I'm Gonna Be a History Geek for a Second

Anyone who took a high school history class knows the Soviet Union sustained the worst death toll in World War II (about 23 million total). But can you tell me who sustained the second most?
I bet more than half of the U.S. population didn't even know that China was an Ally. 20 million Chinese died in World War II. Why the heck don't we learn this stuff in high school? The bottom line is that, though we believe we are the land of the free, one of the most accepting and cultured countries in the world, our high school history cirriculums are western-focused. Where are the primary sources from Chinese civilians talking about the death all around them? It just confuses me. Is non-Western history not important? We trace Soviet progression into Communism but not Chinese. It just blows my mind.

Let's face it. White history is still the history of public schools. Sure, we throw in some black history. But so-called "Global Studies" are usually a look at Europe, or the events that effected the United States. We may talk about Japan, but only because they were a major player against us in World War II. We may talk about the Soviet Union, but that's only because they we our opponents in the Cold War. Our education system still looks at the world as it affects us. We disregard Africa because we look at it as a tribal continent that doesn't have a lot of interaction with the United States. We look at the east and see cultures that are far different than ours, and that alarms us. For these reasons, we choose not to explore and discuss them, and that's just sad. 20 million lives is an insane number, whether they are Europeans or not. The value of a life should not change based on the culture from which it came from.