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By Linda Sieg, Reuters, Friday, April 6, 2007; 6:05 AM TOKYO (Reuters) - Sumie Oshiro was 25 when she and her friends tried to kill themselves to avoid capture by U.S. soldiers at the start of the bloody Battle of Okinawa. "We were told that if women were taken prisoner we would be raped and that we should not allow ourselves to be captured," Oshiro said on last month's anniversary of the March 26, 1945, invasion of the Japanese islet of Zamami. "Four of us tried to commit suicide with one hand grenade, but it did not go off," Ryukyu Shimpo, a local Okinawa newspaper, quoted Oshiro as saying at a gathering of now elderly survivors. The fighting on Zamami, south of the main Okinawan island, was the prelude to three months of carnage that took some 200,000 lives, about half of them Okinawan men, women and children. Many civilians, often entire families, committed suicide rather than surrender to Americans, by some accounts on the orders of fanatical Japanese soldiers. "The army ordered them to commit suicide," said Yoshikazu Miyazato, 58, who plans to publish testimony from survivors on Zamami, where he says suicides accounted for 180 of the 404 civilians -- about half of the islet's population -- who died. The accuracy of such accounts, however, has been questioned by conservative historians who argue the suicides were voluntary. Late last month, the education ministry ordered publishers of high school textbooks to modify references to Japanese soldiers ordering civilians to kill themselves. The textbook revisions echo other efforts by conservatives to revise descriptions of Japan's wartime actions, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's denial that the military or government hauled women away to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in Asia before and during World War Two. Abe has sought to dampen overseas outrage over his remarks by repeating his backing for a 1993 apology to the "comfort women," as they are known in Japan, and offering his own brief apology. "In every case, Abe's administration is saying there was no military involvement," Shoukichi Kina, an opposition lawmaker from Okinawa told Reuters in a phone interview. "They are distorting history and it is unforgiveable." Continued Okinawa Suicides, Page 2