Well, to be fair, the idea behind whitewashing is that there's some benefit to covering up the horrors of the past. It doesn't work out that way, especially whe

Well, to be fair, the idea behind whitewashing is that there's some benefit to covering up the horrors of the past. It doesn't work out that way, especially when the truth eventually comes out. But what would be the benefit here? It's ice measurement data from seven centuries ago, long before climate skeptics started complaining that scientists were "fudging data for grant money" and other nonsense accusations. The monks would have had zero reason to fudge data. In any case, you didn't really see the rise of Japanese militarism until after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The atrocities that took place before and during WWII can't really be connected to a remote monastery and its priests who started recording this data seven centuries beforehand.