Japanese General:Japan was not an aggressor in WWII

Japan's defence minister has dismissed his air force chief for claiming that the country was not an "aggressor" in the Second World War and was trapped into entering the conflict by the United States.

General Toshio Tamogami's essay, posted on the website of a Japanese hotel and apartment developer, was expected to spark anger in China and South Korea, where memories of Japan's wartime acts and colonisation run deep.

Beijing and Seoul say Tokyo has failed to properly atone for its invasion of the Korean peninsula, Taiwan and parts of China.

"His views are different from the government's. It is not desirable for him to stay in the job," Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters soon after the essay was made public.

In the essay, titled "Was Japan an Aggressor Nation?" Tamogami said it was "certainly a false accusation" to say Japan was "an aggressor nation" during the Second World War.

"The current Chinese government obstinately insists that there was a 'Japanese invasion,' but Japan obtained its interests in the Chinese mainland legally under international law through the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and so on, and it placed its troops there based on treaties in order to protect those interests," he wrote.

He also claimed life under Japanese occupation was "very moderate" and cited a rise in the population on the Korean peninsula during Japan's 1910-1945 occupation as "proof that Korea under Japanese rule was also prosperous and safe."

Gen Tamogami also claimed that Japan was tricked into attacking Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941, by US President Franklin D Roosevelt. More