Representatives of three civic groups left for Hiroshima Tuesday on a campaign to stop the Japanese prefecture from adopting a controversial history book that they say glosses over Japan's wartime atrocities.

The South Korean activists, joined by Japanese supporters, hope to stop Hiroshima officials from adopting the textbook that the civic groups say would hurt South Korean-Japanese relations.

According to the civic groups, Hiroshima education authorities have shown signs of adopting the middle school textbook, written by nationalistic Japanese scholars, ahead of the Friday deadline.

If adopted, the middle school textbook will be used beginning in the spring semester next year.

Tokyo invited a flurry of criticism from South Korea and China in 2001 when it approved the textbook, compiled by the nationalistic Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform.

Asian countries, especially South Korea and China, are particularly sensitive to any Japanese moves to justify its wartime atrocities. The Korean peninsula was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 till 1945.