The Asia Pacific War: Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation 9781138222342, 9781032509044, 9781315408026

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Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia

THE ASIA PACIFIC WAR IMPACT, LEGACY, AND RECONCILIATION Yasuko Claremont

The Asia Pacific War

This book examines key aspects of the Asia Pacific War (1931–1945), which was initially waged between Japan and China, before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor drew in the U.S.-led Allied Forces from 1941 to 1945. Part I of the book examines three interlocking components, the origins of the war; its impact on combatants and civilians; and its short-term legacy, including the huge changes that took place in the postwar governance of Japan. Part II explores the ongoing impact and legacy of the war for those in postwar Japan, and later generations, particularly through the examination of the ambiguity of state-led reconciliation with Japan’s neighbors, the growth of dynamic civil reconciliation efforts, and the prominent role of the arts in peace movements. Through a people-centered approach, it filters historical events through the lens of the war’s impact on individuals, who found themselves players within a larger frame of the social history of Japan and caught up in the international power dynamics of the nuclear age. Featuring studies of contemporary peace activism, this will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Modern Asian and U.S. History, as well as those interested in postwar memory and reconciliation. Yasuko Claremont has a PhD in Japanese literature, is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, and was the curator of Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age, an exhibition held at the Tin Sheds Gallery at the University during April and May 2022. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming book Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to be published by Routledge. Her research interests lie in the emergence of civil society in postwar Japan.

Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia

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For a full list of available titles please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-theModern-History-of-Asia/book-series/MODHISTASIA

The Asia Pacific War

Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation Yasuko Claremont

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Yasuko Claremont The right of Yasuko Claremont to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-22234-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-50904-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-40802-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

To My Husband Barry

Contents

Dedication Author’s note List of Tables List of Figures Preface Acknowledgments General Introduction: Japan’s Peace Paradox PART I

v viii ix x xi xv xvi

The Asia Pacific War

1

Introduction: Is There, or Was There, a So-Called Just War?

3

1 The Origins of the Asia Pacific War: ‘Honour, Fear, Self-Interest’

5

2 The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War

47

3 Legacies of the Asia Pacific War: The Atomic Bombings and Article 9

71

PART II

Postwar Reconciliation

105

Introduction: Aspects of Reconciliation

107

4 Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level

110

5 Citizens’ Reconciliation

142

6 Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts

174

7 Epilogue: The Rise of Citizen Power in Support of the Spirit of Article 9

220

Index236

Author’s note

Japanese personal names have been rendered according to the customary Japanese order of surname first. Translations not acknowledged are mine.

List of Tables

2.1 Military deaths in Pacific island battles during the Asia Pacific War 4.1 Japanese government compensation settlements 1987–1999 4.2 Death statistics by country (except China) for World War II and the Asia Pacific War 4.3 Japanese casualties, including returned and uncollected remains of Japanese soldiers, 2012 5.1 Death rates of Allied POWs by country of origin 5.2 Compensation paid to POWs by their home countries

52 125 130 131 149 152

List of Figures

3.1 Memorial monument for Article 9 dedicated to the memory of Kurihara Tadaichi and Sadako. 5.1 Sites of approximately 130 camps for Allied Prisoners of War located in industrial areas, harbors, mines, etc. in Japan. 6.1 Maruki Suma’s painting, ‘Pika no toki’ (‘Atomic bomb dropped’), 1950. 6.2 Fukami Noritaka, Kiyō no arashi (Storm over Nagasaki), 1946, detail of a section of the scroll. 6.3 The original cover of Genbaku Shishū. Drawn by Shikoku Gorō. 6.4 Tōge Sankichi and Shikoku Gorō, street poster with the poem, ‘Naze ni’ (Why?). 6.5 Group photograph taken after the performance, The Rivers, by Tsuchiya Tokiko, 2017. 6.6 Display of all of the Hanaoka woodcut prints. 6.7 Hanaoka woodcut print, soldier stomping on a worker. The narrator and locals are critical as they observe how the Japanese authorities treat the Chinese laborers. 6.8 Hanaoka student’s drawing for the paper picture slide show. 6.9 Monolith ‘Never again war between Japan and China’ (Nicchū fusaisen yūkōhi), Hanaoka student’s drawing of the monolith, the last slide. 7.1 Memorial Mound (Kuyōtō), Hiroshima Peace Park. 7.2 ‘“Daihatsu” taken away by Australian Army’. 7.3 28 January 2020. A wreath at the tip of the derrick of MS Kinugawa-maru. 7.4 Article 9 monument, 2022.

97 150 180 182 184 187 203 204 208 209 210 224 227 229 231

Preface

One day on a Sydney ferry in the 1970s, a stranger sat next to me. Recognizing me as Japanese, he remarked, ‘Japanese are a war-like race’. I didn’t understand what he meant. I had pursued an academic career in Australia, first as an overseas student and later as a lecturer teaching Japanese literature and language at the University of Sydney, where I worked until my retirement in 2016. In my early days, I marveled at my Korean colleagues’ fluency in Japanese, unaware of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Similarly, I had no knowledge that Australia and Japan had once fought each other in New Guinea during the Asia Pacific War, nor that Australian Prisoners of War (POWs) had been badly mistreated while constructing the Thai-Burma railway and in Japanese POW camps from 1942 to 1945. Gradually, I came to realize that my knowledge of Japan’s wartime history was fragmented. It was only when I was teaching postwar Japanese literature – the literary works of Ōoka Shōhei and Ōe Kenzaburō, poetry by Kurihara Sadako and Ibaragi Noriko, and Inoue Hisashi’s drama – that I understood the significant impact of war on these authors and their works. Having lived through war, they had questioned what their experiences really meant. In applying their artistic skills to successfully reconstruct the realities of their shared past, they worked the fertile ground of intricate human experiences in adversity together, leading to the stirring of defiance and the indestructible human longing for hope. The motivation to write about something comprehensive about the wartime history of my home country Japan has grown since 1975, the year I took up residency in Australia. Before that, having been born into a later generation with limited knowledge of the Asia Pacific conflict, I considered that the war itself was long over and seemingly irrelevant to me. I know that I wasn’t the only one who was kept in ignorance. A lack of understanding of one’s own country’s crucial history is common to Japan’s postwar generations. I blame Japanese authorities for the inadequacy of school history teaching – textbooks lack precise details, offering partial and selective views of history. But, in the end, I realized that it was my responsibility to gain as much accurate knowledge of the Asia Pacific War as possible. More importantly, I wanted to find out why postwar generations were deliberately kept in the dark. This book is, thus, an outcome of my critical overview of why and how the war occurred, how it ended in the defeat of Japan, and, most importantly, what

xii Preface differences those 77 postwar years have made to Japan. It goes without saying that the past cannot be changed, but the future may still be subject to change through the will of the individual. My explorations began in earnest with a project called the yakeato (the burnt-out ruins) generation. With my colleague Roman Rosenbaum, I co-edited Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War – published by Routledge in 2011 – in which my three articles discussed Watanabe Kazuo’s wartime diary, Irisawa Yasuo’s poetry and the children of war, respectively. I knew I needed to know more, and since this project was too ambitious to be accomplished by one individual, particularly one who is not a trained historian, I ventured out to organize a series of annual conferences between 2011 and 2015. These were held three times at the University of Sydney, once at the Academy of Korean Studies (Seongnam, South Korea), and once at Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto). This book is the last of five publications1 resulting from those conferences. I wholeheartedly acknowledge how much I have learnt from my fellow-participants from Korea, China, Japan, and the United States, as well as how delighted I am to have known so many people working in this vast field of study. Among them were those I met when I joined the POW Research Network of Japan in 2012; the members’ dedicated research on POWs is significant in filling in the vast gaps in Japan’s wartime history. Due to illness, the keynote speaker for the concluding 2015 conference Donald Keene (1922–2019) was not able to make an appearance, but he sent us his speech2 and a message on video. He had witnessed the battles between United States and Japanese forces on Attu Island and Okinawa, where Japanese soldiers had been decimated. Although he was an American military officer/translator rather than a combatant, he knew at firsthand the brutality of war. Known for his momentous achievements in introducing Japanese classic and modern literature to the world after the war, he remained a staunch pacifist. I was fortunate to have met him in person. During the war and its immediate aftermath, the Japanese people showed endurance in coming to terms with their own suffering as victims, while simultaneously acknowledging the atrocities and war crimes that their Imperial Army had committed in neighboring countries. Yet, this remorseful sentiment was gradually subsumed by a return to conservative Japanese traditions, one of which is paternalism. This takes the form of autocratic, male-dominated, and feudalistic authoritarianism toward the people. This unequal relationship in Japan between the powerful and ordinary people is paralleled by Japan’s relationship with the United States. Japan relies heavily on the United States for defense. I doubt the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951, and its subsequent renewals over the decades since then, can really guarantee Japan’s peace. Gradually, however, due to Japan’s high levels of literacy, exposure to global communication, and the advancement of social media, the Japanese people are redefining social and political norms, especially through grassroots activities conducted primarily by women. While working on this project, I became convinced that Japan has now a stratum of independent-minded people who can speak out and act on what they

Preface xiii believe to be correct, contrary to the blind compliance demanded in wartime or the acquiescence that has been expected by postwar governments. They are the citizens of contemporary Japan. A recent example of people power was the election of Denny Tamaki as Governor of Okinawa on 30 September 2018. He defeated three other candidates, one of whom was supported by the powerful Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, and other smaller parties. Tamaki, who was elected for a second term in September 2022,3 opposes the relocation of a U.S. military base within Okinawa Prefecture, which the former national government of the late Abe Shinzō had approved. The Okinawan public have voted to uphold their rights. Knowing the intransigence of the successive conservative governments in refusing to admit and atone for wartime misdeeds, Japanese citizens are taking it upon themselves to restore better relationships with Chinese and Korean victims and their families through acknowledging and understanding what had occurred. They have been involved in reconciliation activities in groups, such as researching local wartime history in relation to POW camps, erecting memorial monuments for the forced laborers, and taking care of overseas visitors whose family members died in camps during the wartime. This spontaneous volunteerism is part of the legacy of the Asia Pacific War. Each individual act evolves from what those citizens believe should be done. This free and generous spirit is to be treasured for maintaining peace. Notes 1 Yasuko Claremont, The Asia Pacific War: Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation (Abington; New York: Routledge, 2024); Yasuko Claremont, ed., Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing (Abington; New York: Routledge, 2018); Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation [bi-lingual edition in English and Japanese] (Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, printing and distribution by the Sydney University Press 2017); Michael Lewis, ed., ‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea, the Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and, Hiroshima Television Corporation, Ishibumi: A Memorial to the Atomic Annihilation of 321 Students of Hiroshima Second Middle School, translated by Yasuko Claremont and Roman Rosenbaum (Tokyo: Poplar Publishing Co., 2016). 2 Keene’s paper ‘From enemy to friend’ was published in Yasuko Claremont, ed., Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing, 1–8. 3 ‘Anti-U.S. base incumbent Gov. Denny Tamaki wins Okinawa Vote’, The Japan Times, 11 September 2022. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/09/11/national/politicsdiplomacy/denny-tamaki-okinawa-victory/, accessed 19 October 2022.

Bibliography Books Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation [bi-lingual edition in English and Japanese], Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Claremont, Yasuko, ed., Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing, Abington; New York: Routledge, 2018.

xiv Preface Hiroshima Television Corporation, Ishibumi: A Memorial to the Atomic Annihilation of 321 Students of Hiroshima Second Middle School, translated by Yasuko Claremont and Roman Rosenbaum, Tokyo: Poplar Publishing Co., 2016. Lewis, Michael, ed., ‘History Wars’ and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea, the Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Rosenbaum, Roman and Claremont, Yasuko, Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War: The Yakeato Generation, Abington; New York: Routledge, 2011. Articles ‘Anti-U.S. base incumbent Gov. Denny Tamaki wins Okinawa vote’, The Japan Times, 11 September 2022. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/09/11/national/ politics-diplomacy/denny-tamaki-okinawa-victory/.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, this book owes its existence to Stephanie Rogers, publisher of books relating to East Asian Studies at Routledge, who encouraged me to persevere despite onerous delays caused by my work and life circumstances. The trust that she placed in me means a great deal. The advice and assistance of Andrew Leach, who has helped me steer to the project to completion, has been much appreciated. Also, the final proof was created efficiently by Dueata Menon. I must acknowledge my two anonymous reviewers, for their endorsement to write and publish this rather personal book. As a person without formal training in history, it was daunting for me to examine and crystalize elements from such a large canvas of history. Very fortunately, my journey brought me into contact with Lynn Smailes. Without her editorial guidance and expertise in writing, my hopes of transforming my manuscript into a meaningful book worthy of publication may have sunk into oblivion. I am also indebted to quite a few supportive editors and friends – Sue Wiles, Elizabeth Rechniewski, Yoshida Takashi, the late Lucy Davis, David Kelly, Roman Rosenbaum, and Ikuko Sorensen – whose friendly assistance was invaluable in keeping me going over this period. I am particularly grateful to Ikuko for agreeing to read the final version of the manuscript – her comprehensive knowledge of English and Japanese, and her intelligent and insightful comments, have been very valuable. Finally, I would like to express my warmest gratitude to my husband Barry for his initial enthusiasm for the idea of this publication to be written in English and in Japanese. I do hope one day I can publish the Japanese version. Yasuko Claremont November 2022

General Introduction Japan’s Peace Paradox

After Japan’s surrender at the end of the Asia Pacific War in 1945, the Dai-Tōa Sensō Chōsakai1 (Committee Investigating the Great East Asia War) was set up by Shidehara Kijūrō,2 Prime Minister of Japan from 9 October 1945 to 22 May 1946. The aims of the committee were noble: Today, we advance alone, hoisting a large banner declaring the renunciation of war, into an immense arena of international politics. Sooner or later, the world will wake up to the disaster of the war, and the time will come when they follow us from far behind, hoisting the same banner. We will investigate the causes of the war and actual events, and then the results will be recorded for future use. The report will force the people to review the war, and we will make it as convincing as possible for the people to understand it.3 Although Shidehara was successful in having the principle of peace enshrined in the new Japanese Constitution, the committee’s vision was never fulfilled. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate how significant it is to clearly understand the cause and effects of Japan’s Asia Pacific War of 1931–1945,4 particularly its impact and legacy for the generations of Japanese people who have grown up in postwar Japan. Despite the efforts of people like Shidehara Kijūrō, a lack of accurate wartime knowledge – resulting from the inadequate teaching of history in schools and political manipulation of the curriculum – has by and large had a detrimental effect on the ability of people in Japan to understand their recent history. Generally speaking, there is no acceptance of Japan’s role as a wartime aggressor and much of the population simply regard themselves as victims of war. This critical overview of the impact and legacy of the Asia Pacific War is written from the perspective of an individual from one of the postwar generations5 of Japan. Having been born near the end of the war, the author feels obliged to add a voice to draw attention to what makes contemporary Japanese society significant – the emergence of citizen power to defend Japan’s civil society. While these generations have had no firsthand knowledge of the war, they have witnessed Japan’s troubled postwar attempts to settle socio-political issues resulting from their nation’s wartime aggression. In my view, the reactions of the members of these generations have been characterized by confusion, bewilderment, and uncertainty, not

General Introduction  xvii knowing what the truth about the war really was. This was due to contested views they had been taught about matters such as Japan’s invasion of China and Korea, as well as ongoing issues relating to the treatment of the comfort women and the Chinese and Korean wartime forced laborers. Initially I thought the cause of the uncertainty of facts and evidence was due to so many vital sources being destroyed before the Allied Forces landed in Japan in 1945, but not all of them disappeared. I soon concluded that the so-called facts of the war are subject to interpretation and manipulation. When this happens, facts are no longer on equal terms with the truth. The politics of postwar Japan has been nothing but ambiguous, and the facts have had no place in politics. In the recent years in particular, the new paradigm of ‘post-truth’ has emerged more visibly as a political strategy since Donald Trump’s presidency of the United States from 2016 to 2020, adding more confusion through the circulation of blatantly false information and the branding of unpalatable or inconvenient truths as ‘fake news’. That said, what makes contemporary Japanese society significant – the emergence of citizen power to defend Japan’s civil society. This book evaluates the reconciliatory efforts made by concerned individuals and groups of Japanese citizens, who have been active in researching and exposing what the Imperial Army did to prisoners of war and the people of Japan’s neighboring countries, as well as to those of their own people who perished in vain during the war. The activities of these citizens have succeeded in establishing the facts of what happened in detail and in doing so, they have provided more rounded perspectives of Japan’s wartime history. No matter how limited their political power might be, their activism counterbalances so-called mainstream conservative politics. Their commitment and courage in undertaking their reconciliatory activities deserves more attention. A good example is the Japanese counterpart of the South Korean Wednesday demonstration6 in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul; a group of Japanese citizens belonging to Nihongun ‘ianfu’ mondai kaiketsu Hiroshima nettowāku (the Hiroshima Network for resolving the issues of the ‘comfort women’ instituted by the Imperial Japanese Army)7 celebrated their 100th ‘Wednesday street campaign’ via YouTube on 6 May 2020 – as the meetings weren’t allowed to take place in person due to COVID-19. Similarly, Shūkan Kinyōbi8 (Friday Weekly) was launched in 1993 as a magazine fully dependent on subscriptions, eschewing sponsorships. The magazine has been pursuing justice by voicing progressive (politically left) opinions. The circulation was around 13,000 as of 2018. These voluntary initiatives reflect postwar democratic Japan, where civilians form civil organizations to express their concerns and views. Some individuals have been recognized for their work, Utsumi Aiko,9 for example, was awarded the 2022 Kim Dae-jung Prize from Chonnam National University, South Korea, for her long-standing research and activism in supporting the Korean and Taiwanese former soldiers who were unfairly treated by the Japanese governments, who offered them no compensation even though they had been used as ‘Japanese soldiers’ in the wartime. The concept of ‘civil society’ has its origin in Aristotle’s work10 and, given its evolution since the philosopher coined the term, no single definition could

xviii  General Introduction suffice. Yamada Toshio11 sums up Japan’s postwar experience of the concept in his book entitled Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society: The Japanese Experience (2018): The term ‘civil society’ (shimin shakai in Japanese) followed a fixed path; beginning with a Marxist or Hegelian definition, the connotation of ‘commercial society’ as described by Adam Smith was added, and a wholly original and unique normative concept was developed around this definition. The resulting civil society theory then went on to play an important role in postwar Japanese democratic thought.12 Yamada, being an economic theorist, went on to analyze the relationships between postwar Japan’s capitalism or market economy and the simultaneous emergence of civil society that developed when Japan faced socioeconomic crises, such as inequality and insecurity. Japanese people will join a particular society by choice, because it aligns with their interests, supports common values, and enables them to share their abilities. They act as free, independent, and self-aware individuals. Among the postwar democratic movements, one of the best features is the emergence of civil societies. Japan is a democratic nation and freedom of speech is protected as a democratic right, yet it can become subject to abuse, as demonstrated by those who speak out with hate speech being targeted. In particular, self-censorship (jishuku13 in Japanese), the not-to-rock-the-boat mentality, is prevalent and quietly yet coercively expected of those employed by government agencies and industries in Japan. On the other hand, civil societies can organize to make their voices heard in public and they can make other people aware of potentially contentious issues that they are concerned about. Let me give you one example, where a group of citizens banded together to uphold freedom of speech. In December 2018, the creator of a haiku poem, Tsuyuzora ni ‘kyūjō mamore’ no jozei demo「梅雨空に 『9条まもれ』 の女性デモ」(‘Women’s demonstration shouting “protect Article 9” under the sky of the rainy season’), won a court case.14 The accused, the city of Saitama Council, apologized to the plaintiff, the poet of this haiku, and promised her that they would publish the haiku in their council newsletter.15 The plaintiff was supported by about 14,000 signatures and by over 200 local citizens who, in 2015, had formed a group entitled ‘“kyūjō haiku” shimin ōendan’ (Citizens’ Support Group for the Article 9 Haiku). In 2014, this so-called kyūjō haiku (the Article 9 haiku) had been rejected for publication in a public hall newsletter, without consultation, by the city council’s publishing committee. The decision was made on the grounds of ‘its politically sensitive and divisive nature’. While Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution renounces ‘war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes’,16 successive Japanese governments have been trying to alter Article 9 so that Japan can rearm in preparation for military conflict. The Council chose to comply with the attitude that the government of the time had toward Article 9, whereas the haiku asserts the need to ‘protect Article 9’.

General Introduction xix As the Tokyo High Court’s decision indicated, the Council’s one-sided decision infringed on freedom of speech. Although democracy is under threat in today’s world, the solidarity shown by the citizens in this case suggests that democracy has become embedded in Japanese society. When Article 9 was enshrined in the Constitution in 1947, it reflected the determination of the Japanese people, who aspired for peace by renouncing war. Subsequent generations, however, have been left largely ignorant about the war and the context in which Article 9 was introduced, because school history textbooks have been screened by committees appointed by the ruling conservative political powers. Nonetheless information about the war is now globally available on internet and social media, although the latter can also be the source of falsifications. More than ever, we need critical insights to distinguish historical fact from fiction. The role of language, too, is crucial in revealing or obscuring the truth: in recent years, the term ‘comfort women’ has been changed to ‘women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers’ and even the term ‘forced labor’ has been changed to ‘wartime laborers’.17 Bureaucratic authorities must have suggested, even forced, modifications of language in order to push their own version of political correctness. It goes without saying that the war was deeply impregnated with moral complexity and ambiguity. However challenging, reviewing the history of the Asia Pacific War in its entirety is, I believe, still crucial today. Otherwise, we risk adopting a very narrow perspective on the range of problems, such as the ultranationalism, racism, conformism, and authoritarianism that were inherent in the pursuit of the war. These problems continue to haunt the world – and not just in Japan. Particularly for the Japanese, it is necessary and important to grasp what the war really meant to them in relation to maintaining a peaceful society after it had ended. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine resembles Japan’s invasion of China in 1931, particularly in the parallels between the war crimes that have been committed by Russian soldiers and horrific deeds perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army, such as the 1937 Nanjing massacre. Many publications assessing the impact of the Asia Pacific War are still being published to this day in Japan, showing the persistent interest in this topic among the population. Japanese historians do not shy away from incorporating a range of perspectives and methods in going about their work. Consider the work of Katō Yōko. Katō Yōko’s Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ wo eranda18 (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’) analyzes Japan’s decision to go to war against the background of the international political situation. Katō adopts a seminar-style approach, drawing on the questions and answers raised in discussions with high school students. In 2010, Katō’s educational approach toward war history was awarded the Ninth Kobayashi Hideo Prize.19 Another example is Murai Shōsuke’s editorial curation of lived experiences that were published in Sekaishi to tsunagaru nihonshi Kii hantō kara no shiza20 (Japanese history in relation to world history viewed from the Kii peninsula), 2018. The history, local to the Kii peninsula, was compiled by headmasters and teachers from

xx  General Introduction local schools. The book includes histories of overseas emigrants and pearl divers working in Australia, as well as wartime forced laborers21 at the Iruka mines, where 17 British prisoners of war and numerous Korean laborers perished as the result of illness and maltreatment. The case of the ‘Iruka boys’, named by the British prisoners themselves, will appear at last in a high school textbook to be published in 2022, when a new ‘total history’ curriculum is introduced in high schools. Further, the Japan-China-Korean common history textbook, Mirai wo hiraku rekishi (History that opens future, 2005),22 was jointly written and edited by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean scholars headed by Obinata Sumio, Emeritus Professor of Waseda University. I wish I could envision Japan taking a leading role in maintaining international peace and trust through the example it has set, in upholding Article 9 in the Peace Constitution over the last 77 years. The Japanese people have had the opportunity to learn from some of the mistakes of their wartime leaders, although I admit that this point remains precarious as Japan appears to be rearming itself in the name of ‘The total principle for defense, 2019–2024’.23 This was a decision made by the Japanese Cabinet on 18 December 2018. Nonetheless, Japan’s postwar vision for peace has been achieved through five pillars as articulated by Ōnishi Hitoshi.24 These are the Peace Constitution, the Self Defense Force, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, Japan’s monetary contribution to areas such as Official Development Assistance (ODA), and the efforts to improve relationships of mutual trust with neighboring East Asian countries. Ōnishi has pointed out, however, that, despite its efforts, Japan has failed to establish better relationships with its neighbors, to say the least. This has been clearly shown in the two rulings of the Supreme Court of South Korea in October/November 2018, ordering the Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay compensation to wartime Korean forced laborers.25 These decisions have not been accepted by the Japanese government, which responded with its usual rationalization – that it had settled individual claim issues through the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, and the Agreement between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation, both signed in 1965. In December 2018, the South Korean government disbanded a Japanese-funded foundation for ‘comfort women’,26 without discussing the closure with the Japanese government. The foundation had been controversial since its inception in 2015, due to a lack of consultation with former Korean ‘comfort women’. This decision demonstrates that the willingness of the current South Korean administration to respond decisively to Korean civil societies’ demands, in this case for the foundation’s abolition. Generally speaking, Korean civil protest movements are more successful than their Japanese counterparts, for example, the successful challenges to government control by the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, 18–27 May 198027 and the Candle Revolution, November 2016 to March 2017.28 In a democracy, the people are sovereign over the state, as indeed the Japanese Constitution declares. Yet, we know how difficult it is to achieve in practice, unless

General Introduction xxi we realize what the parameters of the situations we are dealing with really are. A failure to acknowledge factual details and a lack of transparency at government level is the obstacle here. Particularly, the way in which the attitudes of the Japanese people have been largely controlled by one-sided claims made by successive governments, such as those denying war crimes committed in China and the insistence that no comfort women were instituted in the Imperial military system. There is a danger for us in having been made so easily compliant. The recovery from the economic, socio-political, and moral turmoil in the immediate postwar period required perseverance from the Japanese people. Especially, Japan faced severe unemployment due to the surge in working population resulting from repatriation and the decimation of industries. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare White Paper, the estimated unemployment number in November 1945 was 13,420,000 – 30–40% of total labor force. The working generations of the time suffered greatly. Yet, having been liberated from the fear, secrecy, and hardship that the war had imposed on them, Japanese people in general became hopeful of rebuilding Japan into a new democratic nation. They found freedom to speak out under the new Constitution. Furthermore, in 1998, the NPO (Non-Profit Organization) Law was established allowing civil organizations to easily acquire nonprofit status. Thus, civil groups now flourish in Japan. Women in particular have played a significant role in fostering peace movements. As mentioned earlier, by making war history accessible to them in her book, And yet, Japanese chose ‘war’, Katō Yōko encourages Japanese young people to question why the war began. Some devoted individuals have worked in other fields of research, such as on the experiences of POWs (Prisoners of War), and used other cultural forms: performing anti-nuclear plays and dramas; publishing books for children concerning war and peace; or establishing peace museums. The range of activities is impressive, even though they are not widely reported in the media. While working on this book, history has come alive for me, linking past and present together in a continuum. Furthermore, individuals, who previously had been merely names to me, have taken on a new significance in Japanese history. At the beginning of this Introduction, I referred to a quote from a government committee called Dai-Tōa Sensō Chōsakai (Committee Investigating the Great East Asia War). Shidehara Kijūrō who was Prime Minister of Japan acted independently by setting up the committee to review the disastrous impacts of the war that Japan had initiated. Since this was initiated during the occupation of Japan led by the Americans, his efforts faced massive difficulties and were short lived, but, for me, he was no longer just a name in a textbook, but an agent of change. The fact that a person of such stature felt it necessary and urgent to investigate the way the war was conducted reveals the general state of ignorance that existed among the population. Shidehara hoped that Japan’s own investigation into the failure of the war would deter the nation from engaging in another war 20 or 30 years later. Regrettably, this national project ended without a single report being issued; the committee was disbanded in September 1946, because members of the Allied Council for Japan, including Australia, Soviet Union and the U.K., objected to its existence. They pointed out that, because some consulting members had occupied senior positions

xxii  General Introduction in the Japanese Imperial Army, the outcomes could be questionable.29 I am skeptical about their objections; it is more likely that those countries did not want to reveal their own wrong-doings during the war. On the other hand, the Japanese Peace Constitution – a joint effort by the General Head Quarters or GHQ (the name given to the Allied leadership by the Japanese) and the Japanese consulting committee – was welcomed by the general public. Indeed, the decision to include the ideal of pacifism in the Constitution came from the Diet and not from the GHQ.30 Yet Japan’s postwar history is replete with socio-political ambiguities, especially on interpretations of Article 9. As previously noted, successive conservative governments have announced their intention to change Article 9, so that Japan can prepare for and engage in warfare. In 2015, former Prime Minister the late Abe Shinzō passed collective self-­ defense rights legislation via his cabinet, without debate in the Diet. Jeff Kingston’s article ‘Japan’s constitutional rebirth or reincarnation?’ says ‘[he] sealed the deal with Washington first in a manner that subordinated the Diet’s role’.31 Abe’s military allegiance to America was clear. This is unprecedented and undemocratic, nonetheless, this pro-U.S. political stand is unchanged and has been supported by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the majority of the voters. The 2021 general election results showed the LDP winning 259 seats of the 465 seats in the Lower House, resulting in the resignation of Edano Yukio, the leader of the opposition, from his representative position in the Rikken Minshu-tô (the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan). He took responsibility for the defeat. Similarly, the results of the 2022 House of Councilors’ election to elect 125 of the 248 members of the Upper House of the National Diet were 76 (LDP) and 49 (opposition). These reflections have led me to conclude that Japan’s politically embedded conformism is unchanged. It is manifested in top-down obedience, self-censorship, and an unwillingness to rock the boat. Despite this, a wide range of Japanese citizens, writers, and teachers have sought to remind us that we do not have to comply blindly with the decisions of our political leaders. The degree of critical inquiry among its people is a barometer for the health of the nation. This can be seen in the actions taken by individual citizens as well as by the communities and societies they belong to. Their actions, which may not be mainstream, should take center stage, as they strive to change the course of contemporary history. I have already referred to the vacuum of knowledge that I had experienced at school, stemming from the classroom textbooks that were edited to conform to the government’s screening process. The textbooks contained no detailed description or discussion of Communist China, or Japan’s many invasions of other countries, including its colonization of Korea. The distinguished historian, Ienaga Saburō, took this issue to the courts in 1962 in an attempt to have the ‘doctoring’ removed from his Shin-nihonshi (New Japanese History). Although he lost his case in 1986, his ongoing challenges in court made an impact on the general public, historians, and teachers, both nationally and internationally. In order for his history textbook to be released in schools, the historian had to comply with government policy.32 But he didn’t comply, so his textbook didn’t pass the government’s authorization

General Introduction xxiii process and it didn’t make to schools. As a consequence of not teaching about the war at secondary school, the majority of universities in Japan have not offered peace and conflict studies, nor have they encouraged students to research Japan’s wartime history. At an international conference in 2012, I was asked ‘What are Japanese scholars’ opinions about peace and reconciliation?’ Regrettably, I couldn’t answer at that time. But I can say now that there are strong grassroots movements fostering Japanese civil participation in reconciliation. These individual commitments are of real benefit in contributing to the making of a healthy society. In his famous 1985 speech, Richard von Weizsäcker declared that everyone in the present generation is responsible for what has happened before them, even though they were not perpetrators.33 I believe that once we have recognized the wrongdoings committed by the Imperial Army, we become responsible for ensuring that the war crimes of the past are not repeated. Without acknowledging the historical facts and the truth of violence in the past, reconciliation will remain impossible. At the end of the Pacific War in 1945, most of the Japanese people living at that time felt that they were the victims of the war, as it had broken out before they knew what had been decided by their rulers. They suffered from wartime trauma and the loss of family members and friends. The Japanese people were forced to comply with what the military and the government expected of them and to participate in total warfare as a national duty under their responsibilities to the divine Emperor, as required by the Meiji Constitution. The National Mobilization Law (1938) set out a state of totalitarianism. Under military rule, the Japanese people had little choice. Participation in public duty, especially in national emergency, was regarded as an uncompromising virtue. The Asia Pacific War was an unjust war driven by the sentiment of ‘honor, fear, self-interest’ of Imperial Japan, who sought expansionistic solutions for its problems of growing population and lack of natural resources via colonization. Japan followed the pattern set by Western colonialism. This book reflects my own understanding of where Japan stands today and who I am as a Japanese national. The defeat of Japan in 1945 brought into being a new democratic Japan, yet age-old bureaucracy and culture have been kept intact along with paternalistic social norms. Nonetheless, what is breaking through is the exercise of the people’s individual power to work toward a better society and world. Instead of the past being shuffled away into oblivion, from the war, we can learn the necessity of having an informed population. I hope I can impart a clear, balanced, and objective study of the war and its legacies to the readers and help to redress the lack of knowledge that has characterized the postwar era. Notes 1 The committee was short-lived and disbanded on the recommendation of the U.K. and the Soviet Union. The term, the Great East Asia War (Dai-tōa sensō), was an older expression of the Asia Pacific War. It was related to the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere conceptualized by imperial Japan.

xxiv  General Introduction 2 Born in Osaka, Shidehara Kijūrō (1872–1951) was a prominent pre-World War II Japanese diplomat, Baron, and the 44th Prime Minister of Japan from 9 October 1945 to 22 May 1946. He was a leading proponent of pacifism in Japan. 3 Quoted in Katō Yōko, Sensō made: Rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure) (Tokyo: Asahi shuppansha, 2016) 450. 4 The timespan 1931–1945 is derived from the date of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria to the end of World War II. Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 was part of the Asia Pacific War. 5 By the term ‘postwar generations’, I broadly include people who were children during the war, the baby boomer generations (usually people born from 1946 to 1964) to the current time. The earlier generations grew up in a period of massive technological changes, whereas later generations may take technological advances for granted. 6 The Wednesday demonstrations by former comfort women and their supporters has been an ongoing weekly demonstration since 1992, demanding that Japan to redress the Comfort Women issues. The bronze statue of a Korean girl in the image of comfort woman was set in the spot where the demonstration has been taking place in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul since 2011. Replica statues have been installed in other parts of the world, including Sydney. 7 Nihongun ‘ianfu’ mondai kaiketsu Hiroshima nettowa-ku (The Hiroshima Network for the ‘comfort women’ instituted by the Imperial Japanese Army). http://9-hiroshima.org/ news.html, accessed 5 November 2022. 8 Shūkan Kinyōbi (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure), launched in 1993, is a political journal for citizens who are involved in human rights, disarmament, and environment. Uemura Takashi is the current President of the journal. 9 Utsumi Aiko (b. 1941) is Emeritus Professor of Keisen University and the joint representative of two grassroots organizations: Shin-jidai ajia piisu akademi (New Asia Peace Academy) and the POW kenkyū kai (POW Research Network Japan). She is a leading figure in the movement to address the issues relating to the compensation cases on behalf of Korean soldiers during the Asia Pacific War. 10 Aristotle (b. 384–d. 322 BCE) was well known for his political theory, in which, among others, he defines the citizen as a person who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial office (1275b18-21). In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Aristotle’s Political Theory, Section 3, General Theory of Constitutions and Citizenship’. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/, substantive revision Tues 7 November 2017, accessed 19 October 2022. 11 Yamada Toshio (b. 1942) is Emeritus Professor at Nagoya University, specializing in economic theories and Japanese civil society. 12 Yamada Toshio, Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society: The Japanese Experience (Singapore: Springer, 2018), vi. 13 Some Japanese words are difficult to translate into English. The word ‘jishuku’ is one of them. It can be translated into English as ‘practice of self-control’ or ‘self-imposed control’. Similar to this, the word ‘sontaku’ is currently in popular use in relation to political matters. The word, ‘sontaku’, can be translated into English as ‘reading what someone is implying’ or ‘reading between lines’ or ‘surmising’. ‘Jishuku’ is commonly used, whereas the meaning of ‘sontaku’ can be unclear when it is used within certain contexts. 14 In 2014, this haiku was selected to be published in a public hall newsletter by the members of a group learning to write haiku at the Mihashi Public Hall of Saitama city. The Saitama City Council maintained that they would not be able to publish the haiku, which could be mistaken for an opinion of the Council, particularly at the time when the government’s Collective Self-defense Rights bill was being debated. The Tokyo High Court upheld a district court ruling that called ‘unfair’ the city of Saitama’s refusal to publish a haiku, which referred to the Constitution and carried a pacifist message, in its

General Introduction  xxv

15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25 26

27

local newsletter. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/18/national/crime-legal/ tokyo-high-court-upholds-ruling-calling-city-saitamas-refusal-publish-pacifist-haikuunfair/#.XDCEw_xS-i4, accessed 19 October 2022. https://www.palsystem-saitama.coop/theme-2/heiwa/kenpou/52971.html, accessed 5 November 2022. Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, The Constitution of Japan, http://japan.kantei. go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html, accessed 19 October 2022. Justin McCurry, ‘Comfort women’: anger as Japan paper alters description of WWII terms’, The Guardian, in Tokyo, 30 November 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/nov/30/japanese-paper-sparks-anger-as-it-ditches-ww2-forced-labourterm, accessed 19 October 2022. Katō Yōko, Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ wo eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’) (Tokyo: Shinchō bunko, 2009). Kobayashi Hideo Prize is awarded annually to a work of nonfiction published in Japanese that presents a new world image based on a free spirit and flexible intellect. Murai Shōsuke [editorial supervision], Sekaishi to tsunagaru nihonshi Kii hantō kara no shiza (Japanese history in relation to world history viewed from the Kii peninsular) (Tokyo: Minerva, 2018). See Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017), 60. Also POW Research Network Japan. http://www.powresearch.jp/jp/archive/research/index.html, accessed 19 October 2022. Obinata Sumio is the editor of the Japanese edition of Mirai wo hiraku rekishi (History that opens future) (Tokyo: Kōbunken, 2005). Reuters Editing, ‘FY19 defense spending demands a record high of 5.3 million yen, a significant increase of over 2%’ [Japanese text] Reuters, 31 August 2018. https:// jp.reuters.com/article/japan-defense-ministry-budget-idJPKCN1LG0K1, accessed 19 October 2022; Ra Mason, ‘Japan’s doubling of its defence [sic.] budget will make the world a more dangerous place – here’s why, The Conversation, 11 May 2022. https:// theconversation.com/japans-doubling-of-its-defence-budget-will-make-the-world-amore-dangerous-place-heres-why-182625, accessed 19 October 2022. Ōnishi Hitoshi (b. 1949) is Research Professor at Tōhoku University specializing in international politics. His article in the Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Japanese Economic Newspaper), 28 July 2017, entitled ‘Let us keep upholding “Security and the Constitution”’ contains a graph, ‘Five pillars of Pacifism’ in which he defines what constitutes Japan’s pacifism. An Upper House member, Miyazawa Yōichi, collaborated in analyzing Japan’s Pacifism in a five-pillar model. This article reflects ongoing political climate under the Abe administration, which promoted changes of Article 9. Ōnishi offered recommendations, that is, the upholding of current security model and the Constitution by improving the relationships with Japan’s neighboring countries, particularly with South Korea. Choe Sang-Hun, ‘South Korean court orders Mitsubishi of Japan to pay for forced wartime labor’, New York Times, 29 November 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/ world/asia/south-korea-wartime-compensation-japan.html, accessed 19 October 2022. In December 2015, the year of the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and Korea, with funding of 1 billion yen from the Japanese government, the South Korean government set up a foundation called a Reconciliation and Healing Foundation. The Japanese government expected that ‘the comfort women issue would be resolved finally and irreversibly’. The Foundation was dismantled by the Moon Jae-in administration in 2018. The Gwangju Uprising, also known as May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement, was a student and citizen uprising against South Korean Army Major General Chun Doo-hwan in the city of Gwangju, South Korea, from May 18 to 27, 1980. President Choi Kyu-hah had no control over the government.

xxvi  General Introduction 28 The Candlelight Revolution was the name given to South Korean citizens’ protests against President Park Geun-hye from November 2016 to March 2017. It brought down her government. 29 Inoue Toshikazu, Sensō Chōsa-kai: Maboroshi no seifu bunsho wo yomitoku (The war investigation commission: understanding the archival government record of disuse) (Tokyo: Kōdansha gendai shinsho, 2017). 30 Katō Yōko, Sensō made: Rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure) (Tokyo: Asahi shuppan-sha, 2016), 451–453. 31 Jeff Kingston, Commentary/Counterpoint: ‘Japan’s constitutional rebirth or reincarnation?’, The Japan Times, 13 May 2017. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/ 2017/05/13/commentary/japans-constitutional-rebirth-reincarnation/, accessed 19 October 2022. 32 Ienaga Saburō (1913–2002) was a prominent Japanese historian. In legal battles spanning three decades, he filed three law suits to test decisions that had been made about the content of school history textbooks in 1962, 1966, and 1982. He won the 1982 case. His commitment to and tenacity in pursuing truth in history were known to overseas scholars. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2001. 33 ‘All of us, whether guilty or not, whether old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it’. Richard von Weizsäcker, ‘Speech made by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker during the ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of war in Europe and of National-Socialist Tyranny’, Bundespräsidialamt: The Speech Online. https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2015/02/150202-RvW-Rede-8-Mai-1985-englisch.pdf?__ blob=publicationFile [pdf], accessed 19 October 2022.

Bibliography Books Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Inoue, Toshikazu, Sensō Chōsa-kai: Maboroshi no seifu bunsho wo yomitoku (The war investigation commission: understanding the archival government record of disuse), Tokyo: Kōdansha gendai shinsho, 2017. Katō, Yōko, Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ wo eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’), Tokyo: Shinchō bunko, 2009. Katō, Yōko, Sensō made: Rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure), Tokyo: Asahi shuppan-sha, 2016. Murai, Shōsuke [editorial supervision], Sekaishi to tsunagaru nihonshi Kii hantō kara no shiza (Japanese history in relation to world history viewed from the Kii peninsular), Tokyo: Minerva, 2018. Obinata, Sumio, ed, Mirai wo hiraku rekishi (History that opens future), Tokyo: Kōbunken, 2005. Yamada, Toshio, Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society: The Japanese Experience, Singapore: Springer, 2018. Articles Aristotle (b. 384–d. 322 BCE), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ‘Aristotle’s Political Theory, Section 3, General Theory of Constitutions and Citizenship’. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/, substantive revision Tues 7 November 2017.

General Introduction  xxvii Kingston, Jeff, Commentary/Counterpoint: ‘Japan’s constitutional rebirth or reincarnation?’, The Japan Times, 13 May 2017. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/05/13/ commentary/japans-constitutional-rebirth-reincarnation/, accessed 19 October 2022. Mason, Ra, ‘Japan’s doubling of its defence [sic.] budget will make the world a more dangerous place – here’s why’, The Conversation, 11 May 2022. https://theconversation.com/ japans-doubling-of-its-defence-budget-will-make-the-world-a-more-dangerous-placeheres-why-182625. McCurry, Justin, ‘‘Comfort women’: anger as Japan paper alters description of WWII Terms’, The Guardian, in Tokyo, 30 November 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2018/nov/30/japanese-paper-sparks-anger-as-it-ditches-ww2-forced-labour-term. Reuters Editing, ‘FY19 defense spending demands a record high of 5.3 million yen, a significant increase of over 2%’ [Japanese text] Reuters, 31 August 2018. https://jp.reuters. com/article/japan-defense-ministry-budget-idJPKCN1LG0K1. Sakura, Murakami, ‘Tokyo High Court upholds ruling calling City of Saitama’s refusal to publish pacifist haiku “unfair”’. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/18/national/ crime-legal/tokyo-high-court-upholds-ruling-calling-city-saitamas-refusal-publishpacifist-haiku-unfair/#.XDCEw_xS-i4. Sang-Hun, Choe, ‘South Korean court orders Mitsubishi of Japan to pay for forced wartime labor’, New York Times, 29 November 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/29/ world/asia/south-korea-wartime-compensation-japan.html. Websites Kyūjō Haiku Lawsuit, https://www.palsystem-saitama.coop/theme-2/heiwa/kenpou/52971. html. Nihongun ‘ianfu’ mondai kaiketsu Hiroshima nettowāku (The Hiroshima Network for resolving the issues of the ‘comfort women’ instituted by the Imperial Japanese Army), http://9-hiroshima.org/news.html, accessed 5 November 2022. POW Research Network Japan, http://www.powresearch.jp/jp/archive/research/index.html. Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, The Constitution of Japan. http://japan.kantei. go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html. Richard von Weizsäcker, ‘Speech made by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker during the ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of war in Europe and of National-Socialist Tyranny’, Bundespräsidialamt: The Speech Online. https://www. bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2015/02/150202-RvW-Rede-8Mai-1985-englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile [pdf].

Part I

The Asia Pacific War

Introduction Is There, or Was There, a So-Called Just War?

The discussion about the legitimacy of war has gained momentum in the twentyfirst century as a result of a series of inconclusive wars – including the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, and Iran and Iraq Wars – all of which have left lingering socio-­ political consequences to this day. ‘Just war’ theory philosophically explores multiple aspects of the conditions that justify war, a jus ad bellum (Latin for ‘right to war’) and jus in bello (whether war is conducted justly). Considering the genocide of Jewish people in World War II, the war in Europe was necessary to stop Nazism and so it was just. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor before declaring war on the United States, and Japan’s invasions to China and Malaya needed to be stopped, so going to war in these circumstances was just. However, reasoning and the moral imperative aside, it is my view that it was techno-scientific advances in weapons, aviation, and medicine, together with military power, that led to the victory of the Allied Forces. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of the Asia Pacific War was an experiment involving newly developed atomic weapons, conducted in the form of indiscriminate air raids. The survivors have been suffering from radiation illness and trauma ever since. These inhumane events have, in effect, stopped nuclear war so far, and we live now in the nuclear age; yet nuclear-armed countries still hang on to their military superiority, despite the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons coming into force on 22 January 2021. In this context, affirming the peace mission of five nuclear-armed nations in the excerpt below sounds like autocratic and self-righteous paternalism: We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons – for as long as they continue to exist – should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented. Joint Statement of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States on Preventing Nuclear War and Avoiding Arms Races, January 3, 2022. United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China.

DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-2

4  The Asia Pacific War This tricky balance of power reminds us of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) that was struck after World War I, in which 68 nations, including Japan, subscribed to the notion of war being ‘outlawed’. Yet the pact accepted war in self-defense – the fine line between self-defense and aggression in war is difficult to distinguish. The same question remains in Japan’s Peace Constitution, where Article 9 clearly declares the renunciation of war and that ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained’, yet Japan has had its Self-defense Force since 1950, as a result of pressure to dilute the interpretation of the article. From our vantage point of life in 2023, it is crucial to revisit why the Asia Pacific War happened and what its impact and legacies have been, so that we can critically review our present by examining the consequences of the history of war and whether we have been benefitted from our forefathers’ experiences.

1

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War ‘Honour, Fear, Self-Interest’

1.1 Introduction On 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked and destroyed the U.S. fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Simultaneously, the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Malaya, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Burma. As a consequence, in the court of international diplomatic and public opinion, Japan has been held responsible for the war in the Pacific that followed. While these simultaneous attacks were the flashpoint – and the immediate trigger for the United States to be drawn into the war in Europe that had now spread to the Pacific – they cannot be held to have been the sole cause. Rather, the attacks represent the culmination of a chain of contributory events extending back to the 1800s, when Western powers began annexing all the major populations and islands of South East Asia into their empires. Having achieved dominance, the Western powers were prepared to fight to retain their conquests as Japanese expansion threatened to redraw the perimeters within the region. It is through this lens that this chapter considers not only the deeply rooted origins, but also the more immediate events and causes that came together to precipitate the war. Underlying my argument are the observations of Thucydides,1 that conflict between sovereign powers is motivated by honor, fear, and self-interest. Although his history of the Peloponnesian War relates to events that took place in the fifth century BCE, his account of Athens defending its actions has more than an echo of the position taken by nations in relation to their conquests in the modern era: … do we deserve to be so bitterly hated by the other Hellenes merely because we have an empire? That empire was not acquired by force: but you would not stay and make an end to the Barbarian, and the allies came to us of their own accord and asked us to be their leaders. The subsequent development of our power was originally forced on us by circumstances; fear was our first motive; afterwards honour, and then interest stepped in.2 Japan initiated the war against the United States as part of its drive to create ‘a New Order for Asia’ by creating a ‘co-prosperity sphere’. The United States, on the DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-3

6  The Asia Pacific War other hand, responded to Japan’s sudden attack on Pearl Harbor not only to defend its dignity, but also to protect its freedom to trade in Asia. Both nations feared loss of face and pursued self-interest. The review of the origins of Asia Pacific War will provide insights and background to current events that still reverberate in our own time, especially the Ukrainian war, in a world that continues to be riddled with political and economic tensions involving powerful nations, notably between China and the United States, and the United States and Russia. In the case of Japan, apart from the high officials in the government and army, the general public were uninformed and at times deliberately misinformed by their leaders during the nation’s aggressive pre-war expansion into neighboring countries. This aspect of ongoing negligence by the authorities echoes the situation during wartime – while the people were misguided by the authorities to a lesser degree after war was formally declared, they were taught to believe that Western soldiers were evil.3 Even though the war ended more than 77 years ago, there are unresolved issues arising directly from it that persist to this day; one example is the perpetual struggle between South Korea and Japan to come to a settlement on the treatment of the so-called comfort women, especially since Japan has resisted acknowledging what took place. It is often only when young Japanese people visit South East Asian countries and Oceania that they become aware of the history of Japan’s failed military invasions and feel ashamed about their ignorance. As time goes on, memories of the war continue to resurface in so many ways, including the revisionists’ interpretations of the war that are expressed in history books, school textbooks, and manga.4 Thus, I would like to examine the origins of the war as closely as I can. I have learned much about the general historical background, mainly from Robert J. C. Butow’s Tojo and the Coming of the War5 published in 1961, Ienaga Saburō’s The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese, 1931–19456 (English translation in 1978; the original Japanese in 1968), Ienaga’s Japan’s Last War,7 first published in 1961, and Katō Yōko’s Sensō made: rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to Nihon no shippai8 (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan's failure), 2016. Butow and Ienaga were both leading authorities on the Asia Pacific War. Katō’s approach – to educate young Japanese students about the complexity of negotiations that took place before the war had even started – was revolutionary and effective, because it involved the students in discussion at a series of seminars. Katō’s efforts were focused on leading the students to think about why Japan failed. 1.2  The fundamental cause of the war As with many wars, the fundamental cause of the Asia Pacific War was the clash between conflicting empires, each fighting for control and annexation of subjugated territories and their people. For Japan, the purpose of the war was twofold: (1) to drive the West out and to establish in turn a New Order, a Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with Japan at its head; and (2) to ensure that Japan in particular had continuous access to oil supplies to continue its war with China, which had

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  7 formally commenced in 1937.9 War was seen as being inevitable for the survival of Japan. Commencing with the attack on Pearl Harbor, the war between the United States, its allies, and Japan became popularly known as the Taiheiyō Sensō (the Pacific War), 1941–1945. This term was problematic because of its narrow focus on the United States and Japan in the Pacific, as if none of the preceding warfare in China and Korea had existed. There is an abundance of information regarding the battles in the Pacific, but so little about Japan’s presence in China and Korea in the 40 years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The failure of Japanese authorities to tell the general public of Japan the truth about Japan’s invasion of China is nothing short of willful neglect, especially since the outbreak of war in 1941 is intimately linked with Japan’s ongoing, but ultimately unsuccessful, foray into China. In this context, it is more accurate to describe the Pacific War of 1941–1945 as part of a much larger war, which extended from Indonesia to the Manchurian border with China in the 1930s. For this reason, from around the 1980s, the term Ajia Taiheiyō Sensō (the Asia Pacific War) was more commonly used and the date span amended to 1931–1945. The rationale for this redefinition is as follows. In contrast to its sporadic military activity in China for many years before it, Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 led to its need to ensure that it had a stable and continuing supply of oil, which had to come either from Russia or Southeast Asia. The strike south was ultimately chosen and approved by the Emperor on 5 November 1941.10 Predating the 1937 invasion was the Mukden Incident of 1931, when a clash (which did not lead to the formal declaration of war) took place between Japan and China in Manchuria, but more of that later. As a result, the Asia Pacific War has also been regarded as part of a 15-year war that commenced in 1931. History has recorded many instances like this, where different dates and terms are used, depending on who is using them. 1.3  Brief history of Western annexation in Southeast Asia The progressive annexations of the islands of Southeast Asia by Western powers, as well as the principalities of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, were the other essential preconditions for the war that subsequently took place. Six conquering nations were involved: Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain, Australia, the United States, and France. Portugal was the first European nation to arrive in Southeast Asia, landing in Timor between 1509 and 1511. In 1702, Timor was proclaimed a Portuguese colony and placed under military rule with the help of local chiefs. Then in 1859, the country was divided, with West Timor becoming part of the Dutch East Indies, and East Timor remaining under Portuguese rule. Sandalwood and coffee were the country’s main exports. Commencing in 1595, with the arrival of the Dutch trading in search of spices, the Dutch gradually gained a tenuous control over the islands of the Indonesian archipelago, expanding by military force, putting down Indigenous resistance in the Java War (1825–1830), and quashing resistance, either by conquest or by formal agreements. By 1920, Dutch colonization of the territory was complete.

8  The Asia Pacific War Oil and rubber were Indonesia’s chief exports and on 5 November 1941, when Japan decided to strike south, Indonesia, together with Malaya, became a major target. British influence in the Malay States had begun in 1791. By 1826, Penang, Malacca, and Singapore were being administered by Britain and were known as the Straits Settlements. Separately, adjacent islands, including Christmas Island and the Cocos Islands, also fell under British control. Malaya became the world’s largest producer of tin and rubber. For the British, Singapore stood as an impregnable defensive outpost of their empire. The harbor, which was deep enough to allow cruisers and battleships to moor there, was fully protected by a battery of strategically placed guns. As well, a military force of 140,000 British, Australian, and Indian soldiers was based in Malaya. Inland from Singapore, the succession of steep mountains combined with jungle were considered so forbidding that they were regarded as a natural defense. It was through this difficult terrain that the Japanese 25th Army advanced, completing the conquest of the whole of Malaya and Singapore in 70 days. New Guinea also became a part of the British Empire. In 1888, Britain annexed the southern coast of New Guinea, placing it under Australian administration in 1906. After World War I had ended, Australia gained possession, under a mandate from the League of Nations, of the north-eastern part of New Guinea, which had previously been conquered and annexed by Germany. The history of New Guinea reflects the presence of the multiple European colonial powers who each claimed territory there – the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, French, and Germany. In 1942, as part of its New Guinea campaign during World War II, Japan invaded the Netherlands and Australian territories of New Guinea. Following the U.S. victory in its war against Spain in 1898, a Treaty of Peace between the two countries ceded control of the Philippine Islands from Spain to the United States. Almost immediately a vicious new war broke out between the United States and the Philippine revolutionaries who were seeking independence (1899–1902), with U.S. troops finally gaining the upper hand. However, unlike other Western countries, which maintained a firm grip on territories they had conquered in South East Asia, the United States began to follow a policy of the gradual transition of power back to the Filipinos, so that by 1935 a ten-year policy was in place to allow the people of the Philippines to resume full autonomy over their islands. This process was in its final stages when Japan declared war against the United States in December 1941. Japan occupied the Philippines in 1942 until its defeat. Finally, following its victory over China in the Sino-French War (1884–1885), France established a federation known as French Indochina, comprising principalities in Vietnam, as it is known today, and Cambodia. In 1893, Laos was added, as a result of the Franco-Siamese War in that year. The French administered this large area, using local rulers as figureheads. From Japan’s point of view, Cochin China (as it was then known) was an ideal launching ground for its invasion of the rest of Southeast Asia, providing an ideal base for military build-ups and ports for the transport of soldiers and arms. Thus, early in the twentieth century, these six Asian countries – Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, New Guinea, and Malaya – formed a loose consortium of

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  9 territories acquired by force, which their conquerors were prepared to defend. As it transpired, when the Asia Pacific War began, all the conquerors were in turn conquered by the superior force of the Japanese, driven by the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere ideology and the desperation of Japanese Imperial Army leaders. Though short-lived, Imperial Japan’s self-righteous slogan to release Asia from the Western colonialism was at first welcomed by those populations who had been under Western colonial rule. 1.4 The modernization of Japan and its military expansion (1868–1937) With the end of Tokugawa rule and the ascension of the Meiji government in 1868, Japan set itself on a course that, if successful, would place it on an equal footing with other empires of the world. This was a flow-on effect from the visit of U.S. warships under the command of Commodore Perry in 1853, who conducted ‘gunboat diplomacy’ to coerce the Japanese to reverse their isolation policy, enter into a treaty, and open Japanese ports to trade. In this respect, the Japanese differed from their Chinese counterparts, whose protracted attempts to resist the incursion of foreigners led to a long series of major military and naval defeats, harsh reparations, foreign interference in their internal affairs, and the loss of control of a number of strategic territories within China, including ports and islands such as Hong Kong. In contrast, so rapid was Japan’s modernization, which included the build-up of a new army based on the structure and tactics of the German army, that the nation emerged victorious in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). As a result, Japan took control of territory in Korea – previously held by Russia and China – and, once in occupation, the Japanese used military force in 1910 to annex Korea altogether. A further result of the war with China was that Japan gained a substantial foothold in Manchuria, taking over the Kwantung concession and the South Manchurian Railway zone, once held by Russia. Moreover, Japan forced China to concede special rights to Japan in Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia. Having seen how other empires had expanded and created colonies through the use of force since antiquity, the Japanese leadership had begun to follow the same path with the acquisition of Korea. Their further plans to establish a huge imperial presence in Asia were no different in their essence from those of the Western powers, who had already subjugated the whole of Southeast Asia and were beginning to raise their voices in criticism when Japan showed signs of following suit. For the Japanese, ruling over areas that were now theirs fostered a greater sense of superiority when they compared themselves with the Chinese and Koreans. Vast tracts of property were taken from Koreans, leaving them with the status of laborers, reduced to an underclass in their own country. Japan’s colonial methodology in Korea and Taiwan was assimilation, by means such as forcing the local population to speak Japanese and to adopt Japanese names. It was also a time of gradual, but pervasive, mistrust of the United States, as exemplified in the propagandist views of Satō Kojirō11 in If Japan and America Fight12 which found great favor with the

10  The Asia Pacific War disgruntled middle ranks of the Kwantung Army.13 One of the Japanese generals – ­General Satō Kenryō14 – argued that Japan’s historic mission was to open the way to the future by expanding into Southeast Asia and setting free a population of 600,000 enslaved by the West. Japan, he said, must escape from western colonialism. As early as 1933, Tōjō Hideki was already claiming there was an international conspiracy against Japan, a charge that certain powers were intent on enacting what became known as the ABCD [Americans, British, Chinese, Dutch East Indies] encirclement (which became a reality in 1941).15 In this way, the Japanese people became conditioned to see themselves as ‘“victims” rather than “victimizers”’, which ultimately ‘made it easier to mobilize public anxiety’ and to ‘galvanize that anxiety into war fever’.16 The characterization of Japan as an underdog fighting to liberate other Asian nations from the Western imperialists and as a nation that was being provoked into going to war also fitted in to this narrative, and it was a theme that many Japanese leaders frequently articulated. In line with this national sentiment, the military began to advocate far-reaching aggressive policies. In 1929, Lieutenant Colonel Ishiwara Kanji17 drafted ‘A Plan for the Solution of the Manchurian and Mongolian Problem as a Basic Policy to Change our Country’s Destiny’. The plan called for Japan ‘to expand overseas to achieve political stability at home’ and in doing so ‘Japan must be willing to fight America to achieve our objectives’. With the defeat of the United States, Ishiwara wrote, Western dominance in Asia would collapse, to be replaced by the creation of a new ‘Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere’ in which the four peoples of Japan, China, Korea, and Manchuria would share common prosperity through a division of responsibilities: the Japanese, political leadership and large industry; the Chinese, labor and small industry; the Koreans, rice; and the Manchus, animal husbandry.18 As can be seen from the prescriptive tone of this formulation, the idea of co-prosperity was nothing more than a fine phrase to justify Japanese domination of the whole of China. Korea had already been conquered. 1.4.1  Social oppression in Japan

From its inception, the Meiji government had continued to use the Tokugawa practice of withholding information and suppressing individual thought and collective action. Almost immediately on gaining power in 1868, the Meiji government began promulgating a host of internal security laws and regulations aimed at achieving the same result as the previous regime, commencing with regulations controlling content in publications (1869), followed by similar laws constricting information in newspapers (1873), a law concerning libel (1875), and a further law prohibiting appeals to the Emperor and the government (1884). As time went on, several of these laws were revised and made even stricter. The Meiji Constitution of 1889 made no specific provision for basic human rights and ultimately the Peace Preservation Law (1925) afforded government officials wide-ranging powers of suppression. Such was the range of constraints contained in the laws; the population lived in an atmosphere of coercion, where free speech and public inquiry were

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  11 virtually impossible. With such suppression in place, the population was manipulated into passive approval of all government pronouncements. Remarkably, provisions in the Constitution assigned sole responsibility for the Japanese army and navy to the Emperor, so that they functioned independently from the Cabinet. Article XI specified that ‘The Emperor has supreme command of the army and the navy’ and Article XII gave the Emperor full authority, stating ‘The Emperor determines the organization and peace standing of the army and navy’. Thus from 1889 until Japan’s collapse in 1945, the high command of both the army and the navy exercised unique and separate power not subject to the cabinet ministry or civil authority.19 While the bulk of the Japanese population received a basic education, and universities20 were established in public and in private and continued to function at a higher level as early as 1904, the government began to compile and approve all elementary school texts. Thus, a system of thought control began to infiltrate the national education system. In this way, absolute loyalty to the emperor and obedience to all the laws of the nation was inculcated in the minds of students from an impressionable age. This was enshrined into the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890), which emphasized that education should foster and preserve patriotism, as can be seen in such directions as: ‘Should an emergency arise, guard and maintain the Constitution and observe the laws. Always respect the Constitution and observe the laws’.21 Through ideological control over education, combined with restrictive laws, the government was able to mold public opinion in support of its policies. As Ienaga Saburō has so presciently observed, ‘These laws and public education, used as instruments of coercion and manipulation, were the decisive factors that made it impossible for the Japanese people to stop their country from launching the Pacific War’.22 1.4.2  Insubordination and aggression in the Kwantung Army23

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the prosperity of the Japanese nation rose at a rapid rate, leading to a mood of euphoria in the population. Here, however, the role of the military played little part, and the social status of the army gradually diminished from the high level it had enjoyed after its double victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905. Military elements were critical of what they saw as ‘the weakened condition of Japan at that time to the liberal tendencies of the Government’, particularly under the policies toward China advocated by Foreign Minister Shidehara (1924–1927).24 Discontent became prevalent among middle-ranking officers in the Kwantung Army. In the top echelons, new staff, comprising largely lieutenants, captains, and majors, replaced the old. These two groups combined to form a core that began instigating aggressive actions against the Chinese army, without military or civil authority from Japan. The first of these took place in 1928. Marshal Chang Tso-lin,25 whose army was based in Manchuria and had shown increasing resistance to allowing Japan to gain greater influence in Manchuria. He became the victim of a conspiracy. Early in the morning of 4 June 1928, as his special train passed under a South Manchurian

12  The Asia Pacific War Railway bridge controlled by Japanese forces, a bomb exploded directly under his private carriage, killing him. A rebel faction in the Kwantung Army wanted to take the initiative immediately, leading to a breakout from the Liaotung peninsula and the railway zone, to which Japan had been confined in Manchuria. They wanted to seize Manchuria by force and create a puppet state, undermining attempts by the government of Baron Tanaka Giichi ‘to expand and develop the special rights and privileges, which Japan claimed to have acquired in Manchuria, through collaboration with Manchurian authorities, especially Marshal Chang Tso-lin’.26 When the rebels sought formal approval from Japan, their plan was blocked by an official in Tokyo. This insurgent action, however, turned out to be a powerful political catalyst in that – from the murder of Chang Tso-lin onward – the Japanese army began exercising an increasing influence on Japan’s Manchurian policy, supported by military-minded fanatical nationalists in Japan. Although Tanaka had taken a much harder line on China than the government that Shidehara had served, the army succeeded in bringing down his government: Tanaka had asserted that the perpetrators would face harsh punishment. However, pressure from the army ensured that the chief conspirator, Kōmoto Daisaku, only faced suspension from office. This led to the Shōwa emperor reprimanding Tanaka, and the subsequent resignation of the entire cabinet in July 1929.27 A second, similar, attempt was made by dissident officers on the evening of 18 September 1931, when a train stopped on the South Manchurian Railway near Chinese army barracks close to Mukden. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion followed by rifle fire. This led in turn to Japanese soldiers attacking the Chinese barracks, and from there capturing and occupying the old city of Mukden, installing a Japanese colonel as mayor. What was initially a small local incident began to escalate when the Japanese army launched a general attack on all Chinese barracks in the area, at the same time blaming the Chinese for attacking the Japanese train. In response the Chinese still wanted to settle the incident peacefully, but the Japanese, who were bent on taking control of the whole of Manchuria, refused. The local Japanese consul Morishima Morito28 was rebuked and even threatened by one army officer, who indicated his intention to draw a sword in telling the consul not to interfere. Such was the state of belligerence and disobedience that the Kwantung Army had reached. The result of this blatant disobedience, which went unchecked, was that the cabinet in Tokyo was consistently undermined by the army in the field through the sympathetic attitude that central military authorities in Tokyo showed toward them. The cabinet’s initial reaction was to limit the area of the incident and to prevent any expansion of hostilities; the Japanese military authorities in Manchuria paid no attention to this limitation. Unimpeded by the Japanese high command, violence spread from Manchuria to Shanghai, where hostilities continued for more than a month, with Japanese forces bombing and strafing the city and, in general, conducting what amounted to a full-scale war. This extension of fighting into north China brought Japan into

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  13 direct conflict with Western powers, because of the existence of the International Settlement within Shanghai. The potential for conflict created not only a greater likelihood of war being declared between Japan and China, but also the possibility that challenging Western rights and interests in Shanghai could escalate into an armed clash with Western forces, particularly the United States. The League of Nations sent the Lytton Commission to investigate the cause of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 and in the following year in September its report found that both China and Japan were guilty. Hostility between China and Japan continued until 1937, when full-scale warfare began. After completing its conquest of Manchuria in March 1932, Japan established a puppet ‘independent’ state called Manchukuo, installing the last of the Manchu imperial rulers, Pu Yi, as Emperor. The League of Nations voted 42 to 1 to condemn Japan for its invasion of Manchuria, resulting in Japan walking out of the League while at the same time invading Jehol province, China. This allowed the imperial army to establish a springboard from which it could, at any time, launch its government in Tokyo, and the Japanese people, into full-scale war against China. 1.4.3  The military spirit and the fear of encirclement

As we have seen, the introduction of the Imperial Rescript on Education in 1890 is widely accepted as an attempt by the Meiji regime ‘to inculcate total submissiveness to the political authority presided over by the emperor’, and ‘emperorcentered patriotic ceremonies on the opening day of school each year began about the same time’ – one of many rituals used to ‘used to instill an awed obedience to the emperor and the state’.29 In 1917, disregarding protests that children should be encouraged to think for themselves and have ideas of their own, an Ad hoc Commission on Education resolved that measures to encourage military training in schools should be introduced30 and, as early as 1920, a ‘military spirit’ was encouraged throughout Japan to enhance the security of the nation. Physical culture and military training became mandatory in the schools. Active-duty army officers were assigned to all schools from middle level up (except girls’ schools) from 1925 and youth training centers were established in every town, city, or village to ensure that males who had not gone beyond elementary school completed 400 hours of military training.31 Army propaganda and indoctrination came to occupy an effective place in the education system and seeped into the thinking of the population at large through popular songs, stories, and films, including a motion picture based on the speeches made by the then war minister, General Araki Sadao in 1934. Araki was an ultranationalist, promoted expansionist ideologies and militarism, and was a proponent of restricting journalism that he deemed unpatriotic. Robert J. C. Butow discusses the content and the impact of the film in some detail in his book. That General Araki’s speeches and the subsequent film were greeted favorably indicates that feverish military propaganda of this kind was being disseminated and imprinted in the minds of the people long before the basic national policy that advocated Japanese expansion through East Asia was first presented to the Emperor in 1937.

14  The Asia Pacific War Commencing in 1937, radical elements in the Japanese army were able to use crucial leverage to intrude further into what were, fundamentally, civil responsibilities. As we have seen, this independence of action had its roots in articles relating to the army in the Constitution, so that it reported directly to the Emperor, whose position was equivocal, in that he was the head of the nation but did not govern it, a familiar power dynamic that had been in place during the Tokugawa period, where: At the top of the feudal hierarchy was the Emperor, who reigned but did not rule. The power of government was in the hands of the chief military lord, or shōgun, assisted by the Council of State. The latter body often held the actual reins of government, particularly if the Shōgun was a weak ruler.32 The Emperor was essential as a figurehead, regarded as a god descended from Emperor Jinmu. Using military propaganda to indoctrinate the people, extremists delved into the mythical past to 660 BCE, when this first Emperor Jinmu had supposedly issued an imperial rescript in which two expressions – kōdō and hakkōichiu – were used. Kōdō, meaning ‘the way of the Emperor’, was part of a larger phrase signifying ‘the oneness of the Imperial Way’; hakkōichiu meant ‘the eight corners of the world [united] under one roof’. When mobilized by the ultranationalists like Araki, who was a key member of the ‘Imperial Way’ or Kōdōha faction of the army, these two expressions were gradually transformed into symbols to promote visions of cultural unity and military domination in Japan. It was an impediment to parliamentary government. The cabinet was responsible to the people for national policies, but events were often decided by the military, who were responsible to neither the people nor the cabinet.33 In 1936, Prime Minister Hirota Kōki34 agreed to the demands of the army and the navy that stipulated that only those officers on active service, and listed with the rank of at least lieutenant-general or vice-admiral, would be eligible for the army and navy portfolios, formalizing a process that had been accepted practice in various forms since the 1900s. In this way, the leaders of the armed forces placed themselves in an unassailable position to take direct control of the Japanese Cabinet. If their minister decided to step down as a result of a major disagreement, and the army or the navy maintained that a suitable replacement could not be found, the government would fall. Thus, by this simple but antiquated leverage, the army and the navy were able to ensure cabinet endorsement of their policies when the approval of the Diet was needed. Such was their power over the survival of the cabinet that, in February 1937, civil control over matters of state was lost altogether, culminating in the army being in the position to virtually dictate who was ‘unacceptable’ to be the prime minister or to officiate in particular positions.35 This gave the army and the navy full authority over all phases of national life – particularly the building-up of the offensive power of the army navy and air force services, as well as responsibility for the patriotic unification of the population in an atmosphere of imminent war.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  15 On 11 August 1937, Prime Minister Hirota Kōki and his four most important ministers affixed their signatures and seals to a document validating a national policy based on the use of force, as can be seen in the four provisions set out below, all ambivalent in their wording and all underpinning a warlike direction for the nation: 1 to work toward the acquisition of a secure position on the Asian continent so as to make Japan ‘a stabilizing power in East Asia’; 2 to make a gradual advance toward the South Seas for the purpose of developing Japanese interests there; 3 Japan would attempt to achieve unity in Eastern Asia by destroying the aggressive policy of the great powers; and 4 the determination of the Japanese people would be enhanced by ‘guiding and unifying public opinion’.36 From that moment onward, all four pathways were vigorously pursued, leading to disaster and carnage as the Asia Pacific War intensified five years later. 1.5 The U.S. foreign policy in the face of Japanese aggression (1931–1937) The U.S. attitudes toward the emergence of Japan as a sphere of influence in Asia were one of debate and watchful inaction, characterized by a refusal to intervene in any way. When Japan, having swept through Manchuria in 1932, announced the creation of a new puppet state called Manchukuo, the United States refused to recognize its legitimacy. But that was all. A protest from the then Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, was the only response. Indeed, under free trade agreements from which Japan could benefit, the United States continued with its regular supply of oil in large quantities to Japan, together with other components which could be used by its air force and military in China. On the other hand, the United States aided the Chinese in resisting Japan by providing loans and war materials that were needed to fight the Japanese. In this way, the United States made sure that it did not provoke the Japanese by any action that could escalate into war between the two, while at the same time, through its aid to China, ensuring that the Japanese army – which in the end grew to 1 million soldiers – remained bogged down and fully occupied in China. This double-pronged strategy, authorized by President Roosevelt, ensured peace for the United States where, for a time in the early 1930s, the bulk of the population was in no mood for war and looked for an isolationist policy from its president. 1.5.1  Practicalities, pragmatism, and conflicting ideologies

Quite apart from the public mood, the United States at that time was in no position to fight Japan. The naval forces it had in the Philippines were much too small to fight a full-scale battle there. But for all of that, and a lack of preparedness for conflict, the existence of War Plan Orange37 – a series of military and naval

16  The Asia Pacific War plans developed over many years and formally adopted for the first time in 1924 – indicates that successive American governments had recognized that a war with Japan at some time in the future was possible, if not inevitable. The ideologies of the two countries were incompatible – Japan wanting a New Order, a framework for autocracy, and America wanting free trade and investment. When it came to the point, neither would budge from these fundamental principles, which each regarded as essential to the national interest. In his memoirs, Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote: As I entered the State Department I had two points on the Far East firmly in mind. One was the definite interest the United States had in maintaining China and preventing Japan from gaining overlordship of the entire Far East. The other was the conviction that Japan had no intention of abiding by treaties but would regulate her conduct by the opportunities of the moment … Japan was flagrantly dishonest in her statements regarding Manchuria. She had conquered Manchuria, set up a puppet government with the strings manipulated by her army, and occupied with her troops. Yet the Japanese ambassador maintained to me that control of the oil industry is a project of that government itself and not within the knowledge or concern of the Japanese government.38 1.5.2  The State Department at war – With itself

Such blatant lying disgusted Hull. Personally, he was an idealist and a difficult man to shift in his opinions once he had established them. He had formulated a policy which, if implemented, would have brought about worldwide peace. This he called ‘the pillars of peace’ – respect by all nations for the law and treaties they had entered into, free trade, arms limitation, and ‘national restraint’. He went so far as to circulate these ideas to world leaders. Yet Hull was a pragmatist in his negotiations with the Japanese, and an effective one. He was the first to realize that in the volatility of international diplomacy governed by self-interest, this combination would never have a place, particularly with autocratic powers such as Germany, Italy, and Japan. Indeed, all the Western powers, who had seized for themselves the whole of Southeast Asia, together with territories in China that were protected by their soldiers and gunboats, were no respecters of sovereignty either and had no plans to relinquish what they had won. Japan was now intent on following this same path, which meant conquering China and driving the West out of South East Asia. This Hull knew, and his middle of the way policy of no confrontation, no withdrawal, and no assent to Japan’s aggressive and positive actions, kept the United States out of the war with Japan until 1941. The defect of this policy, however, was that it could not go on forever. It was not a decisive policy, and what happened in the United States in the 1930s was that no development to combine its naval, military, and industrial resources took place to prepare the nation for war. Certainly, through its power to invoke crippling embargoes on Japan, the United States still had the upper hand, but to call on such measures would have led inevitably to a war for which it was not prepared.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  17 The State Department under Hull was deeply fractured by opposing views in relation to the position the United States should take in this aspect of foreign affairs. The cause for this widespread disagreement lay in the formulation of a joint policy combining the U.S. response to the rise of dictatorships in both Europe and Asia and the relative importance to be placed on each of these. It was here that Asian and European specialists clashed, each emphasizing their own area of interest. As Secretary of State, Hull had the support of the president to watch developments in Asia and to protect the U.S. position. On the other hand, the most powerful voice opposing a lack of intervention was that of Stanley Hornbeck, the high-ranking senior adviser in foreign affairs. Hornbeck argued persistently that a demonstration of force and the willingness to use it was the only way of stopping Japan. To avoid war, the United States had to confront Japan with forces superior to their own. Essential to this strategy, the first priority was to expand the U.S. navy and military forces and its industrial capacity. These, together with the threat of imposing an embargo on its oil supplies and freezing its assets, would bring Japan’s rise to a halt. Hornbeck’s argument for forestalling war carried weight, proved later by the United States actually carrying out this plan of action in the wartime situation, but at the time it was weakened by the United States need for a European policy; the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy was creating a rapidly developing crisis that was threatening to undermine the U.S.’ values of free trade and liberalism. Differing again from both Hornbeck and Hull were the views of two State Department European specialists, Hugh Wilson, Assistant Secretary of State, and J. Pierpont Moffat, Chief of the Division of European Affairs. Where Hornbeck ignored European affairs altogether and concentrated on Asia, Wilson and Moffat argued that America’s interest in Asia was minimal, centered as it was on the Philippines. Wilson went further, saying that the United States should withdraw from South East Asia altogether. Furthermore, both argued that the United States had already shown that it would not go to war with Japan over China, whereas ensuring the return of peace in Europe was paramount. Roosevelt always supported Hull, but he was an activist at heart, and on 5 October 1937, he made his famous ‘quarantine’ speech in Chicago, denouncing the imminent rise of Japan in Asia and Nazi Germany in Europe: The present reign of terror and international lawlessness … (means that) the very foundations of civilization are seriously threatened … The situation is definitely of human concern … The peace-loving nations must make a concerted effort to uphold laws and principles on which alone peace can rest secure … When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread … the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patient … War is a contagion, whether it is declared or undeclared … There must be positive endeavors to preserve peace.39 This speech, in direct opposition to the national policy of non-intervention, was received with alarm by Hull, who felt that it had set his plans back by six months.

18  The Asia Pacific War Another excellent example of the administration working at cross purposes was the Brussels Conference40 in 1937, where nine nations met to discuss measures to be taken against Japan. From this conference, Roosevelt hoped that agreement would be reached on a plan of action, stopping Japan while not provoking war. He appointed Norman Davis, a vocal critic of Hull’s ‘do nothing’ policy, as ambassador-at-large representing the United States. Davis, however, received no specific orders from the president, apart from an indication for action and, if none transpired, then ‘we must look for other measures’. In this atmosphere, Davis proposed wide-ranging international action against Japan, including an embargo on the sale of arms and a boycott of Japanese goods. Hull’s team, also present at the conference, rapidly brought proceedings to a close by appointing a sub-committee to review and report on the situation at a future date not nominated. The president gave Davis no further support, as he felt Davis had gone too far. Also, influencing his decision was the fact that the nation had not responded as he hoped it would to his quarantine speech, and it had been condemned by Congress. The result of all this was that the Brussels Conference made no decisions concerning Japan, allowing Hull’s non-intervention policy to continue unchanged. From 1931 to 1937, as each year went by, further views by prominent influential figures emerged, all of which Hull and Roosevelt had to take into account, but the overall result was that, whereas the Japanese worked steadily at their expansion plans and continued to make gradual territorial advances, the United States remained a forum of argument with no firm plan that would stop Japan. 1.6  Sliding into war – Overview While diplomatic relations were maintained between Japan and the United States and continued until just a few days before Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, diplomacy as a means of arriving at stability and peace failed, because neither party was willing to adjust its own position to meet the terms of the other. As early as 1935, Japan began its war preparation with Admiral Nagano Osami41 and his staff developing plans to raise Japan’s navy strength to be equal to that of the United States, and later to surpass it. Even so, while Japan continued to build up its offensive power year after year until 1941 and conditioned its population to meet the threat of war through propaganda, the high command still hoped that the nation would not be forced to fight the United States, recognizing the overwhelming military and industrial capacity of the United States. They knew that while Japanese forces would at first be victorious, Japan could not match the United States if a war continued beyond its opening phase. The Japanese high command gambled on a scenario where the ongoing strategy in such a situation would be that the scale of Japan’s territorial acquisitions would increase its bargaining power and lead to a treaty of peace between the two powers. The defect here, of course, was that this ideal outcome was out of Japan’s hands. It all depended on the United States being willing to agree.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  19 On the other hand, the United States did not want to fight Japan either, because its leaders recognized that in the early stages of such a war the United States did not have the resources to withstand the Japanese. A further telling factor was by then it would be engaged in two wars simultaneously – one in Europe and one in the Pacific. One of the U.S. informal entry points into the war against Germany and Italy began with the Battle of the Atlantic. Although this battle, which took the form of a naval blockade of Germany that began days after war in Europe was declared in 1939, it was not until September 1941 that American ships and aircraft joined the campaign. Nevertheless, the steps and actions the Japanese and the Americans took between 1937 and 1941 put them on a collision course. This came to pass with the U.S. formal entry into war in the Pacific and Europe in December 1941, after Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan, who had become an ally of Nazi Germany and Italy. 1.7  Japan’s pathway to war (1937–1941) As early as 1936, Japanese army and navy officers had met informally to discuss future directions for Japan. Then, with the approval of an inner cabinet of only five men, the officers had gone on to prepare a basic national policy for Japan that was informally presented to the Emperor on 15 August 1937. So far-reaching were its leading principles that their intentions in the document ‘Outline of National Policies in View of the Changing Situation’ were not approved by the Emperor until five years later. On 7 July 1937, without any cause or provocation, Japanese troops opened fire on a Chinese garrison stationed in Wanping.42 Chinese soldiers retaliated. This local incident widened and got out of control, escalating into a point of no return for Japan and triggering a war that remained unresolved between the two nations until 1945, when Japan was defeated. In the three days between the 7 and 9 July 1937, 20,000 Japanese soldiers were supported by air cover as they poured into the area. Buoyed by further reinforcements, they broke through, spreading out and advancing in two directions simultaneously – south to Shanghai and north toward the Chinese capital of Nanking. Unable to contain the Kwantung Army, the Konoe Cabinet chose to support its unauthorized incursions by ordering the dispatch of three further divisions. On 3 November 1938 in the Diet, the prime minister went on to announce that his government was now determined to create a ‘new order’ in East Asia. The conquest went on, and on 13 December, Japanese troops stormed Nanking. There is no shortage of accounts of the savagery that was inflicted on the Chinese population by the Imperial Japanese Army, including extensive photographic evidence, reports written in international newspapers that had been filed by international correspondents who were in the city, accounts by foreign diplomats, and the Judgement of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) in 1948, which estimated that more than 200,000 civilians and prisoners of war were murdered in the first six weeks.43 According to testimony given to the IMTFE, nearly all the Chinese soldiers had fled the city and, as the Japanese army entered

20  The Asia Pacific War the city, all resistance had ceased, after which ‘they [the army] were let loose like a barbarian horde to desecrate the city’.44 The Japan Year Book, 1946–48 describes what happened: Japanese anger at the stubborn Chinese defense of Shanghai (which had slowed the Japanese advance and caused heavy casualties) burst upon Nanking in an appalling reign of terror … For four weeks the streets of Nanking were splattered with blood and littered with mutilated bodies, while Japanese soldiers ran amok, causing untold suffering among the civilian population.45 Against this horrible background, it is worth noting the statement made on December 17 by Colonel (later General) Matsui Iwane,46 army commander of the lawless troops. Mounted on his horse, he led the Japanese troop into Nanking in victory: Now the flag of the Rising Sun is floating over Nanking, and the Imperial Way is shining forth in the area south of the Yangtze-Kang. The dawn of the renaissance of Eastern Asia is about to take place.47 On 22 December 1938, the Japanese Foreign Office released a Statement by the Japanese Prime Minister Konoe that referred to the ‘new order’ three times. The first paragraph read: The Japanese Government are resolved, as has been clearly set forth in their two previous statements issued this year, to carry on the military operations for the complete extermination of the anti-Japanese Kuomintang Government, and at the same time to proceed with the work of establishing a new order in East Asia together with those far-sighted Chinese who share in our ideals and aspirations.48 The invasion of China that continued after the savagery in Nanking, euphemistically referred to in Japan as ‘the China Incident’, had to be completed. But try as they might, the Kwantung Army could not achieve it, and they were unable to transform China into a part of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere with Japan at its head. The army had also been active on the domestic front, taking a decisive step in May 1938 that would make war virtually inevitable, when they introduced a bill to enact the National General Mobilization Law. If approved, the law would place the whole of Japan on a war footing. In an article dated Monday 28 March 1938, Time magazine described a campaign of intimidation against the opponents of the bill in the Diet, who had been confronted in the streets by posters ‘which shrieked: “THOSE OPPOSING THE NATIONAL MOBILIZATION BILL ARE DOGS!”’. The Minister for Home Affairs (and in charge of police) ‘fiery’ Admiral Suetsugu Nobumasa ‘stormed at these representatives of the Japanese people as though they

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  21 were schoolboys meddling on a warship’s bridge’ when they demanded that the posters were taken down. The Minister only agreed ‘to give deputies opposed to the bill some protection’ after the elderly leader of the Social Mass Party ‘had his jaw broken by ruffians’.49 The provisions were not at all clear and may have been unconstitutional, resulting in a member of the Diet demanding clarification. The responsible cabinet minister was unable to present the bill and speak to it and no minister entered into debate on this law, which was of the utmost significance to the nation. Instead, Lieutenant-Colonel Satō Kenryō,50 representing the army, stood up to assert that all aspects of national life should be focused on preparing for war, and the act was the only way to provide the mechanism to do so.51 It is a sign of the control that the army already exercised over the Cabinet and the Diet that this law, which so deeply affected the direction in which the whole of the population was being moved, was presented by a middle-ranking officer and, according to the Time article subsequently passed without a dissenting vote after the Prime Minister indicated that the law would not immediately become effective. Within the Diet, it signaled the collapse of civilian control and its approval handed the army all the power it needed to mold the thinking of the people, by suppressing vital information and replacing it with by more of their incessant propaganda. Here three main points were repeatedly stressed: (1) Japan as an island nation had limited resources to meet the needs of its increasing population; (2) Japan was encircled by China, America, Russia, and Britain, all of whom were a permanent threat to the nation’s safety; and (3) the full development of Japan involved meeting its destiny. Such were the army’s stated purposes. That destiny, of course, was full control of Asia in the guise of international cooperation, laid down according to Japan’s will. Japan saw itself as fated to reach this glorious role – through the regular supply of goods and services, they would allow all people within the co-prosperity sphere to benefit. To support this immense dictatorship, the army would retain its power to enforce the law. 1.7.1  The Tripartite Pact

On 27 September 1940, Japan entered into a Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, whereby each nation would come to the aid of the other if attacked. In this way, the Japanese hoped that their membership would deter the United States from confronting Japan as it swept into Southeast Asia. In actuality, it had the reverse effect. The fascist ideology of the Axis powers was anathema to the liberalism and free trade espoused by the United States and when, late in July 1941, their codebreaking system MAGIC intercepted a message from Japan’s foreign minister stating that ‘membership of the Tripartite Pact is the cornerstone of Japan’s policy and there would be no departure from it’, the die was cast. All Japanese assets were frozen and partial embargoes put in place, including any further shipments of oil. Four months later the United States and Japan were at war.

22  The Asia Pacific War 1.7.2  The Imperial Conference held on 2 July 1941

The ‘Outline of National Policies in View of the Changing Situation’ was approved by the Emperor at an imperial conference held on 2 July 1941. The minutes of the 1941 Conference indicate that: various opinions were heard on the relative merits of stationing troops in Southern Indochina, the German-Soviet conflict, and the arguments for and against war with the Soviet Union. These issue [sic.] were discussed in light of their impact on the positions of Great Britain and in particular the United States.52 The Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact had been signed in April 1941, despite the Soviets being at war with Japan’s European allies. On the other hand, hostilities with the Soviets would give Japan an opportunity to gaining access to oilfields in the north. The ‘Outline’ document approved in July 1941, which underpinned Japan’s final determination to go to war, was based on the draft that had been prepared in 1936 and presented to the Emperor in 1937. This policy (in fact a set of policies) would set the priorities for the entire nation, even though they had been prepared by officers of the armed forces without reference to, or contact with, the Foreign Minister. The 1941 version expressed the original three objectives of the earlier version in more general terms: establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and world peace, no matter what international developments take place’ and ‘working vigorously towards dealing with the China Incident’ and ‘seeking to establish a solid basis for the security and preservation of the nation by advancing into the Southern Regions.53 1.7.3  The ABCD encirclement

Japan had commenced a new cycle of aggression in 1939, when Japanese soldiers took possession of Hainan Island off the southern coast of China in February and Japan annexed the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in March. By 1940, Vichy France54 was in no position to protect French Indo-China and so, following negotiations, Japan began occupying the northern half of the colony on 22 September 1940, making it a passageway for troops and weaponry entering China; in mid-July 1941, Japanese soldiers swept into the southern half of French IndoChina in preparation for the invasion of Southeast Asia. Through its international codebreaking system called MAGIC, the Americans learned of this new maneuver and its obvious intent. For President Roosevelt, it was the last straw. On 26 July 1941 (as already mentioned), he ordered selective embargoes be placed upon Japan as a sign of resistance, but not outright confrontation. Disastrously, the reverse happened, accelerating the start of the war between Japan and the United States. Through administrative delays in carrying out the president’s order, the whole of Japan’s assets in the United States were in effect, frozen, including the supply of oil.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  23 Britain, the Dominions, and the Netherlands East Indies immediately applied similar full embargoes, the result being that Japan found itself in crisis. The American Administration hoped that the shock would lead Japan to conciliation, but the Japanese saw it as their empire being cut off and surrounded by America, Britain, China, and the Dutch – the so-called ABCD encirclement. Nevertheless, the American government informed the Japanese government that in the current circumstances the freezing order was an act of national defense and need not be permanent. At his interrogation after the war ended, Tōjō Hideki also claimed that the reason for Japan going to war against the Western powers was that Japan, too, had been acting in self-defense and that the cutting off of a regular supply of goods and materials to the Japanese nation had a life and death crisis for the nation. Indeed, it had. 1.7.4  The decision to go to war

During August 1941, the leaders of Japan concentrated on three areas of urgency. The first of these concerned the Tripartite Pact. At the Liaison Conference on August 1, there was unanimous agreement to commit to the Pact because it would not only enable a New Order in Europe but also allow Japan to establish a New Order in Asia.55 The second matter for review concerned the huge massed army in Manchuria, ready to attack the Soviet Union, and seize the oil fields there, provided that Germany continued its advance against the Russian army. As it turned out, no attack went ahead. The third area for action was the arrangement of a meeting at the highest level between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Konoe, aimed at gaining a temporary truce and restoring normal trade relations between the two countries. Although both sides were looking for a way to avoid war, each had policies that the other would never agree to, and the meeting never took place. So it was that at an Imperial Conference in September 1941, a major policy titled ‘Decisions Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941: Lines of Action in the Execution of Japan’s National Policy’ – also translated as ‘The Essentials for Carrying out the Empire’s Policies’, ‘Imperial Policies Execution Outline’, and ‘Guidelines for the Implementation of Imperial National Policy’ – was presented to the Emperor for his approval. According to one (tentative) English translation, the Appendix sets out ‘the Minimum Japanese Requirements which must be fulfilled and the limits of the Concessions to which Japan can agree’.56 Basically, the requirements were that America and Britain are not to ‘obstruct the Japanese plan to settle the China Affair’, the Burma Road must be closed and the Chiang Regime must not be afforded military or economic assistance. The limit of concessions depended on the settlement of the ‘China Affair’ and the Soviet Union adhering to the Soviet-Japan Neutrality Pact, in which case Japan would withdraw troops from French Indo-China and guarantee the neutrality of the Philippines.57

24  The Asia Pacific War In one of translations of the document, Item 1 of the Lines of Action in the Execution of Japan’s National Policy stated that: In order to insure [sic.] self-preservation and self-defence [sic.], Japan under the resolve to risk a war with America (Great Britain, and the Netherlands) will go forward with war preparations, which will be completed sometime toward the latter part of October. Assuming Japan’s minimum requirements and limits of concessions were met, Item 2 stated: Parallelly [sic.] with this fore-going measure, Japan will strive to establish fully her claims by diplomatic means vis-à-vis America and Britain … Following Item 2, there were warnings against the other powers ‘endangering Japan’s defence’ by establishing ‘military rights and interests’ in Thailand, Netherlands Indies, China, and Soviet territory in the Far East. America and Britain were to restore commerce with Japan. Item 3 was unambiguous: In case there is no prospect by the early part of October of pushing through Japanese claims by diplomatic means as mentioned in the preceding paragraph, Japan will forthwith decide upon war against America (Britain and the Netherlands) … Special efforts will be exerted to prevent America and the Soviet Union forming a united front against Japan.58 It has been established that Emperor Hirohito was deeply concerned that the nation was facing war, especially with the United States, and the policy statement placed the emphasis on war rather than diplomacy.59 Nevertheless, he approved the policies, provided that every effort continued to be made to achieve a diplomatic solution, and that a review should commence with ‘a clean slate’. This marked a turning point in that it allowed the armed forces to continue preparations for war with a deadline. While the deadline was subsequently extended, the reality that a deadline was always in place continued. The former Prime Minister, Prince Konoe, had tendered his resignation in October 1941 because he did not agree with his War Minister General Tōjō Hideki, who was generally regarded as a warmonger in political circles. In his memoirs, Konoe, citing a conversation with Tōjō about the prospects of success against the United States, asserted that he [Konoe] was not alone holding the view that ‘[however] roundabout the way may seem, I firmly believe that war, unless it is a question of safety or 100% safety, must be avoided’.60 On November 1, in order to comply with what is known as the emperor’s ‘clean slate’ order, a further high-level liaison conference was held. Three courses of action were considered – a cautious approach that would lead to domestic hardship (particularly as oil was running out), launch hostilities (in opposition to the Emperor’s wishes), or continue diplomatic efforts while preparations for war continued.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  25 On 5 November 1941, the 7th Imperial Conference was held to inform the Emperor of the Liaison Committee’s conclusions, the chief one, outlined in a speech by Tōjō, was that the deadline for the conclusion of diplomatic negotiations would be early December. The deadline was locked in even though neither the Prime Minister and War Minister Tōjō, nor Army Chief of Staff General Shigemitsu or Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Nagano was prepared to guarantee Japan’s success if the war with America continued beyond its early stages.61 In the meantime, as the United States had established before the negotiations had even begun, Japan’s preparations for war continued. Two draft proposals were presented to the Emperor. The content of Proposal A guaranteed its rejection by America because it did not address the four principles that U.S. Secretary of State Hull had set out as the United States negotiating position. These are discussed in more detail later, but the first and fundamental principle related to respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other nations. The draft called for non-discriminatory trade principles in the Pacific and China, a declaration that ‘the Axis pact between Japan, Germany and Italy embodies “the right to self-defense” without reckless expansion, and that the Japanese government had been operating on this particular interpretation’ and set out a plan for China that did not involve Japan withdrawing from Chinese territory.62 Another diplomat, Kurusu Saburō, was sent to Washington by the Tōjō Government as a Special Envoy to assist the Ambassador to the U.S. Nomura Kichisaburō.63 In presenting the first proposal to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, Ambassador Nomura said: of the three principal questions on which there were divergent views, he [Nomura] thought that it would not be difficult to reconcile the views of the two Governments on two, namely, non-discrimination in international trade and Japan’s obligations under the Tripartite Pact. He realized that the difficulties of reaching an agreement on the third, the China question, were greater.64 Hull rejected it outright, referring the Ambassador to the four principles which he had been given on April 11 and which still remained as the U.S. negotiating position. What was not stated is that, as Proposal A was being presented, reports about Japanese ‘military movements to the south’ and ‘alarms about Japanese naval movements’ had ‘discredited the intentions of the Japanese Government’.65 Proposal B was intended as a stopgap if Proposal A was rejected, and on 20 November, Hull reacted to it by issuing the message known as the Hull Note, using the four principles as the basis of a counter-proposal of ten points. The first of these was ‘a multilateral non-aggression pact among the British Empire, China, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United States and Thailand’. The second was an agreement with each of the governments to ‘respect the territorial integrity of French Indo China’. The third required ‘The Government of Japan to withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and Indo China’. The fourth stipulated that Japan and the United States would not support any government in China other than ‘the national Government of the Republic of China, with capital temporarily in Chungking’ and under the fifth both nations ‘will give up

26  The Asia Pacific War all extraterritorial rights in China’. Points three to eight proposed that the two nations negotiate a ‘most-favored nation’ trade agreement and a reduction of trade barriers; rescind the freezing of funds in both countries; and stabilize the dollar-yen exchange rate. The final two points bound the parties to agreeing ‘the fundamental purpose of this agreement, the establishment and preservation of peace throughout the Pacific’ would take priority over any agreement made with third powers, and for both nations to use their influence with other governments ‘to adhere to and give practical application to the basic political and economic principles set forth in this agreement’.66 1.7.5  Tōjō’s radio address

A former head of the Kenpeitai and later chief of staff of the Kwantung Army, General Tōjō Hideki had been appointed Prime Minister in October 1941. As noted earlier, he had previously served as war minister under the outgoing Konoe government. On 17 November 1941, he and Foreign Minister Tōgō Shigenori67 addressed the Diet. Their speeches were broadcast nationwide, together with a fiery speech from Diet member Shimada Toshio, in which he roused the nation to go to war and denounced the United States.68 Tōjō made three points: 1 The third powers will refrain from obstructing a successful conclusion of the China affair which Japan has in view; 2 The countries surrounding our Empire will not only refrain from presenting a direct military menace to our Empire, but nullify such measures of hostile character of economic relations with Japan; and 3 Utmost efforts will be exerted to prevent the extension of the European war and the spread of the disturbances into East Asia.69 In the earlier part of the speech Tōjō made reference to the countries supporting Chiang Kai-shek as ‘obstructing the successful conclusion of the China affair’, as well as alluding to the difficulties that Japan faced in acquiring food, coal, oil, and other raw materials that it needed due to the freezing of Japanese assets, ‘virtually complete embargoes’ and the ‘enforced economic blockade’. He had compared the effect of these measures to an armed attack, especially as those nations had simultaneously ‘rapidly augmented their military measures against our country’.70 Obliquely phrased as they are, all of the three points can be seen as warnings to the United States. The first referred to the repercussions for America if it maintained its support of China; the second involved the consequences that might follow from embargoes crippling Japan; and the third hinted at Japan’s membership of the Tripartite Pact and the threat posed by the combined forces of Japan, Germany, and Italy if the United States confronted Japan. Foreign Minister Tōgō’s speech was aimed directly at the United States and framed in terms of an impending war. While hoping that diplomatic negotiations would be successfully concluded, Tōgō said Japan would reject any proposal that might impair her status as a major power. The deadline for signing an agreement was on 29 November 1941 and could not be changed.71 After that date, the situation would develop ‘automatically’.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  27 These two speeches condemning the United States received the support of the Diet. A speech given by Shimada Toshio72 reflected how effective military indoctrination had been in convincing Japanese citizens that they were victims of hostile powers. Parts of Shimada’s speech were widely quoted in international newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald of Wednesday on 19 November 1941, where Shimada was described as the ‘noisiest supporter’ of a resolution condemning the United States. After beginning his speech by describing the United States as ‘the root of all evil’ for supporting Chiang Kai-shek, thus threatening Japan by interfering in the affairs of neighboring countries, and stopping the provision of vital materials, Shimada is quoted as issuing a more threatening assessment: Japan must strike while the iron is hot. On the occasion of the announcement of Prince Konoye’s [sic.] announcement to President Roosevelt the government explained that its purpose was to locate the ‘cancer’ in relations between Japan and America. It is utterly clear that the cancer is the present leaders of the United States. There is an absolute necessity for us to make a big incision in that cancer.73 This florid rhetoric, inciting the nation to charge to its own destruction, was applauded by members of the Diet. Shimada’s speech is a vivid example of the jingoism and fervor whipped up throughout the nation by continuous propaganda. Diplomatic negotiations on both sides continued well into November, gradually petering out until, on 26 November 1941, Cordell Hull ‘kicked the whole thing over’, transferring responsibility for the nation’s welfare and survival from the State Department to the Army and the Navy.74 Evidence tendered to the U.S. Congress Joint Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack (1946) indicates that some final war preparations had been well under way for most of the year. Chief of the Combined Japanese Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku had argued that Japan would have ‘no hope’ of winning a war against the United States unless the U.S. fleet at Hawaii was destroyed. He first proposed a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in January 1941 and in August ‘all fleet commanders were ordered to Tokyo in August for war games that were preliminary to formulation of final operation plans for a Pacific campaign’ including ‘a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor’. A naval war planning conference in the first two weeks of September produced ‘an outline incorporating the essential points of a basic operation order, which was later to be issued as Combined Fleet Top Secret Operation Order No. 1’.75 While accounts differ about when the order was actually issued,76 the Emperor formally approved preparations on 5 November. Translations of the Secret Order Number 1 differ, but part of the version printed in the U.S. Congress Joint Investigation Report stated: Under the heading ‘Preparations for the outbreak of war,’ operation order No. 1 provided that ‘when the decision is made to complete over-all

28  The Asia Pacific War preparations for operations, orders will be issued establishing the approximate date (Y-day) for commencement of operations and announcing “first preparations for war.” ‘The order further provided that ‘the time for the outbreak of war (X-day) will be given in an imperial general headquarters order.’77 During the remainder of November and early December, the pace of war preparations accelerated, and at 6 p.m. on 25 November, the Japanese fleet set sail from Hitokappu Bay in the remote Kurile Islands on its deadly first mission – the attack at Pearl Harbor. That mission was launched ‘before the United States note in reply to the Japanese ultimatum of 20 November was delivered to Japan’s ambassadors on 26 November’.78 When Tōjō Hideki was interrogated after the war, he outlined the prevailing arguments of the military, which had been repeated endlessly in propaganda to the nation and reiterated in his address to the Diet on 17 November 1941, as well as in international negotiations. Excerpts from the diary he wrote while in prison from 1945 until his execution in 1948 show that he didn’t waver from this position, or the stance the Japanese military government had taken when declaring war on the United States and Britain on behalf of the Emperor in December 1941. In the declaration of war, there had been echoes of the address Tōjō had given to the Diet in November, characterizing Japan as having no ambitions other than securing peace in the region and pointing the finger at China: More than four years have passed since China, failing to comprehend the true intentions of our empire, and recklessly causing trouble, disturbed the peace of East Asia and compelled our empire to take up arms.79 The declaration went on to accuse the United States and Britain of aggravating ‘disturbances in East Asia’ by propping up the ‘Chungking regime’ [Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek in exile], asserting that those powers were doing so because they were ‘[eager] for the realization of their inordinate ambitions to dominate the Orient’. 1.8  The U.S. pathway to war (1937–1941) Whether there would be a war in the Pacific between the United States and Japan throughout the 1930s depended on whether the Japanese army could conquer China and thereby place Japan in a strong position to establish its New Order in Asia. For the United States, on the other hand, the continuation of the war in China effectively impeded Japan by keeping Japan out of the Pacific and stalling its plans for dominance in that region. To help in blocking Japan, the United States provided aid to China through the approval of loans and the supply of war materials; the British provided further support. This angered the Japanese: they believed that the United States and Britain were indirectly engaged in a war against them, which indeed was the case.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  29 1.8.1  Divisions within the State Department intensify

At this point, it is instructive to compare the policies and planning being undertaken by the leadership of America and Japan. While in Japan the armed forces proceeded with the purpose of gaining control of the Diet, taking action to unify the nation through propaganda and control of information, and making coordinated preparations for war, the senior leaders in the United States were at loggerheads with each other as to what course to take, even though the national policy, which amounted to appeasement, was in place. Formally, Hull’s policy guided the nation, but underlying it were deep divisions of discontent led by a widespread number of staff in senior positions, both within and outside the State Department. An excellent example of this discontent and opposition can be seen in the clash between the State Department and the navy when a U.S. river gunboat, the Panay, was bombed and sunk in China on 12 December 1937, killing 3 Americans and injuring 50 others, some seriously. The Panay had been stationed about 27 miles north of Beijing, ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if needed. Japanese diplomats apologized, saying that ‘a mistake’ had occurred, and that the 11 naval officers involved had been disciplined and the responsible admiral recalled in disgrace. For Hull and the State Department, the incident was closed, but not for Admiral Yarnell.80 He wanted several cruisers sent to the area and embargoes enforced ‘to teach the Japanese a lesson’. Chief of Naval Operations, William Leahy,81 supported him. Hull went at once to Roosevelt, who ordered that no further action be taken regarding this incident. The result was that Hull’s policy was thus upheld at the cost of seething discontent. This key decision is just one example of the wideranging divisions that Roosevelt, as President, had to quell. The incident, which could have been a potential flashpoint, demonstrated clearly the division between those responsible for international policy and those responsible in the navy for the protection of the U.S. citizens and the upholding of the honor of the United States. A similar example in another context occurred after the sinking of the Panay. Two days later Roosevelt commissioned Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau82 to make recommendations on what embargoes could be established against Japan, as a response to the Panay attack. Morgenthau was an activist. In a memorandum to his Assistant Secretary, he had written: I think it’s time to call a halt when a United States battleship has been sunk and three of our people killed. For us to sit there and let them put their sword into our insides and sit there and take it and like it and not do anything about it, I think is un-American, and I think we’ve got to inch in on those boys, and that’s what the president is doing.83 Following Morgenthau’s report, the president put him in charge of the project but nothing came of it. In the end, Roosevelt remained wary of the effect of the imposition of embargoes. To be fair, both Roosevelt and Hull were responsible for the safety and welfare of the nation but here, they too differed from each other. Whereas Hull was content with his non-involvement policy aimed at keeping

30  The Asia Pacific War America out of a war, Roosevelt looked for some form of retaliatory action against Japan that could not be inflammatory. It was not an easy thing to do, given that a minor and unexpected incident had earlier triggered Japan’s conquest of Manchuria. In addition, Germany’s aggressive rise in Europe was never far from the president’s mind. The time would come when the United States would have to intervene to stop Europe and Asia being overrun and controlled by dictatorships, eliminating free trade and liberalism. But when would that time come? When Morgenthau’s initiative failed to implement embargoes on Japan and, tired of Hull’s ‘do-nothing’ policy, Morgenthau prepared a $25 million loan to China84 for the president’s approval, as a means of helping the Chinese and blocking Japan. He was convinced that Japan had to be stopped before war with the United States became inevitable. This time, as a means of getting presidential approval, he approached Sumner Welles, who was acting in Hull’s position, with all the power of the Secretary of State. Welles, also an activist, was able to gain the president’s approval. When Hull returned to the position, he did all he could to slow the payment, as at that time the Chinese army looked like collapsing and, if that happened, the huge loan would prove to be fruitless. Nevertheless, the loan went through and China did not collapse. 1.8.2  The military and naval perspective

Divisions between the State Department and the navy flared again, this time caused by a clash between the same two levels of responsibility – the overall international level for which Roosevelt and Hull bore responsibility, and the operational level, which lay within the navy’s jurisdiction. This case was related to another U.S. gunboat in China. The Japanese ordered it to be removed, as it was moored in an impending warzone. Hull agreed. Chief of Naval Operations, William D. Leahy, vehemently disagreed. With Roosevelt’s support, Hull won that particular battle, each man acting according to his own set of principles. Disagreements between the State Department and the armed services were exacerbated even further at this time, when a major conflict arose between the army and the navy, in relation to whether a war should be fought in Asia at all. The army favored a general withdrawal from Asia, on the grounds that an offensive there ‘would strain to the utmost the resources of the United States’ and ‘would be justified only if our vital interests were at stake’.85 On the other hand, the navy held firm to its belief that withdrawing could lead to the Japanese overrunning the whole of Asia. This major clash between the two services on which strategy should be adopted continued until 1940, by which time Germany had already conquered France and Holland, and Britain was preparing to be invaded. None of those three countries were in a position to defend their colonies in Southeast Asia, leaving them vulnerable to a Japanese invasion. Spheres of influence in Europe and in Asia had been completely redrawn, leaving the United States with the prospect of fighting two wars simultaneously, against two dictatorships in two separate areas of the world. This prospect I shall discuss in its place at a later point.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  31 1.8.3  An embargo of sorts and more pressure for a new policy direction

In May 1938, public outrage against Japan caused a slight alteration in foreign policy of the United States. When Japan attacked Canton, newsreels and newspaper reports showed the cruelty and devastation suffered by Chinese civilians in attacks by Japanese aircraft. The American people were appalled, and when it became known that the Japanese bombers had been made in the United States and sold to Japan, a public outcry erupted. This time Hull was forced to take action. Instead of authorizing a public embargo, which Japan would have viewed unfavorably, he instituted a moral embargo, persuading all but one of the companies that were manufacturing the bombers to stop. As a result, his national policy remained intact. On its own, the moral embargo had almost no effect, as succinctly described by Jonathon Utley: ‘Japan could no longer buy planes from the United States, but it could and did continue to buy the machine tools to make them, spare parts to maintain them, gasoline to power them, and scrap iron to make the bombs they dropped’.86 Only a wholesale embargo on weaponry being supplied to Japan would have had an effect on Japan’s invasive plans, and this Hull was not prepared to do, in case an embargo of this magnitude led the United States into war with Japan. The glaring defect and unresolved problem in this strategy was that Japan’s basic national plan was to implement its New Order in Asia, including war with America, if that proved necessary. In controlling Japan’s oil supply and war materials, the United States still held the whip hand. If the U.S. had used this edge to pursue the same strategy as the Japanese were employing – that is, continuing with diplomatic negotiations in the hope that a rapprochement would be found, while simultaneously proceeding with the military and naval build-up that would be needed if those negotiations failed – the United States would have emerged as the most powerful of the two. This was a result which Hull’s wait-and-see policy was never going to achieve. In the end, the United States had to embark on a military build-up a couple of years later but, of course, the dilemma always facing Roosevelt and Hull was that the ‘negotiate while rearming’ strategy would have had to be carried out in a period when the U.S. public still remained isolationist. It was only when Japan joined the Axis in Europe in 1940 that the U.S. policy changed. Even then, Hull continued with it in its fundamental form. It was not until 26 November 1941 – ten days before the Pearl Harbor attack – that Hull finally conceded that his policy of deterrence was no longer in the national interest.87 From its inception, this policy, which year after year in the 1930s had served America well in the sense that it kept the nation out of war, had lacked credence, because it had always depended on the imminent collapse of the Kwantung Army in China, a key factor not actually under America’s control. In a nationwide radio address on 3 November 1938 Japanese Prime Minister [Prince] Konoe had defined the path that the Diet intended to follow, and the reasons for doing so. Foreign imperialism, he said, had brought disruption to Asia, and Japan intended to make Asia ‘a co-prosperity sphere, a new peace fabric controlled by Japan’.88 This dramatic statement by Japan’s prime minister left no room for doubt: all Western powers, including the United States, would be expelled from Asia.

32  The Asia Pacific War Yet, in line with Hull’s policy of non-intervention, the response from the State Department was that the American people would never ‘agree’ to Japan’s New Order in China. For the Japanese, this had to mean that, once again, America would ‘acquiesce’, as it had done during the Manchurian Incident and at the commencement of Japan’s sudden invasion of China in 1937. At this point, America’s foreign policy toward war with Japan seemed to be based on niceties of expression. It must also be asked how the United States had come to be in the invidious position of supporting China with loans and war materials to fight the Japanese while, at the same time, it was selling to Japan all the equipment it needed to kill the Chinese and take their territory away from them. The answer lay in the provisions of the 1911 commercial treaty between the Japanese and the United States that was binding on both parties. To rid itself of this commitment and have the power to impose embargoes if it wished, the United States had to serve a notice of abrogation of the treaty to Japan. Roosevelt finally did this on 26 July 1939; the release would come into effect six months later. Both the public and the press welcomed what their president had done – at last, the United States had begun to resist Japan and its demands. However, depending on what embargoes followed and Japan’s reaction to them, the possibility of an ensuing war could no longer be ruled out. Only five months after America had freed itself from this commercial treaty, Japanese Foreign Minister Arita Hachirō gave notice publicly that Japan intended to bring about a co-prosperity sphere, a Japanese-controlled New Order among ‘peoples related geographically, culturally, racially and economically’. The inference in this description was that not only China and other nearby Asian countries would be incorporated into this sphere, but also the whole of Southeast Asia. In a private conversation with U.S. Ambassador Grew, Arita said that control of a co-prosperity sphere was the only way Japan could ensure a regular supply of commodities for the country. Cordell Hull was not impressed. He felt that dictatorial control would crush the region, and only free and liberal trade relations could ensure its viability.89 While both men, Arita and Hull, were sincere in what they had said, neither was right. Japan did not have the supporting capacity to meet its political aims, nor did America possess the persuasive arguments to compel Japan to give up those aims. On receiving such authoritative confirmation about Japan’s future intentions, fresh divisions on strategy broke out in the State Department. Supporting Hull’s basic principles was Maxwell Hamilton, Chief of the Far Eastern Division, who said in an address to officers in the Army War College early in January 1940: ‘The sanctity of treaties, equality of commercial opportunities, and respect for the sovereignty of nations are concepts basic to American foreign policy. To abandon them in the Pacific would be to compromise the principles of our entire foreign relations’.90 Here, knowing the army’s previous reluctance to fight in the Pacific, Hamilton was stressing that there were interests vital to the United States which would justify warlike preparations in the Pacific. On the other hand, he went on to stress that no vital interests lay in China. (Ironically, as war with Japan drew close, China became of vital importance to the

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  33 United States because, while war with Japan continued there, about 1 million Japanese soldiers would be on active service there, rendering them unable to be deployed to Southeast Asia and the Pacific.) In opposition to Hull’s foreign policy were three senior officers in the State Department. While all three were activists, each had a different view on what policy to adopt. Stanley Hornbeck argued that diplomatic protests should be abandoned and replaced by a well-orchestrated program of economic sanctions. John Carter Vincent argued that the United States should not seek to liberate China but rather to ‘prevent Japan from consolidating her position in China and drawing strength for further aggressive action in other fields which would seriously menace our interests and probably lead to war’.91 Walter Adams was concerned that Japan had joined Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact; Adams argued that Japan should be crippled by restricting its exports to the United States. This clash of opinions within the State Department continued, none resulting in action against Japan. By the 1940s, after years of diplomatic negotiations, Hull’s appeasement policy had failed to achieve any palpable advance toward a pathway to lasting peace with Japan. Discontent in the Administration turned into despair. Stanley Hornbeck made his feelings clear in a stinging memo to Hull: We saw Japan take Formosa. We helped Japan take Korea. We let Japan take Manchuria. We let Japan take Rehe. We let Japan take Beiping [Beijing] – and Shanghai and Nanjing and Hangkow and Guangzhou. We forgave Japan’s sinking of the Panay. We forgave Japan’s bombing of the Tutuila. We have observed Japan’s bombing of civilians in China, her driving of more than 30 million people from their homes, her raping of women and her torturing of men and children. We have tolerated Japan’s taking in China American lives, her assaulting and injuring American men and women and children, her bombing and destruction of American missions and hospitals and schools, her ruining of American enterprises, her strangling of American trade, her interference with American officials and tampering with American mail etc., etc.92 This memorandum had no effect on Hull, who continued to pursue his policy through diplomacy and quelling ‘incidents’ that could damage it. In the Treasury,

34  The Asia Pacific War Harry Dexter White let his feelings of frustration be known in an internal memo to colleagues as late as June 1941: Where modern diplomacy calls for swift and bold action, we engage in long drawn out cautious negotiation … instead of squarely facing realities, we persist in enjoying costly prejudices; where we should speak openly and clearly, we engage in protocol, in secret schemes and subtleties.93 In a more measured observation, Joseph Ballantine, who was Hull’s principal assistant in diplomatic talks that he regarded as futile, had also come to the view that Japan did have a legitimate case in its assertions that it was being excluded from ‘economic and commercial opportunities in the Asiatic dependencies of white powers’. In a memo to his colleagues in the State Department, he went on to say that ‘if the situation persisted’ it would be difficult to eradicate the deep-seated feeling among Japanese that ‘white nations, especially the Anglo-Saxon powers, are exploiting Asiatic peoples to their own advantage’.94 Joseph Ballantine and fellow officer Max Schmidt then released a memorandum calling for a new direction that was not based on the comprehensive policy that Hull had overseen for years. This policy, which Hull had redrafted on 9 April 1941, set down the four principles from which he had never deviated: 1 respect for the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of each and all nations; 2 support for the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations; 3 support for the principle of equality, including the quality of commercial opportunity; 4 non-disturbance of the status quo in the Pacific except as the status quo might be altered by peaceful means.95 The new direction which Ballantine and Schmidt advocated was for the United States to take steps to reach a modus vivendi with Japan, a temporary agreement that would give the United States time to build up its forces. Also included was a call for Japan and China to begin peace negotiations. Hull neither agreed nor disagreed. He never responded.96 To be fair, the new direction did not contain the requirement that Japan withdraw from China, a sticking point on which Japan would never agree. 1.8.4  The road to the ‘day of infamy’

It was in this atmosphere of discord and inaction that relations between the United States and Japan altered radically during the early 1940s. Japan was preparing for war. There was no doubt about it. National addresses by the prime minister and the foreign minister forecasting the rise of a New Order in Asia paved the way. The National General Mobilization Law had placed the whole population on a war footing. Japan was no longer alone in Asia. It had joined the Axis in Europe as part

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  35 of the Tripartite Pact, threatening America with an increase in offensive power. And its empire had expanded marginally, but significantly. Japanese soldiers now occupied Hainan Island off the coast of China, as well as the Spratly Islands and French Indochina, both of which were ideal launching bases for an invasion of Southeast Asia. By this time, the situation had become of the gravest concern to the United States and there had been a dramatic shift in public opinion, especially as Germany was now occupying Poland, France, and Holland. Pummeled by German air attacks in the Battle of Britain, the British were fully engaged in fighting for their own national survival and, under Japanese pressure, had withdrawn in August 1940 from the international settlement in Shanghai that it had shared with the United States since 1863. Japanese soldiers promptly occupied the area, signaling a victory of the New Order in dispatching the West. The result of the European situation was that Indonesia and Malaya had become vulnerable to attack and presented rich prizes for Japan, ensuring free access to oil and rubber, assuming they were still under Japanese control once war in the Pacific came to an end. Japan was on the rise. That was obvious. The policy of non-confrontation was no longer viable. That also was obvious. Four years and more of diplomatic negotiations had made no headway in reaching a rapprochement between the two countries. The time had come for America to respond with a firm policy of resistance. Yet again the Administration was deeply divided on what course of action to take. A few examples will suffice. Cordell Hull continued to pursue his admirable but unrealizable policy. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Petroleum Coordinator for National Defense Harold Ickes, and Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson all favored immediate, full-scale embargoes. Roosevelt was too wary to do this and therefore gave more weight to the pragmatic plans of the Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark. Stimson pointed out that two advanced bombers had been developed – the B-17 Super Fortress and the B-47 Super Flying Fortress. To station 100 of these in the Philippines, alongside a build-up of military defenses, would deter Japan from attempting to reach Indonesia. Roosevelt accepted the plan and at the end of July 1941 ordered that action should commence at once to make it happen. Unfortunately, for the United States, the order came much too late, and it was the depleted U.S. forces in the Philippines that faced the onslaught of the Japanese 25th Army commanded by General Yamashita Tomoyuki. The second plan Roosevelt accepted was a war plan put forward by Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark, setting out ways that the United States could fight a war on two fronts. Stark’s plan was that the United States should ‘leave the Pacific to the British’ and concentrate ‘wholeheartedly’ on the war against Germany. While Stark’s plan to withdraw from the Pacific was not accepted by Roosevelt, his basic approach of taking a defensive stance in the Pacific and an offensive one in Europe was acceptable to the president. In addition to taking the advice of Stimson and Stark, Roosevelt gave a further order that, to demonstrate a stiffening of resistance to Japan, all its assets held by the United States should be frozen. There was a proviso that a selective freeze

36  The Asia Pacific War should be placed on Japan’s cash assets, allowing Japan to purchase those goods which the United States thought it should have. Thus, the unpredictable, dangerous repercussions of a total embargo being imposed on Japan would be avoided. Here, because of its great significance in bringing about the Pacific War, we must follow the trail of the president’s order from its inception to what was actually implemented. Roosevelt passed his order, with indicative details, to Assistant Secretary Sumner Welles, asking him to bring it into proper form. This task Welles assigned to Dean Acheson, Assistant Secretary to State, who had a long-standing conviction that America should stand up to Japan. Acheson altered the order for a selective embargo of Japan’s cash assets to a full embargo before sending the completed document containing his alterations back to Welles, who promptly changed the document again, making sure that it met the President’s directions. It was the document in this form Roosevelt signed. Welles then gave the completed document to Acheson, who was in charge of the group administering the freeze. First, Acheson consulted with his opposite numbers in the Treasury and Justice Departments. It was there he learned that Japan already held licenses to import oil and possessed enough funds to pay for these purchases, thus rendering the freeze ineffective. The three officers agreed there and then to stop the oil supplies to Japan. From that point on, Japan’s requests for the oil to which it was entitled were never refused but were held up through deliberately imposed administrative procedures. By the time Hull heard about what was, in effect, a de facto embargo, it was too late to correct it by reopening supply. The United States would have appeared to Japan to be vacillating and weak. The worst fears that Roosevelt had held for years about the consequences of placing a full-scale embargo on oil were now realized. Only four months after oil supply was denied to them, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Acheson certainly precipitated the start of the war, but this must be seen against the backdrop of conclusive decisions for war being taken by Japan at the same time. At an Imperial Conference on 6 September 1941, the High Command presented ‘The Essentials for Carrying Out the Empire’s Policies’ to the Emperor for approval, in which Japan ‘would carry out its policy toward the South’. Agenda Item 1 stated: Our Empire, for the purposes of self-defense and self-preservation, will complete preparations for war, with the last ten days in October as a tentative deadline, resolved to go to war with the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands if necessary.97 From this, it can be seen that massive preparations for war had already taken place in Japan, with a tentative date in October being set as a deadline for its beginning and, as we have seen, the planning for the Japanese navy to launch a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was well advanced. On the other hand, the decision by US administrative staff not to follow the President’s instructions and ‘to do America a favor’ is an archetypal example of how an order from the highest level can be thwarted, producing calamitous results. Through his instructions for a selective

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  37 embargo, Roosevelt wanted to avoid war; preventing his instructions from being implemented made war inevitable. Long before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Americans had developed a topsecret international codebreaking system called MAGIC. Thanks to MAGIC they had learned that the foreign minister of Japan, Matsuoka, regarded the alliance with the Axis as ‘the cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy’, hoping that this alliance would stop the United States from confronting Japan in any move south. What it also meant was that war with Germany would automatically involve war with Japan – altogether crucial secret information for America. Now, on 3 December 1941, MAGIC revealed through its decoded traffic that ‘something big was about to happen’. Roosevelt was determined not to be the first to strike. Only four days later – on 7 December 1941 – Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Following the attack, Roosevelt made one of his most famous speeches, excoriating Japan for having caused ‘this day of infamy’98 and uniting the whole country in its determination to defeat Japan. 1.9  Summation In his great history of the Peloponnesian War, the observation of Thucydides – that conflict between sovereign powers is motivated by honor, fear, and self-interest – applies equally in any study of the Asia Pacific War between Japan and the U.S.-led Allied Forces. Often these basic motivations intertwine. Japan was intent on bringing a New Order to Asia, driving the West out, and creating a vast ‘co-prosperity sphere’ which it would dominate. The United States, on the other hand, went to war to retain freedom of trade and an ‘open door policy’ allowing freedom of investment. The result was an ideological clash, which each saw as being in its own national interest. Secondly, both nations were motivated by fear. Japan feared that the nation would be encircled and cut off by the imposition of trade embargoes and the freezing of its assets. In the case of the United States, the fear was that Japan may have succeeded in its aim to create a vast dictatorial empire in Asia – stretching from the border of Manchuria with Russia to the Indonesian archipelago – and matched by an equivalent empire in Europe dominated by Nazi Germany. Thirdly, while for different reasons, neither the United States nor Japan wished to fight each other, defending their honor at national and international levels led them into battle. For Japan, the United States’ demand that Japan withdraw its army from China and French Indo-China was unthinkable, so great would be its loss of face. For the United States, keeping its army in the Philippines and ‘showing the flag’ became a matter of honor. Even though the United States was not prepared for an immediate war in Southeast Asia, retreat from their territories, and a loss of influence in that region was equally unthinkable. With the failure of diplomacy, intransigence from both sides made war inevitable. The ultimate question of who was responsible for the Asia Pacific War lies in the decisions Emperor Hirohito made. Interestingly, in their assessment of their relative strengths, both sides independently came to the same conclusion: that in the long-term Japan would not be able to withstand the U.S. might, but in the opening stages of the war Japan would have

38  The Asia Pacific War the upper hand. The Japanese leadership saw that, without adequate sea and air support, the U.S. Army in the Philippines would have difficulty in repelling a fullscale invasion from the Japanese. Here, the highly secret planning and the build-up of the Japanese army and navy with their respective air forces – coordinated to mount simultaneous attacks in different spheres of action – gave the Japanese confidence that an early strike and victories throughout South East Asia could place them in a strong bargaining position to negotiate a peace deal with America. Several fortuitous factors also hastened Japan’s decision to provoke the United States into war. The first of these was that by becoming a member of the Tripartite Pact, Japan was no longer alone; Germany and Italy had both pledged to come to its aid should it be attacked. Japan now had allies, although given Italy’s poor military record99 in the field and Hitler’s treatment of England in the 1930s, in which a pact between the two countries had turned out to be no more than signatures on a scrap of paper, Japan had to be wary about how much help would arrive. Nevertheless, the existence of the Pact buttressed Japan’s position should a confrontation with the United States occur. A second factor here, all in Japan’s favor, was the rapid advances Hitler had made in Europe in conquering France and Holland, threatening to invade England, and sweeping into Russia, after initially driving the Russian army further and further back. All this meant that France, Britain, and Holland were in no position to retain their colonies, and with Russia fully occupied in fighting the Nazis, the Manchurian border with Russia was safer from attack. In South East Asia, it was only the United States that could prevent Japan from procuring the oil, tin, and rubber that were crucial to continuing Japan’s fight with China, as well as ensuring supplies for the Japanese nation were secure. A third fortuitous factor hastening Japan’s decision to strike south was the sudden action by Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson to stop the delivery of oil and weapons to Japan, which escalated into the joint ABCD embargo and the encirclement that isolated the nation from international trade. Not least among the contributing causes that brought about the war were the personalities of the Japanese leaders, the power exercised by subordinate groups in the armed forces and administration, and the mood of the nation as a whole. As prime minister and minister of war, Tōjō was determined to break through the encirclement that threatened the nation. Chief of the Army General Sugiyama was confident that all the territories in South East Asia could be conquered in three months. The rebellious aggression of junior officers in Manchuria in 1931 marked the pathway for the upper echelons in the army to use the leverage they held to take control of military policy and, through it, to guide the nation into war. In seizing control of the Diet, the military was able to impose its will on the population, controlling information and replacing it with propaganda, while extremists fanned the flames. This strategy of desperation drove Japan to war, gambling on reaching a rapprochement with the United States, when the United States had shown itself to be completely opposed to a New Order in Asia. No consideration was given by the Japanese high command to a course of action to be taken if the United States, with its increasing might, continued to fight Japan. At the start of the Pacific War, the Japanese were heartened by their alliance with Germany in the Tripartite Pact, and

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  39 by the fact that the United States would be fighting on two fronts, in Europe and in Asia, thereby weakening their forces against Japan. On the other hand, Germany never provided any help to Japan, since its forces were also fighting on two fronts. Japan was persuaded to fight because the United States would initially be preoccupied with sending continuous supplies across the Atlantic to England and later to its military forces. On 11 December 1941, the United States declared war upon Germany, weakening their ability to resist an attack in Southeast Asia. A further factor which worked to Japan’s advantage was that Holland and France were already occupied by Germany, nullifying their presence in Southeast Asia. Japan was emboldened by the knowledge that an immediate attack would result in Japanese control over oil, rubber, and other supplies necessary for its plan to conquer China and Southeast Asia, and to maintain stability in Japan. In doing so Japan would be further down the track to realizing its plans to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with the Empire of Japan at its head. While studying the broad details of how and why the Asia Pacific War started, I cannot help thinking that history repeats itself, as contemporary situations have shown. As I write this Russia has been invading Ukraine, staring down the opposition of the NATO and the United States, but Russia hasn’t been successful. Every day on television we have witnessed the devastation wrought on Ukrainian towns, cities, and citizens. The futility of war is so clear. The world powers know that military confrontation is not a solution. At the time of the September 11 attacks, I thought that the United States would have a good reason to review their foreign policies on Afghanistan and reflect on why they had been attacked. Instead of considering these factors, the Bush Administration immediately began the so-called War on Terror to honor democracy. The results are another history lesson in the futility of violence. Notes 1 Thucydides (c.460–c.400 BCE) was an Athenian historian. His sole work of scholarship, History of the Peloponnesian War, recounts the fifth century BCE war between Sparta and Athens. He examined the perspectives and motives of all of the participants to demonstrate that ‘fear, honour, and self-interest’ are the characteristics of all wars. 2 Speech by the Athenians at a gathering of allies at the Greek nation state of Sparta, where Athens is accused of breaking the treaty with its allies, in Thucydides, translated by Benjamin Jowett, second edition, revised (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900) 52 [public domain]. The spelling of ‘honour’ in this quotation and the citation above is the same as used in this edition. 3 One of the wartime slogans of the Japanese was ‘kichiku beiei’ (literal meaning is ‘Americans and British are demons and animals’) implying that Western soldiers are savage. 4 For example, a controversial manga writer, Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953) justifies the Asia Pacific War as Japan acting in self-defense and contends that Japan’s actions were a challenge against Western colonialism. 5 Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). 6 Ienaga Saburō, The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese, 1931–45 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

40  The Asia Pacific War 7 Ienaga Saburō, Japan’s Last War (Canberra: ANU Press, 1965–1991). https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/114670/2/b12001491.pdf, accessed 15 December 2022. 8 Katō Yōko, Sensō made: Rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan's failure) (Tokyo: Asahi shuppan-sha, 2016). 9 Stemming from minor fighting since 1931, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) between China and Japan was triggered by the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge incident, which escalated into a full-scale battle. The infamous Nanking Massacre occurred in 1938. Upon Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, aided by the Soviet Union and the U.S.A., China became one of the four major Allies of the War (the U.K., the U.S.A., the Soviet Union, and China). 10 Ike Nobutaka, ed., Japan’s Decision for War. Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences, translated, edited, and with an introduction by (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967), 239. 11 Satō Kojirō, popularly known as the ‘Japanese Bernhardi’, was a propagandist, e.g., warning America should not attack Japan because they would follow in the footsteps of Mongolian invaders of old. ProQuest Historical Newspapers, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post) 9 October, 1923, accessed 15 September 2022. Also, see ‘The “Bernhardi” of Nippon Shocks United States’, in The Globe and Sunday Times War Pictorial (Sydney: 1914–1917) 1 January 1916; https://trove.nla. gov.au/newspaper/article/100576091/9467398, accessed 15 September 2022. Friedrich von Bernhardi was an influential German general and military historian who argued that waging war was a natural extension of politics, part of the natural order of things, and a necessity for advancement, ‘The Inevitability of War: General Friedrich von Bernhardi (1912)’, GHDC (German History in Documents and Images), https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/ sub_document.cfm?document_id=775, accessed 5 March 2023. 12 Satō Kojirō, If Japan and America Fight (Tokyo: Meguro Bunten, 1921). 13 Formed in 1906, following Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the Kwantung Army was named for the Kwantung Leased Territory of the strategically important Liaodong Peninsula of north-east China. Many of Japan’s most influential wartime military leaders had served with the Kwantung Army, including Tōjō Hideki. 14 Satō Kenryō (1895–1975) was an advisor to Tōjō. He was a war criminal, sentenced to life in prison for crimes against the peace but was paroled in 1956. The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia, https://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/S/a/Sato_Kenryo.htm accessed 15 September 2022. 15 Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, 45. 16 Peter Duus, ‘The “Paranoid Style” in Japanese Foreign Policy’, in Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, eds., Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001), 171. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.18507.34, (open access) accessed 15 December 2022. 17 Ishiwara Kanji (1889–1949) was a Japanese general and one of the main architects of the creation of Manchukuo. He played a key role in the Manchurian Incident in September 1931 as well as being involved in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937. Ishiwara was a leading proponent of pan-Asianism and became Vice Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army. As he was outspoken and denounced Tōjō Hideki, he was forced to retire. 18 Ienaga Saburō, The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese, 1931–45 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978) 12, note 24, 258. 19 Ienaga, The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese, 34. 20 The modernization of Japan during the Meiji era brought about the establishment of the Tokyo Imperial University to supply excellent men of ability for the government. Under the University Ordinance in 1918, 22 private universities were officially upgraded into the status of university, where autonomy and freedom of study were respected. 21 Ienaga, The Pacific War, 22.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  41 2 2 Ienaga, The Pacific War, 32. 23 The events leading to the creation of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria (Manchukuo) are reasonably well documented. See also Chapter 2 ‘The Neighbor’s Garden’, 28–47, in Robert J. C. Butow, Tojo and the Coming of War. 24 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, IMTFE Judgement (English Translation), ‘Chapter V, Japanese Aggression Against China, Sections I and II: Section I. Invasion and Occupation of Manchuria. The China War and its Phases. Japan’s Foothold in Manchuria at the Beginning of the War’, 523. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/ IMTFE/IMTFE-5.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 25 Chang Tso-lin, 1875–1928, was a Chinese bandit, soldier, and warlord in China. He was the warlord of Manchuria, 1926–1928. He was backed up by Japan but was defeated by the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek in 1928. On his retreat to Manchuria from Beijing by train, he was killed by a bomb planted by a Japanese Kwantung Army officer, Col. Kōmoto Daisaku (1883–1955). 26 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, IMTFE Judgement (English Translation), 523. 27 Hattori Ryūji, ‘Japan at War and Peace: Shidehara Kijūrō and the Making of Modern Diplomacy’ (Canberra: ANU Press, 2021), 170. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/52035/1/book.pdf, accessed 15 December, 2022. 28 Morishima Morito (1896–1975) was a diplomat, a politician, and an author. He was Consul-General of Japan in New York when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. His two publications are Inbō • ansatsu • guntō, (Conspiracy • assassination • swords) and Shinju-wan • Lisbon • Tokyo (Pearl Harbor • Lisbon • Tokyo). Both were published by Iwanami shinsho in 1950. https://www.kasumigasekikai.or.jp/2017-11-13-1/ accessed 15 September 2022. 29 Ienaga Saburō, Japan’s Last War, 21. 30 Ienaga, Japan’s Last War, 27–28. 31 Ienaga, Japan’s Last War, 28. 32 Harold G. Wren, ‘The Legal System of Pre-Western Japan’, Hastings Law Journal, 20, no. 1 (1968), 229, https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol20/iss1/5, accessed 15 December 2022. 33 Ienaga, Japan’s Last War, 36. 34 Hirota Kōki (1878–1948) was a Japanese diplomat and a politician. He served as the Prime Minister of Japan, from March 1936 to February 1937. He promulgated the Hirota Sangensoku (the Hirota three principles) in 1935 toward China: the establishment of a Japan-China-Manchukuo bloc; the organization of a Sino-Japanese front against the spread of communism; and the suppression of anti-Japanese activities in China. Due to his failure to act to prevent the Nanjing Massacre, among other charges, he was designated as a war criminal and was executed in the Sugamo Prison. 35 Ienaga, Japan’s Last War, 40. 36 Hirota Cabinet’s National and Foreign Policies, Fundamental Principles of National Policy www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/144app01.html, accessed 15 September 2022. 37 The best-known work on the subject is by Miller, Edward S., War Plan Orange: the US Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945 (Annapolis: Naval Institute, c1991). 38 Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: Macmillan, 1948), Vol. 1, 270. 39 Utley, Jonathan G., Going to War with Japan 1937–1941 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005) 16. 40 The Nine Power Treaty Conference or Brussels Conference was held after Chiang Kaishek’s appeal to help China resist Japan’s aggression at Brussels, 3–24 November 1937. Japan and Germany refused to participate. The conference did not produce any means to stop Japanese aggression. 41 Nagano Osami, 1880–1947, was Minister of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1936–1938) and Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff (1941–1944). He was charged with being a Class A war criminal but died of a heart attack in prison.

42  The Asia Pacific War 42 Because the conflict between the Chinese garrison and the Japanese garrison occurred near the Marco Polo Bridge, this incident was named the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. It was also known as Shina Jihen (China Incident) in Japan. 43 IMTFE, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Judgement of 4 November 1948, 495, https://crimeofaggression.info/documents/6/1948_Tokyo_Judgment.pdf, accessed 15 December 2022. 44 IMTFE, Judgement of 4 November 1948, 494. 45 The Japan Yearbook, 1946–1948 (Tokyo: Foreign Affairs Association of Japan), 177. 46 Matsui Iwane, 1878–1948, was born in Nagoya and was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army. He led the Japanese forces at the Battle of Shanghai, and then advanced to Nanking, where the troops under his command were convicted of war crimes – the Nanking Massacre. He was executed by hanging at the International War Tribunal for the Far East. 47 IMTFE, Judgement of 4 November 1948, 496. This is part of what Matsui is reported to have said and has been widely referenced by others, including Butow. 48 United States of America, Department of State, Office of the Historian, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Japan, 1931–1941, ‘Statement by the Japanese Prime Minister (Prince Konoye [sic.]), December 22, 1938’, https://history. state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1931-41v01/d332, accessed 15 December 2022. 49 ‘War in China: National Mobilization’, Time, 28 March 1938, https://content.time.com/ time/subscriber/article/0,33009,759363-1,00.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 50 Satō Kenryō, 1895–1975, Lieutenant Colonel and later Chief of the Military Affairs Bureau, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International War Tribunal for the Far East but was paroled in 1956. 51 Butow, Tojo and the Coming of the War, 113. 52 ‘July 2, 1941: The 5th Imperial Conference (Agenda: Imperial National Policy, Southeast Asia Policy, and British/US Policy)’, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, Data summary of Japanese language content of Document 1, https://www.jacar.go.jp/ english/nichibei/popup/pop_10.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 53 ‘July 2, 1941: The 5th Imperial Conference (Agenda: Imperial National Policy, Southeast Asia Policy, and British/US Policy)’, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, Data summary of Japanese language content of Document 2, https://www.jacar.go.jp/ english/nichibei/popup/pop_10.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 54 Vichy France (1940–1944) was the authoritarian French State governed by Marshal Philippe Petain during the Second World War. It adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany. 55 Ike, Japan’s Decision for War, 113. 56 IMTFE, The International Military Tribunal for the Far East Digital Collection, Tavenner Papers & IMFTE Official Papers, Box 26, Folder 2, ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’, (Tentative translation), http://imtfe.law.virginia. edu/collections/tavenner/26/2/decision-following-imperial-conference-september6-1941-tentative. Japanese language versions of the documents are available at Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’, https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_19.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 57 IMTFE, The International Military Tribunal for the Far East Digital Collection, Tavenner Papers ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’, (Tentative translation), Appendix, 1–3. 58 IMTFE, Digital Collection, 6–7. 59 Prince Konoe’s memoirs, which were used as evidence in the U.S. Congress Joint Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’ [cited below], referred to the Emperor reading

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  43 a poem referring to ‘Emperor Meiji’s ideal of international peace’. ‘Exhibit 173: Memoirs of Prince Konoye [sic.]’, U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings, Pt. 20, Exhibit No. 173, 4005 of 3985–4029,], http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/ pha/misc/konoye.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 60 ‘Exhibit 173: Memoirs of Prince Konoye [sic.]’, U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings, Pt. 20, Exhibit No. 173, 4013 of 3985–4029, http:// www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/misc/konoye.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 61 Ike, Japan’s Decision for War, 238. 62 ‘November 5, 1941: The 7th Imperial Conference (Agenda: Negotiation with the U.S. (Draft A/Draft B), Outline of Imperial national policy)’, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, data summary of Japanese language documents on the site, https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_22.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 63 Nomura Kichisaburō, 1877–1964, born in Wakayama, was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy and the ambassador to the United States at the time of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a member of a committee studying the rearmament of Japan. He believed in civilian control of armed forces. 64 ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’. Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Joint Committee of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, July 1946, 345–346, http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/congress/Vol40.pdf, accessed 15 December 2022. 65 ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’, 344. 66 ‘November 27, 1941, Ambassadors Nomura and Special Envoy Kurusu meets with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Hull rejects Draft B, then presents the “Hull Note”’, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, Document 4, Section 2, pages 1–3, https:// www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_26.html, accessed 15 December 2022. This site contains the data summary of five documents and the transcripts of three documents, the latter includes Japanese language top-secret telegrams sent from Ambassador Nomura to Prime Minister Tojo, and the Hull Note in English. 67 Tōgō Shigenori, 1882–1950, born in Kagoshima, was the Foreign Minister in the wartime governments under Prime Minister Suzuki Kantarō and Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki. He was known as a diplomat who worked for peace negotiations with Japan. He was an Aclass war criminal and died of illness in hospital while detained in the Sugamo Prison. 68 ‘November 17, 1941: Prime Minister Tojo Makes a Speech on Policy Towards the US at an Extraordinary Session of the Imperial Diet’, [documents in Japanese and English translation], Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The U.S.-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/ nichibei/popup/pop_24.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 69 ‘November 17, 1941: Prime Minister Tojo Makes a Speech on Policy Towards the US,’ 4–5. 70 ‘November 17, 1941: Prime Minister Tojo Makes a Speech on Policy Towards the US’, 2–3. 71 Japan’s final attempts and proposal for a diplomatic solution to the conflicts between the United States and Japan. As President Roosevelt had received leaked intelligence that Japan was ready for war, he decided not to present Japan with a temporary modus vivendi. 72 Shimada Toshio, 1877–1947, born in Gōtsu, Shimane, was Minister of Agriculture and Forestry under the Hirota administration and Minister of Agriculture and Commerce under the Koiso administration. 73 ‘Mr Kurusu Will Not Talk for “Too Long”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1941, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17774664, accessed 15 December 2022.

44  The Asia Pacific War 74 Utley, Going to war with Japan 1937–1941, 181. In the Minority Report of the U.S. Joint Committee Report on the Pearl Harbor Attack, dissenting committee members noted that army and navy leaders were drafting a memorandum to Roosevelt asking for a postponement of war against Japan so they could prepare and that Hull did not inform Britain and Australia of his actions, ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’. Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Joint Committee of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, July 1946, 563. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/congress/Vol40.pdf, accessed 15 December 2022. 75 ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’. Report of the Joint Committee, 53. 76 Ike, Japan’s Decision for War, 262, states that the order was issued on 3 November 1941, two days before the Emperor formally approved preparations, while the U.S. Joint Committee, 53, found that it was ‘promulgated to all fleet and task force commanders’ on 5 November. 77 ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’. Report of the Joint Committee, 53. 78 ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’, 49, footnote 135. 79 ‘Tojo Reading Hirohito Speech: Japan Declares War on U.S., Britain’ [official translation], UPI (United Press International) Archives, December 7, 1941, https://www. upi.com/Archives/1941/12/07/Tojo-reading-Hirohito-speech-Japan-declares-waron-US-Britain/5103382818544/#:~:text=%22We%2C%20by%20the%20grace%20 of,America%20and%20the%20British%20Empire, accessed 15 December 2022. 80 Admiral Harry Ervin Yarnell (1875–1959) was an American naval officer. 81 William D. Leahy, 1875–1959, born in Hampton, Iowa, was an American naval officer who played a major role in bringing about final victory against Germany and Japan in World War II. 82 Henry Morgenthau Jr., 1891–1967, born in New York, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. 83 Utley, Going to war with Japan 1937–1941, 28. 84 Utley, 45. 85 Utley, 41. 86 Utley, 41. 87 Utley, 181. 88 Utley, 44. 89 Utley, 91. 90 Utley,50. 91 Utley, 50. 92 Utley, 177, Hornbeck papers, memo 1 December 1941. 93 Utley, 170. 94 Utley, 169. 95 Utley, 143. 96 Utley, 169. 97 ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’, Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, data summary of Japanese language documents. https://www. jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_19.html, accessed 15 December 2022; http:// imtfe.law.virginia.edu/collections/tavenner/26/2/decision-following-imperial-conferenceseptember-6-1941-tentative, English translation, accessed 15 December 2022. 98 ‘This Day of Infamy’ is known as the Infamy Speech by President Roosevelt to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 1941. The Congress passed a formal declaration of war against Japan. 99 Benito Mussolini, Prime Minister of Italy (1922–1943), was a fascist dictator. The Fascist Italian military were inadequately financed during the war, resulting in poor performance, which was often satirized in popular culture. https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/6/6/was-the-italian-military-in-world-war-2-really-thatbad, accessed 30 December 2022.

The Origins of the Asia Pacific War  45 Bibliography Books Butow, Robert J. C., Tojo and the Coming of the War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Duus, Peter, ‘The “Paranoid Style” in Japanese Foreign Policy’, in Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, eds., Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2001, 169–174. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.18507.34. Hattori, Ryūji, Japan at War and Peace: Shidehara Kijūrō and the Making of Modern Diplomacy, Canberra: ANU Press, 2021. https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/52035/1/book.pdf. Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York: Macmillan, 1948, Vol.1. Ienaga, Saburō, Japan’s Last War, Canberra: ANU Press, 1965–1991, 21. https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/114670/2/b12001491.pdf. Ienaga, Saburō, The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese, 1931–45, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Ike, Nobutaka, ed., Japan’s Decision for War. Records of the 1941 Policy Conferences, translated, edited and with an introduction by Ike Nobutaka, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967. Katō, Yōko, Sensō made: Rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan's failure), Tokyo: Asahi shuppan-sha, 2016. Miller, Edward S., War Plan Orange: the US Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897–1945, Annapolis: Naval Institute, c1991. Satō, Kojirō, If Japan and America Fight, Tokyo: Meguro Bunten, 1921. The Japan Yearbook, 1946–1948, Tokyo: Foreign Affairs Association of Japan. Thucydides, translated by Benjamin Jowett, second edition, revised, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900, [public domain]. Utley, Jonathan G., Going to war with Japan 1937–1941, New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Articles ‘Mr Kurusu Will Not Talk for “Too Long”‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1941, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17774664, accessed 15 December 2022. ‘Satō Kenryō, (1895–1975)’. The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia, https://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/S/a/Sato_Kenryo.htm. South China Morning Post, 9 October, 1923, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. [Propagandist Satō Kojirō warning that America should not attack Japan because they would follow in the footsteps of Mongolian invaders of old]. ‘The “Bernhardi” of Nippon Shocks United States’, The Globe and Sunday Times War Pictorial [Sydney, NSW: 1914–1917], 1 January 1916; https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ article/100576091/9467398. ‘Tojo Reading Hirohito Speech: Japan Declares War on U.S., Britian’ [official translation], UPI (United Press International) Archives, December 7, 1941, https://www. upi.com/Archives/1941/12/07/Tojo-reading-Hirohito-speech-Japan-declares-waron-US-Britain/5103382818544/#:˜:text=%22We%2C%20by%20the%20grace%20 of,America%20and%20the%20British%20Empire, accessed 15 December 2022. ‘War in China: National Mobilization’, Time, 28 March 1938, https://content.time.com/time/ subscriber/article/0,33009,759363-1,00.html, accessed 15 December 2022.

46  The Asia Pacific War Wren, Harold G., ‘The Legal System of Pre-Western Japan’, Hastings Law Journal, 20, no. 1 (1968), 229, https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol20/iss1/5. Websites GHDC (German History in Documents and Images). https://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document. cfm?document_id=775. Hirota Cabinet’s National and Foreign Policies, Fundamental Principles of National Policy. www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/144app01.html. Ibiblio ‘Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack’. Report of the Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Joint Committee of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, July 1946 [scanned volume of proceedings]. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/congress/Vol40. pdf. ‘Exhibit 173: Memoirs of Prince Konoye [sic.]’, U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Pearl Harbor Attack: Hearings, Pt. 20, Exhibit No. 173, pp.3985–4029. http://www.ibiblio.org/ pha/pha/misc/konoye.html. IMTFE, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, IMTFE Judgement [English Translation], ‘Chapter V, Japanese Aggression Against China, Sections I and II: Section I. Invasion and Occupation of Manchuria. The China War and its Phases. Japan’s Foothold in Manchuria at the Beginning of the War’. https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/IMTFE/ IMTFE-5.html. IMTFE, International Military Tribunal for the Far East Digital Collection, Tavenner Papers & IMFTE Official Papers, Box 26, Folder 2, ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’. http://imtfe.law.virginia.edu/collections/tavenner/26/2/ decision-following-imperial-conference-september-6-1941-tentative. IMTFE, International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Judgement of 4 November 1948. https://crimeofaggression.info/documents/6/1948_Tokyo_Judgment.pdf. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan, The US-Japan War Talks as seen in Official Documents, (Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) ‘July 2, 1941: The 5th Imperial Conference (Agenda: Imperial National Policy, Southeast Asia Policy, and British/US Policy)’, Data summary of Japanese language content of documents. https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_10.html. ‘Decision Following the Imperial Conference of September 6, 1941’. https://www.jacar. go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_19.html. ‘November 5, 1941: The 7th Imperial Conference (Agenda: Negotiation with the U.S. (Draft A/Draft B), Outline of Imperial national policy)’. https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_22.html. ‘November 27, 1941, Ambassadors Nomura and Special Envoy Kurusu meets with US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and Hull rejects Draft B, then presents the “Hull Note”’. https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_26.html. ‘November 17, 1941: Prime Minister Tojo Makes a Speech on Policy Towards the US at an Extraordinary Session of the Imperial Diet’, [documents in Japanese and English translation]. https://www.jacar.go.jp/english/nichibei/popup/pop_24.html. United States of America, Department of State, Office of the Historian, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Japan, 1931–1941, ‘Statement by the Japanese Prime Minister (Prince Konoye [sic.]), December 22, 1938’. https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1931-41v01/d332.

2

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War

2.1 Introduction The Asia Pacific War finished long ago, yet we continue to live with its sociopolitical and cultural consequences. Its impact on humanity remains strong and is immeasurable, because it directly affected those who lived through that time of war and indirectly affected the generations who came after. To grasp the direct impact of war, this chapter focuses on the price that the Japanese people paid for the war as combatants, non-combatants, students, mothers, and children. While the generations who knew wartime have been diminishing, their legacies have been bequeathed to families and friends, some of whom have responded strongly to their forebears’ hardship by taking the responsive and positive actions that have led to peace movements. Their active engagement in dealing with what war means to them continues in multiple ways to this day and has contributed to making a more enlightened Japanese society. In my view, the awakening of Japan’s civil society was born out of the ruins of the disastrous Asia Pacific War. Statistics are essential and reliable, but there is also vital significance in records of individual human experiences and people’s responses to what happened to them. A few lines from a poem, such as these written by a former soldier, can have a haunting and galvanizing impact: The dead bodies of young Japanese soldiers With their eyes vacantly open Scattered as far as one can see on the road As if they were laundries just squeezed water1 Shikoku Gorō, the last stanza of his unpublished poem ‘Natsukusa ya tsuwamonodomo ga yume no ato’2 It has been estimated that over 20 million Asian people died during the conflict, including more than 3 million Japanese. The Asia Pacific War was triggered by an immense gamble taken by reckless expansionist leaders in Japan, steered chiefly

DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-4

48  The Asia Pacific War by the Imperial Army. Wherever the Japanese army went – in China, Korea, South Asian countries, or the Pacific islands – they left a trail of cruelty and carnage. The Japanese Imperial Forces took 140,000 allied prisoners of war (POWs), and by the end of the war, 30,000 of those POWs had died in Japan or elsewhere, from starvation, disease, or maltreatment. Late in the war, some Japanese soldiers became prisoners themselves. The U.S.S.R. broke the Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact3 when the strong Soviet Army of 1,500,000 soldiers attacked Manchuria on 9 August 1945 and took some 600,000 Japanese soldiers, including Koreans, as prisoners. They were detained mainly in Siberia and forced to perform daily hard labor. Cold weather, disease, and malnutrition claimed the lives of an estimated 60,000 of these prisoners. Clearly, the scale of the human impact of the war is mindboggling. The Japanese people paid with their blood and hardship on home soil, especially toward the end of the conflict, when Japan was crushed by the combination of atomic bombings, the battle of Okinawa, the above-mentioned Soviet Army attack on the Manchurian border, and the U.S. Forces’ air raids. By choosing to emphasize what happened in these events at the end of the war, Japan’s successive postwar governments have encouraged their citizens to evade taking full responsibility for the war Japan started and for reconciliation efforts. Rather than looking at Japan’s role in the war in totality, these governments have suppressed the truth and the evidence in order to maintain their political power. Among these pieces of evidence are photographs of Japanese soldiers queuing up for their turn to enter the comfort stations – images that are appalling for their unabashed presentation of the attitude that they suggest.4 And what is not to be found are photos of the comfort women themselves, silent victims of war. The effectiveness of wartime propaganda, censorship, and indoctrination meant that it was only when the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was established that the Japanese people became aware of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Army.5 As noted above, that awareness was relatively short-lived because of the reluctance of conservative Japanese governments to educate postwar generations on the detail and extent of the aggression perpetrated by their troops in the Asia Pacific War. Nevertheless, those directly affected have never forgotten their experiences, and some have taken steps to record depositions before they died. For example, a witness account, by the 97-year-old war veteran Ikuta Jirō,6 was registered in the NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, The Japan Broadcasting Company) Archives of War Witnesses in August 2018. Ikuta’s story was reported in an article titled ‘A Confession after 73 Years’ that appeared in the newspaper Tokyo Shinbun on 25 August 2018. Ikuta was one of 300 Japanese soldiers who had been involved in a series of forced marches of Allied POWs from Sandakan to Ranau (in what is now Malaysia) from January to June 1945. As a result, 2,345 of the POWs died from starvation or diseases such as malaria and dengue fever; only 6 POWs survived, largely because they managed to escape. In addition, only a handful of the Japanese soldiers survived the ordeal as well, Ikuta among them. In his witness account, Ikuta told of how hard it had been to abandon his dying fellow soldiers, yet he showed no sign of remorse over the POWs who died. He did, however, mention how futile the war was and the

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  49 emptiness that had engulfed him when he was repatriated from Malaysia.7 Captors and captives had met the same fate, a fate lacking all humanity. Why did this happen – was it a lack of empathy, or apathy, or madness? There is no shortage of horror stories or photographs from the war, including those documenting events such as the Nanjing Massacre, the Bataan Death Marches, and the atomic bomb attacks. I will go on to discuss in Part II how postwar generations have been responding to the legacy of their forefathers. But first, I would like to examine some of the causes of the atrocities Japan committed. Fundamentally, as John W. Dower has pointed out in his seminal works War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986) and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999),8 vicious racism was a characteristic of the conflict. What allowed such evil to become rampant was, without doubt, indoctrination through propaganda conducted by the media and official educational channels. After Japan’s defeat, however, most Japanese realized that the authorities had been propagating a succession of lies. An example of this was the brainwashing of the people, especially children and young adults, by telling them that their enemies were devils, as in the slogan kichiku beiei (the Americans and British are devils). But as the people witnessed American medics treating injured Japanese girls with Ringer’s solution on the beaches in Okinawa in 1945, they understood how misled they had been.9 I want to begin by focusing on how and why Japanese wartime leaders misled their people by crafting army and government policies, regulations, and practices that affected not only their own soldiers and civilians, but also foreign residents in Japan, including POWs. In the first place, Japan’s imperial system was anachronistic, as was the imperial army system, in which class distinctions blocked freedom of discussion and access to the truth. Their leaders demanded that all Japanese people be loyal subjects of the national polity (kokutai) that had the emperor at its head. The idea of the superiority of the Japanese race was buttressed through imperial mythology and became the justification for discrimination against other races. Meiji Japan (1868–1912) had declared the emperor’s divinity in its constitution (Article 3, ‘sacred and inviolable’), which remained in place until the promulgation of the new constitution in 1947. While recognizing and embracing Western superiority in advanced modern technologies, Japan maintained its unity by adhering to the imperial system that was based on the native religious culture of Shinto. In the second half of this chapter, I shall first discuss two novels that vividly depict the horror of war: Ōoka Shōhei’s Nobi (Fires on the Plain, 1952),10 which focuses on the impact of the war on combatants, and Ibuse Masuji’s Kuroi ame (Black Rain, 1966),11 which focuses on civilians. Both authors experienced the war firsthand – Ōoka as a POW of the United States and Ibuse when he was drafted to work as an editor for the Shōnan Shinbun in Singapore.12 Their classic works measure the impact of the war on individuals, whereas the hard evidence of statistics obscures the individual experiences of human beings. Finally, an exploration of two of the unpublished poems written by Shikoku Gorō will provide a perspective of the young foot soldiers’ war experience.

50  The Asia Pacific War 2.2 The misleading policies of the Imperial Army and the government The rhetoric of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere masked the general thrust of Japan’s wartime policies, which were either lacking any consideration of human rights and had racist undertones, or were crudely or deliberately ambiguous. The Imperial Japanese Army and the government issued policies, regulations, and directives that were responsible for the deaths of combatants, civilians, POWs, and neighboring people, including Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos. It is difficult to summarize these policies, but the common feature of them is the clear presumption of racial superiority and an army and the government regulated by a strict class system.13 I shall discuss how these played out during the war, especially in the case of the most vulnerable: POWs, comfort women, and forced laborers. 2.2.1 Racial discrimination, the class system, the Geneva Convention, and POW Issues

No nation is immune from the taint of racism, but it is when authorities endorse it in specific ways that real problems emerge. It is well known that Japan strongly sought support for its Racial Equality Proposal at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference,14 but opposition – chiefly from Australia and the United States – prevented its adoption. At that time, Japan wanted to be treated as an equal by the Western powers who had assembled to discuss the creation of the League of Nations after the disaster that unfolded during World War I. Japan was the only ‘non-white’ nation among the five major powers: the United Kingdom, the United States of America, France, Italy, and Japan. Despite its proposal, Japan did not promote universal racial equality.15 It sought equality to advance its own interests and without considering the ramifications for other countries, particularly its neighbors in Asia. Following this rebuff, Japan became increasingly isolated from the world powers, leading to the rise of strong nationalism. Invasion was justified as the means to protect Japan’s rights in China, which had been granted after World War I. Through the powerful messages of the media, the Japanese were, in general, trained to unquestioningly despise and discriminate against the Chinese, Koreans, people of South Asian countries, and white POWs. When engaged in war, the rules of war – the Geneva Conventions16 – ought to have been followed by the nations who ratified those agreements. According to Utsumi Aiko, however, internal opposition from the Japanese Army, Navy, and Privy Council meant that Japan did not ratify the 1919 Geneva Conventions, which required the protection of POWs, even though it was a signatory country. Japan’s ill-treatment of POWs became a major issue at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (International Military Tribunal for the Far East or IMTFE) that was convened in April of 1946, yet the Japanese defendants didn’t understand why they were being charged with war crimes, particularly as BC-class war criminals.17 Ordinary Japanese people had heard nothing about the ill-treatment of POWs in the camps overseas and within their own country. While the failure to face up to misconduct, human rights violations, and war crimes is a characteristic of many regimes,

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  51 incidents of mistreatment inflicted on Chinese or Korean women, and atrocities committed by Japanese army had been leaked and shared privately only within a small circle of people. There was a clear discrepancy between the bitterness with which the Allied Forces perceived these issues and the apparent indifference of the Japanese to POWs. Japanese soldiers were coerced into believing that becoming a captive was shameful. If captured, they were expected to kill themselves. In turn, they expected the same attitude to apply to the POWs of Japan. It was the result of the statement that Tōjō Hideki, Prime Minister (1944–1945), had made in Senjinkun (Instructions for the Battlefield), which will be discussed later. The prevailing culture had conditioned the Japanese to have a high tolerance of harsh treatment from their superiors: beating or slapping the face of a soldier under command (pinta) was accepted as an everyday practice in the Japanese army. It may have seemed barbaric to outsiders, but in the culture of the Imperial Japanese Army, it was not considered to be abuse.18 This meant that the accused were dissatisfied with (what they thought was) the unfairness of guilty verdicts in war crimes trials, which were based on witness accounts by surviving POWs. The accused had been judging their captives by the standards that the Japanese army had set for its own soldiers. When war broke out, in response to the Allied Nations’ request for ratification of the Geneva Conventions, the Japanese Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement affirming that Japan intended to ‘apply in mutatis mutandis’ (jun’yō)’ – the principles of the conventions it had not ratified. What jun’yō meant was that Japan did not want to be bound by the Geneva Conventions, as the POWs were of different nationalities, ranks, and cultures,19 and the administration would apply for necessary modifications and apply Japan’s domestic law. In practice this meant that Allied military officers of higher rank who were detained in a Japanese camp were treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. The officers were not forced to do hard labor and were paid a salary, as they were detained in the camps that were managed by the War Ministry. They were ‘regular prisoners’.20 On the other hand, a large number of POWs who were captured on the battlefield, for whom no proper camps were assigned, were categorized as ‘irregular prisoners’21 and were managed according to the instructions of the local military operations unit. In this way, responsibility for the management of POWs and the manner of their treatment varied, depending on where they were detained. Japan had two bureaucratic offices for the treatment of POWs: Furyo jōhōkyoku (Prisoner of War Information Bureau, December 1941) and Furyo kanri-bu (Management Office for POWs, March 1942). The directors of the two offices had no power to act or make recommendations. Inadequate staffing, and budgetary and bureaucratic imperatives requiring decisions from Japanese military headquarters meant that their operations had no effect.22 Records of names, positions, and countries of POWs were incomplete and often inaccurate. As described in a report submitted to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal by American Major General Archer L. Lerch,23 the inefficiency of the offices arose from the rigid hierarchy of the army, whereby any decision had to come through the War Ministry. And, in any event,

52  The Asia Pacific War contempt for Chinese, Koreans, and white POWs was rife in Japan’s army culture. The two offices were therefore regarded as insignificant, despite the existence of roughly 200 POW camps overseas and 130 camps in Japan. 2.2.2 Senjinkun

Senjinkun (Instructions for the Battlefield) was the name of a booklet issued on 8 January 1941 by the Minister of War Tōjō Hideki. Its primary purpose was to educate soldiers on how to behave on the battlefield, although it was also used for school education later. Written in the bungo (classical) style, it echoes the classical rhythms of imperial poetry. The publication asserted strongly that Japan was a country of divine origin, where divine imperial lineage had endured for centuries. It demanded total selfless loyalty to the emperor. Senjinkun forbade surrender and described the disgrace and shame of allowing oneself to be captured, in contrast to which death and suicide on the battlefield were honorable. All soldiers understood what was expected of them if they were in danger of being captured. Traditionally, overcoming the fear of death had been regarded as a manly virtue, so that ritual suicide (seppuku) was considered an honorable act in the tradition of the feudal samurai code of bravery and heroism. In the final period of the war, the Japanese army was no longer properly equipped with ammunition, rations, and medicines. Yet personnel were not allowed to surrender, a situation which meant that they had to fight to the last man in the manner of gyokusai (a shattered jewel). A euphemism for annihilation, this term sounds Table 2.1  Military deaths in Pacific island battles during the Asia Pacific War Battlefield

Okinawa Iō Island Saipan Island Tinian Island Guam Island Biak Island Angaur Island Peleliu Island Attu Island Roi-Namur Island Kwajalein Island Makin Island Tarawa Island Tulagi Island

Armed Forces

Period

Japanese casualties

Allied and American casualties

Allied American American American American Allied American American American American American American American Allied

26.3.1945−23.6.1945 19.2.1945−26.3.1945 15.6.1944−7.7.1944 24.7.1944−2.8.1944 21.7.1944−11.8.1944 27.5.1944−20.8.1944 17.9.1944−19.10.1944 15.9.1944−27.11.1944 12.5.1943−29.5.1943 30.1.1944 30.1.1944−6.2.1944 20.11.1943−23.11.1943 21.11.1943−23.11.1943 7.8.1942−8.8.1942 Total

94,000 19,000 30,000 8,500 18,000 10,000 1,200 10,700 2,600 3,000 5,200 600 2,600 400 205,800

12,000 6,800 3,000 326 3,000 474 260 1,800 1,000 200 142 763 1,000 45 30,550

Compiled by the author in accordance with the information on the website of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare,24 and various sources, including Dēta de miru Taiheiyō sensō (The Pacific War through the data, 2017)25 and Ōkina chizu de yomitoku Taiheiyō sensō no subete (All about the Pacific War through analyzing large maps, 2014).26

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  53 beautiful and honorable, but it obscured the truth – military failure meant the sacrifice of one’s life. Below is a table showing the number of deaths in the Pacific islands, where major battles occurred. The numbers are estimates and differ between sources, but they show the large numbers of deaths on both sides, and particularly the impact of gyokusai on Japanese combatants. Japanese casualty numbers were far higher than those of the Allied Forces. The comparison is a grim illustration of the disparity, toward the end of the war in particular, between the equipment, technology, and rations available to the Japanese army and what was at the disposal of the allied troops led by the United States. Ikuta, the survivor of the Sandakan Death Marches mentioned above, condemned the Imperial Army and the government for not surrendering before the extreme carnage suffered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Respect for individual human life was completely missing in the Japanese military code of conduct. As shown in all but one case, the large number of Japanese casualties in comparison with allied and American casualties reveals not only the severity of fighting, but also the determination of Japanese to never surrender. When captured, Japanese soldiers fell into a state of self-renunciation, whereby they denied their identity. The Featherston Breakout (1943) by Japanese POWs in New Zealand and the Cowra Breakout in Australia (1944) were regarded as suicidal and tragic, a waste of young lives and living proof of just how spellbinding Tōjō’s Senjinkun had become. Nakano Fujio’s detailed study of the Cowra Breakout, however, established that it was a single ultranationalist at the camp who incited his fellow POWs – many of whom would likely have preferred to live on – to make the doomed attempt. Nakano, in his book Kaura no totsugeki rappa, naze zerosen pairotto wa shindaka (The bugle for the charge at Cowra: why did this zero fighter pilot die?),27 draws a parallel between Cowra and Japan’s wartime imperial conferences, which became known for leaving matters undecided for prolonged periods. He argues that Senjinkun was made into a ‘fumie’28 – a test of loyalty – for the Japanese POWs, compelling them to vote for the attack contrary to their true wishes. The instigator of the breakout was Shimoyama Yoshio, who survived the breakout despite his agitation; he later hanged himself as a result of the accusations directed at him by the other surviving Japanese POWs. 2.2.3  General Tōjō Hideki’s directives on treatment of POWs

On 30 May 1942, Tōjō addressed the Zentsūji troop division29 of the Imperial Army on how to treat POWs: ‘Never let them [POWs] be idle even a single day and make the most of their labor and skills to expand our productivity’.30 This caused POWs to be treated as a source of slave labor. Tōjō regarded being captured by the enemy as shameful, and so, an honorable death must follow – senjinkun, which led to gyokusai – a mass suicide of fallen soldiers. In the same vein, Japanese soldiers despised POWs, as they lacked the status of soldiers. The fall of Singapore meant the supremacy of white Western power was in tatters. Thus, ill-treatment of POWs was endemic in many POW camps, for example, Hintok Camp on the Thai-Burma Railway construction sites and Naoetsu POW Camp in Japan. The treatment demonstrated Japan’s entrenched belief in its racial and cultural superiority.

54  The Asia Pacific War By the end of the war, there were 32,418 POWs in Japan held in approximately 130 POW camps situated near the mining areas and ports where they were forced to work. A further 3,500 had died in them. Beyond Japan, there were numerous POW camps in Korea, Hōten (at Mukden), Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaya, Borneo, and Java, as well as Navy Camps in the Southern Pacific islands. The exact number of allied POWs outside Japan was unknown, apart from Thailand, where 152,090 allied POWs were detained.31 The cruel treatment of POWs was often meted out by sadistic Japanese camp managers and/or Korean guards. The latter were themselves maltreated by their senior Japanese military officers. A combination of bureaucratic indifference and conviction of racial superiority led to Japan’s inability to accurately manage the individual records of POWs, as well as those of its Korean guards. This has left a stain on Japan’s postwar history. 2.2.4  C  hinese Laborers’ transportation policy (Kajin rōmusha naichi inyū hōshin)

To offset the shortage of wartime labor on the home front, the Tōjō Cabinet instructed that Chinese laborers were to be forcibly relocated to Japan. The Minister of Commerce and Industry Kishi Nobusuke (1896–1987) was responsible for this monstrous policy – Kajin rōmusha naichi inyū hōshin – which was issued on 27 November 1942. The way these people were taken by force from villages and off the streets in broad daylight was abominable. They were supposed to be paid for their labor, but that never happened. The 1945 Hanaoka uprising by Chinese forced laborers and their escape led to one of the worst cases of maltreatment of these individuals.32 After being recaptured, over 400 Chinese laborers were tortured to death by the kenpei (military police), police, and guards. This treatment was fueled by racial hatred directed toward the Chinese. Ibaragi Noriko’s epic poem The Tale of Liu Lianren (1965)33 depicted the escape of the Chinese forced laborer Liu Lianren and his journey from the awful conditions of the mine where he had worked after he had been taken by force from Shandong province. Kishi Nobusuke was convicted as an A-class war criminal after the war, only to be politically pardoned in 1948. 2.2.5  Chōhatsu-rei (Requisition orders)34

During Japan’s military campaigns in Malaya, China, the Philippines, and Burma – indeed, in all areas where the Imperial Army operated – supplies of ammunition, rations, and fuel were locally sourced, sometimes with payment but mostly without. In the final futile period of the war, Japanese soldiers were looting everything at gunpoint. The impact of this policy of reliance on forced requisitioning, and its inevitable failure as the war dragged on, had terrible consequences not only for the people of occupied territories, but ultimately for Japan’s own soldiers as well. It was another mark of shame on Japan. Taking advantage of the Nazis’ invasion of France in 1940, the Japanese army had invaded French Indochina, occupying it for five years in the name of the

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  55 Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Indirectly, the use of Chōhatsu-rei must have been partly responsible for Vietnam’s great famine of 1944–1945, in which roughly two million Vietnamese starved to death. From 1940 to 1945, when the Japanese army was stationed in Vietnam, they had placed a levy on rice to supply army provisions and also shipments to Japan, where food shortages were severe. According to Bui Minh Dung,35 Japan’s forced conversion of Indochina’s traditional rice and maize crops into crops-yielding fiber (such as jute and cotton) and vegetable oils, especially in the north (Tonkin), was a further major contributor to the famine, alongside weather and floods. Toward the end of the war, 60% of Japanese soldiers fighting in the Pacific islands lost their lives through starvation and disease.36 From 1943, U.S. General MacArthur’s ‘island-hopping’ strategy effectively cut Japan’s transport routes at a time when it no longer had sufficient ships and planes and was lacking an adequate supply of rice to feed its soldiers. From this fact alone, it can be argued that Japan should have conceded defeat before the battle of Okinawa (April–June 1945), the atomic bombings (August 1945), and the intensification of air raids on Japan in the last year of the war.37 The army’s policy on rations was that they be met locally, not centrally. On the Pacific islands, where such local requisition was no longer possible, 2.3 million Japanese soldiers starved to death.38 They were abandoned as a result of the U.S.-led Allied Forces’ strategy of bombarding the sea supply chain. This abandonment appears heartless when compared to the situation of German soldiers in World War II: German soldiers’ rations increased during the war.39 Had it not, German soldiers would not have been able to continue fighting. Such was the value placed on the life of the individual German soldier. At a later point, we will see, in the novel Fires on the Plain, just how badly Japanese foot soldiers were treated by the army. 2.2.6.  T  he ‘Three Alls’ strategy of ‘Kill All, Burn All, Loot All’ (Sankō-sakusen)

Japan’s military aggression in China was defined by a scorched earth policy. When this was enforced against the Chinese in 1942, millions of Chinese civilians became victims. This large-scale atrocity first became known to the Japanese people through confessions by ex-soldiers. A group of some thousand returned soldiers took action in 1957 by embarking on a China-Japan friendship mission,40 speaking out about what they had done in China and how their war crimes had been pardoned under the lenient policy of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. Their experiences at the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre had been extraordinary – both Japanese prisoners and Chinese guards there had made great efforts to overcome vicious racism.41 Addressing the impact of the war on people from both sides had given new hope in this case. The former Japanese detainees admired the Chinese, who had dealt with them according to the principle of ‘repaying rancor with virtue’.42 When these Japanese were repatriated, they were treated with suspicion by their own people, who saw them as having been brainwashed by communist thought – a clear case of mistrust and self-protection.

56  The Asia Pacific War 2.3  Two Japanese writers on the human impact of the war Beyond state policies, the experiences of combatants were of real significance, particularly for writers who saw the war in action and often skillfully incorporated their memories into narratives. Two such writers were Ōoka Shōhei (1909– 1988) and Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993). Ōoka Shōhei was one of Japan’s most successful writers of war literature, and he wrote of the devastating effects of the war on individual soldiers in his novel Nobi (Fires on the Plain, 1952). Over a decade later, Ibuse Masuji published Kuroi ame (Black Rain, 1966), one of the most celebrated works of the genbaku bungaku (atomic-bomb literature) genre. 2.3.1  Ōoka Shōhei (1909–1988)

A prolific writer across several genres, including translation and criticism, Ōoka Shōhei was born in 1909 in Tokyo and entered the Aoyama Gakuin Middle School in 1921, where he became interested in Christianity. He graduated from Kyoto Imperial University in 1929, specializing in French literature, with a focus on Stendhal. He was drafted in July 1944 as a communications technician and sent to the island of Mindoro in the Philippines, where he was captured by the Americans in January 1945. This life-and-death experience lasting seven months resulted in his autobiographical work Furyo-ki (Taken Captive, 1946). Furyo-ki was awarded the Yokomitsu Riichi Prize43 in 1949. As a realist writer, Ōoka offered psychological observations of situations and people, so that his narratives became the means to examine the nature of humanity. His Reite senki (Records of the Battle of Leyte) was serialized in 1967 in the journal Chūō Kōron. In this seminal work in the senki (battle record) genre, Ōoka painted a vivid picture of how desperate and fierce the fighting was, quoting authentic details and statistics, such as the number of dead and survivors; the real names of American and Japanese army officers in charge of military strategies; and, figures relating to livestock losses that revealed the damage the Japanese army had done to the local people while stationed in the Philippines between 1939 and 1945.44 He was also critical of the Americans’ vicious hunting down of dispirited Japanese soldiers.45 This work was a clear indictment of war and a warning to contemporary Japanese, whose own memories of the war had been fading. Ōoka’s earlier novel Nobi (Fires on the Plain, 1952) is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. The story takes place in late 1944, by which time the Japanese troops had become ‘the debris of a defeated army’. It is the story of Private Tamura and his descent into insanity as decency and order in the Japanese army collapses around him in the struggle for survival. Denied treatment by overwhelmed military medical staff, Tamura is given six small potatoes and told by his squad leader to make better use of his hand grenade to put an end to it all. Thus rejected, he in turn rejects his former companions and wanders the island alone, desperately hungry and hallucinating. He exhibits no apparent qualms when he shoots and kills a Filipino woman and also kills a fellow soldier he believes has blemished humanity by committing cannibalism. Tamura stumbles upon a dying officer who offers him his emaciated left arm, saying ‘You can eat this when I die’. On the verge of himself

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  57 committing cannibalism, Tamura’s conscience stays in his hand, since he stops short of cutting off the dead officer’s arm. As the novel progresses and Tamura is repatriated, it gradually becomes clear that he is an unreliable narrator and deeply disturbed. His is a soul in torment and readers are drawn into his confused state of mind, unsure whether he did indeed commit cannibalism on Leyte Island. Here Ōoka is not seeking justice – he is showing us a human being destroyed by the war. Private Tamura is a universal symbol of men whose souls have been twisted and tormented in the cause of war, of soldiers in all wars who have suffered from combat, both physically and mentally, caught up in the machinery of the state only to return home permanently wounded or suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. In many cases, the soldiers did not return but were left to die in a foreign land. No accurate records of how many Japanese soldiers and army employees died during the war (or how they died) exist, probably due to the absolute chaos unleashed by Japan’s defeat. Nonetheless, the government’s official estimate of the number of overseas war dead (soldiers and army employees) is 2,400,000. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare in August 2009, the remains of approximately 1,150,000 of these people have not been yet returned. Historian Fujiwara Akira’s analysis indicates that some 1,400,000 of the total war dead died of starvation, as a result of negligence in addressing supply issues in the strategic plan.46 Ogawa Masatsugu (1917–2009) published his experiences as a sergeant in the Japanese army in New Guinea, accounts which have haunting similarities to the ordeal of Private Tamura. Powerful in its own right, his book Kyokugen no naka no ningen – ‘shi no shima’ – Nyūginia (Human beings in extremity: the island of death, New Guinea, 1983),47 validates the truth of the fiction Ōoka had written 31 years before, as the following extracts show: In the world we lived in in New Guinea, you had no use for the language or knowledge you had accumulated before you went there. Literature, which I had studied at Keio University, meant nothing. I sensed that the extremes of existence could be reduced to the human stomach. Lack of protein, in particular, fostered a kind of madness in us. We ate anything. Flying insects, worms in rotten palm trees. We fought over the distribution of those worms. If you managed to knock down a lizard with a stick, you’d pop it into your mouth while its tail was still wriggling. Yet, under these conditions, a soldier offered me his final [ration of] rice and a soldier I met for the first time gave me half of a taro root he’d dug up.48 We had other fears in New Guinea. Near the end we were told not to go out alone to get water, even in daytime. We could trust the men we knew, but there were rumors that you could never be sure what would happen if one of our own soldiers came upon us. I once saw a soldier’s body lying by the path with the thigh flesh gouged out, … One time, when we were rushing along a mountain trail, we were stopped by four or five soldiers from another unit. They told us they had meat from a big snake that they were willing to share with us. We didn’t stop. They were trying to pull us in to share their guilt.49

58  The Asia Pacific War For many of the Japanese soldiers retreating in the mud and rain of the mountains of New Guinea, their fate was not glory but starvation, hunger, eating the flesh of one’s fellows, and welcoming death as a merciful release. I mentioned earlier Ikuta Jirō, the survivor of the Sandakan Death Marches – he testified to his ordeal in the jungle, where no food had been available. 2.3.2  Ibuse Masuji (1898–1993)

In 1966, Ibuse Masuji was awarded the prestigious Noma prize for literature in 1966 for his novel Black Rain50 and the Order of Cultural Merit, the highest award that can be bestowed on a Japanese citizen. Apolitical but not apathetic, Ibuse had been drafted in 1941 at the age of 44 and sent to Singapore to work at the Shōnan Shinbun,51 formerly the official British newspaper known as The Straits Times. He and his fellow writers, journalists, and cameramen arrived in Singapore on 16 February 1941, one day after the fall of Singapore. During his time there, Ibuse published a series of stories for Asahi Shinbun titled ‘Hana no machi’ (flowering city), which featured a peaceful civilian society in multi-racial Singapore. The stories contained no criticism of the Japanese occupation and its innumerable civilian victims. He was demobilized in 1942 and returned to Tokyo. Ibuse published very few essays during the war period and, like other Japanese writers, such as Nishiwaki Junzaburō,52 he kept silent as a form of resistance. On its publication in 1966, Black Rain was immediately regarded as a classic, the reviewer Julian Symons calling it ‘the most successful book yet written about the greatest single horror inflicted by one group of men upon another’.53 C.P. Snow saw it as ‘turning Hiroshima into a major work of art, utterly unsentimental, unsparing but not at all sensational, telling us what we are like as human beings and what horrors we assist at, and perhaps leaving us with a vestige of stoical hope …’.54 The narrative is concerned with Shigematsu Shizuma and his wife, Shigeko, who are anxious to find a husband for Shigeko’s niece Yasuko.55 This has become difficult due to rumors that Yasuko may be suffering from radiation sickness, having been exposed five years earlier to ‘black rain’ during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945. In an effort to convince one prospective marriage partner that this is not so, Shizuma offers Yasuko’s journal as evidence, along with his own.56 In what amounts to a polyphonic narrative of eyewitness testimonies to the happenings between 6 and 15 August 1945, multiple witness accounts of the day of the bombing and those after it are interwoven using real and fictional journal entries, accounts in the media, and interviews by the author. The entries form a vast landscape of cruelty and horror, filled with corpses and people who are mutilated, but still alive. Others seek to regain some vestige of order and sanity, even if only in the making of a simple meal, or by setting off to report to what was once a center of authority, only to find that the building and everyone in it has vanished. In the end, the matchmaking of Yasuko becomes a side issue, particularly when she shows actual signs of radiation sickness. The novel focuses on the ghastly fate of the civilians of Hiroshima, whether by death or by sustaining permanent damage to their DNA that could be transmitted to future generations. It contrasts this horror with the beauty of nature experienced by the

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  59 Shizuma family when they are living in Kobatake village in later years. There is hope for humanity in times of crisis such as the atomic bombing, because the power of life remains. In contrast to Fires on the Plain, Black Rain is affirmative in this sense. For example, toward the end of the story, there were descriptions of the sudden awareness attained by the protagonist, Shizuma, as he watched new life appearing in a stream. It was an uplifting scene for him, as he saw them on 15 August 1945 – the day that Emperor Hirohito made the radio broadcast to announce that Japan had been defeated. Having opted not to go with the others to listen to the serious radio broadcast, Shizuma went out into the backyard. To his surprise he found pure running water in the canals. Then, he was more surprised that he found numerous baby eels cheerfully swimming upstream in procession. He was utterly amazed by the scene and cheered them by saying ‘Off you go, up the stream, up the stream! I can smell fresh water’.57 Soon afterward Shizuma heard of Japan’s surrender. He accepted it without compunction even though his eyes were tearful in the first instance. When Shizuma went out to the backyard again wanting to see the procession of baby eels, none was visible, only the crystal water – a touch of irony by Ibuse whose narrative style is renowned for having wishful sidetracks. Black Rain is a masterpiece through descriptions of the immense destructive power of the atomic bomb and an indictment of the sadistic cruelty of war. It is on par with Goya’s Disasters of War and Picasso’s Guernica. In all three works, advocacy is embedded in artistic presentation. The strength of Black Rain comes from its perspective – which is that of ordinary people – as well as its restrained tone and imaginative power, which raises it well above the level of reportage. Ibuse acknowledged his debt to his resource providers, mostly Shigematsu Shizuma’s wartime diary,58 and the medical notes of Dr. Iwatake Hiroshi.59 These were the essential components, but it was Ibuse’s narrative skills that engenders the tone of the human wishes expressed in the last lines: Shigematsu now looked at the hill on the other side and made a prophesy, even though he knew it would never come true. ‘A miracle will happen if a rainbow appears over the mountain. Yasuko will recover if a colored rainbow, not a white rainbow, appears’.60 While it is a work of narrative invention, such is its impact that the authenticity of the reality it describes overwhelms its fictional aspects. 2.4  Two unpublished poems by Shikoku Gorō (1924–2014) Shikoku Gorō was a Hiroshima-born artist who became an activist for peace without nuclear weapons. A self-taught, ardent artist from his childhood, his posthumously published Waga seishun no kiroku (Records of the time in my youth, 2018) was written in 1949. Forty of his unpublished poems were discovered in July 2021,

60  The Asia Pacific War seven years after his death, and they are all his war poems, written around 1966, which will be published in the near future. The poems in both collections present not only his personal experience but, more importantly, a glimpse of a wartime youth whose mission was to make the world a better place without war. Shikoku became one of the early campaigners of the citizen peace movements in Hiroshima. According to his son, Hikaru, Gorō didn’t sell his artworks, which he regarded as the means to realize his life-time mission to promote peace activism, not for money making. This soon-to-be-published collection of his poems was the same. In particular, it is rare to find poetry written by an unknown poet, a young foot soldier who had been ordered to kill himself by detonating a grenade under Soviet tanks. When his army unit was wiped out by the Soviet army, Gorō was captured and became one of 600,000 POWs who were detained in Siberia with hard labor. There he was on the edge of death due to malnutrition, severe cold, and fatigue before recovering at Goling hospital in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1946, where Siberian detainees of Japanese descent learnt about ‘minshu undō’ (democratic movements). The claims of equality for all people under communism were transmitted through a Japanese language newspaper called Nihon Shinbun (15 September 1945 to 30 December 1949). The editor was Major I.I. Kovalenko of the Red Army, but he was assisted by some Japanese detainees. Using his painting and narrative skills, Shikoku took an active role in promoting democratic ideas while he was detained. Gorō returned to his home in Hiroshima in 1948 and learnt that his beloved younger brother had died in the atomic bombing. He pledged to dedicate his life to nuclear disarmament movements through his art and poetry. He abandoned his dream of studying art in Tokyo and becoming a professional artist. I will discuss some of his artworks in Chapter 6, but here I would like to mention two of his unpublished poems: ‘Itoko’ (My cousins) and ‘Senyū’ (Comrade). In ‘My cousins’, the poet describes his two male cousins of the same age, around 20 years. Takeo was a young bomber pilot who perished in the southern sea and Matsuo disappeared before he could be conscripted. The military police were desperate to catch him, to no avail. Gorō celebrates him by using the word ‘appare’ (splendid). Then Gorō goes on to describe himself in the last stanza: One called Gorō His dispositions are No chasing after Mixing the feelings of longing on the palette Singing the passing of the wind Though doubt and strong body he has Now Polishing the 99 model rifle Just waiting Despite admitting to complex feelings of doubt about war, the poet was ready to fight and die for Japan. Throughout these 40 poems, he did not use the word ‘tennō’ (emperor). For his generation, the word ‘emperor’ represents the identity of Japan

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  61 as well as the justification for his role and actions as a loyal Japanese soldier. Yet, he couldn’t possibly bring himself to affirm his complete allegiance to the emperor having seen the reality of war. The poem ‘Comrade’ reveals the desperation of the final stage of war. The soldiers were digging trenches which looked like ‘takotsubo’ (a pot catching an octopus), a cynical analogy for a grave. His comrade, knowing that he would be attacking the enemy in the evening and that his death was imminent, had come to say goodbye to him. The comrade gave a gift of a sweet to him, saying it was ‘no longer needed’. The sweet (yōkan) must have been a precious luxury at the war front. The final stanza reads: I shut my eyes while holding tight the sweet Until I hear A sudden cry and the sound of a rifle shot Gorō and his comrade who gave him the sweet shared the same fate in that Gorō could have been killed as well – but his comrade died and Gorō survived. Suffering and pain at war were undeniable, particularly in a losing war. The readership feels anger about the irrational and impossible predicament these young men have been placed in. Both poems blatantly proclaim the inhumanity that war created. 2.5 Summation For the Japanese people, the human impact of the Asia Pacific War is more than just about the magnitude of the deaths that occurred during the conflict. Among multiple aspects, two stand out: one is the trauma and distrust of the authority and the other is how the trauma experienced by the survivors of the war has continued to have an indirect effect on their families and the generations that came after them. Due to wartime media censorship, the Japanese population had been largely ignorant about key aspects of the war. This kind of downright lies – a deliberate policy that involves the manipulation of the public – creates a deep distrust of authority. The withholding of key pieces of information was made easier because most of the Asia Pacific War was fought abroad, even though toward the end of the war (from 1944) Japan was ravaged by 408 nationwide air raids on 94 cities and towns, resulting in the deaths of 562,708 people (including the atomic bombings). Face-to-face combat was limited to Okinawa, a final shield for mainland Japan. The population did not have a clear sense of who their enemies were. Therefore, when the war was over, the Allied Forces were seen as if they were saviors, releasing the population from the yoke of the wartime hardship. In the seven decades since the formal end to the hostilities, the question of who should bear ‘responsibility for the war’ has continued to be discussed and debated in Japan. The concept of ‘Postwar responsibility’ has also been used as a means of examining the role of postwar politics in causing the settlements associated with the war to remain unfinished. The key word is ‘responsibility’ and the focus of the discussions is centered on the lack of responsibility. The discussions

62  The Asia Pacific War stemmed from Maruyama Masao’s famous book Gendai seiji no shisō to kōdō (Thought and practice in contemporary politics), which was published in 1956– 1957.61 In this work, he pointed to Japan’s imperial political system – from the Meiji era to 1945 – was musekinin no taikei (a system based on irresponsibility). This was because of the uncertain identity of those who made decisions and those who took responsibility. Under an emperor’s reign, no one could act individually and there was no provision in that system for the individual acting independently. The emperor also relied on ancestry. We know now that the imperial army system was outdated and overly bureaucratic, lacking any avenue for implementing innovative strategies because of the rigid class hierarchy. By virtue of his position, the emperor was the head of the army, yet the decimation of the Japanese army in the Pacific islands revealed that the state had abandoned its own people. The impact of this on the people can be seen in statistics, the widespread publication of witness accounts of the devastation wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, art, literature, and political records. The impact on individuals was clearly not just physical, but also spiritual. Civilians had to comply with wartime policies, which were in line with the provisions of the Meiji Constitution (1886 to May 1947) and based on kōkoku shikan62 (the imperial view of the history of Japan). Along with the establishment of kokumin-gakkō (the national school) in 1941, a state-censored school textbook63 Yoi kodomo64 (Good Children, 1941–1945) was published to foster a sense of loyalty to the imperial throne in school children. Yoi kodomo taught school children that Japan was the strongest country in the world and was divine, with the emperor exercising full rule, in addition to articulating daily good manners and discipline. When the atomic bomb exploded in mid-air above the Honkawa Embankment on 6 August 1945 at 8:15 in the morning, over a thousand middle school boys and girls aged between 13 and 15 were assembling for their daily war-effort works. Many were killed instantly, and others died within a few days.65 It was devastating and moving at the same time to learn that they had been singing a popular song at the time Umi Yukaba66 (‘When we are on the sea’) in their last moments, its words resembling a metaphorical incantation: When we are on the sea, our dead are sodden in water; When we are on the mountains, our dead are covered with grass. We shall die by the side of our lord, we shall never look back.67 The tune of the song is heroic, and the lyrics glorify loyalty, but it is alarming and archaic to say the least. During the Asia Pacific War, policies implemented by the army and government reflected perceptions of the racial superiority of the Japanese over Chinese, Koreans, peoples from other Asian countries, and white POWs. In state-censored Japan, indoctrination was inescapable during wartime. Japan had become a modern nation by gaining power from victories in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  63 the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), yet it retained a feudal hierarchical system that could not accommodate real democratic freedom. The imperial army collaborated with and integrated industries to wage the war, with an eye on securing future bargaining power in politics and profits. Chinese, Korean, and POW laborers were forced to work in terrible conditions in mines, on dams, and at ports. When Japan finally surrendered unconditionally, civilians felt that they had been misled by wartime leaders. They held their leaders responsible not only for the defeat, but also for the misery and massacres that the Japanese army had perpetrated abroad. For their part, civilians did not see themselves as having any part in Japan’s aggression and invasions, rather they thought of themselves as the victims of the Japanese army and government, and therefore not responsible for Japan’s actions. On 5 September 1945, Prime Minister Higashikuni-no-miya Naruhiko Ō addressed parliament, admitting the failure of the government’s war policies as well as pointing out that one reason for the failure was the refusal of the Japanese people to accept their moral obligation68 to support the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. He then insisted that every individual Japanese should repent, making a socalled ichioku sōzange (all 100 million people’s repentance). This illustrates once again the naivety of the ruling class. During the occupation period (1945–1952), General Head Quarters (GHQ) under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) set up the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) in order to re-educate the people of Japan. One of their strategies was a war-guilt information program that included pressure to censor any anti-American information, especially about Hiroshima. The occupation was established to be in direct control over the existing Japanese state administration. When the San Francisco Peace Treaty became effective in 1952 and the Occupation Forces departed, Japanese bureaucracy revived, retaining its earlier conformism, with the difference that it now conformed to the security treaty with America.69 Well, before the new constitution came into effect in May 1947, Emperor Hirohito gave a New Year address on 1 January 1946. Known as the Humanity Declaration, it quotes in full the Gokajō no goseimon (Charter Oath),70 which consisted of five points. This Charter Oath had first been proclaimed in the name of Emperor Meiji in 1868, at a time when the Japanese people were uncertain about the political transition from the Tokugawa reign to imperial rule. Broadly speaking the five points were liberal and encouraged everyone to participate in strengthening the state. Based on this oath, Emperor Hirohito defended the imperial system as having been the beginnings of a democratic state ushered in by Meiji era. Yet we know what had happened in his name during the Asia Pacific War. While the Charter Oath is of archival interest, in Linda Hutcheon’s words, it is ‘the textually transformed trace of that past’,71 no actual force in the present. When Hirohito visited Hiroshima in 1947, he was welcomed by its citizens. In other words, they welcomed his new status as Japan’s symbol of peace as enshrined in Article 9 of the Constitution; they wanted to see Japan united again in peace and distanced from the power of the military. They also wanted to regain their

64  The Asia Pacific War own identity. Japan is a country where national identity has been synonymous with the imperial system for so long that it cannot easily lose this association; for example, after the devastation of the war people made every effort to rebuild ruined local shrines as a priority. This was the case in France, too, where priority was given to building a cathedral soon after the war, while people were living in tents. Japanese society has traditionally been patriarchal, as seen in the imperial system and as depicted in the characterization of the Shizuma family in the novel Black Rain. The patriarchal system is close knit and is bound to a particular form of the family unit. The insularity of Japanese culture has gradually lessened due to increasingly the world becoming global as more Japanese people gain a wider perspective. Notes 1 Unless otherwise stated, all English translations are mine. 2 A more detailed discussion of the poet’s work and its context is included toward the end of this chapter. The title of this unpublished poem, ‘Natsukusa ya tsuwamonodomo ga yume no ato’ is a direct reference to the haiku poem by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), ‘Summer grass is the remain of dreams by warriors’. 3 Valid for five years, the Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact was signed in April 1941, but the Soviet Union denounced Japan and invaded Manchuria on 9 August 1945. 4 Shown in the booklets published by the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace, and their Museum display of wartime photographs. See Rumiko Nishino, ‘The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace: It’s Role in Public Education’, Asia-Pacific Journal/ Japan Focus 5, no. 12, (2007, 1–7.). Article ID 2604. https://apjjf.org/-Nishino-Rumiko/ 2604/article.html, accessed 30 October 2022. 5 Officially named the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal was held in the Ichigaya Court from 29 April 1946 to 12 November 1948. It was convened to try the leaders of the Empire of Japan (deemed as ‘Class A’ crimes), those who were accused of conventional war crimes (‘Class B’), and those who were accused of crimes against humanity (‘Class C’). The Allied GHQ compiled lists of prospective war criminals. Although there was a defense team comprising American and Japanese lawyers, the work of the War Tribunal was criticized as ‘victor’s justice’. 6 NHK [Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, The Japan Broadcasting Company] Archives of War Witnesses, occasionally updated under topics such as know the war; outbreak of war: battles of soldiers; citizen life (air raids); and end of war/postwar. https://www2.nhk.or.jp/ archives/shogenarchives/kioku/detail.cgi?das_id=D0001800026_00000, accessed 30 October 2022. 7 In the Tokyo Shinbun article of 25 August 2018. Japanese ex-soldiers’ confessions vary, depending on each individual’s experience. For example, the members of the Association of Returnees from China (Chūkiren) were active in voicing strongly how they were pardoned for the war crimes they had committed. However, most of the soldiers’ attitudes toward the POWs appeared to be indifferent, perhaps reflecting the Japanese ethos at the time. 8 John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, c1986) and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999). 9 Miyagi Kikuko (1928–2014), a former Himeyuri student, worked as a nurse during the battle of Okinawa. She survived, while others died after a hand grenade attack. I had an opportunity to hear her witness account between 8 and 10 September 2018, when the national peace museum conference was held at the Himeyuri Peace Museum.

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  65 10 Ōoka Shōhei, Chikuma Nihon bungaku zenshū, (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992). Fires on the Plain, translated by Ivan Morris (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, reprinted 1972 [first published London: Secker and Warburg, 1957]). 11 Ibuse Masuji, Kuroi ame, (Tokyo: Shinchô bunko, 2015). Black Rain, translated by John Bester (Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1966). 12 Shōnan Shinbun/Shōnan Times (1942–1945) was a wartime propaganda newspaper in Singapore, previously known as the Straits Times (British). Singapore was renamed Shōnan-tō after Japan won the Battle of Singapore. Ibuse Masuji was sent to work for the newspaper in 1941 and was discharged in November 1942; Ibuse maintained his stance as a novelist and did not write pro-army or government articles and stories after his discharge. 13 The racial discrimination stance and the entrenched class system of the army have been highlighted by many scholars. Tachikawa Kyōichi, ‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy Focusing on the Pacific War’, draws on a wide range of Japanese primary sources and the works of Japanese scholars, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/pdf/2008/bulletin_e2008_5.pdf, accessed 30 October 2022. 14 Held in 1919–1920, the Paris Peace Conference dealt with the international settlement of World War I by the 32 victorious nations, including Japan. They established the League of Nations. However, the costly reparations imposed on Germany and similar humiliations indirectly caused the rise of Nazism and the events that led to World War II. 15 Japan’s Racial Equality Proposal became controversial and contentious at the Paris Peace Conference because it challenged the Western colonization of non-white people in Africa and Asia. 16 The Geneva Conventions are the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war, protecting the basic rights of prisoners of war and civilians. The first Geneva Convention (1864) was adopted ‘for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field’ and signed by 12 states and kingdoms. Through some clarifications and additions, the 1929 conference supplemented ‘the Conventions relative to the Treatment of Prisoners War’, which Japan did not ratify. 17 See Note 4. The defendants of BC-class war crimes mostly argued that they were ordered to commit atrocities by their army seniors. By publishing memoirs and testimonies, they claimed that they were victims. The media in particular presented their stories in films and as books, such as the screenplay ‘Watakushi wa kai ni naritai’ (I want to be a shellfish) in 1958, which swayed public opinion to view the BC-class war crime trials as ‘unjust trials’. For more details, see: ‘The “Post-War” of the BC Class War Criminals: How Did War Criminals React to the Australian Trials?’, Utsumi Aiko and Udagawa Kōta, translated by Steven Bullard, in Australian War Crime Trials 1945–1951, ed. by Georgina Fitzpatrick et al. (Leiden: Brill Nijhof, 2016), Chapter 22, 755–780. 18 See page 10 of the report by Major General Archer L Lerch, Headquarters Army Service Forces, Washington, in Utsumi Aiko and Nagai Hitoshi, eds., Tokyo saiban shiryō – furyo jōhō kankei bunsho (Sources of the Tokyo War Trial – documents of the POWs) (Tokyo: Gendai shiryō shuppan, 1999), 312. In fact, ‘pinta’, corporal punishment was quite common at school not only before the war but also well into the 1960s. 19 Tachikawa Kyōichi, ‘Kyūgun ni okeru horyo no toriatsukai – Taiheiyō sensō no jōkyō wo chūshin ni’ (Handling of POWs by the Imperial Japanese Army, centering on the Pacific War), Bōei kenkyūsho kiyō 10, no. 1, (September 2007), 74–77. 20 Utsumi Aiko, ‘The Japanese Army and its Prisoners: Relevant Documents and Bureaucratic Institutions’, translated by Steve Bullard et al. in March 1999, seminar paper for the Australia-Japan Research Project at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. http:// ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/ajrp2.nsf/research-print/D2E5732B8749D2E04A2567A8007B49 0C?OpenDocument, accessed 30 October 2022.

66  The Asia Pacific War 2 1 Utsumi Aiko. 22 Utsumi Aiko. 23 See page 14 of the Lerch report by Major General Archer L Lerch, Headquarters Army Service Forces, Washington, in Utsumi Aiko and Nagai Hitoshi, eds., Tokyo saiban shiryō – furyo jōhō kankei bunsho (Sources of the Tokyo War Trial – Documents of the POWs) (Tokyo: Gendai shiryō shuppan, 1999), 316. 24 The website of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, https://www.mhlw. go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000144250.html, accessed 30 October 2022. 25 Takahashi Masaki, Dēta de miru Taiheiyō sensō, ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu (The Pacific War through the data, truth of ‘Japan’s failure’) (Tokyo: Mainichin shinbun shuppan, 2017). 26 Ōki-na chizu de yomitoku Taiheiyō sensō no subete (All about the Pacific War through analyzing large maps), Bessatsu Takarajima series: 2211, (Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 2014). 27 Nakano Fujio, Kaura no totsugeki rappa: zerosen pairotto wa naze shinda ka (The bugle for the charge at Cowra: why did this zero fighter pilot die?) (Tokyo: Bungei shunjūsha, 1984). 28 Christianity was banned in the Tokugawa period (1603–1868). The authorities tested suspects by asking them to step on to a metal board that had been imprinted with the likeness of Jesus or Virgin Mary, a practice known as fumi-e. Since then, the word ‘fumie’ has become an expression referring to the testing of one’s faith. 29 Zentsūji is a city of Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku island, Japan, where, in early 1942, the first POW camp was established in Japan proper, mostly American soldiers captured on Guam and Wake islands. The headquarters and garrison of the 40th Division, infantry, in the Imperial Japanese Army was located in Zentsūji. 30 See Maesaka Toshiyuki official website, 2015, http://www.maesaka-toshiyuki.com/ war/7335.html, accessed 30 October 2022. 31 Information from the POW Research Network Japan. For the U.S. perspective on the treatment of POWs, see Headquarters army service forces, Office of the Provost Marshal General, Washington 25, D.C. 30 November 1945, Japanese Handling of American Prisoners of War, Arthur L. Lerch, ‘Japanese Handling of American Prisoners of War – a letter by Major General Arthur L. Lerch’, dated 30 November, 1945, at https://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/ R100000002-I000008404440-00?ar=4e1f&locale=en, accessed 30 October 2022. 32 Hanaoka, Akita prefecture in northern Japan, was a black-ore mining town. During World War II, a POW camp was established and 288 POWs (245 Americans and 43 Australians) were imprisoned and used as labor by Fujita-gumi Construction Company. Six POWs died while imprisoned. There were also forced laborers conscripted from China and Korea. On 30 June 1945, Chinese laborers rioted due to inhumane conditions and ran away. A total of 418 Chinese laborers were tortured and killed by police and military. 33 Ibaragi Noriko, ‘Ryurien no monogatari’, in Chinkon-ka (Requiem) (Tokyo: Shichōsha, 1965). 34 National Diet Library of Japan, Chōhatsu-rei, ‘Exploiting local people and industries for the benefit of Japan in the name of law, Nos. 42 and 43 Chōhatsu-rei (Requisition law)’, issued August 1882. info: ndljp/pid/787962. 35 Bui Minh Dung, ‘Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–1945’, Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1995) 586–618. 36 Takahashi Masaki, Dēta de miru taiheiyō sensō, 10–24. 37 h t t p s : / / w w w 2 . n h k . o r. j p / a r c h i v e s / s h o g e n a r c h i v e s / k i o k u / d e t a i l . c g i ? d a s _ id=D0001800026_00000 NHK Archives of War Witnesses, accessed August 2018. 38 Takahashi Masaki, Dēta de miru taiheiyō sensō, 10–24. 39 The combat rations of the German military have been known as the ‘iron ration’ that was scientifically formulated for foot soldiers. The Reich Food Minister was in charge of supply until the end of World War II. The responsibility the Nazi government demonstrated toward the soldiers was markedly different from their Japanese counterparts. 40 NPO Chūkiren Peace Museum, https://npo-chuukiren.jimdo.com/, accessed 30 October 2022. See also Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: The Oriental Society of Australia, 2017), 6–13.

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  67 4 1 Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power. 42 Yasuko Claremone, Citizen Power, 8. 43 Yokomitsu Riichi Prize was set in 1949 in honor of Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947) whose literary style of scientific yet sensory aestheticism was highly praised. 44 Ōoka Shōhei quoted a comparative statistic report of livestock numbers in the Philippines between January 1939 and January 1945. This shows that livestock, such as water buffalos, cows, horses, pigs, etc., was reduced in the Philippines by a half to two-thirds of pre-war levels. For example, sheep numbered 10,184 in 1939 and 870 in 1945. 45 Ōoka asserted that the Japanese soldiers were starving and no longer fighting. Because they were pursued by the Americans, they became violent. Records of the Battle of Leyte, 349. 46 Fujiwaha Akira, Uejini shita eireitachi (Soldiers died of starvation) (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 2018). 47 Ogawa Masatsugu, Kyokugen no naka no ningen – ‘Shi no shima’, Nyūginia, (Human beings in extremity: ‘the island of death’, New Guinea) (Tokyo: Kōgensha, 1983). Awarded the first Ōya Sōichi Non-fiction Prize in 1970. 48 Ogawa Masatsugu, Kyokugen no naka no ningen – ‘Shi no shima’, 273. 49 Ogawa Masatsugu, Kyokugen no naka no ningen – ‘Shi no shima’, 274. 50 Ibuse Masuji, Kuroi ame (Black Rain), first serialized from January 1965 to September 1965 in the monthly journal Shinchō, and in book form in 1966 by Shinchōsha. 51 Japan occupied Singapore from 15 February 1942 to 12 September 1945 and called it Shōnan-tō. The first issue of the Shōnan Times in English was dated 20 February 1942 after the takeover of the Straits Times, Singapore’s English daily. On 8 December 1942, the newspaper was renamed the Shōnan Shinbun with a Japanese morning edition for the first time; this was turned into an afternoon edition. https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol11/issue-4/jan-mar-2016/syonan-shimbun, accessed 30 October 2022. 52 Nishiwaki Junzaburō, 1894–1982, born in Ojiya, Niigata, was an academic and a modernist poet specializing in modernism in Europe. After World War II, his poetic style changed into a traditional narrative form of Japanese poetry, renga, a sequence of short lines, in which the poet expresses his philosophical views of life through poetic images. 53 Review by Julian Symons published in Sunday Times, 12 May 2010. 54 C.P. (Charles Percy) Snow, review, Zero, 269. 55 The name order here (surname/first name) is based on that used in the original 1966 Japanese edition of Kuroi ame (Black Rain). In the English edition that was translated by John Bester, the names are reversed to reflect the English style of first name followed by surname. To add to the confusion, the hibakusha who offered his diary to Ibuse Masuji was Shigematsu Shizuma (surname/first name), as in the next endnote. 56 Shigematsu Shizuma, Shigematsu Nikki (Shigematsu Diary) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2018), with doctor’s notes written by Iwatake Hiroshi. First published in 2001. 57 Ibuse Masuji, Kuroi ame (Black Rain), 379. 58 Shigematsu Shizuma, Shigematsu Nikki (Shigematsu diary). 59 Shigematsu Shizuma, Shigematsu Nikki (Shigematsu Diary) Kaisetsu (Explanation), 288–291. 60 Ibuse Masuji, Kuroi ame (Black Rain), 384. 61 Maruyama Masao, Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōdō (Thought and practice in contemporary politics) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1956–1957; enlarged edition Tokyo: Miraisha, 1964). English edition published as Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, edited by Ivan Morris (London: OUP, 1963 and Tokyo: OUP, 1979). 62 The Preamble of the Meiji Constitution declared that Japan’s unbroken imperial system is at the center of the history of Japan and it was virtuous to be loyal to the emperor. 63 The kokutei kyōkasho system (the state authorized school textbook system) was established in 1903 and was used in schools since 1904. https://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/ hakusho/html/others/detail/1317624.htm; https://www.archives.go.jp/exhibition/digital/ meiji/contents4_06/, accessed 17 November 2022. 64 Hiroshima University Library, Yoi kodomo, http://dc.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/text/list/ school_systems/33, accessed 30 October 2022.

68  The Asia Pacific War 65 See Ishibumi, A memorial to the atomic annihilation of 321 students of Hiroshima Middle School, translated by Yasuko Claremont and Roman Rosenbaum (Tokyo: Poplar Publishing Co., 2016). 66 This is part of a long poem from Man’yōshū (600–759 CE), by the poet Ōtomo no Yakamochi (716–785 CE). Umi yukaba was composed to music by Nobutoki Kiyoshi, NHK (Nihon Hōsō Kyōkai – Japan Broadcasting) in 1937. It was always broadcast before the radio announcements about the decimation of Japanese troops (gyokusai) during the war. 67 This translation is mine. There is one other translation of the last line, ‘we shall not die in peace’, but ‘we shall never look back’ is commonly used. 68 Oguma Eiji, ‘Minshu’ to ‘Aikoku’: sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei (‘Democracy’ and ‘patriotism’: postwar nationalism and public nature) (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2002), 69–70. 69 The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the U.S.A. signed on 8 September 1951. There are more than 80 U.S. military bases in Japan. Japan has shared the cost of maintenance in exchange of the U.S. defending Japan. However, over the seven decades, after the Asia Pacific war, Japan has increased its military power even though it still upholds Article 9, which renounces war. 70 Charter Oath, also known as the Imperial Oath of Five Articles, has notions of democratic intention, such as ‘all governmental matters shall be determined by public discussion’. https://www.britannica.com/event/Charter-Oath, accessed 30 October 2022. 71 Linda Hutcheon’s book, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), theorizes the adaptive process, in which she defines adaptation as repetitions but not replications. A second edition of the book was published by Routledge in 2012.

Bibliography Books Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Sydney: The Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Claremont, Yasuko and Rosenbaum, Roman, trans., Ishibumi, A Memorial to the Atomic Annihilation of 321 students of Hiroshima Middle School, Tokyo: Poplar Publishing Co., 2016. Dower, John W., War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, New York: Pantheon, c1986. Dower, John W., Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: Norton, 1999. Fujiwaha, Akira, Uejini shita eireitachi (Soldiers died of starvation), Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 2018. Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaptation, New York: Routledge, 2006. A second edition of the book was published by Routledge in 2012. Ibaragi, Noriko, ‘Ryurien no monogatari’, in Chinkon-ka (Requiem), Tokyo: Shichōsha, 1965. Ibuse, Masuji, Black Rain, translated by John Bester, Tokyo and Palo Alto: Kodansha International, 1966. Ibuse, Masuji, Kuroi ame, Tokyo: Shinchō bunko, 2015. Maruyama, Masao, Gendai Seiji no Shisō to Kōdō (Thought and practice in contemporary politics), Tokyo: Miraisha, 1956–57; enlarged edition Tokyo: Miraisha, 1964. English edition published as Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, edited by Ivan Morris, London: OUP, 1963 and Tokyo: OUP 1979. Nakano, Fujio, Kaura no totsugeki rappa: zerosen pairotto wa naze shinda ka (The bugle for the charge at Cowra’: why did this zero fighter pilot die?), Tokyo: Bungei shunjūsha, 1984. Ogawa, Masatsugu, Kyokugen no naka no ningen – ‘Shi no shima’, Nyūginia, (Human beings in extremity: ‘the island of death’, New Guinea)’, Tokyo: Kōgensha, 1983.

The Human Impact of the Asia Pacific War  69 Oguma, Eiji, ‘Minshu’ to ‘Aikoku’: sengo Nihon no nashonarizumu to kōkyōsei (‘Democracy’ and ‘patriotism’: postwar nationalism and public nature), Tokyo: Shinyōsha, 2002. Ōki-na chizu de yomitoku Taiheiyō sensō no subete (All about the Pacific War through analyzing large maps), Bessatsu Takarajima series: 2211, Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 2014. Ōoka, Shōhei, Chikuma Nihon bungaku zenshū, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992. Fires on the Plain, translated by Ivan Morris, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, reprinted 1972 [first published London: Secker and Warburg, 1957]. Shigematsu, Shizuma, Shigematsu Nikki (Shigematsu diary), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2018, with doctor’s notes written by Iwatake Hiroshi. First published in 2001 Takahashi, Masaki, Dēta de miru Taiheiyō sensō, ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu (The Pacific War through the data, truth of ‘Japan’s failure’), Tokyo: Mainichi shinbun shuppan, 2017. Utsumi, Aiko and Nagai, Hitoshi, eds., Tokyo saiban shiryō – furyo jōhō kankei bunsho (Sources of the Tokyo War Trial - documents of the POWs), Tokyo: Gendai shiryō shuppan, 1999. Utsumi, Aiko and Udagawa, Kōta, ‘The “Post-War” of the BC Class War Criminals: How Did War Criminals React to the Australian Trials?’, translated by Steven Bullard, in Georgina Fitzpatrick et al. ed., Australian War Crime Trials 1945–1951, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2016, Chapter 22, 755–780. Articles Bui Minh, Dung, ‘Japan’s Role in the Vietnamese Starvation of 1944–1945’, Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (July 1995), 586–618. https://www2.nhk.or.jp/archives/shogenarchives/ kioku/detail.cgi?das_id=D0001800026_00000. Nishino, Rumiko, ‘The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace: It’s Role in Public Education’, Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 5, no. 12 (2007). Article ID 2604. https:// apjjf.org/-Nishino-Rumiko/2604/article.html. Snow, C.P. (Charles Percy), Review of Black Rain, Zero, 269. Symons, Julian, ‘Review of Black Rain’, Sunday Times, 12 May 2010. Tachikawa, Kyōichi, ‘Kyūgun ni okeru horyo no toriatsukai – Taiheiyō sensō no jōkyō wo chūshin ni’ (Handling of POWs by the Imperial Japanese Army, centering on the Pacific War), Bōei kenkyūsho kiyō, 10, no. 1 (September 2007), 74–77. Tachikawa, Kyōichi, ‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy Focusing on the Pacific War’, draws on a wide range of Japanese primary sources and the work of Japanese scholars, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/kiyo/ pdf/2008/bulletin_e2008_5.pdf. Utsumi Aiko, ‘The Japanese Army and its Prisoners: Relevant Documents and Bureaucratic Institutions’, translated by Steve Bullard et al. in March 1999, seminar paper for the AustraliaJapan Research Project at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ ajrp/ajrp2.nsf/research-print/D2E5732B8749D2E04A2567A8007B490C?OpenDocument. Websites Charter Oath, also known as the Imperial Oath of Five Articles, https://www.britannica.com/ event/Charter-Oath. Hiroshima University Library, Yoi kodomo, http://dc.lib.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/text/list/school_ systems/33, accessed 30 October 2022. Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/0000144250.html.

70  The Asia Pacific War Lerch, Arthur L., ‘Japanese Handling of American Prisoners of War – a letter by Major General Arthur L. Lerch’, dated 30 November, 1945, https://iss.ndl.go.jp/books/ R100000002-I000008404440-00?ar=4e1f&locale=en. Maesaka, Toshiyuki official website, 2015, http://www.maesaka-toshiyuki.com/war/ 7335.html. National Diet Library of Japan, Chōhatsu-rei, ‘Exploiting local people and industries for the benefit of Japan in the name of law, Nos. 42 and 43 Chōhatsu-rei (Requisition law)’, issued August 1882. info:ndljp/pid/787962. NHK Archives (Japanese language). https://www.nhk.or.jp/archives/, accessed 2 March 2023. NPO Chūkiren Peace Museum. https://npo-chuukiren.jimdo.com/, accessed 2 March 2023. The kokutei kyōkasho System (state authorized school textbook system) https://www. mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/others/detail/1317624.htm; https://www.archives. go.jp/exhibition/digital/meiji/contents4_06/. The Syōnan Shinbun/Shōnan Times. https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-11/issue-4/jan-mar-2016/ syonan-shimbun, accessed 2 March 2023.

3

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War The Atomic Bombings and Article 9

3.1 Introduction Although the legacies of the Asia Pacific War are numerous, I regard the emergence of citizen power in the Japanese population as one of the most important, particularly the relationship of that movement to the reaction to the atomic bombings and the determination to retain Article 9 in the new Constitution without amendment. Having experienced the devastation of war, the collapse of Japan’s imperial system, and realizing the extent to which their leaders had misled them, the population has gradually embraced independent thinking. This has taken years to evolve and is an ongoing process in many ways. Although this is an immeasurable and abstract concept – especially when it is to be considered as a legacy of something so terrible – in Part II, especially in Chapter 6, I will discuss the ways in which the war and its aftermath is linked to citizens taking action on reconciliation. Before we get there, in this chapter, let me focus on Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, along with the background to its introduction and ongoing issues associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Put simply, pacifism is one of the major characteristics of postwar Japan and is written into the country’s Constitution, which is also known as the Peace Constitution; in Article 9 of the document, the Japanese people pledge ‘forever to renounce war’. This clear renunciation of war is an anomaly alongside what is reflected in all other official documents, yet it has been supported by the general public for 77 years (at the time of writing), unchanged from its promulgation in 1946. This is not to say that interpretations of the article have not been modified by the government to adapt to the demands of national and international political situations, especially because the United States has been forced to share the burden of security in East Asia, and respond to North Korea’s unpredictable testing of missiles. For example, in July 2014, the cabinet of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party Government announced that Japan’s Self-Defense Force (SDF) could use its troops to operate overseas as part of a strategy of ‘collective self-defense’ (集団自衛権) with Japan’s allies. The legislation came into effect in 2016. In July 2020, the Japanese Cabinet endorsed an (already planned) purchase of 105 F-35 fighter jets from the United States. In this way, Article 9 has been treated as a mere piece of paper, leaving a degree of ambiguity between what Article 9 states and the political DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-5

72  The Asia Pacific War reality created by those in charge of adhering to it. Nevertheless, it is still a pillar of Japan’s Constitution, and a recent poll in April 20191 shows that 54% of the people are opposed to its revision. Article 9 is currently on the verge of revision – not only because of U.S. political pressure but, more importantly, because of Japan’s own political ambitions. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been Japan’s dominant political party in the postwar period and, in alliance with the United States, expects Japan to play a significant role in the politics of the world. The purpose of tracing the history of the Constitution in this chapter, specifically Article 9, aims to reveal the Janus-faced rhetoric – war or peace, right or left, conservative or liberal – clashing quietly in contemporary Japanese society. Article 9 epitomizes the nation’s divided and ambiguous self. In his Nobel Prize Lecture in 1994, Japan’s Nobel laureate for literature Ōe Kenzaburō2 (b. 1935–2023) stated that ‘the ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia, and resulted in its isolation from other Asian nations not only politically but also socially and culturally’.3 The reference to ‘the ambiguous orientation of Japan’ suggests that Japan was split between Japan’s traditional culture and the Western model of modernization it had adopted. After the long period of feudalism during the Tokugawa shogunate from 1600 to 1868, the Meiji government hurriedly engaged with all aspects of Western modernization and technologies. However, its mainstream thinking – especially in dealing with the national political agenda, such as the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and the annexation of Korea in 1910 – reflected the government’s expansionist ideologies, a combination of colonialism, autocracy, capitalism, militarism, and authoritarianism. One of the enlightened men of the time of Meiji, Fukuzawa Yukichi4 (1832– 1901) wrote an editorial entitled ‘Datsu A ron’ (‘On leaving Asia’) in the Jiji Shinpō5 (The Current News) on 26 March 1885. Using the phrases ‘Datsu- A Nyū-Ō’ (Leaving Asia, Entering the West), he expressed the view that Japan should go with the West as there was no time to wait for Qing China and Joseon Korea to be modernized and work in cooperation to build prosperity in Asia. Considering that Western colonialism reached its height in Asia in the late nineteenth century and Japan could have been in danger of losing its sovereignty, his opinion had a convincing ring to the people. However, there was another aspect to this perspective, inviting the conclusion that the nature of Japan’s progressive spirit was such that it harmed the nation’s ability to foster friendship and cooperation with neighboring countries. The Meiji government subsequently progressed measures to enrich and strengthen the country using military power, launching invasions of China and Korea that ultimately failed. At present, with China having become a superpower in Asia, Japan has to consider what she can do to protect herself. In particular, without the help of the United States, Japan cannot maintain its security and economy. In 2022 a U.S.-Australia-Japan Strategic Dialogue between the U.S. Secretary of State and the Foreign Ministers of Japan and Australia took place in Phnom Pen, along with a number of U.S.-Japan-Australia Trilateral Defense Ministers Meetings (TDMM). The focus of these meetings has been to help counter China, especially on the issue

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  73 of Taiwan, with the Defense Ministers’ Meeting of October stating that they would strengthen training initiatives to promote defense equipment and technology cooperation.6 Similarly, the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or QSD) partnership between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia has a clear focus on the security of the Indo-Pacific region and countering Chinese influence. However, I think reliance on military power is deadly. Inherent assumptions about the nature of the state’s progress did not die out when Japan unconditionally surrendered in 1945. They were rekindled almost as soon as Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952. Though the chief agenda items for the Allied Occupied Forces had been the demilitarization and modernization of Japan, very soon Japan had to be rearmed – despite Article 9 – in order to support the United States in the Korean War (1951– 1953), the start of interference in the demilitarization aspect. First, this chapter reviews what happened at the time of American occupation (1945–1951), when the Constitution was drafted under General MacArthur. The impediments to effective administration of the Constitution will be examined, together with the series of attempts to amend Article 9. Hibakusha7 (atomic-bomb survivors) and their descendants have been among the grassroots groups and individuals who have been campaigning for nuclear disarmament. Their activities, including artists’ works, have been effective in promoting a vision of peace without the need for nuclear arms. For the sake of peace in a world without nuclear weapons, they are adamant supporters of Article 9. Hiroshima and Nagasaki support the momentum of such efforts, which include state efforts to memorialize the disaster using a variety of means, including the building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, and the National Peace Memorial Hall for the atomic-bomb victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the collection of resources for public use. Invoking the word ‘peace’ in its truest sense, Japan’s civil movements began in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bombings of 1945 opened the nuclear age of the world. In my view, Article 9 sets the standard not just for Japan’s safety, but for the world, since the renunciation of war implies no nuclear weapons. Yet, instead of being reinvented as a model of non-nuclear peace-keeping, Japan has been drawn under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. This excerpt from the play Kawa reflects the view of many antinuclear activists: [Upon hearing the steam engine noise, pop! pop! from a river boat carrying sands in Hiroshima.] Ōki: Tōge: Ōki:

Is that a sand boat? Yeh. Only that sound never changes. Everything unchanged, you know. Even the atomic bomb didn’t change anything. Flashed and burnt-out everywhere. I thought the world would totally change, but … It was an illusion. Japanese are still Japanese no matter what. Simply they have changed a master.8 Tsuchiya Kiyoshi, Kawa (The Rivers), 19639

74  The Asia Pacific War Even though it does not possess nuclear weapons, Japan has not yet signed the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017).10 In his speech at the 75th postwar anniversary ceremony on 15 August 2020, the Prime Minister at that time, the late Abe Shinzō, still expressed his support of Japan’s national policy, hikaku sangensoku (the three anti-nuclear principles),11 whereby Japan won’t produce, possess, or allow nuclear weapons to enter the nation. His speech sounded hollow. The nuclear arms race was accelerated during the Cold War period12 (1947– 1991) and continues to this day. Okinawa became the site of a U.S. missile launching ground directed toward China and Russia under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (1951). Nuclear tests at sites, such as the Trinity site of New Mexico (1945), the Bikini Atoll (1946–1958), and Maralinga in Australia (1956–1963), have left polluted and uninhabitable areas in their wake. Furthermore, the Atoms for Peace movement13 instituted by the United States in the 1950s created the worldwide nuclear energy industry. As a result of this, Japan had over 50 nuclear power stations in operation until the meltdown that occurred in the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station in March 2011. Incidents such as this meltdown also have political ramifications. Along with other serious consequences, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 was said to have brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. The nuclear arms race is futile, involves enormous costs, and the precise identity of the enemy and their allies at any one time remains uncertain, even after the Cold War. Nations are interdependent as we share the world’s resources and communicate with one another so closely. The disastrous history of the Asia Pacific War has left a legacy of ambivalence in Japanese politics, as evidenced by the rearming of Japan in contravention of Article 9. While the constitutionality of Japan’s SDF was questioned in the past and tested in court, the SDF has grown bigger through an ever-increasing budget from the Ministry of Defense, which was elevated to a cabinet-level ministry in 2007. Mainstream political power in Japan represents the revisionist views of the right, for example, former Prime Minister the late Abe questioned the legitimacy of historical references to Japan’s invasions as being not ‘academically’ proven.14 Among the Japanese people, there has been no consensus about who was responsible for the Asia Pacific War. Their lack of familiarity with, and suspicion of, historical facts and truth has led to confusion, divisiveness, and distrust. Nonetheless, thanks to globalization in the media and economy, Japan (and any other nations for that matter) can scrutinize one another. The role and importance of current world civil society movements, such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons15 (ICANw), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and the International Networks of Museums for Peace,16 (INMP) will be discussed in Part II, Chapter 5, Civil Reconciliation. 3.2  Immediate aftermath Twenty million people lost their lives in the countries ravaged by the invading Imperial Japanese Army during the Asia Pacific War. Three million Japanese people were also killed in this total war that involved every adult Japanese, as a result of the enactment of the National General Mobilization Act, 1938. These laws gave authorities

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  75 control over civilian organizations, the news media, price control, and rationing. The Japanese people were guided by propaganda and news was censored. In other words, they were not accurately informed and lost their right to freedom of speech. As part of the National General Mobilization, the National Service Draft Ordinance created the mechanism for the conscription of civilians and the exploitation of their labor in strategic war industries. Japan was the perpetrator and responsible for the war, but the people did not become aware of what the Imperial Japanese Army was doing in China until the commencement of inquiries like the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948). At the same time, the Japanese people were also victims of the war because of the misjudgments made by their political and military leaders. At its promulgation in 1946, the Japanese people had genuinely welcomed Article 9 as they had been forced to bear extreme hardship, admit that they had engaged in a war that was wrong, and accept responsibility for the atrocities committed by the Imperial Army. In an article entitled ‘Tracing “victimizer consciousness”: the emergency and development of war guilt and responsibility in postwar Japan’,17 Yoshida Takashi18 traces the way the Japanese people’s victimizer consciousness has emerged and developed. Yoshida refers to the war guilt information program of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), in which SCAP thought it mandatory to ‘bring the true facts before the people to prevent Japan from gaining public support for future acts of aggression’.19 The disaster of the war was in everyone’s collective memory as they experienced this program, although the generations that were the target of the campaign are now in decline. Those who were too young to understand the situation at that time still experience uncertainty, fear, and uneasiness. Japan was ruined and the people were forced to live through extreme food shortages and extreme levels of unemployment.20 There is no doubt that the United States assisted Japan’s postwar recovery21 and, in general, the Japanese people approved and welcomed the pacifist thrust of the new Constitution that came in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat. This mood of pacifism found its way into the preamble of the Constitution promulgated in November 1946 and enacted in May 1947: We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution. Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representatives of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people. This is a universal principle of mankind upon which this Constitution is founded. We reject and revoke all constitutions, laws, ordinances, and rescripts in conflict herewith. We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined

76  The Asia Pacific War to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world. We desire to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth. We recognize that all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want. We believe that no nation is responsible to itself alone, but that laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations. We, the Japanese people, pledge our national honor to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all our resources.22 Shidehara Kijūrō23 (1872–1951) was the Prime Minister of Japan from 9 October 1945 until 22 May 1946, succeeding the cabinet of Prince Higashikuni-no-miya Naruhiko Ō (17 August 1945 to 8 October 1945). Shidehara was also the main architect responsible for adding Article 9 to the nation’s new Constitution. An episode of symbolic importance involving Shidehara that is well known to Japanese people has been recorded in Sensō chōsakai24 by Inoue Toshikazu25: On 15 August 1945 Shidehara Kijūrō [prime minister of Japan 9 October 1945–22 May 1946] was on his way home by train in Tokyo, having listened to the emperor’s declaration of the surrender. On the train a man in his thirties cried out tearfully, ‘How on earth could we all have known how Japan was driven into a corner? Why did we have to wage war? … We were taken to war without realizing it and they surrendered without us knowing about it. We were stabbed in the back. They were the villains.’ Other passengers responded noisily, ‘Yes, yes that’s right!’26 Shidehara was deeply moved by this scene and understood the public outrage. Although he set up a commission during his prime ministerial term for the government to pursue its own investigation into both the causes of the defeat and uncovering the truth, the U.S. General Head Quarters (GHQ) forced the closure of the commission less than a year later.27 Shidehara strongly believed that Japan should learn from its mistakes and ensure it would never again be involved in any new war. This notion echoes the approach of the President of Germany (1984–1994) Richard von Weizsäcker 28 and of Zhou Enlai ‘Do not forget past events, they will guide you in the future’.29 The wartime and postwar generations of Japan have suffered from being deprived of a truthful, home-grown investigation into the war. For example, the claims brought on behalf of the comfort women have been partly rejected by the Japanese government, who have insisted that there was no systematic plan by the Imperial Army to recruit women. At the same time, the Japanese government had offered apologies and funding to establish a foundation to provide

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  77 financial assistance to those surviving South Korean women in 2016; a year later, the foundation was dismantled by the Korean government, led at that time by President Moon Jae-in, resulting in a long period of diplomatic stagnation between South Korea and Japan. Even now, the majority of the postwar Japanese population has not been fully educated by being provided with factual information about the motives for the Imperial Japanese Army’s actions in China and South Asia during the Asia Pacific War. Inevitably, when these details come to light, it creates confusion among the people, since they don’t know what to believe. This lack of awareness has prevented the Japanese from taking the same path as their German counterparts, who were determined to put their wartime past to rest by acknowledging, compensating for, and memorializing their historical mistakes. In contrast, the Japanese authorities hid their mistakes from the people. In order to understand Japan’s current problems, the time has now come to review the nation’s past, and to become familiar with numerous publications on the war,30 as well as with global communication networks. 3.3  American Occupation There is a Japanese saying, ‘kateba kangun makereba zokugun’31 (‘might is right, losers are always in the wrong’). The saying is indicative of how justice lacks neutrality – it operates within a power structure. But this shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that everything that happens as a result is just or unjust. The reality is more complex and serious. The judgments from the Tokyo War Crime Trials of 1946–1948 were largely accepted, but for some Japanese they reflected the point of view of the victors. With leaders of the stature of General Tōjō Hideki32 on trial, it was the first time the Japanese people had to face up to what really had gone wrong within Japan’s wartime governments as they hadn’t been told the truth about the way the state had engaged in warfare. They must have felt some sense of relief from knowing the truth had finally been revealed and felt some allegiance to the Occupation Powers. For their part, the Occupation Powers had the overwhelming power of the U.S. military to dictate communication at their disposal – their strategic control over other forms of messaging took various forms, which included the provision and manipulation of media information. The following is an example. From the perspective of the United States, the Pacific War began with the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 – President Roosevelt described it in his famous Pearl Harbor Speech as ‘a date which will live in Infamy’.33 In the aftermath of the attack, this view was used to justify going to war – the final stage of which was marked by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the U.S.-led Allied Occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952, the war was unilaterally called the Pacific War. No other variants, such as Dai Tōa Sensō (The Great East Asia War), were permitted. Confining the location of the war to the Pacific in this way may have focused more attention on the Pacific theatre, deflecting from issues related to the rise of communist China and the influence of what was then

78  The Asia Pacific War the Soviet Union – a sign of the beginning of the Cold War. The words ‘the Pacific War’ conveyed no hint of the warfare that Japan had already been engaged in with other Asian countries, namely China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), and the Philippines. It led to the postwar generations of Japan being ignorant about the extent of Japan’s warfare in Asia generally. There had been no declaration of war when Japan invaded China, although China had been on a war-footing with Japan since 1931 and joined the Allied Forces in 1941. By the time the war ended, Japan’s invasive war had engulfed the nations of South-East Asia and a Japanese puppet government had been installed in Burma (Myanmar). In many of these countries, the people had initially thought of Japan as a liberator who had driven out all signs of Western colonization in Asia. Even before India weathered Japanese attacks on its east coast and repelled a Japanese invasion on its north-east, some of its population questioned why Indian citizens should fight for Britain and saw the war as an opportunity to get rid of their colonizers. The states under Japanese rule soon discovered that their previous colonizers had merely been replaced by another. Japan went along with the American doctrine of ‘the Pacific War’, as if it had had nothing to do with the Asian countries it had ravaged. In so doing, Japanese political leaders misled or misinformed the Japanese people in much the same way as the wartime governments had done. Throughout the war, from 1931 to 1945, most Japanese had not been effectively informed about any government decisions. The war had begun without their knowledge, yet they had paid a heavy price. 3.4  GHQ censorship Some historians have argued that, because Japan was on the verge of collapse in 1945, there had been no need for the United States to resort to atomic bombs.34 The decision by the United States to use atomic weapons was taken in the context of the United States’ wish to minimize the Soviet Union’s participation in the Far East – a means of reducing the concessions Russia would receive from victory in the war. Atomic bombs were experimental at that stage, so the United States reinforced its superpower status by dropping a uranium bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. Both bombs were targeted at cities populated mainly by civilians, not at army bases. These nuclear attacks pointed to further advances that resulted in the development of the hydrogen bomb. America was considering the possibility of a future nuclear war in the years following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.35 The GHQ stopped the War Investigation Commission36 set up by the Japanese government, partly because it wanted, as far as possible, to forestall the publication of incriminating information, including the indiscriminate nature of the atomic bombings. It is clear the United States wanted to conceal the cruelty of its atomic attacks on defenseless civilians and the agony and misery they had inflicted. Many myths emerged around the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, most prisoners of war held by the Japanese firmly believed that the atomic

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  79 bombing hastened the end of the war, implying that their lives were thus saved by the bombings. In fact, the censorship was so widespread and targeted that the first memorial service for American prisoners of war killed in the atomic bombing was not conducted until 1985, by President Reagan.37 Because of the Imperial government’s censorship of information relating to wartime Japan, even such a distinguished scholar as Ienaga Saburō admitted that he had been completely ignorant about what the Imperial Japanese Army did in China and other East Asian countries. He did not become aware of details of war crimes committed until the time of the Tokyo Trials.38 There are some clues to how ordinary Japanese people must have felt when they were confronted with this information. Particularly, members of the Nihon Izokukai39 (the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association), established in 1947, found difficult to accept the realities of the wrongdoings that their lost fathers and brothers had committed. The dead soldiers are referred to by a special term eirei (英霊) meaning ‘glorious/honorable dead spirit’ to be enshrined. Also, members of the Association had been granted war pensions (onkyū) and/or supporting law (engo-hō) from the government in recognition of the service of their relatives. Due to its alignment and influence with successive LDP governments, the organization has exercised considerable influence over government policy since its inception.40 Subsequent Japanese governments emulated the American policies of censorship.41 This was convenient for Japan due to its military alliance with the United States during the Cold War. History relies on the interpretation of facts. Equally, when people react to facts it is filtered through their memories of war. The American Occupation contributed greatly to institutionalized democracy in Japan after the war, beginning with the revision of the Japanese Constitution. From the American point of view, it was necessary for the feudal culture of Japan to be dismantled. Obviously, political and cultural tensions existed between the two nations. Yet a man of foresight such as Faubion Bowers (1917–1999), who was General MacArthur’s interpreter during the Occupation, was able to use his position to save Kabuki drama from extinction.42 3.5  General MacArthur’s objectives August 1945 was a month of terror, hunger, bewilderment, and social upheaval for the Japanese people. On 6 August, Hiroshima was torn apart by an atomic bomb. On 9 August, a second atomic bomb devastated Nagasaki, and on the same day, Russia declared war on Japan. Did the Americans have more atom bombs? Would the Russian army invade Japan from the north? These fears were silenced on 15 August when Emperor Hirohito announced to the nation that the war had ended. This sudden and dramatic announcement was confirmed on 30 August, when General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, supported by American troops. For months, the people of Japan had been exhorted by the military to prepare for an invasion and to fight to the death in defense of their country, even if the only weapon they had was sharpened bamboo canes as spears. Suddenly the truth was brought home to

80  The Asia Pacific War them – that the Japanese empire had collapsed and Japan was experiencing full occupation with MacArthur in complete control. The Americans found Japan in a terrible state. The cities were in ruins, entries to the ports were blocked, many railways had been rendered useless, and the people were verging on starvation. For those still living in the cities, searching for food had become a frantic scramble. Black market prices were exorbitant. Passengers swarmed onto trains going to the countryside to procure food. Farmers no longer accepted Japanese currency due to triple-digit inflation. Produce could be purchased only through barter. America’s policy was that the Japanese should become self-sufficient after a period of urgent help to overcome the crisis; in line with this strategy, MacArthur ordered the establishment of army canteens for the population where possible, and the release of unused airfields for growing vegetables. He also ordered the importation of canned foods, bulk wheat, corn, and bags of flour from the United States. The urgency of the situation and the security implications of it was noted in the minutes of a U.S. cabinet meeting, where the Secretary of War, Robert S. Patterson noted: General McArthur’s [MacArthur’s] situation in Japan is approaching a critical stage. Unless relief is granted there will be famine in Japan. Japanese should have 400,000 tons of grain a month in order to offset the situation. Adding that: It is our responsibility to prevent famine in Japan. If food requirements are not met we will have to increase number of soldiers in the occupation forces.43 One problem that MacArthur did not have to face was the attempt by Russia to split the occupation of Japan. In May 1945, President Truman sent Harry L. Hopkins to Russia to find out what Stalin wanted. In a top-secret telegram to the president on 30 May, Hopkins advised that the Russians wanted an agreement with the United States and Britain to share in the occupation zones of Japan. As a consequence, when negotiations between the two nations began, Russia demanded occupation of southern Sakhalin, the four Kurile islands,44 and Hokkaido. Initially the United States rejected the Soviet Union’s demand for a separate zone before agreeing to the occupation of southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, but not Hokkaido.45 Russia in turn agreed to this modified proposal, the end result being that Japan lost sovereignty over four Kurile islands – sovereignty that it has never been able to regain. Two societal issues of the greatest importance that MacArthur did have to address were how to deal with the role of the emperor, and the drafting and promulgation of a new democratic constitution for Japan. At the end of the war, Russia, China, Britain, and Australia had called for the indictment of the emperor as a war criminal, a process which undoubtedly would have led to his execution. At first, U.S. State Department officials were also of this

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  81 opinion, until MacArthur wrote a powerful telegram of warning to President Eisenhower on 25 January 1946: The Emperor’s indictment will undoubtedly cause a tremendous convulsion among the Japanese people, the repercussions of which cannot be overestimated…. … all government agencies will break down, civilized practices will largely cease, and a condition of underground chaos and disorder amounting to guerrilla warfare in the mountains and outlying regions would result. I believe all hope of introducing modern democratic methods would disappear and that when military control finally ceased some form of intense regimentation probably along communistic line [sic] would arise from the mutilated masses.46 This letter won MacArthur’s full support from the State Department. To the four nations47 who insisted on the indictment of the emperor and were difficult to placate, he then outlined the reasons behind his decision not to indict the emperor and pressed on immediately to the drafting of the new Constitution. He had instantly grasped that the continued existence of the emperor in a new symbolic role uniting the nation was essential to the democratic future of Japan. In the closing stages of the war, the Potsdam Declaration had defined the terms for Japanese surrender; the agreement of the Allied Powers to the clauses concerning the future socio-political status of Japan made the drafting of a new Constitution inevitable. It was MacArthur’s view that ‘in their present state Japan had become the world’s great laboratory for an experiment in the liberation of a people from totalitarian military rule and for the liberalization of government from within’.48 MacArthur was clear on how to set about creating a democracy in Japan. He detailed the actions needed in order to achieve a democratic social situation in a statement to the Japanese government on 11 October 1945: First, destroy the military powers. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize the political power. Separate church from state.49 At first, the Japanese government, which would be responsible for initiating the changes, was reluctant to make any significant alterations. At the end of the war, the kokutai (the sacred tradition of national polity which ensured the mythical authority of the emperor) was still in place in the then-current Meiji Constitution. As early as 4 October 1945, MacArthur directed the Japanese Cabinet to commence a revision. A committee of revision consisting of prominent Japanese scholars was subsequently appointed. The head of the committee

82  The Asia Pacific War Matsumoto Jōji50 made it clear in his opening remarks that, in his opinion, ‘the aim of this committee is not constitutional amendment. We should aim to assess first whether amendment is necessary’. The other members were all of the same mind, believing it was not the Constitution itself that had led to Japan’s downfall, but its misuse, which had resulted in the rise to power of the military. As a result, the report Matsumoto’s committee handed to MacArthur on 8 February 1946 contained only conservative amendments that fell far short of the democratic reforms MacArthur expected. In order to get a conclusive result without procrastination and resistance by the Japanese, MacArthur took the momentous decision of having American lawyers under his command to prepare a draft constitution containing the reforms he and the Allies wanted. The revised draft was submitted to the Japanese government, which agreed to endorse it as it still contained provision for the emperor as ‘head of state’. The Americans concealed their role in order to gain acceptance by the public, so that the Constitution was presented formally to the Diet in the name of the Emperor and promulgated by the Japanese government on 3 November 1946. Following this, the Emperor renounced his divinity in a 1946 New Year’s Day message to the Japanese people: The ties between myself and my people have always stood on mutual trust and affection. They do not depend on mere legends and myths. They are not predicated on the false assumption that the Emperor is the living god Japanese people are superior to other races and fated to rule the world.51 [my translation] The Emperor asked his people to unite firmly in their ‘resolve to face the present ordeal … Love of family and love of country are especially strong in this country’. He went on to refer to his grandfather Meiji’s Charter Oath in 1868: ‘We wish to make this oath anew’. The provision in the oath that ‘deliberative assemblies shall be widely established in all matters decided by public discussion’ definitely has a democratic ring. But the oath also proclaims that ‘knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundations of imperial rule’. Undeniably, this second proclamation in the oath, far from affirming democracy, affirms the autocracy of imperial rule, an unfortunate connotation in such an important speech. Nishi Toshio has commented on this point, saying that the Emperor’s advocacy of the Charter Oath as a manifest of Japanese freedom and liberty merely underlines the superficial way in which the Japanese leaders had approached the meaning of democracy.52 Certainly, the speech does combine remnants of the past with an assertion of a new way of living in Japan. It must be said that the Japanese people welcomed this social upheaval leading to freedom, and that the new Constitution based on individual rights has never been altered in over 70 years. The reference to the Charter Oath was an unfortunate addition to the Emperor’s speech at that time of tumultuous change – as significant as the Meiji Restoration in 1868 which had overthrown Tokugawa rule.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  83 3.6  The Constitution of Japan As we have seen, following resistance by the Japanese government to make any significant changes from the existing Meiji Constitution, the Constitution of Japan was drafted by American lawyers. While the new constitution appeared to be an amendment to the Meiji Constitution, its radical rebuttals of imperialism and divine authority overturned the existing Meiji Constitution altogether, bringing instead the freedom and respect for individual rights that the Japanese people had never enjoyed throughout the entire history of their nation. The 1946 Constitution, which came into effect on 3 May 1947, was transformative and made Japan a truly parliamentary state. Some of the major changes were:

• The pre-war elite groups (the armed services, Privy Council, and special • • • •

officials close to the emperor) were either abolished or strictly subordinated to the Cabinet. Based on the British model, the Cabinet became a committee of the majority party or coalition in the Diet. Both houses of the Diet became fully elected, and the franchise was extended to all men and women aged 20 and over. The judiciary was made independent by law, and the Supreme Court was given the power to judge the constitutionality of Diet legislation. Human rights were guaranteed, as were the right of assembly, the right to a free press, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to academic freedom, and the right of workers to bargain freely.

Let us now compare three key articles in the Meiji Constitution that emphasized the emperor’s divine authority with the corresponding democratic amendments in the new constitution. Article 1 of the Meiji Constitution, significantly titled The Constitution of the Japanese Empire, states: ‘The Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of emperors unbroken for ages eternal’. Article 3 asserts the emperor’s mythical authority: ‘The Emperor is sacred and inviolable’, while Article 4 reaffirms, yet again, the emperor’s absolute authority: ‘The Emperor is the head of the Empire, combining in himself the rights of sovereignty according to the provisions of the present Constitution’. In his Commentaries on the Constitution of Japan (1906), Marquis Ito Hirobumi provided a fascinating discussion of Article 3, the tone of which captures the psychological climate of life in Japan at that time and the submissive relationship between the people and their emperor, whose divine authority made him remote and untouchable: The sacred throne was established at a time when the heavens and the earth became separated (Kojiki). The Emperor is heaven-descended, divine and sacred. He is pre-eminent above all his subjects. He must be revered and is inviolable. He has indeed to pay due respect to the law, but the law has no power to hold him accountable to it. Not only shall there be no irreverence

84  The Asia Pacific War for the Emperor’s person, but also shall He neither be made a topic of derogatory comment or of discussion.53 By eliminating the reference to ‘empire’ in its title, the new constitution, with its historic reforms, immediately overthrew the idea that Japan continued as an empire. The new constitution is simply titled The Constitution of Japan. Similarly, the mythic sovereignty of the nation was rendered void by the Preamble, which proclaimed: We, the Japanese people, acting through elected representatives in the National Diet, are determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout the land. We resolve that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the actions of government, and do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.54 When enacted in 1947, the Constitution promised fundamental changes in the way people lived: the rule of the nation by the people, not an emperor; the renunciation of war; and the recognition of individual rights through democratic practices. The role of the emperor in Japan was dramatically altered and reduced – he was no longer seen to be ‘heaven-descended, containing in himself the rights of sovereignty’. Article 1 proclaimed: ‘The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power’. In Article 3, we find ‘[t]he advice and approval of the Cabinet shall be required of all acts of the Emperor in matters of State, and the Cabinet shall be responsible therefor’. Article 4 further confirmed that ‘the Emperor shall perform such acts in matters of state as are provided in the Constitution and he shall not have powers related to the government’. 3.7  The Emperor and Shinto ritual While the Constitution stripped away the emperor’s sovereign powers, his status within the nation remained virtually intact. MacArthur made sure that no regicide took place. As a result, when the Constitution came into force in 1947, a seismic shift in national life took place seamlessly. The emperor still remains on the throne and is revered by the people. Although free speech provisions in the Constitution allowed the population to criticize his actions, this has never occurred. The emperor was indeed a symbol of the state and of the unity of the nation. As such, his status in Japanese society was impregnable. Emperor Akihito acceded to the throne on 7 January 1989. Nearly two years later, on 15 November 1990, controversy arose over his participation in enthronement ceremonies based archaic practices of the Shinto religion. These ceremonies were conducted in secret but at public expense via the Imperial Household Agency. They were also contrary to the democratic principles of the Constitution that aimed at totally removing Shintoism, with its mythical associations. The elaborate ceremonies culminated in the Emperor lying down on ‘the bed of the gods’, which he

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  85 shared as a newly enthroned emperor with divine status. While this ceremony was not in accord with democratic rule, it did accord with the mood of the people. The government confirmed this anomaly by referring to Sato Tatsuo’s memo written at the time of drafting the Constitution of Japan (2 March 1946 Draft) about the Emperor’s status: ‘The entire people are bound together through their spiritual ties with the emperor, which are rooted deep within their hearts – that is to say, with the emperor as the center of their devotion’.55 MacArthur’s prescience about the importance of ensuring the survival of the emperor had been proven right. It is ironic that, whereas the change in Japan from imperialism to democracy came into effect peacefully on a single day (3 May 1947), in other Asian countries, the people’s sovereignty could be achieved only through struggle. The People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 October 1949 in the form of a Communist regime that had defeated its Nationalist (Kuomintang) enemy after decades of civil war. After Korea had existed for 35 years as a Japanese colony (1910–1945), the Korean peninsula was divided into two zones that were administered by the Soviet Union in the north and the United States in the south. Unification attempts were unsuccessful because of domestic opposition and the influence of Cold War politics. The nation formed two separate governments in 1948 and the Korean War broke out in 1950. In 1953, an armistice was signed that resulted in the formal division of Korea into the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea) – a Western/U.S.-style democracy – and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – a Sovietstyle communist state. The Korean people had regained control of their nation, even though it meant that the country was ideologically split and each side had its own army. A formal peace settlement has never been signed. In 1954, in what was once French Indochina, Communist armies defeated the French, gaining partial control of Vietnam by taking charge of the north. In the south, the Vietnamese were supported militarily by America and Australia. In a vicious and protracted civil war between north and south, North Vietnam finally won out, uniting the whole country as a Communist state in 1975. After World War II and the Asia Pacific War had ended in 1945, Britain had resumed its occupation of Malaya, intending to make it a colony again. In 1948, the British established the Federation of Malaya, bringing the diverse area together under its control. Insurgency from the people broke out almost immediately and grew in force to such a point that Britain gave way. Malaya then became an independent state in 1957, going on to form a second Federation of Malaya in 1963, with Singapore breaking away to form its own state. Finally, Indonesia proclaimed its independence only two days after the end of the war. The Dutch sent in its army to resume colonization but acknowledged defeat in 1949 and, with that, Indonesia gained sovereignty. 3.8  Impediments to administering the Constitution of Japan56 Drawn up by American lawyers immediately after the end of the war, the Constitution of Japan embodied some idealism in its promulgation of human rights and the rejection of the repression and feudalism contained in the Meiji Constitution. Yet in five prominent areas – the democratic status of the emperor, national

86  The Asia Pacific War education, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and pacifism – the intent of the Constitution has been either ignored, blocked, modified, or politically resisted. Three of those areas – national education, workers’ rights, and women’s rights – have been particularly controversial, as I outline below. 3.8.1  National education

Based on the American model, Japan’s education system is divided into four grades: elementary (six years), lower secondary (three years), upper secondary (three years), and higher (two to four years). Article 23 of the Constitution of Japan guarantees ‘academic freedom’ and Article 26 (1) states that ‘All people shall have the right to receive an equal education correspondent to their ability, as prescribed by law’, affirming the freedom of research and education at all levels of teaching from higher to elementary and, by implication, the freedom to issue and use textbooks relevant to all levels. Reinforcing this concept of freedom in education is Article 10 of the Fundamental Law of Education (1947), which stipulates that ‘education shall not be subject to improper control but [that] it shall be directly responsible to the whole people’. Following the promulgation of the Constitution in 1946, a major clash developed over control and administration of the national education system; the government was pitted against the Japan Teachers’ Union and other dissidents. The government maintained that democratic elections expressing the will of the people had given it the power to represent the people, and that overriding policy control within the nation was essential for a viable educational system. Furthermore, this practice of having education controlled by a Ministry of Education was in line with practices adopted by other nations and was reinforced by the range of administrative forces the government could bring to bear in the interests of the people. On this point of basic authority, the government’s opponents referred to Article 10 of the Fundamental Law of Education, where the reference to ‘the whole of the people’ gave the people a basic right to determine what form of education would be appropriate for their children and that wholesale reform of existing practices should take place. This right of the people, it was argued, was consistent with the democratic intentions of the Constitution and particularly with the concept of ‘academic freedom’ espoused in Article 23. The strength of the government’s case rested on providing the uniformity necessary for the education of the population; its weakness lay in giving the government an opportunity for political intrusion into the curriculum. The strength of the opposition’s case rested in its highlighting the benefits of democratic values, greater participation by the people in the formulation of the curriculum, and extinguishing the potential for political interference. Its weakness lay in the variety of models that could be created in an education system based on democratic values, turning national education as a whole into a patchwork and making it therefore unviable. The pragmatic (and idealistic) solution, of course, was for the government to combine its responsibility with giving due attention to representations from the people. This has not been achieved in Japan. This clash intensified when the government introduced a textbook inspection system, under which government approval was required for all texts used in schools.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  87 According to the Ministry, the system was implemented ‘in order to guarantee the citizen’s right to receive an education, to maintain and improve the national standard of education, and to secure neutrality in education’.57 Interestingly, in that statement, there was no mention of the power it extended to the government to force the inclusion of its own concerns in the educational curriculum. In his book Freedom of Expression in Japan, Lawrence Beer has detailed examples of state intrusion into high school education: In preparation for the high school textbook triennium, the Ministry of Education in July 1981 asked that high school textbook writers and publishers soften their approach to Japan’s excesses during World War II, the horrors of atom bombs, the serious damage to health and the environment caused by factory pollution, political corruption, rights as distinct from duties, and the pacifist requirements of the Constitution (Article 9). More stress was suggested on patriotism, the constitutionality of the Self-Defense Forces, a balanced treatment of capitalism and Marxist socialism, and the safety and necessity of nuclear power development.58 To date the administration and delivery of the curriculum in Japanese schools has been carried out in accordance with the government’s views, even though it has been said that this system ‘in fact constitutes nothing less than an attempt to keep out of our schools all ideas that do not fit in with the State’s view of the kinds of knowledge which are appropriate and desirable to administer to Japanese youth’.59 Other Asian countries have also taken issue with Japanese government intrusion into the content of history textbooks. China, supported by Taiwan, has protested over the treatment of two major issues: the Manchurian Incident (1931) – when Japan invaded and annexed Manchuria as a puppet state – and the Nanking massacre (1937) of some 190,000 Chinese people by the Japanese Imperial Army. North and South Korea have jointly objected to insulting depictions of public rallies during their historic Independence Movement of 1 March 1919 as mere ‘riots’ and, subsequent to this dismissive statement, contradictory discussion of wartime mobilization by subjects of the emperor. Further international objections have deplored ‘Japan’s outright dishonesty in the textbook presentation of historical fact’.60 This textbook inspection system was challenged in a series of lawsuits brought against the state in 1965, 1967, and 1984 by the historian Ienaga Saburō. Ienaga had written a textbook on Japanese history that he revised for upper secondary schools; he objected to the Ministry of Education blocking its publication unless he modified his description of the Nanking atrocities. He was also directed to delete the phrase ‘the people who uphold history’ on the grounds it implied a populist view of history, even though this phrase endorsed the democratic purposes of the Constitution. Ienaga has put forward four arguments:

• in itself and in its operation, the textbook inspection system is unconstitutional; • the censure of the content of his manuscript was illegal, as it surpassed the discretionary authority of the Minister of Education;

88  The Asia Pacific War

• in particular, the system infringed on textbooks writers’ academic freedom and violated the provisions in Article 21 that emphasized freedom of expression and prohibition of censorship; • the inspection system was not in conformity with authority over the people’s education.

The Sugimoto Decision of the Tokyo District Court in 1970 ruled in favor of Ienaga, the judge declaring ‘In light of the nature of education, it is the whole of the people with the parents as leading figures that should take the responsibility for educating children in correspondence with children’s right to receive education’.61 In clarifying the role of the state the court ruled that ‘The state is not basically allowed to interfere with educational content. Educational or instructional freedom is mainly attendant on the teacher’s occupation and the professional and scientific character of what is being taught, so that is different in substance from natural freedom’.62 The court also concluded that the state had engaged in censorship and judged the use of inspection to be illegal in view of Article 10 of the Fundamental Education Law. However, in 1974, the Takatsu Decision in the Tokyo District Court overturned the Sugimoto Decision and upheld the authority of the government in education, judging that the state has ‘the authority to fulfil public education under its own standpoint and responsibility … and should have the responsibility and authority to administer public education in compliance with the laws, which is reflected in the people’s general will through the Diet under parliamentary democracy’.63 This decision implies that the government of the day is allowed to insert political views into national education. At the time of writing, the textbook inspection system remains in place as ‘Examination based on Textbook Examination Standards and on Report of Textbook Approval Research Council’.64 3.8.2  Workers’ rights

Immediately after the end of the war, the Japanese government in its Institutional Post-Surrender Policy for Japan noted that ‘Encouragement shall be given and favor shown to the development of labor organizations functioning on democratic principles’. Among the many measures taken at that time to protect workers’ fundamental rights was a U.S. directive to General MacArthur to ‘remove all legal hindrances to the formations of employees along democratic lines’.65 In effect all workers, including government employees, were guaranteed the three labor rights contained in Articles 27 and 28 of the new Constitution: Article 27. All people have the right and the obligation to work. Standards for wages, hours, rest, and other working conditions shall be fixed by law. Article 28. The right of workers to organize and to bargain and act collectively is guaranteed.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  89 Labor organizations quickly flourished but conflict flared between GHQ and certain of the more radical movements when communist-inspired demonstrations became more frequent. In May 1946, General MacArthur warned of ‘demonstrations and disorders by mass mobs’ and, in January 1947, he prohibited a planned general strike by government workers. This placed GHQ in the anomalous situation of denying people the fundamental right to freedom of speech that it had emphasized in the constitution it had itself drawn up. In a further escalation, in a letter to the Japanese government in July 1948, MacArthur stated that ‘Anyone who has a position in the Japanese government or a related organization by employment or appointment must not appeal to strikes or to any other delay strategies that might affect efficient government management’.66 In response, the government passed a host of restrictive laws and ordinances that would apply to major parts of the work force and restrict their constitutional rights. Chief among these measures was Ordinance No. 201, which prohibited collective bargaining and strikes. These laws, which apply to government workers and employees of national enterprises, remain in force and have never been repealed. Despite continual criticism of the laws from academics and in court actions, the reason that no substantial alterations have been made to them is clear in light of the following considerations. Commencing in the 1950s, corporate control became a very strong element of Japanese society. Increased productivity led to increased profits which flowed on to increased pay for employees. The bond thus created between management and workers was strengthened by guaranteed employment for life for selected employees, along with subsidized family accommodation and other such benefits that were offered in return for absolute loyalty to the company. When Japanese company employees, professions, trades, and laborers all set to work to rebuild the nation, long hours became an accepted work practice that was so strong it spilled over to become part of corporation management strategies, leading to excellent profits before the downturn and stagflation which paralyzed growth from the 1990s onward. In terms of the democratic rights of the individual, however, the cost has turned out to be severe. ‘The blessings of liberty’ envisioned by the Constitution were swamped by sheer hard work. Economic imperatives crushed the personal lives of corporation workers. As Mori Hideki observed, ‘such a usurpation of individuality corrupts the core of the system of fundamental rights without an overt confrontation’.67 Many terms have been coined to describe this social phenomenon: tanshin-funin (accepting a work transfer without taking one’s family), kyūjitsu-shukkin (working on days off), service zangyō (voluntary unpaid overtime), shukkō (being transferred, which may involve a pay reduction), furoshiki-zangyō (take-home overtime), and karōshi (death from exhaustion from overwork). Under the COVID-19 pandemic, the mode of work has seen a marked shift from office to home. The formation of in-house unions who were working with managements threatened the existence of national unions. This concern culminated in November 1975, when unions representing the employees of public enterprises announced ‘a strike for the right to strike’. Such was the grip of company policies impacting on workers’ rights that this crucial strike – basically authorized under Article 28 of the

90  The Asia Pacific War Constitution – was a failure. Unions representing private railway workers and truck drivers did not participate, rendering the strike ineffective. The potential of the national unions to exercise nationwide power was thus seriously diminished, leaving the power to bargain in the hands of in-house unions, where cooperation with managements’ objectives came to be seen as the best way to ensure workers’ continuing welfare. The labor supply in Japan is now lawfully organized by the Labor Standards Act (1947) (with reforms to be in force from 1 April 2023), is run with great efficiency, and is paid accordingly. The work force has been categorized, and people are legally processed in terms of the conditions applying to their particular category. The sophistication of this modern form of control over the labor supply appears to be a much more sinister method of exploitation than the oppression which provoked violent confrontation between managers and laborers in the 1930s. The activist Amamiya Karin suggests in her Ikisasero! Nanminka suru wakamono-tachi (Make us live: the displacement of young people! 2007) that young freeters68 (casual workers) do not understand how they came to be in such a desperate situation. In a market that is based on promoting high efficiency and profit within the framework of democracy, they often blame themselves for being non-competitive, and lacking in jiko-sekinin (self-responsibility). 3.8.3  Women’s rights

Japan’s new democratic Constitution granted unprecedented social rights and powers to women: the right to vote, to become a member of the Diet, to work on a level of equality with men, and equal rights with men in the household. Article 14 (1) of the Constitution makes a general statement emphasizing the equality of both sexes under law and prohibiting discrimination based on race, creed, sex, status, or family origin. Article 27 proceeds from this generalization to guarantee all people the right to work. This guarantee is further reinforced in Article 4 of the Labor Standards Law, which specifically prohibits gender-based wage discrimination. Unfortunately, the intent of the Constitution in this regard has not been fully realized. This can only be ascribed to an entrenched paternalism in Japanese men, and the joining together of men as a group in determining preferences in selection at executive levels or in political representation. Even now, while women have an opportunity to work at responsible levels, relatively few are chosen. In the first democratic election for the House of Representatives ever held in Japan on 10 April 1946, 39 women were elected out of a total of 148 representatives.69 Despite this disparity, women have infiltrated upper-level positions, the most notable being Doi Takako (1928–2014), who began her career as an academic specializing in constitutional issues before being elected to the House of Representatives in 1969. Doi went on to become the first female politician ever to lead a Japanese political party – the Japan Socialist Party, from 1986 to 1991 – and the first woman to be nominated by the Upper House for the position of prime minister (1989), where she was outvoted by the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Kaifu Toshiki. The first woman to occupy the prestigious position of Speaker of

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  91 the House (1993–1996), Doi was an energetic advocate of women’s rights and a defender of the Constitution, particularly in the preservation of Article 9. When in power, she worked through women’s organizations in order to broaden the base of her party. Because the provisions of the Constitution that guaranteed equality were still not being met some 40 years after it was enacted, a national inquiry was ratified by the Japanese Diet in 1985. ‘The Convention on the Reform of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women’ uncovered many difficulties that women face in attempting to reach equality with men in the work force. Statistics revealed that, while the percentage of women working almost equaled that of men, their comparative numbers fell dramatically at the executive management level. A second difficulty for women was that they were still responsible for managing the home. Combined with time spent on childbearing and the raising of children, this impeded further their ability to achieve equality with men. This form of inequality brought about by gender and domestic circumstances meant that women were generally found in part-time occupations, often at a low level; given the nature of the work, they earned a much lower take-home rate of pay than men enjoyed. Nevertheless, pay levels are determined by the nature of the work to be done and differences in remuneration cannot be said to be the result of active discrimination by employers. Overall, however, a more subtle discrimination exists in employment decisions at upper levels, where ‘the men’s club’ or the propensity for males to employ males has so far consistently led to a disproportionate number of men being selected over women applicants. Discriminatory practices by companies against female workers resulted in legal action being taken against Nissan Motor Company Ltd. One of the company’s rules required women to retire five years earlier than men, a practice ruled invalid by a Supreme Court decision in 1981. The court declared that ‘until about 60 years of age, both men and women do not lack the ability to fulfil duties required in business if they are ordinary duties’.70 In highlighting the company’s denial of equal rights, such a decision was no more than simple common sense. As for Japanese women’s participation in politics, Japan was ranked 164 among 192 countries (2019); according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)71 – at that date only 10.2% of the Lower House Diet members and 20.7% of the Upper House were women. In the World Economic Forum’s annual World Gender Gap Index in 2018, Japan was ranked 110 out of 149 countries, slipping to 121 in the Index of 202072 (behind the United Arab Emirates). At the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2013, the former Prime Minister the late Abe Shinzō pledged to ‘cultivate the power of women’ and to direct the emergence of a ‘Japan in which women can shine’. The rights of Japanese women have not yet been realized. Article 24 (1) of the Constitution states that marriage ‘shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes’. There is no question that marriages in Japan are indeed based on mutual consent; in practice – and largely through habit as well as for genetic reasons – it has proved difficult for women to abandon their traditionally subordinate role in the house and assert the individuality granted to them by the Constitution. For all but the wealthy few, the bearing of children

92  The Asia Pacific War and seeing to their daily welfare confines women to a household role, leaving husbands in the traditional position of master of the house and breadwinner. For women to assert their individuality and embark on a career requires major adjustments to the lifestyle they are accustomed to. Out of choice or necessity, most remain unwilling to make these adjustments. The old ways continue. Once the children have grown up, women have an opportunity to work, but employment available to them at that time of their lives would typically be in roles like shop assistants in a supermarket. Overall, the idealistic provisions in the Constitution that were intended to liberate women have achieved much, initiating major improvements in their right to work and to vote, as well as modifying the overarching authority in all household matters that was granted to husbands under the Meiji Constitution. Despite this progress, limitations still remain that restrict the full realization of the intent of the Constitution. 3.9  Article 9 Article 9 contains just two clauses, (1) and (2) as below: Article 9. (1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. (The Constitution of Japan, enacted 3 May 1947) Former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Prime Minister of Japan, the late Abe Shinzō, was a staunch proponent of the need to revise Article 9. A revision would have allowed Japan to become part of international military forces led by the United States – Abe Shinzō had already passed legislation for the collective selfdefense bill in July 2014 as a Cabinet decision, without discussion and approval by the Diet. Abe had been cautious about proposing constitutional amendments, which have been highly sensitive issues and there has been strong resistance among the Japanese people to any form of rearmament since the disastrous record of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1931 to 1945 was exposed. Abe’s attempts were only the latest by the LDP – Japan’s longest serving ruling party – which has been working unsuccessfully for many years to reform Article 9. The LDP’s surprise outright victory in the November 2021 elections, along with the growth of the influence of more right-wing populist politicians in the Diet, means that this revision of Article 9 may still come about.73 Understandably, countries neighboring Japan would be concerned by the possibility of Japanese remilitarization.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  93 No other nation has imposed upon itself such severe defense constraints, and yet this has remained law, unaltered for 77 years (at the time of writing). Article 9 has put Japan in an anomalous position in a world that has been in constant upheaval through wars in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, and through conflicts that were spearheaded by its ally America in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In the postwar period, Japan has never been actively engaged in the use of offensive weapons. Whenever the United States has wanted Japan to take part in international security campaigns, Japan’s Article 9 has been an impediment. At this point, let us review the importance of Article 9 from its earliest days. 3.10  Attempts to amend Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan The first attempt to subvert Article 9 of The Constitution of Japan was made in 1950, when General MacArthur instructed the Japanese government to establish a 75,000-member National Police Reserve. The chief of staff to the military advisor of the U.S. forces, Frank Kowalski, later acknowledged that ‘what we were establishing were armed forces, but we were ordered to camouflage it’.74 Tensions have emerged since then between strict adherence to Article 9 and what is seen as political reality. When the Occupation ended in 1952 Japan concluded a Security Treaty with the United States that allowed U.S. troops to be stationed on Japanese territory. Debate in Japan over this controversial decision centered on whether ‘land and air forces with a war potential being maintained against direct and indirect invasion’ contravened Article 9. In 1954, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces were established, their main aim being ‘to defend our country’. Despite massive opposition from the people in 1960, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was revised, and the Self-Defense Forces were strongly reinforced. In 1996, Japan agreed to a redefinition of the Security Treaty to cooperate with U.S. forces in the whole of the Asia Pacific region. Amendments to the provisions of Article 9 were attempted in the 1950s and again in the 1970s under Prime Minister Nakasone. Each failed. The most recent attempt was initiated in 2014 by LDP Prime Minister the late Abe Shinzō, whose administration approved an interpretation of the Constitution that would allow the nation to exercise the right of collective self-defense in a limited range of situations. This interpretation endorses the use of minimum force in situations that pose a ‘clear threat to the Japanese state or could fundamentally threaten the Japanese people’s constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. The arguments put forward by the government in support of this Cabinet decision are as follows: 1 The security environment surrounding Japan is increasingly threatened. The growth of China’s air, sea, and ground forces is accelerating, and China is committing acts of provocation against Japan. North Korea has improved the performance of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, randomly firing these as acts of provocation; the emergence of a new factory in the form of terrorism is expanding globally.

94  The Asia Pacific War 2 Given the current international turmoil, there are limits to the effectiveness of Japan’s self-defense or Japan’s ability to defend itself within limitations that only allow the nation to maintain its right to individual self-defense. On the other hand, the Japan-U.S. collective alliance, further supported by other countries joining the alliance, will strengthen Japan’s capacity for self-defense. 3 This new interpretation will lead to a stronger Japan: ‘This is no deviation from the path of a peaceful state that Japan has walked for 70 years,’ Abe maintained in a speech. ‘This is significant for fulfilling our responsibility to preserve peace in the region and in the world’. 4 The Self-Defense Forces will be able to play a greater role in international operations cooperating for peace operations by assisting personnel of another nation’s military who are under attack. Such involvement would enhance the international status of Japan. The Self-Defense Forces would, however, not be engaged in the use of force in an area of conflict: that is prohibited under the Constitution. 5 Forthcoming bills will be subject to further discussion and examination by the judiciary to investigate whether they conform with the Constitution and embody the separation of the powers of administration and judiciary in accordance with the Constitution. 6 The document supporting the Cabinet position closes by pointing out that the right to participate in collective self-defense is an approved means of national defense under international law.75 The sequence of bills introduced by the government in 2015 and endorsed by the Diet would radically alter Japan’s national defense policy by reinterpreting Article 9 and formulating a new national security policy, by establishing a National Security Council, increasing the defense budget, and by drastically relaxing the long-standing arms export ban. No action has been taken as yet by the government to take these decisions to a public referendum for endorsement, nor is it likely to do so, there being vociferous public opposition and vehement disapproval from professors of constitutional law on the legal basis for any change. Patently, the Diet has disregarded the overriding principles for amending the Constitution that are contained in Article 96. The arguments opposing amendments to Article 9 are based on adherence to the existing principles of the Constitution: 1 To change the government’s interpretation of defense not only undermines Article 9, but it also violates the pacifist principles that lie at the heart of the Constitution. 2 The Cabinet decision allows Japan to take part in conflicts abroad, potentially putting the Self-Defense Forces under threat of injury and death. This is not selfdefense and could make Japan a target, exposing it to attack by enemy forces. 3 The Abe administration has not undergone the proper constitutional procedures that apply to revision, nor has it explained to the people what engaging in collective self-defense will mean for the nation. The point here is that the Self-Defense

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  95 Forces could be used to help defend another country. To cease to defend Japan because they are defending others. 4 Formal approval of the interpretations would set a dangerous precedent, allowing future administrations to violate other articles in the Constitution in order to implement new Cabinet policies. 5 Given Japan’s security alliance with the United States, it is also questionable whether the government would be able to make an independent decision to refuse to assist the United States militarily in a conflict. A NHK public opinion survey of January 201576 revealed that attitudes in favor of and opposed to constitutional revision were about equal – 28% say ‘revision is necessary’, 25% say ‘revision is not necessary’, while 43% ‘cannot say, either way’. The controversial measures aimed at change are centered on Article 9 and Article 96 of the Constitution. Article 96. (1) Amendments to this Constitution shall be initiated by the Diet, through a concurring vote of two-thirds or more of all the members of each House and shall thereupon be submitted to the people for ratification, which shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of all votes cast thereon, at a special referendum or at such election as the Diet shall specify. (2) Amendments when so ratified shall immediately be promulgated by the Emperor in the name of the people, as an integral part of this Constitution. (The Constitution of Japan, enacted 3 May 1947) In an effort to break this deadlock, the government has turned its attention to Article 96, drafting an amendment that can only become law if it is supported by a two-thirds majority in both Houses, and by public approval – these are the very conditions the government is seeking to remove: Amendment to this Constitution shall be initiated by a member of either the House of Representatives or the House of Councilors and resolved by the Diet through a concurring vote of a majority of all the members of both the Houses, and shall thereupon be submitted to the people for ratification, which shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of all the valid votes cast in a popular election as required by law. But until Article 96 of the Constitution is legally altered, it will continue to apply to Article 9 with its renunciation of war. The LDP – and Japan – has arrived at a crossroads. At the date of publication, no action had been taken. Most unexpectedly, Abe Shinzō was shot by a former member of the Maritime SDF while campaigning during the Upper House elections in Nara. He later died in hospital on 8 July 2022. The suspect confessed that he attacked Abe because of his connections with the Unification Church.77 Prime Minister Kishida Fumio pledged that he and LDP members will carry on Abe’s legacy in relation to the revision of Article 9.

96  The Asia Pacific War 3.11 Summation In 1951, Japan regained its sovereignty with the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty.78 In return the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was signed on the same day, allowing the U.S. Army to stay to defend Japan against the Soviet Union and China. This was in the early years of the Cold War. Decades later, on 26 June 2019, prior to the G20 Summit in Osaka, President Trump again criticized Japan on a Fox TV business program saying, ‘We will go in and we will protect them and we will fight with our lives and with our treasure. We will fight at all costs, right? But if we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us at all. They can watch it on a Sony television, the attack’.79 Trump’s claim turned out to be unreliable in terms of costs; Japan duly paid these to the United States by providing the U.S. bases in Japan, particularly in Okinawa,80 and by buying 105 F-35 Lightning jet fighters from the United States.81 His comment indicates how far the supremacy of the United States in Asia has declined since the inception of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 1951 and the revisions that were made to it in 1960 and 1970. In 1951, it was unthinkable that Japan might one day aid the United States. In 1960, the biggest civil demonstration in Japan was mobilized to protest against the revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and demand the rejection of the military alliance, the presence of the U.S. Army forces in Japan, and the formation of Japan’s Self-Defense Force.82 There were fiery scenes in the Diet when the legislation was brought to a vote in the Lower House and the anti-U.S. feeling led to the cancelation of an expected visit to Japan by President Eisenhower for security reasons. Then Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke83 (1896–1987), the late Abe’s grandfather, took responsibility for the public unrest and resigned. Despite the efforts aimed at modernizing Japan by the U.S. Occupation Forces, Japan remains largely a patriarchal society84 and the dominance of a right-leaning/conservative body of power exists within Japanese socio-political culture. Increasingly, however, there has been a heightened occurrence of robust activism in public affairs by Japanese individuals and citizens in groups. People have volunteered to clean disaster zones and established movements to oppose the unnecessary operation of nuclear power stations. This kind of action has increased since the establishment of the Law to Promote Specified Non-Profit Corporation (NPO Corporation) in 1998. The law was introduced in response to spontaneous volunteer activities by citizens responding to the disaster that unfolded after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, which hit Kobe and Osaka in 1995. The legislation made it easier for groups like these to register their non-profit organizations as corporate entities. This citizen power exercised by those who are willing to act on behalf of others and express their views collectively or individually is, in my view, one of the positive outcomes emerging from Japan’s postwar generations.85 As I mentioned earlier, one of their priorities has been the protection of Article 9.86 Below is a photograph of a February 1991 memorial monument for Article 9, which was dedicated to the memory of the late Kurihara Tadaichi and Sadako, Hiroshima, by their daughter Mariko. Sadako was a well-known and outspoken activist poet, and Tadaichi and Sadako were both hibakusha. Though too many

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  97

Figure 3.1 Memorial monument for Article 9 dedicated to the memory of Kurihara Tadaichi and Sadako. Photo courtesy of Takeuchi Yoshio.

to name, those who have contributed to maintaining the spirit of ‘renunciation of war’ in Article 9 have ensured that their wishes have been carried out to this day. Ironically, the atomic devastation of Hiroshima inspired Japanese citizens to establish enduring grassroots movements for peace. Notes 1 ‘Poll shows 54% oppose revision of Japan’s pacifist Constitution under Abe’s watch’, Japan Times, 11 April 2019, accessed 28 February 2022. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2019/04/11/national/politics-diplomacy/poll-shows-54-oppose-revision-japanspacifist-constitution/#.XhcTCBdS-i4, accessed 21 October 2022. 2 Ōe Kenzaburō was six when the Asia Pacific War broke out. His early upbringing has been described as being in the ‘village tradition’ and the women in his family were storytellers. Once at school, he was subjected to the militaristic education that permeated all Japanese schools during the period. A biography that details his upbringing and the context from which his stories evolved can be found at ‘Kenzaburō Ōe Biographical’. https://www. nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1994/oe/biographical/, accessed 21 October 2022. 3 Ōe Kenzaburō, Nobel Lecture ‘Japan, the Ambiguous and Myself’, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1994/oe/lecture/ accessed 21 October 2022. 4 Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835–1901) was author, educator, political theorist in Meiji whose life spanned two political systems: Tokugawa feudalism and Meiji restoration. He founded Keio University in Tokyo. 5 Jiji Shinpō (the Current News), a daily newspaper, 1882–1936, was founded by Fukuzawa Yukichi. It was one of the more influential newspapers in Japan.

98  The Asia Pacific War 6 Jesse Johnson, ‘U.S., Australia, Japan Defense Chiefs Slam China’s “Aggressive and Bullying Behavior”’, Japan Times, 2 October 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ news/2022/10/02/national/politics-diplomacy/us-japan-australia-defense-ministerssummit/, accessed 30 December 2022. 7 ‘hibakusha’ means atomic-bomb victims. They were often subject to discrimination in Japanese society, as their medical symptoms, such as fatigue and PTSD, prevented them from working and living normally. 8 Unless otherwise state, English translations are mine. 9 Extract from Kawa (The Rivers), the first performed in 1963 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the death of Hiroshima poet Tōge Sankichi (1917–1953), and the 9th International Conference for Prohibition of Atomic and Hydrogen bombs. Tsuchiya Tokiko and Yagi Yoshihiro, eds., Hiroshima no ‘kawa’ – gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (‘The Rivers’ of Hiroshima: playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s drama of a group of youths) (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019). 10 United Nations, ‘UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’, accessed 28 February 2022, https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/; see also the list of signatories at ICANw https://www.icanw.org/signature_and_ratification_status, accessed 28 October 2022. 11 Prime Minister Satō Eisaku (1901–1975), in office (1964–1972) proposed the idea of hikaku sangensoku (the three anti-nuclear principles) in 1968. Satō accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974 for his proposal. Yet, nuclear weapons were stored at the American military camp in Okinawa later and Satō was in fact seeking Japan to possess nuclear arms, according to an NHK Special Exclusive Report, ‘Japan’s Nuclear Arms Pursuit’, October 3, 2010, https://www.nhk.or.jp/archives/shogenarchives/no-morehibakusha/library/bangumi/en/19/, accessed 28 October 2022. 12 The Cold War period (1947–1991) is generally dated from the Truman Doctrine of 1947 to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. 13 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, ‘Atoms for Peace’, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/atoms-peace, accessed 28 February 2022. 14 Abe Shinzō said in parliament ‘the definition of what constitutes an “invasion” has yet to be established in academia or in the international community’ in response to whether he would support Japan’s official apology issued in 1995. ‘Shinzō Abe’s inability to face history’, The Washington Post, 26 April 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ opinions/shinzo-abes-inability-to-face-history/2013/04/26/90f5549c-ae87-11e2-a986eec837b1888b_story.html, accessed 28 February 2020. 15 ICANw, (International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons) https://www.icanw.org/, accessed 2 March 2023. 16 INMP (International Network of Museums for Peace)https://www.ipb.org/members/ international-network-of-museums-for-peace/, accessed 2 March 2023. 17 Yoshida Takashi’s article, “Tracing ‘victimizer consciousness’” is in Yasuko Claremont, ed., Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing (Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2018), 11–25. 18 Yoshida Takashi is a professor of history at Western Michigan University in the United States, specializing in World War II and memory in East Asia and in the United States. 19 Cited in “Tracing ‘victimizer consciousness’”, p.12, (‘Supreme Commander’ 1945, 31–31) – ‘Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Monthly Summary, no. 1’. September-October 1945. Record Group 331. Box 1349. US National Archives. 20 Unemployment was said to be 10 million. 21 The U.S. assistance for postwar recovery of Japan amounted to $2.2 billion in total aid. Nina Serafino, Curt Tarnoff, and Dick K. Nato, Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Division, U.S. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared, March 23, 2006, accessed 28 October 2022. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf, accessed 28 October 2022.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  99 22 The Constitution of Japan, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html, accessed 28 October 2022. 23 Shidehara Kijūrō, 1872–1951, was a prominent diplomat pre-World War II, statesman, and Prime Minister (1945–1946), known for his pacifism. His title was Danshaku (Baron). 24 Inoue Toshikazu, Sensō chōsakai – maboroshi no seifu bunsho wo yomitoku (The war investigation commission: understanding the archival government record of disuse) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2017). 25 Inoue Toshikazu (b. 1956), historian in Japan’s diplomatic relations, president of Gakushuin University (2014–2020), is specializing in World War I, World War II, and postwar Japan. 26 Sensō chōsakai, p.18. 27 The reasons for the closing down of the committee were not stated; however, it could be easily speculated that the Allied Forces did not want to expose their own wrongdoings. 28 Richard Von Weizsäcker (1920–2015) was a German politician who served as the President of Germany, 1984–1994. His speech on 8 May 1985 at the 40th anniversary of the end of the World War II was recognized around the world for its sincerity and tone of repentance. 29 Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) was the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China, serving under Chairman Mao Zedong from 1949 until his death in 1976. He was advocating peaceful co-existence with the West. Zhou’s lenient policy for the Japanese POWs in the Fushun War Criminal Management Centre not only saved their lives but also fostered them to work for friendship between China and Japan. See Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: The Oriental Society of Australia, 2017), 6–12. 30 Publications, Katō Yōko, Soredemo nihon jin wa ‘sensō’ o eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’) (Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2009) and Sensō made: rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to Nihon no shippai (Until the war: ‘negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure’) (Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2016). 31 This phrase implies arbitrary nature of what is regarded as justice and injustice as the victor claims it as justice no matter what. 32 Tōjō Hideki, 1884–1948, the Prime Minister 1941–1944, Japanese military head responsible for Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. He was a war criminal and was hanged. 33 U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, ‘FDR’s “Day of Infamy” Speech’, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/winter/crafting-day-of-infamyspeech.html, accessed 28 February 2022. 34 Hiroshima-based writer Horikawa Keiko’s award-winning documentary book Akatsuki no Ujina, rikugun senpaku shireikan-tachi no Hiroshima (Ujina of Akatsuki forces: the army shipping commanders’ Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2021), explored why Hiroshima was the target of atomic bombing. One of the reasons was Ujina, Hiroshima, the major shipping deport and port of embarkation. Yet, many civilians were killed instantly when the atomic bomb was exploded in the mid-air above the city’s shopping quarters – it was a convenient place for scientists to draw concentric circles to analyze the impact of the atomic bomb. The United States of America wanted to show off its supremacy as the nuclear armed nation. 35 During a news conference in 1950, President Harry Truman asserted that the United States would take ‘whatever steps were necessary’ to stop the communist onslaught in the Korean Conflict, including ‘every weapon’ they have. 36 The War Investigation Commission (Sensō chōsakai), a national project, was launched by the Shidehara Kijūrō Government in November 1945. See Inoue Toshikazu, Sensō chōsakai, maboroshi no seifu bunsho wo yomitoku (The war investigation commission: understanding the archival government record of disuse) (Tokyo: Kodansha Gendai shinsho, 2017). 37 President Reagan addressed at the memorial service for fallen American airmen in Hiroshima on 27 June 1985.

100  The Asia Pacific War 3 8 Ienaga Saburō, ‘The Glorification of War in Japanese Education.’ International Security 18, no. 3 (1993), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539207, accessed 23 October 2022. 39 Nihon Izokukai (the Japan War-Bereaved Families Association) supports the Yasukuni shrine for memorial services for their war dead. The Yasukuni shrine and its war museum have been controversial for upholding revisionist interpretations of the war. 40 Maciej Pletnia, ‘Internal Pressure – Japan War-Bereaved Family Association and its Influence on Japanese Politics of Memory’, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies (ejcjs) 20, no. 3 (2020), https://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol20/ iss3/pletnia.html, accessed 25 October 2022. 41 Carol Gluck, Newsweek 30–31, 20 March 2018. 42 Okamoto Shirō and Samuel L. Leiter (trans), The Man Who Saved Kabuki, Faubion Bowers and Theatre Censorship in Occupied Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001). 43 National Archives, Harry S. Truman Library, Notes on Cabinet Meetings, 1945–1946, ‘Cabinet Meeting Minutes, March 8, 1946’, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/personal-papers/notes-cabinet-meetings-i-1945-1946/march-8-1946, accessed 15 December 2022. 44 Four islands are known as the Northern Territories: Etorofu Island, Kunashiri Island, Shikotan Island, and Habomai Islands. 45 Richard C. Thornton, ‘Truman and the Pacific War Endgame’, Journal of Strategy and Politics 1 (2014), 46–73, provides an insight into the strategic interests of the Soviet Union in relation to Japan. 46 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, The Far East, Volume VIII, ‘General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the Chief of Staff United States Army (Eisenhower)’, 25 January, 1946, Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d308, accessed 11 October 2022. 47 They were the Soviet Union, China, Britain, and Australia wanted the Emperor tried as a war criminal. 48 Widely quoted from Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 282. 49 Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences, 282–283. 50 Matsumoto Jōji, “Gist of the Revision of the Constitution” https://www.ndl.go.jp/ constitution/e/shiryo/03/074shoshi.html, accessed 2 January 2023. 51 National Diet Library. Birth of the Constitution of Japan, Documents with Commentaries, ‘3.1 Emperor, Imperial Rescript Denying his Divinity (Professing his Humanity)’, [Commonly known as the Humanity Declaration at the request of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Douglas MacArthur, where the Emperor was denied the status of being divine], https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/056shoshi.html, accessed 15 December 2022. 52 Nishi, Unconditional Democracy, 150. 53 Ito Hirobumi, Commentaries on the Constitution of Japan, 2nd edition, 1906, translated by Itō Miyoji (Tokyo, Chu-o Daigaku), 6–7. Originally published in Japanese, 1889. 54 The Constitution of Japan. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html, accessed 11 October 2022. 55 Satō Tatsuo, a member of the Privy Council, described the emperor in a handwritten memorandum as ‘center of devotion, not as a god, nor as lord, but as the feeling one has towards parents’ in Moore, Ray, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japan State under MacArthur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 180. Also see https://www. ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/086shoshi.html accessed 2 January 2023. 56 Relevant to this section, I wish to acknowledge the help I have received from reading Higuchi Yōichi, editor, Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2001). 57 Uchino Masayuki, ‘The struggle for Educational Freedom’, Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001), 115–132.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  101 58 Lawrence Ward Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan; a Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society (Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, 1984), 271, note 117, Asahi shinbun, 10 July 1981. 59 Horio Teruhisa, translated by Steven Platzer, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan: State Authority and Intellectual Freedom (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1988), 16. 60 Beer, 270, 271 and 272, as quoted in Ienaga Saburō, ‘The Glorification of War in Japanese Education’. In East Asian Security, edited by Michael Edward Brown, Sean M. LynnJones and Steven E. Miller (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 133 [preamble to the chapter]. 61 Uchino, Five Decades of Constitutionalism, 126. 62 Uchino, Five Decades of Constitutionalism, 127. 63 Uchino, Five Decades of Constitutionalism. 64 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan website on Textbook Examination Procedure: https:// www.mofa.go.jp/policy/education/textbooks/overview-3.html, accessed 5 December 2022. 65 Mori Hideki, ‘Workers’ Rights in Japanese Labor Praxis’, Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society, (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001), 171–194. 66 Mori, Five Decades of Constitutionalism, 176. 67 Mori, Five Decades of Constitutionalism, 187. 68 The term, ‘freeter’ is a Japanese expression used to describe the young adults who are casual workers. 69 Tsujimura Miyoko, ‘Women’s Rights in Law and Praxis: The Significance of Three Statistics from Politics, the Household, and Labor’, Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001) 155–170. 70 Tsujimura, Five Decades of Constitutionalism, 165. 71 International Parliamentary Union, ‘Women in National Parliaments’, [as of 1 February 2019] http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm, accessed 28 February 2022. 72 World Economic Forum, ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2020’, https://www3.weforum. org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf, accessed 28 February 2022. 73 Ra Mason, ‘Japan: Pressure from Populist Right to Scrap “Peace Constitution” after 75 Years”, The Conversation, 9 November 2021, https://theconversation.com/japan-pressure-from-populist-right-to-scrap-peace-constitution-after-75-years-171333, accessed 28 February 2022, 74 Frank Kowalski, edited by Robert D. Eldridge, An Inoffensive Rearmament: The Making of the Post-War Japanese Army (Annapolis: The Naval Institute, 2013), 172. See also Frank Kowalski, Nihon saigumbi (Japanese rearmament) (Tokyo: Saimaru Shuppankai 1969). 75 The list was based on Cabinet Decision on Development of Seamless Security Legislation to Ensure Japan’s Survival and Protect its People, July 1, 2014. https:// japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/decisions/2014/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/07/03/anpohosei_eng.pdf 76 Aramaki Hiroshi and Masaki Miki, ‘Pros and Cons Evenly Matched on Constitutional Revision’, NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, January 2016, https://www. nhk.or.jp/bunken/english/reports/pdf/report_16010801.pdf, accessed 28 February 2022. 77 Formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and commonly known as Unification Church, this is a new religious movement founded in 1954. The motive for the assassination looks baseless, yet the connections between politicians and powerful religious groups are widely known. 78 San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed in San Francisco, 8 September 1951, and initial entry into force, 28 April 1952. It ended the U.S.-led Allied occupation of Japan. A total of 48 countries signed. Neither the Republic of China nor the People’s Republic of China was invited to attend the conference where signing took place. 79 ‘Trump renews criticism of Japan-US alliance before G20 summit’, Reuters, June 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-summit-trump-japan/trump-renews-criticism-ofjapan-us-alliance-before-g20-summit-idUSKCN1TS057, accessed 22 February 2022. 80 ‘Trump renews criticism’.

102  The Asia Pacific War 81 ‘Japan formally announces decision to buy F-35B stealth fighter jets from U.S.’, The Japan Times, Aug 17, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/08/17/national/ japan-formally-announces-decision-buy-f-35b-stealth-fighter-jets-u-s/#.XhXGJutS-i4, accessed 28 February 2022. 82 The amended U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, 1960, delineates mutual defense obligations for any attack against Japan and the U.S. It provided for the continued presence of U.S. military bases in Japan. 83 Kishi Nobusuke, 1896–1987, was the Prime Minister of Japan, 1957–1960. Kishi was one of the architects of creating Manchuria by using his bureaucratic power to exploit laborers. He was designated as an A-class war criminal but was released by the U.S. Occupation Forces. 84 ‘Japan Fails to Shine in International Report on Women’s Participation in Politics’, The Japan Times, March 7, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/07/ national/japan-fails-shine-annual-report-womens-participation-politics/#.XiGpuxdS-i4, accessed 28 February 2022. An international organization (International Parliamentary Union) monitoring the representation of women in national parliaments reported that in the Diet in 2017, only 10.1 percent of Lower House seats and 20.7 percent of Upper House seats were filled by female lawmakers. As discussed in this chapter, this had changed little in the IPU’s follow-up survey in 2019. 85 See Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: The Oriental Society of Australia, 2017). 86 ‘Kyūjō wo mamoru kai’ (Protecting Article 9 Society) – a group of Japanese citizens who advocate for protecting Article 9 from revision. It was established in 2004 by nine prominent authors and critics, e.g., Inoue Hisashi, Ōe Kenzaburō, Oda Makoto.

Bibliography Books Beer, Lawrence Ward, Freedom of Expression in Japan; A Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society, Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International, 1984. Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Sydney: The Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Claremont, Yasuko, ed., Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing, Abingdon; New York: Routledge, 2018. Higushi, Yōichi, ed., Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2001. Horio, Teruhisa, trans. by Steven Platzer, Educational Thought and Ideology in Modern Japan: State Authority and Intellectual Freedom, Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1988. Ienaga, Saburō, ‘The Glorification of War in Japanese Education’, in East Asian Security, edited by Brown, Michael Edward, Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Inoue, Toshikazu, Sensō chōsakai – maboroshi no seifu bunsho o yomitoku (The war investigation commission: understanding the archival government record of disuse), Tokyo: Kodansha, 2017. Ito, Hirobumi, Commentaries on the Constitution of Japan, 2nd edition, 1906, trans. by Ito Miyoji, Tokyo, Chu-o Daigaku. Originally published in Japanese, 1889. Katō, Yōko, Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ wo eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’), Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2009. Katō, Yōko, Sensō made: rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to Nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure), Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2016.

Legacies of the Asia Pacific War  103 Kowalski, Frank, Nihon saigunbi Japanese rearmament, Tokyo: Saimaru Shuppankai 1969. Kowalski, Frank, ed. by Robert D. Eldridge, An Inoffensive Rearmament: The Making of the Post-War Japanese Army, Annapolis: The Naval Institute, 2013, 172. MacArthur, Douglas, Reminiscences, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964, Tokyo: Chu-o Daigaku. Mori, Hideki, ‘Workers’ Rights in Japanese Labor Praxis’. In Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society, Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001. Nishi, Toshio, Unconditional Democracy, Education and Politics in Occupied Japan, 1945– 1952, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1982. Okamoto, Shirō and Samuel L. Leiter (trans.), The Man Who Saved Kabuki, Faubion Bowers and Theatre Censorship in Occupied Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. Tsuchiya, Tokiko and Yagi Yoshihiro, eds., Hiroshima no ‘kawa’ – gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (‘The Rivers’ of Hiroshima: playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s drama of a group of youths.), Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019. Tsujimura, Miyoko, ‘Women’s Rights in Law and Praxis: The Significance of Three Statistics from Politics, the Household, and Labor’, in Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society, Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001. Uchino, Masayuki, ‘The struggle for Educational Freedom’, in Five Decades of Constitutionalism in Japanese Society, Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2001. Articles Aramaki Hiroshi and Masaki Miki, ‘Pros and Cons Evenly Matched on Constitutional Revision’, NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, January 2016, https://www.nhk. or.jp/bunken/english/reports/pdf/report_16010801.pdf. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, The Far East, Volume VIII, ‘General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the Chief of Staff United States Army (Eisenhower)’, 25 January, 1946, Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d308. Gluck, Carol, Newsweek 30–31, 20 March 2018. Ienaga Saburō, ‘The Glorification of War in Japanese Education.’ International Security, 18: 3, (1993): 113–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539207. ‘Japan fails to shine in International Report on Women’s Participation in Politics’, The Japan Times, 7 March 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/07/national/ japan-fails-shine-annual-report-womens-participation-politics/#.XiGpuxdS-i4. ‘Japan formally announces decision to buy F-35B stealth fighter jets from U.S.’, The Japan Times, 17 August 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/08/17/national/japanformally-announces-decision-buy-f-35b-stealth-fighter-jets-u-s/#.XhXGJutS-i4. ‘Japan’s Nuclear Arms Pursuit’, NHK Special Exclusive Report, October 3, 2010, https:// www.nhk.or.jp/archives/shogenarchives/no-more-hibakusha/library/bangumi/en/19/. Johnson, Jesse, ‘U.S., Australia, Japan Defense Chiefs Slam China’s “Aggressive and Bullying Behavior”, Japan Times, 2 October 2022, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/10/02/ national/politics-diplomacy/us-japan-australia-defense-ministers-summit/. ‘Kenzaburo Ōe Biographical’. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1994/oe/ biographical/. Mason, Ra, ‘Japan: Pressure from Populist Right to Scrap “Peace Constitution” after 75 Years”, The Conversation, 9 November 2021, https://theconversation.com/ japan-pressure-from-populist-right-to-scrap-peace-constitution-after-75-years-171333.

104  The Asia Pacific War Ōe Kenzaburō, Nobel Lecture ‘Japan, the Ambiguous and Myself’, https://www.nobelprize. org/prizes/literature/1994/oe/lecture/. Pletnia, Maciej, ‘Internal Pressure – Japan War-Bereaved Family Association and its Influence on Japanese Politics of Memory’, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies (ejcjs) 20, no. 3 (2020), https://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol20/iss3/ pletnia.html. ‘Poll shows 54% oppose revision of Japan’s pacifist Constitution under Abe’s watch’, Japan Times, 11 April 2019. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/11/national/politicsdiplomacy/poll-shows-54-oppose-revision-japans-pacifist-constitution/#.XhcTCBdS-i4. Serafino, Nina, Curt Tarnoff, and Dick K. Nato, Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Division, US. Occupation Assistance: Iraq, Germany and Japan Compared, March 23, 2006. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33331.pdf. ‘Shinzō Abe’s inability to face history’, The Washington Post, 26 April 2013, https://www. washingtonpost.com/opinions/shinzo-abes-inability-to-face-history/2013/04/26/90f5549 c-ae87-11e2-a986-eec837b1888b_story.html. Thornton, Richard C., ‘Truman and the Pacific War Endgame’, Journal of Strategy and Politics, 1 (2014), 46–73. ‘Trump renews criticism of Japan-US alliance before G20 summit’, Reuters, June 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-summit-trump-japan/trump-renews-criticism-ofjapan-us-alliance-before-g20-summit-idUSKCN1TS057, accessed 22 February 2022. Websites Dwight D. Eisenhower, Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home, ‘Atoms for Peace’. https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/atoms-peace. ICANw, (International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons). https://www.icanw.org/. INMP (International Network of Museums for Peace).https://www.ipb.org/members/international-network-of-museums-for-peace/, accessed 2 March 2023. International Parliamentary Union, ‘Women in National Parliaments’, [as of 1 February 2019]. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm. National Diet Library. Birth of the Constitution of Japan, Documents with Commentaries, ‘3.1 Emperor, Imperial Rescript Denying his Divinity (Professing his Humanity)’. https:// www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/056shoshi.html. The Constitution of Japan. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html. United Nations, ‘UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’, accessed 28 February 2022. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/. United Nations, ‘UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’, List of signatories at ICANw. https://www.icanw.org/signature_and_ratification_status. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, ‘FDR’s “Day of Infamy” Speech’. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2001/winter/crafting-day-of-infamyspeech.html. World Economic Forum, ‘Global Gender Gap Report 2020’. https://www3.weforum.org/ docs/WEF_GGGR_2020.pdf.

Part II

Postwar Reconciliation

Introduction Aspects of Reconciliation

Seventy-seven years have passed since the end of the Asia Pacific War. The majority of people living in Japan now have no firsthand knowledge or memories of the realities of the war years and the chaos that was unleashed after Japan’s unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945. To this day, the first pieces of information that most Japanese people absorb about the Asia Pacific War, and the postwar decades (1945–1989),1 are conveyed through family history sources, history textbooks, social sciences, the media, education, and the arts. Secondary sources such as these, as well as the memories passed down to others, have been vulnerable to misinformation, disinformation, or political manipulation. In particular, due to political expediency, details of Japanese aggression toward neighboring countries – especially China, South Korea, and North Korea – are neglected in public education about the nation’s wartime history. Therefore, it is up to the individuals who are making an effort to cast light onto the postwar history of Japan to bring further understanding and other perspectives of, not just what the Asia Pacific War was about, but more importantly, the way it has affected contemporary thinking about who we are and the principles and attitudes that underpin contemporary Japanese society. To prevent the danger of Japan making a similar mistake and engaging in an invasive war in the future, especially involving nuclear war or nuclear accidents, enlightened individuals should remain alert to what’s going on in our (Japanese) society and the world. Chapters 4–6 of Part II attempt to outline the pathway Japan took to be able to re-join the world community after regaining its sovereignty in 1952. These chapters explore why Japan did not achieve full reconciliation, either inside or outside Japan. As well as discussing many important topics such as economy, education, and defense in postwar Japan, I would like to focus on what I regard as the most important subject – Japan’s efforts at reconciliation. This reconciliation is complex, as it concerns what Imperial Japan did to neighboring countries as well as to its own people, whether these actions were carried out by the government, at the grassroots, or by scholars and artists. Focusing on these three major areas – the state, the civil, and art workers – will demonstrate why Japan, unlike Germany, has been unable to come to terms with either the war or proper reconciliation, and the

DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-7

108  Postwar Reconciliation reasons for this failure. Even so, some initiatives arising from citizens’ movements have been effective, and I shall discuss these in Chapter 5. Any major or minor event will lose currency over the years. As people busy themselves dealing with daily affairs, there is a temptation to dismiss the past as irrelevant, despite the seriousness of some of what has happened. This becomes a challenge for people who are committed to expressing their legitimate concerns and attempting to keep the focus on critical issues, for example, the work undertaken by the nuclear disarmament movements championed by the citizens of Hiroshima. What is left after cataclysmic events, such as what happened in Hiroshima, is the permanent resolve of those who have been affected to maintain the visibility of their campaigns – in the case of Hiroshima, efforts to memorialize those who were killed in the atomic bombing and opposition to nuclear armament. In Chapter 6, I will discuss similar attempts made by professional and amateur artists, whose depictions of these nuclear events are a powerful form of protest. The value of their artworks goes well beyond their aesthetic value. A characteristic of great works of art is the capacity to reach deeply into human feelings. First, I would like to define what I mean by ‘reconciliation’. This word is used in various contexts, such as political reconciliation, historical reconciliation, or financial reconciliation. Reconciliation has two sides, but they are not as neatly differentiated as black/white, good/bad, justice/injustice, or victim/perpetrator. The Asia Pacific War damaged both sides, and both sides need to be reconciled. However, agreement and understanding relating to the casualties of war – whether they are innocent victims or soldiers abandoned to starvation and death – cannot be achieved unless both sides seek reconciliation. How can reconciliation be achieved when the outcome – a pointless death – was due to political folly? It is a truism that war begins with the state and concludes with the state. Until 1945, Japan was represented by the state and it regained its sovereignty when the San Francisco Treaty came into force in 1952. Therefore, Japan as a state is responsible for reconciliation with, and the payment of reparations to, the nations it invaded. It is also responsible for providing the same measures to its own people, whether they were affected by military duty or what happened to them on the home front. Ultimately, however, in order to develop mutual friendship and peace with the people affected by the war, it must be the will of the Japanese people – not just the state’s political will – to reconcile their shared memories of wartime history. Reconciliation involves willingness. In his War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II, Thomas U. Berger describes Germany as a ‘model of penitence’,2 having successfully managed settlements arising from the war, unlike Japan, which he describes as ‘a model of impenitence’.3 According to Berger, the idea of ‘reconciliation’ emerges from a Western concept of democracy, and he outlines five strategies for achieving reconciliation: 1 a powerful interest in seeking reconciliation on the part of the political leadership; 2 a degree of reciprocity – a willingness by the designated victim to accept the apology;

Introduction 109 3 consistency of the official narrative: rhetorical apologies are unacceptable if the textbooks continue to feature a narrative sharply at odds with the rhetoric – a chronic problem in Japan; 4 reconciliation efforts must arise from below as well as flowing from above. A reconciliation strategy will be helped if it is supported by significant actions by civil society – conferences, media programs, public diplomacy. (These are not very effective unless the government supports them); 5 the reconciliation process takes time: no reconciliation between two peoples was achieved by the signing of a treaty, which signified only that they could now begin ‘to walk the path of reconciliation together’.4 Japan has not performed well in the areas of these five strategies, although the fourth has been achieved to a limited extent. As Berger points out, a chronic problem in Japan is the long succession of conservative governments, which have continued to manipulate the content of school textbooks and excluded important facts from the depiction of the nation’s wartime history. Conservative governments remain powerful because of support from Japanese industries, banks, and voters who want a strong competitive Japan. As my aim in this book is to present a comprehensive picture of how the Asia Pacific War has affected contemporary Japan, I will begin in Chapter 4 with a review of the period in which Japan was occupied, before discussing state treaties and agreements, and the issues that arise from these. I will go on to discuss reparation and compensation payable by Japan. These three national steps toward the peaceful settlement of the war – treaties, agreements, and reparation – provide a necessary political framework for reconciliation. However, none of these steps have been taken in a way that was faultless. I aim to clarify why they were, and still are, problematic today. Notes 1 The 1956 White Paper on the Japanese Economy coined a famous phrase ‘no longer “postwar”’, as the 1955 GDP showed a recovery as strong as the pre-war GDP. However, in politics as well as in general consensus, the postwar period is usually accepted as being from 1945 to 1989, when the Cold War ended. 2 The penitent model as discussed in Thomas U. Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Chapter 2 ‘Germany: The Model Penitent’, 35–82. 3 The impenitent model in Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, Chapter 4 ‘Japan: The Model Impenitent?’, 123–174. 4 Reconciliation strategies, Berger, War, Guilt, and World Politics, 248–249.

Bibliography Berger, Thomas U., War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

4

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level

4.1 Introduction In relation to the title of this chapter, by ‘the state level’ I mean, ‘official’, ‘authoritative’ efforts by those ‘responsible’ for their actions as the national representatives of Japan. The San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951 was the most important treaty for postwar Japan, as it allowed Japan to regain its sovereignty. This was followed by other individual treaties that Japan established with other countries. First, as a background, I shall discuss what happened in Occupied Japan, followed by Japan’s major international peace treaties and the nation’s agreements and actions since 1945. Treaties are not necessarily reconciliatory actions. In addition to its obligations to its victims in the countries it invaded, the Japanese state is also responsible for those of its people who had suffered a great deal because of the military governments’ reckless strategies in the war and its use of emigration to Manchuria.1 Understandably, the chaos and confusion that occurred immediately after the defeat paralyzed the nation because of a severe shortage of food and the high rate of unemployment. At a minimum, sincere apologies from successive governments to its own people have been long overdue. This kind of failure to recognize its own folly has demonstrated a typical form of leadership arrogance that has remained unchanged since Japanese modern history began in the Meiji era. As soon as Japan regained sovereignty in 1952, it was seen as imperative to quickly resume paying national war pensions (allocated according to rank). On the other hand, it took some time for assistance to be offered to civilians who had been victims of the atomic bombings – this only began in 1957.2 There are other examples where no compensation has been provided, including for those farming people who had been forced to travel to work in Manchuria through reckless national emigration policies, such as Manmō kaitakudan (the Manchuria pioneer farming groups dispatched to China by the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945). This policy resulted in a devastating tragedy ‘toward the end of the war,’, when the emigrants were attacked by ‘local Chinese farmers whose land had been taken away by Imperial Japanese army and Soviet Union soldiers and former local Chinese landowners’.3 Most men of fighting age had been drafted into the Kwantung Army – many were killed, others were captured, taken to Siberian prison camps, and eventually found their way home. Most women and children who survived the Soviet attacks and a mass suicide campaign were left to fend for themselves. DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-8

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 111 It is difficult to believe that there were so many incidents of injustice, unfairness, and cruelty during the war period that have not been acknowledged, particularly those concerning women. In one of the most disturbing incidents, a Japanese pioneer village in Manchuria escaped an attack by Soviet Union soldiers only because the village girls were forced to provide sex to Soviet Union soldiers in return for the safety of the village.4 Around 2013, the survivors, who are now women aged over 90, spoke out for the first time about what they had endured. As has been the practice in other poverty-stricken countries and communities, some Japanese had sold their own daughters into prostitution, so that their families could survive. It was conventional and distorted view of self-sacrifice.5 Other instances of Japan’s failure included a practice that is often disparagingly referred to as ‘kimin seisaku’ (hidden policies of abandoning their own nationals for political and economic reasons). These instances included leaving groups of hundreds of soldiers to starve to death on the Pacific islands. Admittedly, their predicament was compounded when ill-equipped Japanese supply ships were targeted by American air forces and were mostly sunk. Carol Gluck6 states that domestic politics change memories of the past, particularly war memories. She cites the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China as one dramatic example of this – after this ‘incident’, the Chinese government placed greater emphasis on patriotic education, which brought about greater support for the Communist Party. The official public campaigns in China against Japan’s wartime aggression have also proved to be a highly effective means of encouraging anti-Japan sentiment and of strengthening patriotism. Gluck calls this ‘chronopolitics’, where ‘the present can change the past’7 by developing different perspectives. It seems that more than ever we need to grasp what truth is, since revisionist views, fake information, and social media now dominate the internet. Let me first illustrate how chronopolitics played out significantly during the Occupation period, before dealing with the topic of major international treaties. 4.2 Occupied Japan, GHQ censorship, and U.S.-Japan chronopolitics Two apparently contradictory declarations are symbolic of the effect of chronopolitics on Japanese politics. The first is Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution: RENUNCIATION OF WAR

Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. The Constitution of Japan, promulgated 1946, came into effect 19478

112  Postwar Reconciliation The second sets out the government’s defense strategy for Japan: NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY (NSS)

The NSS states that defense capability is the ultimate guarantor of Japan’s national security, and Japan will build a comprehensive defense architecture to firmly defend Japan. Based on the NSS, the MOD [Ministry of Defense] will develop a highly effective joint defense force, strive to ensure operations with flexibility and readiness based on joint operations, and advance coordination within the government and with local governments and the private sector. At the same time, the MOD will actively promote bilateral and multilateral security cooperation with other countries, while strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance, in close coordination with Japan’s foreign policy. Ministry of Defense, Japan, current as at November 20229 The origin and evolution of both of these stances is linked to the complex relationship Japan has developed with the United States since the end of the Asia Pacific War. The nature of the relationship has influenced Japan’s relationships with its neighbors. During the Occupation, General Head Quarters (GHQ) realized that the Japanese public had been deliberately kept in ignorance about why and how the war had begun, and what the Imperial Japanese Army had been engaged in. They therefore established the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), to use the media to expose the Japanese people to the extent of Japan’s guilt for the war.10 When the Hiroshima fujin rengō (Hiroshima Women’s Association) organized the Women’s Peace Congress on 6 August 1949, messages of congratulations came in from the CIE, as well as personally from General MacArthur’s wife and the chairmen of the Upper and Lower Houses of the Japanese Diet.11 Daily life in early postwar Japan was bewildering because of the readjustments that had to be made, especially when GHQ changed its focus from the pursuit of peaceful democracy to rearmament against North Korea. This meant that Japan emulated the policies of the United States and there was a gradual reversion to nationalistic elements in political life. For example, after being congratulated the year before, the 1950 Hiroshima Women’s Peace Congress was banned by GHQ and President Truman hinted at the possible use of atomic bombs in the Korean War. Japanese communists, who had been released from jail immediately after Japan’s surrender and were hailed by the public for their anti-war activity12, soon found themselves in trouble because of the McCarthy-era Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s. This is typical of chronopolitics, since the situation changed from disarmament to armament, and from hailing communists to orchestrating a red purge. The evolution of the status of the Emperor from Living God to Symbol of Japan was a further example of the chronopolitics. Blindly and deliberately ignoring its aggressive past, Japanese governments began heavily censoring the parts of school textbooks covering the Asia Pacific War. As a consequence, successive postwar generations – I speak as a member of one of these generations – did not know the basic facts, much less the whole truth, until the 1990s.

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 113 In the previous chapter, I referred to the GHQ’s order to use only the term ‘The Pacific War’. I asserted that, in effect, this did not acknowledge Japan’s responsibilities for its invasion and colonization of China and Korea, as the term only focused on ‘the Pacific theatre’ of World War II. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified as being necessary to hasten the end of the war. In my view, the atomic bombings of civilian precincts, excluding military bases, show an intention to carry out nuclear experiments on the people. GHQ’s Press Codes also censored any information about the inhumane atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the result that it created an information vacuum – there was no real knowledge of these events among the Japanese people in the vital early postwar period. This censorship was equally applied to the people of the United States, so that the Truman Administration could avoid criticism for using inhumane weapons. As late as 1995, the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs, the B-29 Enola Gay had been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, without any attempt to refer to the consequences of the atomic bombing of Japan. In December 2003, the Enola Gay became a permanent display at a new museum of the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport, where it is labeled as a ‘magnificent technological achievement’.13 4.3  International treaties and agreements 4.3.1  The San Francisco Peace Treaty and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty

After the initial shock of the unconditional surrender, the American-led Allied Occupied Forces were almost welcomed by the general public as liberators from the hardship of the war that Japan had initiated. The Americans were no longer enemies. Donald Keene,14 for instance, went to a Japanese barber shop in Atsugi in U.S. Army uniform without compunction soon after the Allied Forces had arrived. The barber also did service without a sense of fear toward Keene. Keen reflected on this episode and said that the barber could have cut his throat with a razor. It shows how both sides, foe and enemy, had left the war behind as soon as war ended.15 While friendship between America and Japan has been growing stronger since the end of war, Japan’s relationships with China, South Korea, and North Korea have been complex and difficult. This complexity stems from decisions inherent in the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951.16 Because Japan regained its sovereignty after the American Occupation of 1945–1951, it was the most important treaty Japan negotiated with the Allied Nations who were headed by the United States. Forty-nine nations signed their agreement with the treaty’s determinations, but the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), North Korea, and the Republic of Korea were never invited to be parties to it. Japan later entered into separate bilateral arrangements with the two Chinas and South Korea, but not with North Korea. Articles 14 and 16 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty defined Japan’s future actions and the benefits accruing to the nation. Article 14(a) recognizes that Japan barely survived the severity of the war.17 In fact, without America’s massive

114  Postwar Reconciliation relief aid during the occupation period, including food and medicine, Japan would not have recovered so quickly. Some of this relief was coordinated by U.S.-based Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA), which was comprised mainly of church-based groups, who were answerable in Japan to GHQ.18 Article 14(a.1) states that, in meeting reparation responsibilities to countries it had invaded, Japan would ‘compensate those countries for the cost of repairing the damage done, by making available the services of the Japanese people in production, salvaging and other work’.19 In addition, ‘where the manufacturing of raw materials is called for’, they ‘had to be provided by the receiving nations, so as not to throw any foreign exchange burden upon Japan’.20 Article 14(b) declares that, other than those provisions specified in the treaty, the Allied Nations must renounce their rights to reparations from Japan for war damage it committed: Except as otherwise provided in the present Treaty, the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers, other claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution of the war, and claims of the Allied Powers for direct military costs of occupation.21 Compensation was to be paid to Allied POWs under the provisions of Article 16, which stipulates that Japan must make funds available by: [transferring] its assets and those of its nationals in countries which were neutral during the war, or which were at war with any of the Allied Powers, or at its option, the equivalent of such assets … to the International Committee of the Red Cross which shall liquidate such assets and distribute the resultant fund to appropriate national agencies, for the benefit of former prisoners of war and their families.22 The San Francisco Peace Treaty represented the pre-eminent political leadership of the United States in Asia, in its role in protecting Western powers against emerging communism. Japan’s aggression had caused irreparable damage to countries it invaded and their peoples, yet reparations were in Japan’s favor because the Allied forces, and the United States in particular, wanted Japan to be part of the anticommunist campaign in Asia – as evident in the speech General Macarthur gave to a joint sitting of Congress in 1951.23 The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty was signed a few hours after the San Francisco Peace Treaty was concluded on 8 September 1951. Japan’s independence and sovereignty had been achieved through the military alliance with the United States. After Japan regained sovereignty, it continued hosting the U.S. military bases throughout Japan, the biggest in Okinawa. The San Francisco Peace Treaty upheld America’s insistence on the renunciation of cash reparations to the Allied Nations, because America wanted Japan to be self-sufficient as soon as possible. The motivation for this was economic as well as strategic – at U.S.$900 million, the cost of the Occupation had become alarmingly expensive to some observers.24 The treaty was based on addressing each nation’s

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 115 reparation plans, not on claims from individuals seeking compensation for the damage they had suffered from the Imperial Army. The Allied Nations, particularly Asian countries that Japan had ravaged, initially demanded cash reparations but finally had to accept the renunciation of reparations. This brought with it feelings of further resentment against Japan. The San Francisco Peace Treaty was sealed at a time when Japan was incapable of payment; once Japan had recovered applications from individuals for compensation began to be filed in court. However, the success rate is very small, as can be seen from the fact that only 3 of 90 such lawsuits were successful between 1972 and 2008.25 Japan always insists that the San Francisco Peace Treaty included the settlement of individual cases. In addition, any events that happened in the period under the terms of the Meiji Constitution (1889–1947) were affected by the stipulation that regardless of the state’s actions, it bore no responsibility for its people (国家無答責), and the State Redress Law (Article 17, 1947) of the new Constitution is non-retroactive. To a layman on legal matters like me, this sounds like feudal, undemocratic, and irresponsible to say the least. The concept of ‘kimin seisaku’ that was discussed above may well be the basis of the Japanese state’s justification for abandoning its own people so irresponsibly. 4.3.2  Treaties with Korea, Taiwan, and China

Taiwan (Formosa) had been ceded to the Empire of Japan from Qing China when Japan was victorious in the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, placing Taiwan under Japanese rule from 1895 to 1945. The Treaty of Peace between Japan and the Republic of China (Taiwan) was signed in 1952. In accordance with Article 2 of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan has renounced all rights, titles, and claims it held relating to Taiwan. In 1972, special arrangements between the two nations, regarding the disposal of Japanese property and the future of Japanese nationals still living in Taiwan, were still in progress. In the 1972 Joint Communique by Japan and the People’s Republic of China, Japan also recognized mainland China as the sole legal government of China. Japan and Taiwan still communicate, but not through diplomatic channels. With the conclusion of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan recognized the independence of Korea, nullifying the annexation treaty of 1910. The 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea26 was eventually signed following seven bilateral talks held during the 14 years after 1951. Japan agreed to pay reparations to Korea, a total of $1.1 billion. Korea spent the bulk of this money on infrastructure – roads and factories – reserving little for Korean soldiers, army employees, and war-bereaved families. Relations between Korea and Japan have long been difficult because of a succession of political tensions on the Korean peninsula. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was founded in 1948 and the Korean War between South Korea (supported by the United States) and North Korea (supported by the Soviet Union and China) broke out in 1950, with the demilitarization zone separating North and South Korea declared in 1953. Recent welcome developments include the possibility of the reunification of North and South Korea and the denuclearization of North Korea. Japan does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea.

116  Postwar Reconciliation 4.3.3  Reparation agreements

Japan made reparation agreements with four Asian countries: Burma (1954), the Philippines (1956), Indonesia (1958), and South Vietnam (1959). Japan also made mutual economic cooperation agreements with countries such as Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Mongolia, and Taiwan. In accordance with the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan provided manufactured machinery and sent Japanese technicians to work on its partners’ infrastructure plans. If the materials were not available in Japan, partner countries had to provide them. In this way, based on their partners’ requests, Japan gained more economic growth through productivity and acquired advanced technology. The one exception to Allied Nations’ acceptance of reparation in kind was the treatment of compensation cases relating to POWs. Since the end of the Cold War, Asian countries have begun asking for revisions of the reparation agreements. The Japanese government, however, has been obdurate in insisting that all reparation matters were resolved in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Herein lies a key discrepancy in the understanding of reparations. The fact is that Japan caused major damage to neighboring countries during wartime and now that it is a wealthy country, Japan has a responsibility to settle past difficulties by negotiating in a spirit of reconciliation and goodwill, rather than making demands and arguing over details. In 1972, former Japanese army sergeant Yokoi Shōichi (1915–1997) was rescued in the jungles of Guam, and in 1974, a further two Japanese soldiers were discovered – a Japanese army intelligence officer, Lieutenant Onoda Hirō (1922– 2014), on Lubang in the Philippines, and Private Nakamura Teruo (1919–1979), on Morotai Island in Indonesia. While Yokoi and Onoda received a war pension, Nakamura, who was an Indigenous Taiwanese of Takasago origin, was denied a pension, as he was deemed to no longer have Japanese nationality. Taiwanese soldiers with a Takasago background were called ‘Takasago volunteers’ during the war and were sent to the Philippines and New Guinea by the Japanese Imperial Army. They also fought against the Nationalist Party of China led by Chiang Kai-shek, who later ruled postwar Taiwan, so their postwar lawsuits in Taiwan against Japan for compensation (1977–1985) were unsuccessful. While the Tokyo High Court turned down their claims, it recommended that the government should bring in legislation that would solve the plaintiffs’ difficulties. In 1987, legislation was established and became effective with the payment of a lump sum of ¥2 million to each. In the interest of friendship between the two nations, the People’s Republic of China renounced its demand for war reparations from Japan with the signing of the Joint Communique in 1972.27 The Chinese government under Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were fully convinced that Japanese military leaders, and not the Japanese people, had been responsible for Japan’s aggression. This may well be correct, but casting the Japanese people in the role of victims with their own leaders as the perpetrators may also suggest that the people bore no responsibility. I place no trust in this kind of simple dichotomy. It is a serious consideration that the Imperial Japanese Army committed atrocities, including the bombing of Chongqing and the heinous torture committed inside Unit 731.28 Anti-Japanese sentiment can

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 117 be stirred up among Chinese people at any time by pointing out how inhumane the Japanese were, and the extent to which the Japanese fail to acknowledge the crimes they committed, instead seeing themselves as victims. However, placing the blame for Japan’s wartime past on the present population would be quite unjust. One major problem not covered in treaties concerns compensation for the mistreatment of individuals and wages that were unpaid by Japanese industrial companies during the war. Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese former ‘comfort women’ have sued the Japanese government. However, once again, the Japanese government maintained that Japan’s responsibility for reparations was settled at the time of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and in subsequent bilateral peace treaties. The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed when Japan was on its knees and in an anarchistic state created by the defeat. This was one of the reasons for the concessions the Allied Nations made regarding reparations. In the current situation where the Japanese economy has recovered, people affected believe they have the right to claim compensation. Japanese news broadcasts have begun to broadcast what have become ongoing protests outside the Japanese consulates in Seoul, Indonesia, and Manila. An ongoing campaign by former ‘comfort women’ and their supporters gathered around a symbolic statue of a ‘comfort woman’ in Seoul every Wednesday protested for 1,000 consecutive Wednesdays29 since 8 January 1992. There are other claimants, such as wartime forced laborers from Korea and China, who seek justice and compensation. These I will discuss later in this chapter. 4.3.4  German reparations

Reparations due from Germany and Japan may have been forgiven, but this did not mean a corresponding release from responsibility for the wartime atrocities they committed. Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft – or EVZ – (Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future) was created in Germany in 2000. Among its aims are those that will ‘support survivors of National Socialist persecution’ as well as to ‘initiate … a critical examination of National Socialism as well as its aftermath’.30 Between 2000 and 2007, Germany completed all three reconciliation actions required by the Foundation. Japan, however, has not yet emulated any of these processes. Until around 1995, the Japanese in general were caught up in the belief that they were the victims of the war, not the aggressors. This unfounded belief resulted from years of deliberate negligence on the part of the governments, media, and people in general in confronting Japanese actions in the war and the failure to convey an accurate picture of what had happened. Understandably, the war left enduring scars on everyone involved, including Japanese war orphans and children left behind in China and Indonesia after the war. The Japanese civilians who were injured during American air raids have also been fighting for compensation in the courts without success, because it is not constitutionally mandated that compensation be provided to air-raid victims. This is still being debated in the Diet, where the balance of opinion is shifting toward allowing relief aid.31 Germany, on the other hand, has compensated air-raid victims. Considering that the war pension has been paid to Japanese soldiers, bereaved families,

118  Postwar Reconciliation and army employees, the unfairness of the treatment of air-raid victims is indisputable. Statistics reveal that the United States bombed 400 cities, towns, and villages, killing a total of 410,000 people.32 In Hiroshima, 142,430 people were lost on 6 August 1945 and 74,000 in Nagasaki.33 4.4  Individual compensation claims against the state of Japan I would like to focus on the ambivalence of the Japanese government’s attempts to reconcile with its neighbors with reference to two major groups of people seeking compensation – comfort women and Chinese wartime forced laborers – whose lawsuits against the Japanese governments have not found success in the courts. However, the veracity of their assertions has attracted media attention, with the result that the Japanese public in general are in a quandary about plaintiff claims, because their government’s official response has been to deny the validity of those claims. 4.4.1  Comfort women

In 1991, Kim Hak-Sun (1924–1997) testified that she had been a ‘comfort woman’. She protested against the Japanese government’s lies that there had been no forced sexual slavery on the part of Japan in the Asia Pacific War. Since then, the issues arising from the injustice shown toward ‘comfort women’ have spread worldwide; in South Korea, a statue portraying a girl who had been abducted and raped by Japanese soldiers was constructed, symbolizing the suffering of all those women. It was erected outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Others were unveiled in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The latest statue in San Francisco has three figures representing girls from Korea, China, and the Philippines, with a fourth figure of an elderly woman standing alongside them. That woman is Kim Hak-Sun. All of these statues symbolize the increasing protests against the intransigence of the Japanese government in its denial of the Imperial Army’s organized sex slavery. Kim Hak-Sun’s bravery in speaking out about her unbearable wartime experience encouraged more women who had endured similar experiences of sexual violence from Japanese soldiers to do as she had. A Dutch woman, Jan Ruff-O’Herne (1923–2019), was one of them. Among the mostly Asian women who were taken by force from Korea, China, and the Philippines, Jan stood out as a non-Asian victim of the wartime sexual violence. After 50 years, she came forward to testify about her ordeal at the International Public Hearing Concerning Post-War Compensation of Japan.34 Six of the testimonies given there by former ‘comfort women’ forced the government of Miyazawa Kiichi to acknowledge the crimes committed by the Imperial Army. In 2015, a joint agreement was signed ‘finally and irreversibly’ between the South Korean and the Japanese government on this issue. The Japanese government paid ¥1 billion to the South Korean government as a final payment. As expected, however, in 2018, South Korea’s new president Moon Jae-in asked Japan

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 119 to reconsider the agreement. The administration of former Prime Minister the late Abe had not continued the reconciliatory processes initiated by Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei in 1993, and by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi in 1995, both of whom had formally apologized to the ‘comfort women’. The lack of understanding on this matter caused communication between two nations to breakdown, resulting in a clearly visible and lasting rift. The victims of the Imperial Japanese Army’s sexual slavery want Japan to acknowledge the suffering they endured; Japan should apologize for this, pay compensation, and erect a public monument acknowledging the wrongdoing. This point was succinctly made by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel – during her visit to Japan in 2015, she reminded then Prime Minister Abe that there is a need for Japan not only to confront its wartime past squarely but also to signal to its neighbors that they must follow suit in order to achieve reconciliation.35 In addition to its failure to initiate talks with the countries it invaded as a starting point for reconciliation, Japan has been unjust in its interpretation of issues of fact. Successive governments have continued to display an ambiguous attitude – by simultaneously partially denying and partially accepting the existence of Japan’s war crimes, such as the Nanjing Massacre and widespread sex slavery. Their language is obscure and confusing to the general public, to such an extent that talking about such topics has become taboo in Japan. Self-censorship and blind compliance for the sake of harmony and self-protection are both embedded in Japanese culture. At government level in Japan and in the Japanese media, gaining cooperation in the work of reconciliation with China and/or with North and South Korea looks almost impossible, because of the ambiguous attitudes displayed by conservative Japanese governments toward war-related issues. Despite this, China, Korea, and Japan have interrelated business and cultural relationships that could provide linkages for reconciliation. Economic needs help to bind countries together, the single exception being disastrous trade wars. Bilateral treaties have been sealed, yet reconciliation issues remain open and unaddressed. This lack of finalization of issues that form part of the legacies of the war affects all Japanese, even though most of us are not responsible for what happened during wartime. We are still universally responsible for achieving peace with countries who were once enemies. Ironically, the ambiguity of the unyielding attitude of Japan’s ruling party has caused a nationwide rise in the number of voluntary citizen movements. Freedom of expression and the development of equal rights in education, as set out in the Constitution, have led to the Japanese receiving a much more comprehensive education and expectations of greater freedom of speech, despite the censoring of some teaching materials. Academics, writers, lawyers, and artists have not only spoken out but have also taken action to rectify situations, ensuring that the population has accurate knowledge of the facts of Japan’s aggression and of its collapse. On the positive side, grassroots communities have voluntarily taken steps at a civil level to engage in communication with people who suffered from Japanese aggression during the war, such as the Korean ‘comfort women’.

120  Postwar Reconciliation 4.4.2  Ambivalent reconciliation at state level

One of the reasons for Japan’s continued failure to achieve reconciliation with neighboring countries is the embedded political culture of male-dominated authoritarianism that is a major remnant from Meiji times. Japan’s successive conservative governments have maintained an image of Japan that exercises denial at the cost of distorting the truth, as we have noted, two examples are the Nanjing Massacre and the reality of the ‘comfort women’. In the case of the latter, who was being comforted? A queue of soldiers waiting for their turn to rape a woman was an appalling misrepresentation of ‘comfort’ and the very use of the term illustrates Japan’s inability to face the truth. Generally speaking, Korean people were regarded as second-class human beings during Japanese colonization, because they were poorer than the Japanese and also because of the xenophobic attitudes of the colonizers. This kind of racism still exists. North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese people during the 1970s and 1980s36 understandably intensified hatred, fear, and suspicion of other races along with anti-autocratic sentiment. Throughout history dictatorial nations have acted with brutality and justified the behavior by identifying a ‘common enemy’; two outstanding examples are Nazi Germany’s treatment of people, particularly those who were Jewish, who were interned in concentration camps such as Auschwitz, and the Imperial Japanese Army’s Nanjing Massacre and forced emigration of its neighbor’s citizens. According to Utsumi Aiko, 38,935 Chinese were taken by force to work in Japan, and 6,830 people died or went missing between March 1944 and June 1945.37 Liu Lianren (1913–2000) was one of the missing. He was found in 1958, 14 years after running away and surviving in the wilderness of Hokkaido. The lawsuit for compensation that he filed against the Japanese government was rejected by the court because of the statute of limitations. The court also ruled that Imperial Japan did not bear any national responsibility. It was deemed that the incident concerned had occurred under the Meiji Constitution (1889– 1947), and, as mentioned previously, the new Constitution of Japan is not retroactive. If the state of Japan had really wanted to express its reconciliatory intentions in a consistent manner, the present confusion and arguments about the authenticity of the record of the Nanjing Massacre could have been avoided. Nevertheless, former Secretary General of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, Nonaka Hiromu, first visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum in 1998, followed by visits by two former prime ministers, Murayama Tomiichi (1998) and Hatoyama Yukio (2010). All laid flowers on the sites where the massacre occurred. As the generations who remember the war die out, the war, which ended over 77 years ago, no longer seems directly relevant to the generations who came after the war. Yet the political situation in present-day Japan is closely tied to what the nation concluded, as well as what it failed to conclude, with the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951. Japan subsequently negotiated basic bilateral treaties of friendship and cooperation with the Republic of China (Taiwan, 1952), the Republic of Indonesia (1958), the Republic of Korea (1965), and the People’s Republic of China (1972). The treaty with Taiwan however was rendered invalid in 1972, when Japan recognized the People’s Republic of China’s

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 121 One-China policy. In addition, Japan does not have a diplomatic relationship with North Korea. In all of the treaties with other countries negotiated by Japan, Japan was placed in a favorable position, being no longer the invasive enemy of these countries. This resulted from the necessity for the United States to use Japan as a shield against communism. With the demise of the Soviet Union, globalization has been escalating in politics, trade, and information technology, highlighted particularly by the rise of China, and its challenge to the supremacy of America in Asia. On 27 April 2018, the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula was signed by the leaders of North and South Korea, pledging to work toward denuclearization on the peninsula. On 9 May 2018, a trilateral summit attended by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and former Japanese Prime Minister Abe was held, more than two years after their previous meeting. No clear joint statement was issued, other than that there should be mutual cooperation in working toward denuclearization of the peninsula and in trade between the three countries. Perhaps, the summit in itself demonstrated how quickly politics in North East Asia were moving toward a new order. In particular, the pandemic of COVID-19 that ravaged the whole world after the summit has stopped any practical cooperation between the three nations. Japan’s colonial rule of Chosen (Korea) between 1910 and 1945 has left historical wounds that remain unhealed, including a lack of action in the case of the ‘comfort women’, the continuance of issues arising from Japan’s use of forced laborers during the Asia Pacific war, and the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korea. There is also the matter of Koreans who had been taken to Japan to work during wartime, who had to decide whether to repatriate or to stay in Japan. Incidents such as the sinking en route to Korea of the 4,730-ton Ukishima-maru with 4000 Koreans on board in August 1945 – where 524 Koreans and 25 Japanese sailors died as a result of a mysterious explosion in Maizuru Harbor, Japan – have raised deep suspicions. In June 2016, here were 456,91738 Korean residents in Japan (zainichi), and this minority ethnic group is the target of racism; unfortunately, this is endemic to Japanese culture and is not confined to Koreans, as is evident in the treatment of the Indigenous Ainu people and burakumin.39 By June 2019, 451,54340 registered Korean residents were still living in Japan. As a point of reference, I mention the life-long battle of Yi Hak-Nae, a Korean guard on the Thai-Burma railway. At the age of 96, he was still petitioning the Japanese government to compensate him and his Korean colleagues for the military work they did as employees of the Japanese army. The dismissal of his appeal clearly demonstrated the inability of successive governments to solve this issue at a state level. He died in 2021. Korean and Taiwanese soldiers who fought alongside Japanese soldiers in the Imperial Army have been treated in a manner that is far removed from reconciliation. As soon as Japan regained sovereignty in 1953, war pension payments resumed for Japanese soldiers, army employees, and families of those who had died in service. The higher the army rank, the greater the payment. But these war pensions apply only to Japanese nationals and not to colonial Korean and Taiwanese soldiers who joined the Imperial Army and fought for the emperor of Japan. In 1964,

122  Postwar Reconciliation these men were advised by the Japanese Ministry of Justice to become naturalized Japanese citizens so that they would qualify for a war pension. They were required to gain Japanese nationality before the Japan-Korean Peace Treaty came into force less than two years later, on 22 June 1965. Many of them missed this opportunity. In 2000, special legislation was passed offering zainichi Korean former soldiers, army employees, and bereaved families a lump sum allowance of between ¥2 million and ¥2.6 million as an expression of sympathy and condolence. This amount was too small and offered too late. They were being discriminated against due to their nationality, and the offer was a once-only payment, not a war pension. 4.4.3  Unpaid wartime forced laborers

The Foreign Ministry has recorded that some 38,900 Chinese were brought to Japan by force under the Chinese Transportation Policy.41 They were to work at mines, dams, and ports, during the Asia Pacific War and about 6,800 of them died due to mistreatment, malnutrition, and illness. Under a government policy engineered by Kishi Nobusuke, these emigrants were brought in to cover labor shortages in industries such as mining and construction. Prisoners of war were also used as laborers. The survivors have been demanding apologies and compensation since the war ended and have filed lawsuits against the Japanese government and the industries they were forced to work for. After years of difficulties in dealing with lawsuits, a breakthrough appeared in 2015, when a major Japanese company, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, expressed its apologies that its company had used American POWs as unpaid laborers. Furthermore, it agreed to give compensation of 100,000 yuan (A$15,190) to each of the 3,765 Chinese laborers who were forced to work under appalling conditions during the war. In a global economy, the company could not afford a bad name. 4.5  State apologies Issues relating to apologies by politicians have been discussed in the media, in particular, whether or not such expressions of regret are effective in achieving forgiveness and reconciliation. For example, according to Jeff Kingston’s article in The Japan Times (11 July 2015), the national apologies in relation to Japan’s wartime wrongdoings given by then Prime Minister the late Abe Shinzō to China and South Korea were counterproductive, because Abe spoke ambiguously.42 Abe, who was assassinated in July 2022, was an admirer of his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke.43 Kishi was a convicted A-class war criminal, a former Prime Minister of Japan, and an architect of the Transportation Policy for recruiting Chinese laborers to work at mining and building under the Chinese Laborers Transportation Policy. Kishi’s pardon was orchestrated by the United States, who needed an influential Japanese powerbroker who would be capable of implementing their anti-communism policy. Historical memories must be based on facts and accepted by the general public, as with the Holocaust in Germany. However, Japan’s public memory is defective. Japanese education in particular has neglected actual details of wartime history, leaving the populace either in ignorance or knowing almost nothing. As a consequence, we have

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 123 no shared common historical memories, for example, of the ‘comfort women’ or of the Nanjing Massacre, apart from media reports, as well as some books and visual information, which may or may not be 100% factually accurate, because of different perspectives. In 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno Yōhei of the Miyazawa government (LDP) addressed the Diet to report the findings of a government investigation into ‘comfort women’ issues. He apologized to all the women who had suffered. The investigation found that the Imperial Army was either directly or indirectly involved in setting up army recreation stations and recruiting women, at times contrary to the wishes of the women and using force and cajolery.44 Though his announcement attracted criticism, the report was authentic and convincing and was acted on by a coalition government (made up the Japan Socialist Party, the LDP, and a party that was an offshoot of the LDP) led by the leader of the Japan Socialists Murayama Tomiichi. The year was 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. Thus, only the nominally socialist government under the leadership of Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi officially acknowledged Japan’s aggression in Korea and China. He sent an official letter of apology to every known Korean ‘comfort woman’. Murayama founded the Asian Women’s Fund,45 (of which he later became president) which had three purposes: 1 to express atonement together with compensation from the donations of Japanese citizens and medical support from government funds for former ‘comfort women’; 2 to collect and edit historical documents concerning issues arising from the war for history lessons; 3 to reflect on past mistakes involving the violation of women’s dignity, and to assist projects aimed at reducing incidents of violence against women. Approximately ¥565 million from citizen donations and ¥750 million from government funds were stockpiled and used for medical welfare support. The fund was dissolved in 2007, but after that, the Digital Museum website under the title ‘The “Comfort Women” Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund’ was created as a public record. Murayama must be praised as his government was the only one to have created comprehensive initiatives of this kind. Perhaps his chief achievement was to create the Ajia rekishi sentā (Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records, acronym JACAR) as an organization of the National Archives of Japan.46 Its digital archives provide government documents online free of charge, including materials censored in wartime in their original form. During the late Abe Shinzō’s first term as the prime minister in 2007, he stated that he did not believe women were coerced by the Japanese army into working at ‘military recreation centers’. Nonetheless, Abe maintained lip service to the government’s position on this issue. While he later offered apologies to Korean ‘comfort women’ as a group, he never apologized to any of the women as individuals. Formal Japanese apologies to Korean ‘comfort women’ have thus become a matter of rhetoric, with no suggestion of atonement. Without meeting the women face to

124  Postwar Reconciliation face and asking for forgiveness, how would forgiveness be possible, particularly when the number of survivors is now no more than 10? Furthermore, since Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi apologized to the women, a series of LDP-led governments has never acknowledged the truth of the historical evidence relating to the treatment of the comfort women. 4.5.1  POW concerns

Japan’s refusal to acknowledge historical details was also taken up by retired Major General Peter Phillips at the final meeting of the Commemorative Event of the Japan-Australia Grassroots Exchange on 7 July 2017. It was held in Tokyo, celebrating the end of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ invitation program for POWs from Australia to come to Japan. Phillips, who was also a former national president of the Returned and Services League (RSL) in Australia, said in his address: What rankled most with former POWs was a perception that authorities in Japan had done little to educate its younger generation as to the treatment meted out by Japanese imperial forces on their prisoners of war, on native laborers, and to the so-called ‘comfort women’. It seemed that Japan had not adequately admitted to horrors such as the rape of Nanking, biological experiments by Unit 731, the ill-treatment of thousands of prisoners and laborers, and here in Australian waters the sinking of the hospital ship, Centaur. This was in marked contrast to Germany where Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had urged the German people to face up to their past, including the shame of the Holocaust … The issue of what history is or [is] not taught to Japanese children was an issue of concern to the RSL. I think Japan is facing up to its past but it is not in the Japanese mindset to admit publicly to such matters.47 In 2008, a program on reconciliation began in Japan, where ex-POWs were invited to return to Japan to be personally welcomed. This invitation program continued for eight more years. By the end of the war, there had been 36,000 POWs detained in Japan – 3,559 of these were Allied POWs who had died from mistreatment, starvation, and illness, including 192 Australians. The invitation program was successful but ended due to the advanced age of ex-POWs. The success of this reconciliation program came from the cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and grassroots organizations to make the visits as meaningful as possible. The ex-POWs returned to places where they had been detained and met local people who still remembered them. The families of British, American, Dutch, and New Zealander ex-POWs were also involved in this program. These POWs had been forced to work at ports, factories, and mines. Laborers from Asian countries had also been forced to work with them under miserable conditions, yet they have not been acknowledged by the Japanese governments or the industries that used their labor. On the other hand, in the 1990s, Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II were compensated by the United States. Each received a letter

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 125 of apology signed by President Reagan. The compensation bill provided for taxfree payments of $20,000 to an estimated 62,000 ex-internees who are still alive.48 In the Japan edition of Newsweek, Carol Gluck commented that war memories are transnational and become global memory culture.49 Apologies, such as in this American case, are quite clear and effective in their settlement of matters relating to experience and national memory. 4.6  State actions 4.6.1  Japanese government compensation

Beside the Asia Women’s Fund, the Japanese government has undertaken compensation as outlined in Table 4.1 (German payouts for forced laborers are included as a comparison). Table 4.1  Japanese government compensation settlements 1987–1999 Country

Year

Germany 2000–2007 completed Japan 1987–1988

Amount of compensation

Paid to

DM5,000–15,000 per person ¥2 million per person

About 1,765,000 forced laborers

1988–2010

¥100,000 (national bond) + ¥100,000 (travel cost) 2010–present ¥250,000–1500,000 per person 1988–2007 About ¥70 million 2000

1995–2007 1994 and 2007 revision 1991– 1999

¥2.6 million per war dead and ¥4 million per injured person. Total ¥8 million 52,800,000 ¥50 million (Asian Women’s Fund)

About 30,000 Taiwanese soldiers, civilian army employees, and the injured, who are residents in Taiwan Siberian returnees Siberian returnees, 67,000 (as of March 2012) To support the return home of North and South Koreans who had been left behind in Sakhalin 414 Korean (as Japanese in wartime) soldiers and civilian army employees

285 ‘comfort women’ and a further group of 79 Dutch ‘comfort women’ (¥3 million) Increased amount of About 2000 China returnees received pension and daily an increased amount of pension and care daily care Application for special Support for overseas hibakusha medical care allowance Japan is responsible Agreement between China and Japan for disposal for the disposal of poisonous gas and chemical weapons

Compiled by Yasuko Claremont, based on figures available mainly in the sources listed in the endnotes.50

126  Postwar Reconciliation A joint agreement ready for settlement between Japan and South Korea on ‘comfort women’ on 28 December 2015 failed miserably as South Korea wanted to renegotiate. Then newly elected President Moon Jae-in saw the agreement as ‘flawed’ because of a lack of consultation with surviving former ‘comfort women’.51 Instead the Koreans had received a bulk payment without referencing the individual names of the Korean ‘comfort women’. This indifference is evidence in itself of the distrust and hostility between the two nations. In Japan at that time, there was a lack of general knowledge about ‘comfort women’ for reasons that have been previously noted, creating a deep gap in understanding between the peoples of both countries. The payment had been intended to be a positive gesture by the Japanese government, to compensate Korean ‘comfort women’ by contributing ¥1 billion, along with a joint statement containing a conclusive phrase – that ‘the “comfort women” issue will be resolved finally and irreversibly’. After the joint statement had been received by the Koreans, Prime Minister Abe did not distribute a letter of apology, as Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi had done in 1995. Neither did he go to South Korea to offer an apology, nor did he send his representative. With this lack of courtesy, Abe completely failed to provide the compensation in the spirit of constructive reconciliation. 4.6.2  A comparison of German and Japanese war settlements

I have summarized the scope of Japan’s reparations along with what was required under the treaties Japan had signed. It is of interest to compare Japan’s incomplete attempts at reconciliation with Germany’s decisive actions. I do not consider that I am eminently qualified to discuss details of political, legal, or economic matters, but unless I can present what I understand from my attempt to form a rounded view of the Asia Pacific War through study, the purpose of this work will be jeopardized. To begin with, after the war, Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany, as a result of disagreements between the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. The building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 by the Russians separated the East until the fall of the Wall in 1989, when these divisions collapsed. After the European war, there had been no peace treaty that was the equivalent of the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Instead, the London Agreement on German External Debts between the Federal Republic of Germany and creditor nations52 was signed on 27 February 1953 and came into force on 16 September 1953. Germany’s reparation issues were shelved until a suitable time arrived to negotiate a peace treaty, meaning that Germany did not have to pay reparations at that time. America favored West Germany because of its anti-communist stance. While the Marshall Plan aided Europe generally, Germany in particular was given major assistance. If the Germans chose to pay compensation to individuals during that period, they were not regarded as breaching the agreement, as their actions were defined as being the wish of the German people, who opposed the Nazis and their crimes. The payment of compensation to the victims of the Nazis was considered a separate concern from other general crimes and damage that occurred on the battlefield. Admirably, Germany had already completed its financial compensation ‘to former forced laborers and to those affected by other injustices from the National

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 127 Socialist period’ by 2007. The payment of this compensation was confirmed with the establishment in 2000 of ‘The Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ (Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft, EVZ) that was referred to above, in the discussion of German reparations. The German Federal Government and its financial circles worked equitably to provide a total of DEM 10.1 billion (EUR 5.2 billion) for the Foundation. In 1998–1999, in response to a collective lawsuit by Jewish forced laborers that was launched in the United States, German industry leaders decided to pay, in order to protect their reputations. It is understandable that the war settlements of postwar Germany had their difficulties. Germany’s absolute acceptance of their war crimes from a moral point of view has also been welcomed by the neighboring countries. Historical reconciliation has been achieved because people shared a clear knowledge of what Nazi Germany had done. Established in 1991, the German-Polish ‘Treaty of Good Neighborhood and Friendly Cooperation’, for example, has been a model of the successful reconciliation, yet the current changes in the Polish Government have created tensions through their variance from this position.53 A major factor leading to Germany’s success was that the government distinguished itself from the Nazis who had committed inhuman crimes. In a similar situation, China chose to view the Imperial Japanese Army as responsible for cruelty and damage, leaving room for the Japanese government and the people to reach out in friendship. Even so, difficulties that still remain unresolved can arise, issues such as Japan’s incredulous and long-held denials of both the Nanjing Massacre and the experiments carried out on human beings by Unit 731. According to the writer Kim Jong-chul (金鐘晢), matters relating to the ‘comfort women’ raise an ethical issue between Japan and Korea, not a political or diplomatic one. He uses the words ‘historical reconciliation’, whereby he is acknowledging any issues about the ‘comfort women’ as belonging to the past and not involving any grudge or ill will in the present. If the former Prime Minister the late Abe, or his representative, had gone to South Korea and apologized to former ‘comfort women’, the situation would have been greatly improved. To make a public apology involves public humiliation for senior officials in Japan. The reason Japan has failed in this particular case points to a deep-seated problem in the Japanese national psyche, which upholds a superiority of status, as well as the essential need for conformism and secrecy. Nonetheless, the importance of the government’s role cannot be ignored. Apart from the agreed reparation payments in kind, the state’s major contributions to the countries that Japan once invaded are being carried out by agencies such as the Japan Foundation, JETRO and JICA. Briefly, the Japan Foundation promotes and supports the understanding of Japanese language teaching and cultural exchanges. The task of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization, a government-related body) is to promote foreign direct investment into Japan and to help small-to-medium-sized Japanese firms maximize their global export potential. JICA is the Japan International Cooperation Agency, an umbrella group encompassing international organizations, government and non-government entities. JICA’s mission is to provide financial assistance for developing countries for socioeconomic development.54

128  Postwar Reconciliation 4.6.3  Compensation claims against the Japanese government

The Japanese government has insisted that the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty finalized payment of all war reparations and has rejected all other claims. In 2015, in response to claims made by former POWs who were forced to undertake unpaid work in Japanese industries, Mitsubishi Materials Corporation expressed its apologies and agreed to the payment of compensation. In addition, the major Japanese company agreed to compensate all Chinese laborers who were victims. This led the Japanese government to put pressure on other industries to make reconciliation payments, for the sake of their reputations. I cite here two specific examples of injustice – one involving a Korean and the other a soldier from Taiwan. They are being assisted by volunteer lawyers and supporters. I shall discuss their activities further in the next chapter, Civil Legacy and War Reconciliation. Yi Hak-Nae (1925–2021) was a Korean guard at Hintok POW Camp on the ThaiBurma railway construction site. The POWs called him ‘the lizard’ and were afraid of him. After the war, having served as a Japanese soldier, he was classified as a war criminal and sentenced to death, a sentence which was later reduced to 20 years imprisonment. He was detained in Sugamo Prison until 1956. Yi wasn’t able to receive war pension as he was not a Japanese soldier. He had waged a life-long battle against the Japanese government’s unfair treatment, not only in relation to his own compensation case but also, more importantly, to the injustice suffered by his fellow Korean guards, some of whom have already died. Here again, the intransigence of the Japanese government and its inability to take corrective action are clear. The successful compensation case of a Taiwanese soldier mentioned earlier encouraged another 13 Taiwanese former soldiers to file lawsuits in 1977. The Tokyo High Court rejected their claims in 1985, with the additional comment that the court expected members of the Diet to seek to address the plaintiffs’ apparent disadvantage. Because of the High Court’s comments, new legislation was established in 1987. Bereaved families and the injured soldiers were compensated with the amount of ¥2 million from the Japanese government. However, in 1992, another appeal application brought to the Supreme Court for compensation was rejected on the grounds that the misfortunes caused by the war had been endured by all nationals, including ‘Japanese nationals’ from the colony. 4.6.4  The compensation bill for Siberian Detainees

In addition to the atomic bombings, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 was a decisive factor in Japan’s acceptance of an unconditional surrender. The Soviet’s territorial interests had been guaranteed in the Yalta conference agreement between the three great powers (the Soviet Union, the United States of America, and Great Britain). Japanese soldiers who had been disarmed and a large group of civilians who were living in Manchuria – roughly 600,000 detainees in total – were taken to Siberia and Mongolia as POWs. They were used as forced labor and worked under harsh conditions for between 2 and 11 years, until the U.S.S.R. and Japan signed

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 129 an agreement for the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1956 (The SovietJapanese Joint Declaration of 1956). Altogether 68,000 prisoners had died from malnutrition, fatigue, and the cold, and detainees who returned from Siberia were treated with suspicion in Japan because the Cold War was well under way and it was feared they might have become communists. In 1977, these people formed the National Siberian Detainees Association and attempted to gain compensation by filing lawsuits against the Japanese government in 1981, 1986, 1989, and 1997. In 2002, a Supreme Court decision turned down their claim, on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. This was the same decision that had been applied in most of the compensation cases, such as those of air-raid victims. Nonetheless, in 2010, a bill entitled ‘Special Arrangements for Postwar Forced Detainees’ came into force and, depending on the period of detention, payments of between ¥250,000 and ¥1,500,000 were made to 68,847 people.55 Since the money was paid only after years of struggle, it seemed a negligible amount. Some 10,000– 15,000 Korean soldiers in the Imperial Army were excluded from receiving this payment. According to the Geneva Convention, the unpaid wages for their labor in detention had to be paid by the home country, in this case, Japan – a payment which has not yet been made. The experience of these Japanese soldiers in Siberian detention is one of many human tragedies that the war created. 4.7  Government responsibility: The human cost Contrary to the glorious visions of ‘The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ that were espoused at the beginning of the Asia Pacific War, it is my view that Japan had no serious intention of liberating Asian countries from the colonial rule of Western powers.56 Instead, it played the role of a rapacious invader with an insatiable greed for power. Moreover, under its military policies, the Japanese Imperial Army was given license to commit war crimes in China, Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia.57 Such unthinkable cruelty must have been generated both by the war itself and by the Imperial Japanese Army’s archaic hierarchical order. The six writers of Shippai no honshitsu58 (The essence of Japan’s failure) concluded that Japan’s failure in the war was caused by fundamental feudalism at every level. The culture of the Japanese Imperial Army was so brutal that it neglected the duty of care for its own soldiers. It has been estimated that 60% of the Japanese war dead were abandoned and left to starve to death.59 The human cost of the Asia Pacific War must be emphasized as it tells us the scale, as well as the diversity, of the nations involved and highlights the inadequacy of Japan’s more recent official efforts at reconciliation. However, grassroots groups are now working to achieve reconciliation in many ways, such as helping Chinese survivors of forced labor to lodge their claims in the courts. The survivors are not only seeking monetary compensation, but public recognition, a sincere apology from Japan, and a more consistent, ongoing effort to transmit authentic history lessons to future generations.

130  Postwar Reconciliation 4.7.1  Estimated deaths and casualties

The scale of deaths in the two wars (World War II and the Asia Pacific War) is set out below. Because both periods of the conflict occurred so long ago, the numbers are only indicative. The website of the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has listed the number of those who died in World War II in two categories, one involving the Axis and one involving the Allies. The Ministry has also prepared statistics indicating the numbers of people who died in the Asia Pacific War. Table 4.2  Death statistics by country (except China) for World War II and the Asia Pacific War60 Deaths during World War II: September 1939 to September 1945 The Axis Powers Japan Germany Austria Italy Others Sub-total Allied Forces Soviet Union China Poland Yugoslavia France England America Others Sub-total Total Asia Pacific Nations (excl. those mentioned above) Korea Taiwan The Philippines Vietnam

Burma Malaysia Singapore Indonesia India Australia New Zealand Total

Military deaths 2,300,000 4,220,000 250,000 300,000 1,630,000 12,050,000 13,600,000 3,500,000 120,000 500,000 200,000 140,000 290,000 780,000 43,600,000 55,650,000

200,000 30,000 1,110,000 2,000,000

150,000 100,000 4,000,000 1,500,000 23,000 12,000 9,125,000

Civilian deaths   800,000 2,670,000 930,000 (650,000 Jewish citizens) 130,000

Total 3,100,000 6,890,000 1,180,000 430,000

(4,530,000) 7,000,000 20,600,000 9,710,000 13,210,000 5,910,000 (2,700,000 6,030,000 Jewish citizens) 1,210,000 1,710,000 400,000 600,000 240,000 380,000 290,000 (24,470,000)   29,000,000

2,000,000 died of starvation, 1944–1945, according to Ho Chi Min

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 131 A major point worth commenting on is the omission of China from the list of Asia Pacific nations above. This reflects the continuance of Japan’s wartime strategy of maintaining its silence about its invasion of China. Because Japan did not officially declare war on China, the public in Japan were not even informed, nor were they consulted by the Diet or the army that Japan was at war with China. This huge conflict was concealed and referred to ambiguously as the ‘China Incident’61 of 1937. Since theoretically Japan was not at war with China, Japan excluded China from the reparations that were payable to the Allied Forces. It is also a sign of negligence that no civilian deaths appear in the columns of those Asian nations that were involved in the war. Perhaps no record existed. Other lacunae in statistical records relate to POWs, Chinese and Korean forced laborers, ‘comfort women’, children left behind in China, and Japanese detainees in Siberia. The impact of the war has been so huge that it would be very difficult – perhaps impossible – to be sure of a final total of the numbers of people affected. As part of its responsibility, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare listed the collected and uncollected remains of war dead on various battlefields, including China and Russia. The Ministry is also responsible for collecting the remains of war dead using DNA testing, and it records all changes as further investigations take place. By 2012, the ashes returned to Japan accounted for 1,268,000 dead, and the total of the remains of Japanese soldiers yet to be located was calculated at 1,132,000. Table 4.3  Japanese casualties, including returned and uncollected remains of Japanese soldiers, 201262 As of 2012

Japanese casualties Returned remains of Japanese Soldiers

Uncollected remains of Japanese Soldiers

China mainland China North/East (incl. Nomonhan) The Philippines Thailand/Malaysia Myanmar India North Borneo East New Guinea Bismark/Solomon Islands Mid-Pacific islands North Pacific islands Aleutian, Karafuto Chishima Islands Russia Okinawa

465,700 245,400

438,470 39,310

27,230 206,090

518,000 21,000 137,000 30,000 12,000 127,600 118,700

148,520 20,200 91,390 19,950 6,910 50,580 56,860

369,480 800 45,610 10,050 5,090 77,020 61,840

247,000 21,900 24,400

73,430 10,100 1,720

173,570 11,800 22,680

Others

107,800

54,400 186,500

20,890 186,700 (inc. Okinawa local citizens’ collection) 58,800

33,510 – 49,000

132  Postwar Reconciliation These statistics show the scale of both human loss and remains still to be returned. This is a massive task, but the nation requires that proper records be kept. Even today we see on TV the scattered skulls and bones of Japanese ex-soldiers and unidentified people that have been washed up on the beaches of Pacific islands. It is natural to wonder how they died and to what extent these deaths were due to the Imperial Japanese Army running out of ammunition and food for their soldiers who were isolated on Pacific islands. Yuki Tanaka (also known as Tanaka Toshiyuki to Japanese readers) has consulted Fujiwara Akira’s study of Japanese soldiers’ deaths from illness and starvation, leading Tanaka to describe the Asia Pacific War as ‘the Japanese war of starvation’.63 The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan intends to organize more trips to the Pacific islands to collect remains. The large figures quoted above indicate the impossibility of collecting them all. Obviously, the collection of the remains of the war dead as a form of reconciliation has not been carried out as a moral obligation. Further, it is considered obligatory for those left behind to carry out the proper Buddhist burial ceremony for the dead. Otherwise, the dead are ‘ukabarenai’ (cannot rest in eternal peace). In this way, it is a personal, family, and religious act rather than simply a reconciliatory act. Whether on duty or in death – they were abandoned. Nonetheless, at the time of writing this book, the Ministry concerned has decided to collect remains in the sea (kaibotsu ikotsu) so long as they are collectable in shallow water. 4.7.2  Hiroshima and Nagasaki

In 1990, the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially confirmed the number of people killed by atomic bombs as 201,990 in Hiroshima and 93,966 in Nagasaki, a total of 295,956. However, deaths caused by radiation continue each year, making clear the terrible fact that the lethal effects of the original atomic attacks in 1945 are still being transmitted to younger generations more than seven decades later. At the memorial service in Hiroshima that is held every year on 6 August, the day of the bombing, a list of the names of the atomic-bomb victims who have died in the previous year is presented and stored in the room under the memorial stone. The number of atomic-bomb survivors who had died in the year up to 6 August 2022 was 4,978, increasing the cumulative total from previous years to 333,90764; on 9 August 2021 in Nagasaki, 3,202 deaths were recorded, increasing the total to 189,163.65 Those who are counted in these totals were holders of the government’s free medical care card for atomic-bomb survivors. Not all of these deaths can be attributed to atomic radiation; for example, also included in the numbers would be deaths from common causes such as old age, or cancer. Nonetheless, the combined number of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2022/2021 was 8,180. This gives a combined total of 523,070 in all, a figure which stands in contrast to the 1990 figure of 295,956. Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their prefectural councils have also been involved in gathering information regarding local war histories and statistics of war

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 133 dead from local areas. The peace activities on the memorial days are explicitly centered around the atomic-bomb museums where the vital information is held, not only of numbers but also, more importantly, the names of individual victims, including foreigners. On 6 August 1949, the Council of Hiroshima authorized the construction of a peace memorial city in Hiroshima that would symbolize the ideal of an enduring peace among people and nations. Similarly, the people of Nagasaki began their annual Declaration of Ongoing Peace in 1948 and it has continued every year except 1950. The words ‘no more hibakusha’ were first used in the 2017 Nagasaki Peace Declaration. At the state level, reconciliation projects have been limited to national policies that do not go far enough to achieve full reconciliation, for example, at the time of writing the Japanese government still had not ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). 4.8 Summation The picture that I have painted of the shortcomings of government treaties and legislation, as well as unfavorable court decisions, has been grim and demonstrates a lack of consultation and understanding. Japan’s discrimination against soldiers from its former colonies who fought for the nation is an obvious symbol of this, along with Japan’s refusal to acknowledge the facts of its wartime atrocities, which has proved to be a permanent impediment to achieving reconciliation with China and Korea. To state the case more clearly, reconciliation can only be achieved when both sides are willing to work together in good faith on such a difficult undertaking. War exists in people’s memories, concepts which gradually become accepted by the general public. Each nation has its own war memories that are likely to cause disagreements arising from different perspectives and backgrounds. As a simple example, in Japan, the date 15 August 1945 is remembered as the day Japan unconditionally surrendered, whereas the Allied Forces celebrate it as Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day). For South Korea, it is Liberation Day, while in the Philippines, 9 April is a national holiday celebrating Araw ng Kagitingan (The Day of Valor). In China, two additional national commemorative days have been established since 2014. One commemorates the Nanjing Massacre, which began on 13 December 1937, and the other, on 3 September 1945, is also a Day of Remembrance and is commemorated one day after Japan’s formal signing of its surrender and the confirmation of the Allies’ victory. It is clear that the current Chinese government is adamant that Japan’s wartime crimes should not be forgotten and sees it as a strategy to promote feelings of solidarity and patriotism among the Chinese people. With the ending of the war in 1945, former foes became friends – confirmed, for example, when in May 2016 President Obama first visited Hiroshima with Prime Minister Abe. It had taken 71 years for the United States to officially participate in the memorial service at Hiroshima. On 27 December of the same year, both men attended a memorial ceremony commemorating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

134  Postwar Reconciliation that had taken place before it declared war on America. After the war ended, the United States and Japan had affirmed their alliance with each other without pursuing a ‘politics of apology’.66 On 9 April 1942, the United States surrendered to Japan in Bataan. This surrender was followed by the infamous Bataan death marches.67 With 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans) captives of the Japanese, there were many deaths caused by cruel treatment by Japanese soldiers during the marches and later in the POW camps. The current circumstances meant the United States and Japanese ambassadors were able to attend a commemorative ceremony together. Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines President at that time, did not attend, as he was visiting China. However, in his message he acknowledged: The Japanese, against whom our soldiers defended Bataan for many years, now remain as one of our closest allies, a major trading partner and the largest provider of Official Development Assistance, which helps us in the fight against poverty and our quest for economic progress.68 As we see from President Duterte’s symbolic visit to China while the leaders of Japan and the United States were in his country – and his decision to smooth diplomatic waters by issuing an appreciative message acknowledging the importance of Japanese aid – the politics and personal dimensions of reconciliation are complex and multi-layered. While Germany’s efforts have attracted criticism from time to time, their reconciliation record has provided a blueprint that Japan would do well to emulate. Notes 1 満蒙開拓団 (Manmō kaitaku-dan, [Agricultural] Emigrants to Manchuria). This refers to the Imperial Japanese Army’s and the Japanese government’s strategies to recruit young people to work in Manchuria (Manchukuo) from 1931 to 1945. The number of emigrants is estimated to have been more than 270,000, 30,000 of whom were from Nagano prefecture – some were as young as 14. When the Soviet Union attacked Manchuria on 9 August 1945, one week before Japan’s surrender, the emigrants were trapped and many perished. See Nippon.com, ‘Nagano Museum Relates Hardships of Japanese Agricultural Emigrants to Manchuria’, The War and its Aftermath Series, 10 August 2021, https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/ c03308/nagano-museum-relates-hardships-of-japanese-agricultural-emigrants-tomanchuria.html, accessed 20 March 2022. 2 原爆医療法 (Genbaku iryōhō, Atomic Bomb Survivors Medical Relief Law), April 1957. 3 Those agricultural emigrants who made their way back to Japan immediately after the war did not receive any kind of support from the Imperial Japanese Army or Japanese authorities. Once in Japan, they also did not receive any support and experienced extreme hardship. In 1981, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare began an investigation into those who had remained in China. In that later period, as of 2022, 2,557 people had returned to Japan. Repatriated children, for example, those who had been 13-years-old at the time the Asia Pacific War ended, now have issues with isolation, language, and aging. 4 Kurokawa kaitaku-dan, a group of agricultural emigrants from Gifu prefecture to Manchuria.

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 135 5 Satō Masaru, ‘I Learned about the Wretchedness of War: Women Settlers’ “Sexual Entertainment” of Soviet Red Army Troops in Postwar Manchuria’, translated and with an introduction by Joseph Essertier. First published in Tokyo Shinbun, 3 July 2017, and republished in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus 18 No. 3 (September 15, 2017), https://apjjf.org/2017/18/Masaru.html, accessed 15 August 2022. 6 Carol Gluck, b. 1941, Professor of History at Columbia University specializing in modern Japan. 7 Carol Gluck, Newsweek [Japanese edition], 20 March 2018, 30. 8 Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, The Constitution of Japan, Chapter 2, Article 9, Renunciation of War, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html, accessed 3 March 2022. 9 Ministry of Defense, Japan, ‘National Security Strategy (NSS)’, https://www.mod. go.jp/en/d_policy/basis/strategy/index.html, accessed 25 November 2022. 10 Yoshida Takashi, ‘Tracing ‘victimizer consciousness’: the Emergence and Development of War Guilt and Responsibility in Postwar Japan’, Yasuko Claremont, ed, Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing (London & New York: Routledge, 2018), 11–25. 11 Joseishi Kenkyûkai, Hiroshima no onna-tachi (Women in Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Domesu shuppan, 1987), 24. 12 For example, communists, Miyamoto Kenji (1908–2007), Tokuda Kyūichi (1894– 1953), and Shiga Yoshio (1901-1989) were released by General Head Quarters’ release order. 13 Edward J. Gallagher, The Enola Gay Controversy, ‘Round 5 – The Wake of the Controversy: June 28, 1995 to January 2004’, http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/r5/, accessed 3 March 2022. In this digital library at Lehigh University, a detailed exploration of the Enola Gay Controversy at the Smithsonian Museum follows the chronological developments of the controversy in five periods of time between 1994 and 1996, with an addition of 2003/2004. 14 Donald Keene (1922–2019), scholar and translator in Japanese classical and modern literature, was a translator in the U.S. Army. He witnessed the decimation of the Japanese Army on Attu Island and Okinawa. Keen received the Order of Culture in 2008 for his contribution to introducing Japanese culture to the West. He acquired Japanese citizenship and lived permanently in Japan soon after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. 15 Donald Keene, ‘From Enemy to Friend’, in Yasuko Claremont (ed.) Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation, (Routledge, 2018), 6. 16 United Nations, ‘No. 1832 Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, etc., Treaty of Peace with Japan (with two declarations). Signed at San Francisco, on 8 September 1951. Registered by the U.S.A. on 21 August 1952’, https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%20136/volume-136-i-1832-english.pdf, accessed 3 March 2022. 17 United Nations, ‘No 1832, Treaty of Peace with Japan’, Article 14, 61–62. 18 For a background of the organization and the context in which it operated, see Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA), ‘Public Health and Welfare Bulletin’, January 1948, https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/dw/101709886/PDF/101709886.pdf, accessed 3 March 2022. 19 United Nations, No 1832, Treaty of Peace with Japan, Article 14 a, 62. 20 United Nations, No 1832, Treaty of Peace with Japan, Article 14 a, 62. 21 United Nations, No 1832, Treaty of Peace with Japan, Article 14 b, 65. 22 United Nations, No 1832, Treaty of Peace with Japan, Article 16, 68. 23 Macarthur, General Douglas, ‘“Old Soldiers Never Die” Speech’, text of the Farewell Speech delivered to U.S. Congress on 19 April 1951, https://iowaculture.gov/sites/default/ files/history-education-pss-cold-macarthur-transcription.pdf, accessed 3 March 1011, 24 Shaller, Michael, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

136  Postwar Reconciliation 25 Utsumi Aiko, 『戦後補償から考える日本とアジア』(Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases.) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012), Appendix. Three lawsuits were all lodged for compensation for forced labor and unpaid wages: Kim Gyon Sok against Nihon Kōkan (1999), Fujikoshi (2000), and Kashima (2000). 26 United Nations, ‘Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation’, https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20583/volume-583-I-8473English.pdf, accessed 3 March 2022. 27 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ‘Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China’, http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/ asia-paci/china/joint72.html, accessed 3 March 2022. 28 Among various sources of information about Japanese Army Unit 731 is this news article about the horrific chemical, biological and medical atrocities the Unit conducted in China: Justin McCurry, ‘Japan Discloses Details of Notorious Chemical Warfare Division’, The Guardian, 17 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/ japan-unit-731-imperial-army-second-world-war, accessed 3 March 2022. 29 Since 1992 former ‘comfort women’ and their supporters have gathered to protest Japan’s wartime sex slavery and demand a sincere apology, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wednesday_demonstration, accessed 3 March 2022. The former Prime Minister the late Abe Shinzō maintained a defiant stance, claiming that there was no evidence of the Imperial Army forcing women to take part in wartime sexual slavery. 30 The aims of Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft or EVZ Foundation (Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future) are set out in the Foundation’s name and are specifically ‘in memory of the victims of National Socialist injustice’, https://www.stiftung-evz.de/en/, accessed 3 March 2022. 31 Mainichi shinbun, 15 March 2017, ‘The numerals testify – the Pacific War by data’ (Takahashi Masaki/Digital Broadcast Centre), 「数字は証言する〜データで見る太 平洋戦争〜」（高橋昌紀／デジタル報道センター）https://mainichi.jp/feature/afterwar70/pacificwar/ accessed 15 August 2022. 32 https://honkawa2.sakura.ne.jp/5226e.html, accessed 15 August 2022. 33 In 1990, the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially confirmed the number of people killed in Japan by atomic bombs, although the exact number of deaths is unknown. 34 Gabby Seto, ‘The Voices of the Comfort Women’, Tokyo Weekender, 19 February 1993, updated 26 April 2021, https://www.tokyoweekender.com/1993/02/the-voices-of-comfort-women/, accessed 3 March 2022. ‘The International Public Hearing Concerning Post-War Compensation of Japan’ was organized by a citizens group and held in Tokyo Panse Hall on 9 December 1992. Among many important issues discussed were the cases of the comfort women, particularly testimonies of six former ‘comfort women’ that resulted in international condemnation of wartime sexual violence. 35 Andreas Rinke, ‘Visiting Merkel Reminds Japan to Face Wartime Past’, Reuters, March 9, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-germany-idUSKBN0M509220150309, accessed 3 March 2022. 36 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, ‘Abductions of Japanese Citizens by North Korea’, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/abduction/index.html, accessed 3 March 2022. 37 Tanaka Hiroshi, Utsumi Aiko, and Niimi Takashi eds., 『資料　中国人強制連行の記録』 (1960–64) (Records of Chinese forced laborers – sources 1960–64) (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 1990). Also, Utsumi Aiko, 『戦後補償から考える日本とアジア』(Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012), 57–64. 38 Current status of overseas compatriots – South Korea 409,855 (in December 2021) and North Korea 26,792 (in June 2021). Statistics from Wikipedia page ‘Koreans in Japan’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20 there%20were%20over,nationality)%20are%20registered%20in%202021, with a link

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 137

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to data held by the Immigration Services Agency of Japan, https://www.moj.go.jp/isa/ policies/statistics/toukei_ichiran_touroku.html, both accessed 18 August 2022. Mike Sunda, ‘Japan’s Hidden Caste of Untouchables’ [Burakumin], BBC News, 23 October 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34615972, accessed 3 March 2022. Statistics of Japan, e-Stat is a portal site for Japanese Government Statistics, https:// www.e-stat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&toukei=00250012&tsta t=000001018034&cycle=1&year=20160&month=12040606&tclass1=000001060399, accessed 3 March 2022. Chinese Laborers Transportation Policy (華人労務者移入方針) was a policy introduced by the Japanese wartime government, effective in 1944, to fill in the shortage of laborers by transporting Chinese by force into industries such as mining and construction sites. The laborers were mistreated and often unpaid. Acknowledging this, Nishimatsu Construction Group and Mitsubishi Material Corporation paid compensation and offered apologies to former forced laborers in 2009 and 2016, respectively. Jeff Kingston, ‘The Politics and Pitfalls of War Memory and Apology’, Japan Times, 11 July 2015, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/07/11/commentary/politicspitfalls-war-memory-apology/#.XkklVhdS-i4, accessed 15 August 2022. Kishi Nobusuke (1896–1987) was the former Prime Minister of Japan, 1957–1960. He was an A-class war criminal, yet he was released to promote pro-American political positions. He succeeded in establishing a party system called the ‘1955 System’ in Japanese politics, under which conservative political parties merged to form the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in opposition to the Japan Socialist Party. From there, the LDP’s long reign began, lasting until 1993, after which the party has been forced into coalitions with other parties in order to form government. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, ‘Issues Regarding History: Measures Taken by the Government of Japan on the Issue of “Comfort Women”’, 14 January 2021, http://www. mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html accessed 3 March 2022. Asian Women’s Fund, Digital Museum: The ‘comfort women’ Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund, http://www.awf.or.jp/index.html, accessed 18 August 2022. Japan Center for Historical Records (JACAR), Ajia rekishi sentā, https://www.jacar. go.jp/, accessed 3 March 2022. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/qWFXCr8DLRt7 vE2xT7ylCT?domain=mofa.go.jp, accessed 3 March 2020. The National WWII Museum New Orleans, ‘Redress and Reparations for Japanese American Incarceration’, 13 August 2021, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/ articles/redress-and-reparations-japanese-american-incarceration#:~:text=This%20 law%20gave%20surviving%20Japanese,the%20redress%20movement%20into%20 legislation, accessed 3 March 2022. Carol Gluck, Newsweek [Japanese Edition], 20 March 2018, 30. Compiled by Yasuko Claremont, based on figures available mainly in the sources, e.g., Utsumi Aiko, 『戦後補償から考える日本とアジア』(Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012), 2–3. The following websites were also accessed on 15 August 2022: https://www.sangiin.go.jp/ japanese/annai/chousa/rippou_chousa/backnumber/2010pdf/20100901003.pdf; https:// www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/hokabunya/senbotsusha/seido02/index. html; https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/rp/page24e_000276.html; and https://www.mhlw. go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/kenkou/genbaku/index.html. Yukari Easton, ‘Don’t Renegotiate “Comfort Women” Deal’, The Japan Times, 4 January 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/01/04/commentary/japan-commentary/ dont-renegotiate-comfort-women-deal/, accessed 3 March 2022. United Kingdom, ‘London Agreement on German External Debts’, 27 February 1953, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/269824/German_Ext_Debts_Pt_1.pdf, accessed 3 March 2022.

138  Postwar Reconciliation 53 Urszula Pekala, ‘At a Crossroads? German-Polish Reconciliation in Light of Changes in the Polish Government’, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 20 May 2016, https://www.aicgs.org/publication/at-a-crossroadsgerman-polish-reconciliation-in-light-of-the-recent-changes-in-the-polish-government/ accessed 15 August 2022. 54 For more information see ‘Japan’s ODA and JICA’ at https://www.jica.go.jp/english/ about/oda/index.html, accessed 3 March 2022. 55 https://www.sangiin.go.jp/japanese/annai/chousa/rippou_chousa/backnumber/ 2010pdf/20100901003.pdf, accessed 15 August 2022. 56 Abe Zenrō, 1916–2007, was a Japanese Navy pilot who survived the war. While admitting Japan’s wrongdoings in China, he stated in his memoir that he definitely believed that Japan had fought for the release of Asian countries from the colonization of the West. 57 Sankō sakusen (The Three Alls Policy – kill all, burn all, loot all) was a scorched earth policy adopted in China by Imperial Japanese Army. 58 Tobe Ryōichi et al., Shippai no honshitsu: Nihongun no soshikironteki kenkyū (The essence of Japan’s failure: structural study on the Japanese army) (Tōkyō: Chûôkôron-sha, 1991). 59 Takahashi Masaki quoted the study by historian Fujiwara Akira, in which, of the 60% or more of the total war dead, 1400,000 died of starvation. Takahashi Masaki, Dēta de miru taiheiyō sensō: ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu (The Pacific War through the data: truth of ‘Japan’s failure’) (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun shuppansha, 2017), 10–11. 60 National WWII Museum, New Orleans, ‘Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II’, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/studentresources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war, accessed 15 August 2022. 61 In an attempt to legitimize its invasion, Japan did not declare war on China. A contemporary parallel is Russia’s refusal to admit that its attack on Ukraine in February 2022 was the start of a war. The ‘China Incident of 1937’ is also known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident or Lugou Bridge Incident. It marks the point when full-scale warfare began between Chinese Nationalist forces and the Japanese Imperial Army, although Japan avoided formally declaring war on China. In the decades before this, the Japanese Army had been conducting sporadic attacks within Chinese territory. In 1931, Japan had installed a puppet government in Manchuria after the ‘Mukden Incident’. 62 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/12201000/000801890.pdf, accessed 15 August 2022. 63 Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in WWII (London: Routledge, 2020), 250–251. 64 City of Hiroshima, ‘About the List of Atomic Bomb Victims’, updated 9 November 2021. https://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/site/atomicbomb-peace/15513.html, accessed 15 August 2022. 65 City of Nagasaki, ‘List of Atomic Bomb Victims’, updated 24 September 2021, https://www. city.nagasaki.lg.jp/heiwa/3020000/3020100/p002235.html, accessed 15 August 2022. 66 Michael Cunningham, ‘Prisoners of the Japanese and the Politics of Apology: A Battle Over History and Memory’, Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 4 (2004), 561–574. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4141410. By saying ‘regret’ or ‘sorry’, one would accept responsibility. President Obama famously said that atomic bomb ‘fell above’ not ‘attacked’ when he visited Hiroshima in 2016. 67 The Bataan Death Marches were the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of between 60,000 and 80,000 American and Filipino POWs in April 1942 in the Philippines. Exact casualties and losses were unknown but ranged from 5,500 to 18,650 POW deaths. They were forced to walk roughly 100 km without food and water. 68 Christina Mendez, ‘Duterte Recognizes Philippines Alliances with US, Japan’, The Philippine Star, 10 April 2018, https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/04/10/1804527/ duterte-recognizes-philippines-alliances-us-japan, accessed 3 March 2022.

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 139 Bibliography Books Joseishi, Kenkyūkai, Hiroshima no onna-tachi (Hiroshima), Tokyo: Domesu shuppan, 1987. Shaller, Michael, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Tanaka, Yuki, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in WWII, London: Routledge, 2020. Tanaka, Hirosi, Utsumi, Aiko and Niimi, Takashi eds., 『資料　中国人強制連行の記録』 (1960-64) (Records of Chinese forced laborers – sources 1960-64), Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 1990. Tobe, Ryōichi, et al., Shippai no honshitsu: Nihongun no soshikironteki kenkyū, (The essence of Japan’s failure: structural study on the Japanese army), Tōkyō: Chûôkôron-sha, 1991. Utsumi, Aiko, 『戦後補償から考える日本とアジア』(Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases), Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012. Articles Cunningham, Michael, ‘Prisoners of the Japanese and the Politics of Apology: A Battle Over History and Memory’, Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 4 (2004), 561–574. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4141410. Easton, Yukari, ‘Don’t Renegotiate “Comfort Women” Deal’, The Japan Times, 4 January 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2018/01/04/commentary/japan-commentary/ dont-renegotiate-comfort-women-deal/. Gallagher, Edward J., The Enola Gay Controversy, ‘Round 5 – The Wake of the Controversy: June 28, 1995 to January 2004’, http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/r5/. Gluck, Carol, Newsweek [Japanese edition], 20 March 2018. Keene, Donald, ‘From Enemy to Friend’, in Yasuko Claremont (ed.) Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation, Abington, New York: Routledge, 2018, 1–8 Kingston, Jeff, ‘The Politics and Pitfalls of War Memory and Apology’, Japan Times, 11 July 2015, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/07/11/commentary/politics-pitfalls-warmemory-apology/#.XkklVhdS-i4. Macarthur, General Douglas, ‘“Old Soldiers Never Die” Speech’, text of the Farewell Speech delivered to U.S. Congress on April 19 1951, https://iowaculture.gov/sites/ default/files/history-education-pss-cold-macarthur-transcription.pdf. McCurry, Justin, ‘Japan Discloses Details of Notorious Chemical Warfare Division’, The Guardian, 17 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/japan-unit731-imperial-army-second-world-war. Mendez, Christina ‘Duterte Recognizes Philippines Alliances with US, Japan’, The Philippine Star, 10 April 2018, https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/04/10/1804527/ duterte-recognizes-philippines-alliances-us-japan. Nippon.com, ‘Nagano Museum Relates Hardships of Japanese Agricultural Emigrants to Manchuria’, The War and its Aftermath Series, 10 August 2021, https://www.nippon. com/en/japan-topics/c03308/nagano-museum-relates-hardships-of-japanese-agriculturalemigrants-to-manchuria.html, accessed 20 March 2022. Pekala, Urszula, ‘At a Crossroads? German-Polish Reconciliation in Light of Changes in the Polish Government’, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Johns Hopkins University, 20 May 2016, https://www.aicgs.org/publication/at-a-crossroadsgerman-polish-reconciliation-in-light-of-the-recent-changes-in-the-polish-government/.

140  Postwar Reconciliation Rinke, Andreas, ‘Visiting Merkel Reminds Japan to Face Wartime Past’, Reuters, March 9, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-germany-idUSKBN0M509220150309. Sato Masaru, ‘I Learned about the Wretchedness of War: Women Settlers’ “Sexual Entertainment” of Soviet Red Army Troops in Postwar Manchuria’, translated and with an introduction by Joseph Essertier. First published in Tokyo Shinbun, 3 July 2017 and republished in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus 18 No.3 (September 15 2017), https:// apjjf.org/2017/18/Masaru.html. Seto, Gabby, ‘The Voices of the Comfort Women’, Tokyo Weekender, 19 February 1993, updated 26 April 2021, https://www.tokyoweekender.com/1993/02/the-voicesof-comfort-women/. Sunda, Mike, ‘Japan’s Hidden Caste of Untouchables’ [Burakumin], BBC News, 23 October 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34615972. Takahashi, Masaki, Dēta de miru taiheiyō sensō: ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu (The Pacific War through the data: truth of ‘Japan’s failure’), Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun shuppansha, 2017. ‘The numerals testify – the Pacific War by data’ (Takahashi Masaki/Digital Broadcast Centre), Mainichi shinbun, 15 March 2017, 「数字は証言する〜データで見る太平洋 戦争〜」（高橋昌紀／デジタル報道センター）https://mainichi.jp/feature/afterwar70/ pacificwar/. Yoshida, Takashi, ‘Tracing ‘victimizer consciousness’: the Emergence and Development of War Guilt and Responsibility in Postwar Japan’, in Yasuko Claremont, ed, Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation: Wounds, Scars, and Healing, London & New York: Routledge, 2018, 11–25. Websites Asian Women’s Fund, Digital Museum: The ‘comfort women’ Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund. http://www.awf.or.jp/index.html. City of Hiroshima, ‘About the List of Atomic Bomb Victims’, updated 9 November 2021. https://www.city.hiroshima.lg.jp/site/atomicbomb-peace/15513.html. City of Nagasaki, ‘List of Atomic Bomb Victims’, updated 24 September 2021. https:// www.city.nagasaki.lg.jp/heiwa/3020000/3020100/p002235.html. ‘Comfort women’ Wednesday Demonstration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday_ demonstration. Japan Center for Historical Records (JACAR), Ajia rekishi sentā. https://www.jacar.go.jp/. Japanese casualties, including returned and uncollected remains of Japanese soldiers, 2012. https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/12201000/000801890.pdf, accessed 25 November 2022. Japan’s ODA and JICA. https://www.jica.go.jp/english/about/oda/index.html. Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA), ‘Public Health and Welfare Bulletin’, January 1948. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/ext/dw/101709886/PDF/101709886.pdf. Ministry of Defense, Japan, ‘National Security Strategy (NSS)’. https://www.mod.go.jp/ en/d_policy/basis/strategy/index.html. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, ‘Abductions of Japanese Citizens by North Korea’. https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/n_korea/abduction/index.html. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, ‘Issues Regarding History: Measures Taken by the Government of Japan on the Issue of “Comfort Women”‘, 14 January 2021. http://www.mofa. go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html.

Reparation, Memorials, and Reconciliation at the State Level 141 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, ‘Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China’. http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/ china/joint72.html. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan, Invitation Program for POWs from Australia. https:// protect-au.mimecast.com/s/qWFXCr8DLRt7vE2xT7ylCT?domain=mofa.go.jp. National WWII Museum New Orleans, ‘Redress and Reparations for Japanese American Incarceration’, 13 August 2021. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/redressand-reparations-japanese-american-incarceration#:~:text=This%20law%20gave%20 surviving%20Japanese,the%20redress%20movement%20into%20legislation. National WWII Museum, New Orleans, ‘Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II’. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/researchstarters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war. Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet, The Constitution of Japan, Chapter 2, Article 9, Renunciation of War. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/ constitution_e.html. Some sources for Japanese Government compensation payments. https://www.sangiin. go.jp/japanese/annai/chousa/rippou_chousa/backnumber/2010pdf/20100901003.pdf, accessed 6 March 2023; https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/hokabunya/ senbotsusha/seido02/index.html, accessed 6 March 2023; https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/ rp/page24e_000276.html, accessed 6 March 2023; and https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/kenkou/genbaku/index.html, accessed 6 March 2023. Statistics relating to United States bombing of Japanese towns, cities and villages. https:// honkawa2.sakura.ne.jp/5226e.html. Statistics of Japan, e-Stat is a portal site for Japanese Government Statistics. https://www.estat.go.jp/en/stat-search/files?page=1&layout=datalist&toukei=00250012&tstat=000001 018034&cycle=1&year=20160&month=12040606&tclass1=000001060399. Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft or EVZ Foundation (Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future). https://www.stiftung-evz.de/en/. ‘Special Payment for Siberian Detainees: a bill for postwar forced detainees has passed’. https://www.sangiin.go.jp/japanese/annai/chousa/rippou_chousa/backnumber/ 2010pdf/20100901003.pdf. United Kingdom, ‘London Agreement on German External Debts’, 27 February 1953. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269824/German_Ext_Debts_Pt_1.pdf. United Nations, ‘No. 1832 Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, etc., Treaty of Peace with Japan (with two declarations). Signed at San Francisco, on 8 September 1951. Registered by the United States of America on 21 August 1952’. https://treaties.un.org/ doc/publication/unts/volume%20136/volume-136-i-1832-english.pdf. United Nations, ‘Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation’. https:// treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20583/volume-583-I-8473-English.pdf. Wikipedia page ‘Koreans in Japan’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koreans_in_Japan#:~:text= In%202019%2C%20there%20were%20over,nationality)%20are%20registered%20 in%202021, with a link to data held by the Immigration Services Agency of Japan, https:// www.moj.go.jp/isa/policies/statistics/toukei_ichiran_touroku.html.

5

Citizens’ Reconciliation

5.1 Introduction After the shock of an unconditional surrender, the Japanese people were confronted with massive difficulties in going about daily life as the immediate postwar period stretched into the 1950s. Their challenges included a shattered economy, high levels of unemployment, shortages of food, the devastation of their cities, the destruction of manufacturing facilities, and hardship in the repatriation of Japanese civilians from former colonies and military posts overseas. Ordinary Japanese people paid a heavy cost in their personal lives because of the war. They must have felt betrayed by the leaders of the military and the wartime governments. Like the soldiers, they had also been prepared to die for the Emperor. If the enemy had landed in Japan, the death of the whole population would have been likened to ‘100 million shattered jewels’.1 The widespread acceptance of this notion was confirmed by former Prime Minister (1945–1946) Shidehara’s memory of his experience on the train, as he witnessed the outrage of the general public at the way Japan had ended the war (which I cited in Chapter 3). Despite this mortifying end to the war, the people were still left with very little detailed knowledge of the conflict. Having been kept in ignorance and subjected to silence from the authorities, they had given wholehearted support for the constitutional reform that would transform Japan into a democratic nation, including the renunciation of war, even though – as they found out later – it was the United States that was responsible for the creation of their Constitution. They all held hopes for a renewed Japan but quickly realized that Japan was under the control of the American General Head Quarters (GHQ) and a series of governments drawn from one dominant political party from the right. Another kind of warfare began within national politics between the right and the left, and this social division still continues to the present day. In general, it is reflected in the alignment between the political right, anti-Korean groups and those advocating for the ‘reform’ of Article 9, and the links of the political left to groups who are pro-Korean and those who are Article 9 supporters. The suspicion between these opposing groups begets tension, fear, and anxiety. This is all heightened by Japan’s unsettled postwar history and the ambiguous treatment of facts and the truth – both a consequence of the secrecy and lack of certainty surrounding Japan’s wartime actions. I, too, had known very little of such matters until I realized how ignorant DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-9

Citizens’ Reconciliation 143 I was and began absorbing detailed information from authentic sources. Although I can almost draw a parallel line between the manipulation of the wartime general public and our current political situation – in terms of being controlled by government directions at least – we are better off now, as we have the right to express ourselves. This means that each of us can take responsibility. This chapter on citizens’ reconciliation focuses chiefly on the engagement of ordinary individuals or groups of Japanese people in postwar reconciliatory activities, often leading to partnerships with government entities. Each side has its own distinct functions. The civic organizations are non-profit, volunteer organizations – above all, they are independent groups and not government agents. The conclusion of the Foreign Ministry’s Australian POWs program that I referred to in Chapter 4 was a good model of cooperation between civic peace organizations and the government. It is a case study that demonstrates how state and civilian organizations need to work together to maximize the success of reconciliation projects. In initiating such a process, citizen groups may share their detailed research outcomes with the government, for example, by providing lists of the names of the POWs detained in Japan and their backgrounds; in turn, the government provides official recognition for the initiative and additional resources, working with the groups to formalize the reconciliation process. In addition to this cooperation, the role of the media – particularly its power to communicate information about these rebuilding projects to multiple levels of society– is undoubtedly important. Unlike the reconciliation-based treaties negotiated at a state or national level, civil reconciliation is intensely personal and, in the work that they undertake, the people who voluntarily take action reveal their values and determination. Here too, the media plays a vital role in showcasing how individuals working on reconciliation find the power that lies within the strength of their will and understanding. Here is one example. On 8 October 2017, Japanese television station BS1 broadcast a special documentary called ‘Looking for my Japanese father – Japanese Dutch in a never-ending war’.2 After the war, the Netherlands had unsuccessfully attempted to reassert its sovereignty and make Indonesia a colony of Holland once again. The documentary focused on the hardship endured by Japanese Dutch people who had fled from Indonesia as a result of Indonesia’s independence war against the Netherlands. Because their fathers were Japanese, each of the children who were featured had faced discrimination as ‘an enemy’s child’. One of them was a girl who was consistently raped by her stepfather, resulting in her giving birth to a girl at the age of 15. The baby was given up for adoption. While still carrying the trauma, the mother married and grew into old age in Holland. Her suffering was eased when she confronted the facts, began looking for her daughter, and found her. They met, and she explained why she had given her daughter away. Her daughter, now a grown woman, then looked into the past of her mother’s stepfather, as she wanted to know why he had sexually abused her mother. Ultimately, she discovered that he had suffered extreme hardship on the Thai-Burma Railway and concluded that he had sought retribution for his trauma by being intimate with a child of the enemy. This story is reminiscent of the film entitled The Railway Man,3 which was based on a true story about reconciliation between a former Japanese army interpreter,

144  Postwar Reconciliation Nagase Takashi, and Eric Lomax, a British POW who was tortured on the ThaiBurma Railway. Lomax suffered from ongoing trauma and could never forgive his torturers but, finally, his meeting with Nagase led him to accept Nagase’s penitence. Lomax was never able to understand how a man as educated as Nagase could do such a thing as torture people.4 During the postwar years, Nagase worked on reconciliation activities for peace, especially for the people of Thailand who had been kind to the defeated Japanese soldiers. Despite what he had done during the war, Nagase found reconciliation for himself by engaging in activities such as writing memoirs, building a temple and memorials, and offering scholarships for Thai girls to become nurses.5 In his documentary films and the book he subsequently published, TV director Masuda Yasuhiro portrayed Nagase as ‘the man who hung the rainbow over the River Kwai’.6 What Nagase undertook were the honorable actions of atonement by an individual. While he was not the only one, in him we can see the determination to atone coming from an individual who had previously felt that he had no choice but to do his duty in accordance with what the Imperial Army had expected of him. In 2006, a statue of Nagase was erected on the bank of the River Kwai by a group of the students he had supported with scholarships.7 In newsreels featuring the Thai-Burma Railway, it is evident that workers on the railway were a mixture of many Southeast Asian rōmusha (laborers), POWs, and locals. The railway was built on dangerous terrain, through mountain jungle with cliffs to one side. It has been said many times that the number of fatalities is the same as the number of sleepers used on the railway. Remnants of the sleepers can still be seen buried in the ground along the disused section of the railway. To our list of people on a search for truth and reconciliation, let me add the name of Mori Shigeaki (b. 1937), a local historian of Hiroshima and atomicbomb survivor, whose book, Genbaku de shinda beihei hishi (A hidden history of American soldiers killed by the A bomb)8 chronicles his efforts to discover the facts surrounding the deaths of American POWs killed by the A-bomb. His detailed investigations into multiple documents, as well as his efforts to record witnesses’ accounts and reveal precise details about what happened on that day, sparked the creation of a lasting friendship between families and friends – despite the reality of such bonds being founded on the horrible circumstances surrounding the atomic bombings. Mori was able to confirm that 12, rather than 10, was the correct number of American victims, contradicting the number that had been officially documented by the Americans as comprising ‘eight from the Army and two from the Navy’. Because of his contributions to investigating the truth surrounding American POWs in Hiroshima over many years, Mori was invited to meet President Barack Obama during the president’s historic visit to Hiroshima on 27 May 2016. It is unexpected and moving to see images of Barack Obama and the old hibakusha Mori embracing on that day – a symbol of reconciliation and friendship between America and Japan, countries that once fought each other to the death. Furthermore, to thank Mori and his wife Kayoko for their dedication to peace and their work toward achieving a world free of nuclear weapons, the American

Citizens’ Reconciliation 145 Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society honored the two at their congress on 24 May 2018. Trans-generational participation in the quest for truth and peace, for example, by school students, is one of the most heartening aspects of the reconciliation movements. A team of four female students at Tōin Gakuen High School, Yokohama, won first prize for their project ‘Messages to Prisoners of War’ at the National High School History Forum hosted by Nara University and Nara Prefecture in November 2015. Their research focused on three key points: What were the wartime crimes on trial at the Yokohama Court? Why did allied POWs die? and Why did the Japanese army treat POWs so cruelly? Their report concluded with the words, ‘We aim at building a better world where no criminals or POWs exist’.9 5.2  Establishing civil societies In 1954, Japan affiliated with the Colombo Plan and began assisting developing countries with technical cooperation and volunteer projects. In 1956, Japan joined the United Nations as a member. It was a great advance for Japan to become a member of global society once again, and in response to the United Nations’ Charter, Chapter X, the Economic and Social Council, Article 71 – on international cooperation with developing countries – Japan established the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1974, which is one of the most prominent Japanese Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). The NGOs have the right to attend as observers of the international conferences organized by the Economic and Social Committee. Article 71 states: The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations concerned.10 This is one of the differences between Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). NGOs have global interests and profiles, such as corporations dealing with climate change or the plight of refugees, whereas NPOs have both nationwide and local concerns, such as helping earthquake victims by clearing areas when that is needed. In 1998, new legislation governing the practice of the NPOs (Act on Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities) came into force in Japan, allowing civil society organizations to acquire non-profit corporation status relatively easily, as long as the standard conditions are met with the approval of the National Taxation Administration Agency. According to the Japan NPO center, as of 2015, the number of NPOs has reached more than 50,000,

146  Postwar Reconciliation categorized under 20 different activity types.11 I will focus on the ones that are classified under Human Rights, Promotion of Peace, a category that includes a total of 8,099 NPOs. Except for subscription fees, donations, and activity fees, their programs and projects are tax free. Both NGOs and NPOs are independent from the government. However, a small portion of funding resources for NGOs includes public funding from authorities such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (10%) and local government (2%). The number of Japanese NGOs is around 100. Both NPOs and NGOs aim to build a society where citizens’ participation diversifies social responsibility and encourages partnerships in communities at a civil level. Grassroots groups have advanced and now receive government-registered status for their work. Most group organizations are not registered as NPOs however, because people wish to avoid the requirement to officially report their activities and finances to the authority each year. In 1996, UNESCO published From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace, a 270-page document which contained 15 articles by eminent scholars who discussed the multiple facets of a culture of peace. In his article ‘Cultural peace: some characteristics’, Johan Galtung pointed out that there is ‘no guarantee that women are carriers of peace cultures’, but men more likely ‘construct and embed themselves in rigid hierarchies of ideas/theses, (cultural violence, such as deductive law12) and of positions (structural violence, as found in military-bureaucratic hierarchies)’.13 My own observations of grassroots peace movements (NPOs) has shown that women’s participation is strong, for example, the membership of the POW Research Network, Japan, which is essentially a research-led organization, is made up of 73 ordinary members plus 6 honorary members. Of this total, 31 are women, indicating a well-balanced structure. The group consists of academics, retired professionals, journalists, and researchers. Since becoming aware of how much harm Japan did to neighboring countries during the war, they have wanted to contribute genuinely to reconciliation. 5.3  Civil involvement in reconciliation/compensation cases In the democratic societies in which many of us live, everyone should be entitled to have access to public information. But the reality is that we not only suffer from information overload but also find difficulty in making judgments about the credibility of the information available. As the reliability of sources can be questionable, critical thinking about the authenticity of the material is crucial. This is particularly relevant to groups of citizens whose interests in postwar reconciliation require access to authentic documents and factual records from the past. There may be no such records, since many records were destroyed before Japan surrendered and other records were not kept at all. Where that is the case, investigations should take place or, if there are archives, then these records must be examined and verified. This is where people of all walks of life join together to work on their common interests and concerns through investigation – to construct, for example, an accurate picture of what had happened to Japan’s wartime victims, such as prisoners of war, forced laborers, and comfort women. While the Imperial Japanese Army’s

Citizens’ Reconciliation 147 mistreatment of groups like these had been generally recognized, the specific details were only partially known. Accounts from witnesses have been accepted as being a component that contributes to valuable academic sources of information. For this reason, citizens in grassroots groups have volunteered to investigate historical truths and keep these records publicly available, so that they can contribute to the security of authentic knowledge. Apart from regularly responding to inquiries from former POWs and their families, the volunteers also organize study seminars by inviting experts who specialize in particular fields, such as monitoring the costs of the U.S. military bases in Japan. As we have seen, civil reconciliation activities are fundamentally based on the level of knowledge that people have about the war. Such knowledge is either incomplete or lacking altogether. An example can be found in the records of the Japanese Ministry that are intended to show the names, nationality, military rank, and medical reports of prisoners of war. Instead of providing details, an indefinite number of records have been censored, blacked out. It is this lack of transparency in these unsatisfactory records that has prompted the rise of grassroots groups in Japan. These groups apply themselves to two forms of activity: researching and then investigating records of the past; and achieving personal reconciliation between former members of the Japanese armed forces and those who were once deemed to be enemies of Japan. Despite the imperfection of some records, the Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy (Nihon gaikō bunsho) have been made available and open to the public on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Digital Archive. These archival diplomatic materials are also accessible at the Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records. Japan’s historical documents and records from Meiji times up to the Allied Occupation of 1945–1952 are also available for the public to see. In democratic nations, this is part of a trend toward freedom of information and accountability between governing bodies and their citizens. The United States has compiled comprehensive records of military atrocities committed by the Japanese and German armies. From the two records – ‘The Imperial Government Disclosure Act of 2000’ and ‘The Nazi War Crime Disclosure Act of 1998’ – a final report entitled ‘Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records’ was compiled by an Interagency Working Group (IWG) and presented to the U.S. Congress in April 2007. The IWG had examined more than 8.5 million pages of the Federal Government’s records on the war crimes of Nazi Germany and Japan that had been housed in the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA), including CIA operational files. The transparency of these government records has been welcomed by researchers worldwide. In relation to the Japanese cases, the 156-page IWG report describes two main investigations: prisoners of war and comfort women. In addition, in order to encourage research interests because only limited resources about Japan’s war crimes are available, in 2006 IWG published an additional volume with the title Researching Japanese War Crimes: Introductory Essays. In that volume, Daqing Yang, from George Washington University, revealed evidence of the Nanjing Massacre through the diary entries of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers.14

148  Postwar Reconciliation In the following sections, I shall discuss civil involvement in conducting reconciliation with the following groups: 1 2 3 4 5

prisoners of war, forced laborers from Asia, comfort women, air-raid victims, and hibakusha.

The first three topics focus on the results of Japan’s aggression, and the last two center on victim consciousness in Japan. The features these subjects have in common are the commitment of civil members, intensive research, worldwide networking, involvement in education, and the promotion of peace. 5.4  Prisoners of war For the three years between 1946 and 1949,15 the International Military Tribunal for the Far East presided over war crimes trials involving soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army, as well as the guards they had recruited. All the trials were organized by the Allied Nations. One trial that took place related to the POW camp was at Naoetsu, a port city well known for its heavy snowfall that is located on the coast of the Japan Sea. Notorious for its harshness and cruelty, the POW Camp was under the charge of a particularly notorious sadistic psychopath Sergeant Watanabe Mutsuhiro when Louis Zamperini was there.16 Within the violent culture of the Imperial Army, such harsh treatment had been regarded as normal, resulting in the deaths of 61 prisoners in the Camp from malnutrition, injuries, and mistreatment, including torture. As a result of the hearings, two Japanese soldiers and six locally recruited guards were executed. In a closely knit community such as Naoetsu, all citizens felt disgraced, and the families of the recruited guards saw themselves as dishonored – any discussion about POWs and the cruelty of their treatment became a taboo subject for a long time. However, in 1978, an Australian ex-POW, Theo Lee, sent a letter to Naoetsu High School; the letter prompted the citizens to revisit the history of the prison camp. Touched by the consideration shown by their Australian counterparts in burying the Japanese POWs who had died during the Cowra Breakout of 1944, Naoetsu citizens, particularly former Imperial Japanese Army soldier Ishizuka Shōichi and his wife Yōko, worked to build a peace park and memorial monuments on the Camp site. He had been repatriated at the end of the war from Burma, where he had been a POW of the Allied Forces and was appalled at what had happened in the Naoetsu Camp in comparison to his POW experience in Burma. In 1995, 50 years after the end of the war, the Naoetsu Peace Park was opened by the local citizens who had raised 80% of the costs. A two-story house next to the Camp site was donated for a peace museum, and the Jōetsu17 and Australia Friendship Society was established in the same year. The first President of the Society was Ishizuka Shōichi.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 149 As Angela Merkel has said, reconciliation can only be achieved by the willingness of the two parties to reach out to each other. In the peace park, there are two memorials – one for the 60 deceased POWs with their names engraved and the other for the 8 executed guards. Instead of names, engraved on the memorial of the guards is a haunting phrase: ‘Eight stars in the sky of peace’. From the point of view of the local people, the POWs and the eight guards were all victims of the war. This view was also held by 91-year-old Lewis Hill, an Australian ex-POW who had spent two years and nine months condemned to hard labor at the Naoetsu POW camp. In 2014, he visited the camp site on his third and final visit. He placed flowers at the memorials of prisoners and guards alike. This was a genuine gesture of reconciliation that no visiting POW had ever done before, and none has done since. He said that he felt sorry for the Japanese because their family members must have suffered.18 According to data compiled by a civil organization called the POW Research Network Japan,19 the Imperial Japanese Army captured 132,134 prisoners from the Allied Forces during World War II. Out of that number, approximately 36,000 were taken to Japan and were forced to work at POW camps located in industrial areas, harbors, mines, and so on. There were 130 camps, and the total deaths among the POWs came to 3,559. The deaths were due to causes that included starvation, accidents, torture, Allied air raids, and exposure to the atomic bombs. As shown in Table 5.1, the death rate of the Allied POWs in Japan was high. Figure 5.1 shows a map of 130 Allied POW camps in Japan that was made by the late Fukubayashi Tōru, co-founder of the POW Research Network, Japan. The POW Research Network Japan was founded in 2002 by academics, retired history teachers, and journalists. Their website contains comprehensive data about the number of POWs in Japan at the end of the war, how many had died, and what caused their deaths.20 Although their main focus is research concerning POWs, their camps, and daily life, network members have extended their Table 5.1  Death rates of Allied POWs by country of origin Allied POWs America England The Netherlands Australia Canada India New Zealand Norway Italy Other Total

Number of deaths 1,115 1,211 852 192 136 33 1 4 6 9 3,559

Compiled by Yasuko Claremont from the POW Research Network Japan sources.

150  Postwar Reconciliation

Figure 5.1 Sites of approximately 130 camps for Allied Prisoners of War located in industrial areas, harbors, mines, etc. in Japan. Courtesy of the late Fukubayashi Tōru.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 151 research into civil internments and captured American airmen in Japan. As I mentioned earlier, this group has participated in the Foreign Ministry’s invitation program for former POWs from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States. They accompanied former POWs to visit the places where they had been detained and forced to work. They also fill a space that the public sector has neglected by keeping a record of eyewitness accounts of events that took place in wartime and after the war had ended; identifying the detailed personal histories of those who died; specifying locations where B-24 and B-29 bombers were shot down; and locating the sites of POW camp sites that are now long gone. They believe that what happened in such a terrible war, in which Japan played a major role as a perpetrator, should be recorded in detail. Accordingly, the members respond to overseas inquires, which have come from generations who are related to former POWs, and who want further details about how their grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, or cousins were detained and died in Japan. The members’ reconciliatory actions have been valuable in promoting friendship between ex-POWs and their families and concerned Japanese people. For example, their Dutch counterpart, the Dialogue Netherlands-Japan-Indonesia (Taiwa no kai), founded by a small community of Japanese residents in the Netherlands in 1991, is now an active civil society promoting greater understanding of what happened during the Pacific War and the subsequent Indonesian War of Independence. The Japanese military and its government had left an awful legacy for the people in the region. Japan’s invasion of Singapore in 1942 alone resulted in 80,000 POWs – consisting of British, Indian, and Australian soldiers and about 100,000 civilians (women and children included) – being detained in concentration camps, where they were starved. Cooperation among civil societies has been remarkable in achieving civil reconciliation. On 13 September 2015, an unveiling ceremony took place at the site of Fukuoka No. 2 POW Camp. A total of 73 of the 1500 allied prisoners of war – mostly Dutch, British, American, and Australians – had perished as a result of the inhumane treatment they suffered at the camp. This camp site is close to Nagasaki, where people in general are more conscious of being victims of the atomic bomb than perpetrators of war. Yet Nagasaki city councilor and hibakusha Ihara Toyoichi (1936–2019) was instrumental in gaining approval to erect the Fukuoka No. 2 memorials. Ihara’s sister takes care of tidying the area where the memorials stand. The Naoetsu Peace Park is also being taken care of by local volunteers. Politically, Japan did pay compensation to former POWs by selling overseas assets under Article 16 of the San Francisco Treaty. This raised a sum amounting to ¥5,900 million (approximately £4,500,000). When the International Red Cross committee divided the fund among former POWs in 14 countries, the amount that individual POWs received was £75.5 – too small to be regarded as adequate compensation. As a consequence, the home countries of former POWs have paid further sums to them as shown in Table 5.2.

152  Postwar Reconciliation Table 5.2  Compensation paid to POWs by their home countries Country

Year

Amount of compensation

Canada

1999

Can $24,000 per person

England

2000

The Netherlands

2001

New Zealand

2001

Australia

2001

Norway

2001

Paid to

Canadian POWs and civilian internees £10,000 pounds per person British POWs and civilian internees fl. 3,500 per person Dutch POWs and civilian internees NZ$30,000 per person New Zealand POWs and civilian internees AU$25,000 per person Australian POWs and civilian internees Kr10,000 per person Norwegian POWs and civilian internees

Statistics courtesy of Utsumi Aiko, Sengo hoshō kara kangaeru Nihon to Ajia (reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases).21

Although wartime Japanese industries, such as Mitsubishi, Mitsui, and Nippon Steel, profited from the slave labor of POWs, as well as Chinese and Korean forced laborers, they did not express their apologies until 2015. In 1999, the U.S. Federal Court had dismissed claims by American POWs for compensation for their wartime slave labor by Japanese companies, because the San Francisco Peace Treaty precludes claims from individual POWs. It is clear that those treaties prioritized U.S. and Japanese national interests at the expense of people who suffered during the war. However, more than 70 years after the end of the war, human rights are now our chief concern. When the Japan Journalists Club meeting with American former POWs was held as part of the government Invitation Program in 2011, only 1 Japanese company out of 60 attended a meeting of the ex-POWs.22 In 2015, Mitsubishi Materials apologized to American POWs. It also apologized to Chinese forced laborers and paid compensation.23 5.5  Forced laborers from Asia To compensate for the shortage of labor during the war, the Japanese government and industries had jointly planned to promote immigration from Korea and China. Colonial Koreans were mobilized by force or other means of coercion. These immigrants numbered 725,000 (1939–1945) and 343,000 of these were put to work in coal mining under harsh conditions.24 Koreans who were soldiers or Imperial Army employees numbered 242,341 (1937–1945), of whom 22,182 were killed.25 The number of Koreans who were killed in the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not known but has been estimated to have been 22,000. As to Chinese laborers, the Tōjō Hideki wartime Government issued a policy, effective in 1944, called ‘The Chinese Laborers Transportation Policy’. At that time, Kishi Nobusuke

Citizens’ Reconciliation 153 was Minister of Commerce; he was convicted as an A-class war criminal after the war and later pardoned before he went on to become Prime Minister of Japan from 1956 to 1960. These Koreans and Chinese were taken by force, compelled to sign a contract, and obligated to work at 135 different locations belonging to 35 industries, in jobs such as mining, ship building, and undertaking loading work at ports. Of the 38,935 Chinese between the ages of 11 and 78 years who were indentured, 6,830 were either missing or had died due to starvation, illness, and/or violence by the end of the war.26 The worst case was at the Sensen Nishina Mine on Izu peninsula, where 104 of the 200 Chinese laborers died. It was a shameful and appalling event in Japan’s history. Under the provisions of international law, the use of POWs for free labor in wartime was prohibited unless they were paid. Wartime Japan breached this law as forced laborers received no money, even when – as in the case of Chinese and Korean forced laborers – the wages had been promised. The companies claimed that the funds had been kept for the workers through other means, such as postal savings, but when the war ended, these savings were not paid to the workers. These companies had benefitted from exploiting their forced laborers, making them work for long hours, providing very little food as well as mistreating them in other ways, and denying them the wages that were due. One example of the Chinese slave laborers was Liu Lianren (1913–2000), who ran away because of maltreatment he received at the Showa Mine in Hokkaido. He had wandered around in the wilderness of Hokkaido all alone until he was finally rescued in 1958. When he was discovered, the Japanese authorities tried to prepare a case designating him as an ‘illegal entrant’, ‘illegal resident’, or even ‘a spy’. His identity was, however, verified through the efforts of decent Japanese and Chinese people, working together to investigate and provide evidence from the voluminous official records. In the end, they found a precise and decisive document: Liu Lianren Shandong province Zhucheng county No. 7, Zigou Worked in Hokkaido at Meiji and Showa Mining Company In September 1944 Left in 1945 without permission, and Is currently in Japan27 Liu Lianren was able to return home in 1958. His runaway journey was featured in Ibaragi Noriko’s poem entitled ‘Ryūryen ren no monogatari’28 (The Tale of Liu Lianren, 1965), in which the poet, known for her uncompromising views about the self and society, traced Liu’s hardship as he hid in the severe cold of Hokkaido for 13 years. In doing so, she was able to show how authoritative power governed the

154  Postwar Reconciliation fate of individuals. She, too, had believed in Japan’s wartime propaganda at first, but once she had seen the falsity of it and knew of the betrayal committed by the state, her position became one of distrust. The possibility of a future reconciliation was hinted at in her poem, when a young Japanese man, a fictional character, went to great lengths to investigate the history of the strange man he had met in his childhood. This stranger was Liu Lianren. The two (a boy and Liu) had accidentally encountered each other in a remote village in Hokkaido. In reality, however, Liu’s compensation case was rejected in 2007 because of the Statute of Limitations. Highly regarded Japanese scholar Utsumi Aiko compiled the details of 90 postwar compensation cases brought before the courts from the 1990s until their completion in July 2012. A total of 82 out of the 90 cases were tried. These were claims lodged by wartime victims from Asian countries such as Korea, China, and Taiwan; all were suing Japanese companies and the Japanese government for the criminal mistreatment they had been subjected to and for avoiding payment of any compensation.29 Only three cases achieved legal reconciliation, allowing the plaintiffs to receive all settlements due to them. In addition, despite the plaintiffs’ victory, questions, and doubts remain about the sincerity and integrity of not only the defendants, but also the team of Japanese lawyers responsible for legal defense. Yet Japan contributed a large sum of money – U.S.$13 billion – to the United States when the Gulf War began in 1991, because the Japanese Constitution prohibited Japan’s Self-Defense Force from engaging in a war beyond its borders. One cannot but feel the huge discrepancy that was demonstrated in the nation’s priorities. I will discuss the role of citizens’ reconciliation efforts further in relation to the three successful compensation cases. The companies involved are the Kajima Corporation (Hanaoka Mining); Nippon Yakin Kogyo Co Ltd. (Ōeyama Nickel Mine); and the Nishimatsu Corporation (the Yasuno Power Station). 5.5.1  Kajima Construction Company – Hanaoka Mine Incident

On 30 June 1945, a massive uprising of Chinese forced laborers took place at the Hanaoka mine, in the Akita prefecture. The cause of the uprising was their maltreatment by the Kajima Construction Company. The uprising was put down by the police and the military, resulting in the killing of 418 of the 986 forced laborers. Because China had been a member of the U.S.-led alliance, the American GHQ investigated the incident after the war. A BC-class war trial was held in Yokohama and, as a result, seven Japanese who were involved in subduing the uprising were found guilty of murder. Four were given prison sentences and the other three were sentenced to death. Later the death sentences were commuted to prison sentences, as commutations had been given to the others. In 1990, eight representatives of the Chinese survivors and bereaved families of the Hanaoka incident began negotiating with the Kajima Construction Company for a possible reconciliation. At the end of the negotiation, both parties came to an agreement in principle and made a joint statement. The joint statement acknowledged that the ordeal the Chinese had suffered at the Hanaoka mine stemmed from the Japanese government’s decision to take the Chinese by force and then compel

Citizens’ Reconciliation 155 them to work in industries in Japan. In compliance with government policy, the Kajima Construction Company had inflicted harsh working conditions on the Chinese laborers. The Company also offered its deepest apology to the Chinese survivors and the bereaved families. In 1995, 11 Chinese plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in support of the laborers. They were represented by a team of defense lawyers headed by the late Niimi Takashi and Uchida Masatoshi. The plaintiffs stipulated three conditions:

• that the company should acknowledge the harsh working conditions for which it was responsible and issue an apology;

• that a memorial museum should be built; • that the company should pay ¥5 million to each of the Chinese forced laborers who were still alive.

In 2000, the decision of the Tokyo High Court was that the two parties should become reconciled and resolve the issue. Following this decision, the Hanaoka Peace and Friendship Foundation was established with ¥500 million being donated by the Kajima Corporation. In the first instance, the plaintiffs and the legal defense team celebrated the outcome as a victory, as did the media. However, ten days after achieving the legal decision of reconciliation, some of the Chinese plaintiffs rejected it, a result of seeing the formal details in translation. They realized that differences existed between what their defense team had explained to them and what was in the reconciliation statement. The statement confirmed that both parties endorsed the 1990 joint statement. However, there was a provision attached to the 1990 joint statement that the defense team had neglected to explain to the plaintiffs. It stated: Both parties have reconfirmed the 1990 joint statement. However, the respondent [Kajima] insists that the joint statement does not agree that the respondent has any legal responsibility, and the appellants understand this. [Italics are mine.] The plaintiffs were appalled because none of their three aims had been achieved, and they had not received a sincere apology. The plaintiffs were so upset that some of them rejected the payment, even though this could have been to their disadvantage because their advanced ages meant that their efforts to achieve a compensation settlement were a fight against time. The defense team may also have misinterpreted their wishes. The plaintiffs’ priority had not been the compensation money, but a kind of national apology or acknowledgment of what Imperial Japan had done to them. The Kajima Company could not bring itself to jeopardize its alliance with the government, an indication of the inseparability of industries from those in political control of the nation. On the other hand, Hanaoka has become a center of atonement for Japan’s wartime aggression. Along with local members of the Japan-China Friendship Association, the Committee for Commemorating Chinese Martyrs, and the local temple,

156  Postwar Reconciliation Shinshōji – where the ashes of Chinese laborers had been kept – Hanaoka citizens have been actively engaging in atonement activities, such as returning the ashes to China and the establishment of a memorial fund raised by the citizens. In 1960, a movement called ‘hito kuwa undō’ (the One Hoe Movement) was founded, in which Ōdate City Council labor union called for nationwide help to dig the areas where Chinese laborers’ remains were likely to be buried. More than 500 peace organizations responded. An annual memorial service has been conducted by citizens’ groups in Hanaoka since 1971. To keep the memories of the Hanaoka incident alive, the NPO Hanaoka Peace Memorial Museum opened in Ōdate, Hanaoka, in 2010. When I saw (on a museum website) a sliding paper picture theater drawn by local primary school children depicting the way Chinese laborers were forced to work at the Hanaoka Mine and Hanaoka River, I felt that their forefathers’ sins now belonged to the past. Showing clearly what had happened, the children’s drawings are an effective lesson in history and reconciliation for all of us. The following Ōeyama case succeeded in arriving at a reconciliation with the agreements accepted by both sides. Yet, here again, the complainants did not win acknowledgment of the industry’s legal responsibility. 5.5.2  Nippon Yakin Kogyo Co., Ltd – Ōeyama Nickel Mine

In 1998, a Kyoto citizens society, ‘Chūgokujin sensō higaisha no yōkyū wo sasaeru kai’ (Society for Supporting the Claims made by the Chinese War Sufferers), was established to support the lawsuit filed by six former forced laborers from China, who had survived being forced to work at the Ōeyama Nickel Mine, Kyoto. Their claim against the Japanese government and the company, Nippon Yakin Kōgyō, consisted of three demands:

• the company should apologize for its actions; • it should pay compensation to former forced laborers who were still alive; • a cenotaph should be erected. A team of lawyers headed by the late Hatanaka Kazuo took up the case, representing the six claimants pro bono. The judicial battle went on in the courts for nearly 10 years (1998–2007). During those years, the citizen society made public the hidden truth of the Nickel Mine’s mistreatment of forced laborers and provided analyses of issues raised by publishing two booklets: Chinese Forced Laborers to Ōeyama Nickel Mine (2002) and the Unforgivable Refusal by the Nation and Its Mining Industries to Pay Compensation to Chinese Forced Laborers (2003). The society members and lawyers had organized public seminars, as well as investigatory tours to the Ōeyama Nickel Mine and the Henan Province in China, where the plaintiffs still lived. In evidence submitted to the court, they presented details from their investigation relating to the way the plaintiffs were taken by force and how they were compelled to work under appalling conditions.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 157 The first trial at the Kyoto Local Court in 2003 recognized the suffering endured by the forced laborers, the illegality of the state in recruiting forced laborers, the illegal working conditions enforced by the company, the fact that no safety measures existed at the work place, and that the company had failed in its duty to pay their unpaid wages. Above all, for the first time, the court denied that the state was exempt from responsibility. They rejected provisions in the Meiji Constitution (1889–1947) that stated that Imperial Japan did not bear any national responsibility. While this decision about state responsibility was a breakthrough among other similar court cases, the court rejected the case on the grounds that the claim had been lodged long after the period allowed by the Statute of Limitations. The defense team appealed immediately to the Osaka High Court in 2003, and during this time, reconciliation between the plaintiffs and Nippon Yakin was reached. In 2004, Nippon Yakin offered ¥3,500,000 in compensation per person, in line with the court’s decision. After a full discussion between the plaintiffs and the defense team, the offer was accepted, although Nippon Yakin made no mention of its legal responsibility, no apology to the claimants, and no mention of the erection of a cenotaph. This meant that the full claim against the government and the company remained unresolved. Nonetheless, plaintiffs appreciated the court’s recognition of the facts, as well as its decision that compensation payments should be made. The claimants were also aged, since this occurred 60 years after the end of the war. The voluntary pro bono support of the Japanese lawyers and civilians given to the Chinese who had been treated so badly is an excellent example of reconciliation confirmed by action. 5.5.3  Nishimatsu Corporation – The Yasuno Power Station

A similar court case between the Nishimatsu Construction Company (Hiroshima) and Chinese forced laborers resulted in reconciliation in 2009. Nishimatsu acknowledged and apologized for the forced labor inflicted by the company on the Chinese and paid compensation to those still alive. The company also conducts an annual memorial service and invites survivors and their families from China to be present. While the lawsuit launched by the Chinese was unsuccessful in the Supreme Court, the court decision addressed additional remarks to Nishimatsu. The court deemed that the company was expected to make every effort to provide relief for their ex-laborers because the complainants were in the right on humane grounds, suffering as they did from mental and physical pain while Nishimatsu profited from their labor. In addition, the laborers were to receive compensation money from the government. The Supreme Court confirmed three points:

• the Chinese had been taken by force and then used as forced labor by Nishimatsu at the Yasuno Power Station;

• their personal safety had been violated by Nishimatsu; • Nishimatsu’s claim that the Statute of Limitations should apply in this case was unacceptable.

158  Postwar Reconciliation This lawsuit has been regarded as a model of postwar reconciliation, brought about by the effectiveness of grassroots China-Japan friendship movements. Individual compensation cases, such as those raised by the Chinese forced laborers, are an important step in fostering the growth of reconciliation. In this, the assistance given by volunteer lawyers and civil supporters is a vital component. Reconciliation court cases are difficult, sensitive, and complicated. By their very nature, court cases highlight significant differences that are difficult to resolve, as have been shown in the proceedings of the three cases selected. The cases involved the fundamental differences that existed between the Chinese plaintiffs and the Japanese defendants in their understanding of what reconciliation means and the outcomes they expected. The three companies all followed government policy by refusing to concede that employing forced laborers in wartime was an illegal act. Since they had taken advantage of the policy endorsing the use of forced labor, the government had shielded them. At the heart of such wartime, crimes lay the Japanese government’s overriding objectives and its expectation that they would be met. Despite the unsatisfactory aspects of these three cases, company representatives of Japanese corporations, like Mitsubishi Materials, can no longer behave as they once did, since they are now companies with international reputations to protect. The cruel past of wartime Japan under the Meiji Constitution, the Emperor, and the power of the military are now gone. Today, with a new and enlightened Constitution, the Japanese people all benefit from the exercise of human rights. 5.6  Comfort women The Japanese government has so far never agreed to the use of such phrases as ‘institutionalized sexual slavery carried out by the Imperial Japanese Army’ because it maintains that there is no clear evidence confirming the enforced recruitment of women. According to the government of former Prime Minister the late Abe, the women referred to were prostitutes and they were not raped or kidnapped by the army. The rigid position taken by a series of LDP governments is contradictory when compared with the acknowledgment of the truth in the Kōno statement and the Murayama government’s efforts to achieve reconciliation. Ongoing debates around comfort women issues – and about the statue of a girl symbolizing the comfort women – have occurred throughout the world since the 1990s. Politically, it has become a cause of ongoing tension between South Korea and Japan. Since 1994, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has issued a series of recommendations to the Japanese government to resolve the comfort women issues. Major declarations have come from the International Commission of Jurists Report (1994), the Radhika Coomaraswamy Report (1996), the Gay J. McDougall Report (1998), and the Doudou Diene Report (2006), all of which confirm that Japan’s military sexual slavery system violated international law. The writers urge Japan to fulfill its legal responsibility by offering an apology and compensation. In addition, the reports recommend that Japan must educate its people – particularly through school textbooks – about issues relating to the comfort women and

Citizens’ Reconciliation 159 Japan’s colonial rule of China, Taiwan, and Korea. Furthermore, a committee of specialists from the International Labor Organization (ILO) has also advised the Japanese government four times (in 1996, 1997, 1999, and 2001)30 to resolve the comfort women issues, but no satisfactory result has emerged. With the exception of the Murayama government (1994–1995), Japan has done very little. In 2015, a joint communique for the purpose of providing support for former comfort women in Korea was announced. We now know that the current Korean government has asked Japan to reconsider the communique because of a lack of consultation with former comfort women. Those who have survived are now old and frail. A small group of 46 still survive in South Korea. Why the Japanese government persistently denies the Imperial Army’s misconduct, while simultaneously providing compensation from the Asian Women’s Fund and the 2015 agreement, is a cause for puzzlement. Obviously, compensation or payment is not the chief issue. As with the Hanaoka reconciliation case that I discussed earlier, these victims want the current Japanese government to admit their legal responsibility for the war crimes that the Japanese had committed. The government seems still to defend its position based on the conviction that the Asia Pacific War was justified, although it ended in defeat. It has been an age-old question of war responsibility. In contrast to the government’s intransigence, more than ten civil societies have provided nationwide support for the lawsuits brought by comfort women and have disseminated information about the issues involved for the purpose of public education. For example, members of the civil society group Sansei-shō wo akiraka ni suru kai (Research into Wartime Shanxi Province, China) visit China twice a year for further investigations. Their publication of a record called Ōdo no mura no sei bōryoku (Sexual violence in a Chinese village) won the 2004 Yamakawa Kikue Prize31. The name of prominent Japanese journalist Matsui Yayori (1934–2002) must be noted here. She proposed holding a mock trial of the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,32 which was convened in Tokyo on 7–12 December 2000 by three civil organizations – one from Korea, one from the Philippines, and one from Japan. These were the Violence against Women in the Network of War; the Working Group on the Issues of the Korean Women’s Volunteer Corps; and the Asian Centre for Women’s Human Rights. This mock trial was modeled on the Russell Tribunal in 1967, organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others, where the United States and its Allied Nations were accused of war crimes in the Vietnam War. Like the Russell Tribunal, the mock trial proposed by Matsui had no legal binding force but became an effective means of raising public awareness of important humanitarian issues. The achievement of its intention to examine and judge the Imperial Japanese Army’s sex-slave system was very effective, since it publicly exposed Japan’s wartime violence against women. Emperor Hirohito, for example, was judged to be a war criminal. The purpose of the mock trial was to restore justice, human rights, and dignity to the victims, and to prevent any further recurrence. The performance attracted an audience of approximately 1300, 400 of whom were

160  Postwar Reconciliation from overseas, and the trial was the subject of discussions in many other locations. On the tenth anniversary of the Women’s Tribunal in 2010, a symposium titled What was the Verdict of ‘The Court’ and what has Changed Since Then? was held in Tokyo. A Chinese former comfort woman, Wei Shaolan, her half-Japanese son Luo Shanxue, and a Filipino comfort woman, Narcisa Claveria, all gave evidence. With Matsui’s substantial contribution, a privately run museum called The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) was established in 2005. The museum actively curates exhibitions and produces publications that are available for public discussion. From 1991 to 2007, ten lawsuits were submitted to the Japanese courts by former comfort women from Korea, the Philippines, Holland, China, and Taiwan. None of the lawsuits, however, succeeded, because of their invalidity under the Statute of Limitations and the Meiji Constitution (1890–1947). Among these cases, there was a significant court decision. ‘Kanpu saiban’ (the Shimonoseki-Fusan Trial from 1991 to 2003) penalized the government for the first time for its failure to introduce relevant legislation after a period of three years. The penalty of ¥300,000 was paid to each of the three plaintiffs. This trial acknowledged that the treatment of the comfort women involved was not only racially motivated discrimination against women, but also, more importantly, an abuse of their human rights. 5.7  Air-raid victims To this day, a bill to aid civilian air-raid victims has not yet been introduced at the National Diet, supposedly because there have always been other, more urgent, matters to discuss. Considering the length of time that these victims have suffered from their injuries and the poverty that resulted from the effects of attacks from the air, this political negligence is inexcusable. Sugiyama Chisako, a life-long campaigner for the compensation of air-raid victims, died at the age of 101 on 18 September 2016 at a nursing home in Nagoya. The loss of the use of her left eye and her left hand as a result of an air raid on Nagoya had prevented her from getting a job. Obviously, she was not the only one. Hundreds of others with disabilities have struggled to survive as a consequence of American air raids. Carried out by 17,500 B-29 bombers, 110,000 explosive bombs and more than 4,760,000 incendiary bombs were dropped on Japan’s major 113 cities.33 In 2016, a series of 27 short 1,000-character articles, each with its own descriptive photograph, were edited by Itō Tomoaki and published in the Asahi Shinbun. The articles were titled Sukuwarezu 71-nen (Not aided for 71 Years), with the subtitle Kūshū, misuterareta tami (The Air raids, Abandoned People). One of the main features concerned Sugiyama, the founder of Zenshōren (a national union of all air-raid victims) in 1972. In 1989, she and a high school student Wakita Chie visited Germany for a television documentary project, which focused on the subject of what the younger generations thought about the war. Chie’s father had suffered injuries to his legs in an air-raid attack and became disabled. The documentary film Chie to kūshū (Chie and the Air Raid) was a great success when it was broadcast in that year.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 161 Sugiyama and Chie investigated why the two countries had such divergent approaches toward payment of compensation to their own people who had been disabled by air raids, and what the nature of those differences were. Germany provided extensive compensation and aid for the injured, whereas Japan treated them differently, on the basis that the survivors had no contract with the government or the military. Since 1953, former Japanese army servicemen have been paid large amounts in pensions. Over the same period, the Japanese government began issuing aid to various groups such as the hibakusha, the Japanese orphans of the war in China, and the returnees from the Siberian POW camps, but the air-raid victims have received nothing. In Germany, both ex-servicemen and wardamaged civilians have been working together in the same groups. They have received an average income and full medical expenses have been paid by the government. On top of that, every two years they can enjoy a one-month recuperation trip funded by the government. The German government even provides special clothing assistance for people with amputated legs, and it treats victims with facial keloids as serious cases, including consideration of the mental-health impact of such injuries. Commenting on the documentary, the director Higuchi Yukio said that he would never forget Sugiyama’s face when she looked at a photograph showing one of the German civilians who was a victim of war – this woman is photographed skiing with a wooden leg and a broad smile on her face. This documentary highlights Japan’s inadequacy in aiding air-raid victims in comparison to Germany, America, England, and France, all of whom provide comprehensive aid. Saotome Katsumoto (1932–2022) was another determined campaigner for peace and compensation for air-raid victims. In addition to being a prolific writer, he was a director of the Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage. He experienced the great Tokyo air raid (codenamed Operation Meetinghouse by the United States) at the age of 12. In March 1945, an estimated 100,000 residents were killed by B-29 Superfortresses that dropped 1700 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo. He and Matsuura Shōzō launched a project in 1970, funded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government; they published the Tokyo daikūshū – Showa 20 nen sangatsu tōka no kiroku34 (Tokyo Air Raid Damage Records), which provided the viewpoint of the citizens of Tokyo. Published in January 1971, it went through 49 editions and approximately 500,000 copies were sold before its publication was discontinued in 2007. The Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage35 was founded in March 2002 by donations from the general public. It has compiled lists showing the number of deaths that occurred in each prefecture and the figures are available on their website. The total number of Japanese civilians who died from air raids numbers 413,068, including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (calculated to 31 December 1945) but excluding those who died in the military’s factories. Understandably, Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Nagasaki provided the three highest totals from all 47 air raids by American aircraft on Japan’s prefectures. The population of Japan in 1944 was 73,064,316, so calculations suggest the percentage of people who died from the raids was 0.57% of the population.

162  Postwar Reconciliation The Center plays a pivotal role in record keeping and conducting reconciliation activities, by encouraging young people and schools to participate in reconciliation programs. In addition, the Center forms part of a large network of peace museums in Japan and issues a newsletter, MUSE, in Japanese as well as in English. Japan’s peace museums have become centers for citizens’ reconciliation movements both nationally and internationally. The Japanese government refused all claims from the population on the grounds of what is known as junin-ron (‘Everyone in our nation must have the strength to endure a national emergency’). Regardless of the basis for the decision, it communicates a lack of sympathy or comradeship, also illustrated vividly in Japan’s rebuttal of claims for compensation submitted by the comfort women. Furthermore, to conform with the government’s postwar direction for the nation, media coverage dealing with air-raid compensation had been limited. According to Matsuura Sōzō, in order to avoid criticizing the government’s security ties with the United States, the responsibility borne by the Emperor for approving the war and Japan’s conduct of it thereafter, the media may have exercised self-censorship or self-restriction when it came to publicizing the impact of air raids.36 Sugiyama’s campaign group was not welcome at any of the meetings where other groups were campaigning for aid to help returned soldiers and hibakusha. Perhaps, bombing was regarded as normal in war. Although they had not suffered damage from radiation, the air-raid victims suffered disfigurement and the loss of limbs in the same way as hibakusha had. The majority of those who suffered from the raids were women, children, and old people, as men were at the war front. 5.8  Civil assistance in support of hibakusha The Japanese term hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivor) has been used in a discriminatory sense simply because these survivors belong to a minority group who had experienced such a horrible disaster. Consequently, not only have they confronted the ongoing health issues caused by radiation, but they also have had difficulties in finding work or a marriage partner. However, they were the first group of people who raised their voices calling for nuclear disarmament, even at the time of the GHQ censorship of any publicity concerning the atomic bombs. Though their struggle to receive a free medical card from the government was anything but easy, they achieved it in 1957. Kayoko, who is the wife of Mori Shigeaki,37 gave an account in the Yomiuri shinbun on 24 December 2017. In it, she reported how her father, a member of the delegation team to urge the Ministry of Health and Welfare to act on the hibakusha aid bill, traveled from Hiroshima to Tokyo for negotiations. At the meeting, he took off his shirt and showed the keloid scars on his back, to make his point about the survivors’ need for medical care. The number of atomic-bomb survivors nationwide was 127,755 by the end of 2021, when their average age was 84.38 I have become aware of further action from their second-generation descendants (hibaku-nisei), who are involved in tasks to help the hibakusha, including any foreigners who survived after being exposed to atomic radiation. The hibakusha foreigners include Koreans, Chinese, Allied

Citizens’ Reconciliation 163 POWs, and students from Asia. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki have substantial numbers of Koreans, some of whom were born and grew up in Japan. Retired schoolteacher Hirano Nobuto is a hibaku-nisei. In 1986, he organized an association of hibaku-nisei teachers in Nagasaki, and in 1998, he became the President of the National Hibaku-nisei Association. He has been particularly concerned with the Korean atomic-bomb survivors who have continued to live in Korea. Until 2003, free medical cards for hibakusha had been issued only to those living in Japan. Approximately 25,000 hibakusha Koreans returned to Korea after the war and were excluded from the benefits of this medical care, while 2500 Koreans who were residents in Japan had all received the hibakusha medical card by 2010.39 Hibakusha living in Korea are in equal need of the regular medical attention which is available in Hiroshima and Nagasaki hospitals. Currently they are receiving regular support from Japanese citizens’ groups such as Hirano’s association of the hibaku-nisei teachers of Nagasaki, along with other groups whose help is indispensable. As Hirano thought it strange that, of 2500 Japanese-registered Korean hibakusha, only 79 were from Nagasaki, he and other hibaku-nisei members of grassroots groups began investigating the background and current living conditions of the Korean hibakusha in Korea. Using their annual leave from work, they went to places such as Jeolla Province and Gyeongsang Province, where Korean hibakusha were said to be living. From 1990 to 1998, they visited Korea and conducted hearings about the lives of hibakusha living there. During this period, 70 investigators made a total of 16 visits to conduct hearings. Their counterparts, the Korean Association of Atomic Bomb Victims, helped them in their investigations. They were able to identify an additional 500–600 Korean hibakusha. New information about Japan’s colonial rule in Korea was also discovered. The following are some of their findings about Korean hibakusha:

• The Nagasaki hibakusha had all been recruited by Japanese companies, whereas the Hiroshima hibakusha were immigrants by choice;

• The former had been shipped out, taking three routes to Nagasaki; • The Nagasaki hibakusha are (or had been) almost all farmers; • Recruitment in Korea took place in July and August 1944, when the workers were in their early 20s;

• By 1990, many of the Nagasaki hibakusha had died; • Their health had deteriorated; • They knew very little about the atomic bomb and the aid provided by the Japanese government. They did not even know that they were classified as hibakusha;

• They lived in poverty.

The investigators concluded that what most Korean hibakusha needed was a medical examination to be held in Japan, as well as support for daily living. For 24 years (from 1977 to 2001), the Japanese government provided medical aid for Japanese hibakusha who lived overseas. Japanese hibakusha living in North and South America were invited to come back to Hiroshima or Nagasaki for a

164  Postwar Reconciliation medical check by Japanese medical doctors. On the other hand, the Korean hibakusha were only able to have a medical examination and treatment when they visited Japan within a seven-year period (1980–1986). After that, when they were left with no support, Hirano and hibaku-nisei teachers worked on fund-raising for them. Hirano had also looked for a hospital which would accept Korean hibakusha patients. Dr. Kayano Jōji, the Director of Nagasaki Yūai Hospital, accepted Hirano’s request, knowing that there would be some expected difficulties, such as language problems, prejudice against Koreans, and choices of food. One of the urgent cases was Kim Munseong.40 He was born in Hiroshima in 1938 and was exposed to the radiation from the atomic bomb at the age of seven. He survived, but parts of the left side of his body, including his leg, were heavily burnt. Kim’s family returned to Korea in November 1945, where he grew up, married, and had three children. The part of his leg that was burnt by radiation had remained as it was, while the rest of his body parts grew, making it difficult for him to walk. He was too shy to tell his family about his injuries, which became infected. Because his injuries had not been tended for so long, they then became cancerous. As was typical for hibakusha, Kim’s cancer sprang up at separate sites in other organs rather than spreading over his body, requiring him to undergo serious operations and endure month after month of lengthy post-operative treatments. The nurses and hibaku-nisei volunteers assisted Kim throughout his hospitalization. After many difficulties, Hirano helped him to obtain the top level of free medical aid for atomic-bomb victims. The Korean hibakusha had suffered severely from Japanese colonization and discrimination, as well as from poverty. Hirano and his hibaku-nisei colleagues have contributed much to the cause of their Korean counterparts, but at the same time Korean hibakusha have also given the Japanese allies friendship and reconciliation in the true sense of the word. The Dutch ex-POW Willy Buchel van Steenbergen (1918–2019) was a victim of the atomic-bomb dropped on Nagasaki. He lived in the Netherlands, which meant that he wasn’t eligible for free medical treatment in Japan. However, groups of civil supporters and lawyers acting on his behalf brought his case before the courts that dealt with claims by atomic-bomb victims, until a successful decision was reached in 2014. Buchel received a medical card as well as compensation amounting to ¥1.1 million in 2016 from the Japanese government. In 1991, a small community of Japanese residents in the Netherlands founded an active civil society called Dialogue Netherlands-Japan-Indonesia (Taiwa no kai). They promote a better understanding of what happened during the Pacific War and the subsequent Indonesian War of Independence. The group knew Willy Buchel. He had given the compensation money to the people and the organizations who had brought his lawsuit to a successful conclusion. He wanted to highlight his case in the hope that others may follow. 5.9 Summation Realizing how important it is to work on reconciliation, concerned citizens have been responding to the victims of the Asia Pacific War and making a difference wherever they can. This trend to gauge the significance of the conflict for the

Citizens’ Reconciliation 165 Japanese can be discerned in a number of areas, most obviously in the numerous books that have been published and the massive media productions on the war that constantly appear in the market. Some of them, such as Katō Yōko’s Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ o eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’) and Sensō made rekishi o kimeta kōshō to ‘nihon no shippai’ (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and ‘Japan’s failure’), are designed to enhance the capacity for critical inquiry in young students through discursive sessions with them. Katō listened carefully to the students’ responses to the subject matter. The dynamic interactions between the students and Katō brought history alive and made it relevant to today’s unsettling international situations. In a broader sense, her publications are based on primary sources and not only contribute to the promotion of a clear understanding but also convey the intricacy of modern Japanese history. Civil engagement with reconciliation can be as diverse as each person involved, so that a group of like-minded citizens can help one another by exchanging knowledge and information. Civic involvement is fruitful in that it can examine details that the Japanese government, in its role as a ruling body, cannot attend to. A case in point is Kim Munseong’s hospitalization in Nagasaki, where Kim’s suffering and life-threatening pain roused the support of Japanese people who wanted to help him. Their friendship and trust have continued over a long period of time. Treaties and compensation cannot achieve the sense of trust that comes from personal contact. Nagasaki had a well-known mayor in Motoshima Hitoshi (1922– 2014). An outspoken politician and a descendant of kakure kirishitan (underground Christians),41 he had no hesitation in speaking publicly about what he believed to be the truth. He was fully aware of the Japanese army’s ferocity in its invasions overseas and the suffering of the Japanese people who were victims of intensive bombing in the last stages of the war. It was his opinion that, unless Japan’s responsibility for its wartime aggression is acknowledged, its nuclear disarmament movements would remain unconvincing. While in office as mayor from 1979 to 1995, Motoshima officially visited Korea to meet Korean atomic-bomb victims and forced laborers. He visited 13 individual houses where they lived42 and apologized in person for Japan’s aggression and colonization. In 1990, he was shot in broad daylight by a right winger, because he named Emperor Hirohito as being responsible for the war. Motoshima survived the attack, and he continued to maintain that reconciliation cannot be achieved unless Japan’s wartime aggression is acknowledged first.43 Motoshima sharply pointed out that the Japanese population was lacking in perspectives on Japan’s role as an aggressor – he cited Tōge Sankichi’s famous atomic-bomb poem ‘Preface’, for example. The poem starts with agonizing voices, ‘Chichi wo kaese, haha wo kaese’ (‘Give back Dad, give back Mum’). For Motoshima, it evokes also the voices of Chinese orphans in north China, whose parents were slaughtered by the Japanese army. I shall discuss this poem further in Chapter 6. Japan was totally responsible for its invasion of East and South Asian countries and the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. Furthermore, its cruel mistreatment of prisoners of war, forced laborers from China and Korea,

166  Postwar Reconciliation and comfort women was beyond comprehension. It is essential for the Japanese population to be provided with the truth, no matter how shamefully its military behaved. A good model for peaceful living in Japan can be found in the intentions and actions of one group – The Society to Preserve the Monument of Friendship and No War between Japan and China. Each year since its establishment in 1971, the society has organized a memorial service for the 419 Chinese victims in Hanaoka. The deaths of such a large number of Chinese victims had an enduring impact on the local people. Thus, the accurate and detailed statistics that were compiled in the aftermath of the war are an essential tool, as long as the significance and meanings of the figures are analyzed. Human beings are not remembered by numbers, but as individuals. Apart from the government’s official numbers, which are published in bureaucratic style without any explanations, the projects of many civil organizations (including media companies) present more personal perspectives on the outcomes of the Asia Pacific War. For example, the impact that the war had on people was shown on a website in a series that had been based on numerical data by the Mainichi Newspaper Digital Centre. This 70th-anniversary postwar project was given the title ‘The Numbers Reveal – the Pacific War through Data’.44 The theme of this project concerned not only the numbers but also the meaning for us of the figures and numbers. Episode 1, for instance, offered analysis when it asked, ‘How did the 2,300,000 soldiers die?’, while Episode 4 showed that the impact of the war shortened children’s growth by 6 cm because of malnutrition. The whole project consisted of seven episodes,45 each supported by well-researched statistics, analyses, and an interview at the end with an eminent historian, writer, or scholar. Those being interviewed were well known to the public and included Handō Kazutoshi,46 Kaneko Tōta47 and Donald Keene.48 Each of them confirmed the legitimacy of the episodes and expressed their uncompromising views about the war. Donald Keene, for example, witnessed the decimation of the Japanese Imperial Army in the Battle of Attu Island (one of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska) in 1943 and the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. His comments on the endurance of the Japanese people in severe circumstances were impressive and convincing. The documentary director Takahashi Masaki disagreed with the approach of the media, which often glorifies death in war or simply celebrates heroism.49 A comprehensive picture of the reality of war must be based on a combination of numbers and descriptions from witnesses. While I was puzzled as to why this series did not include the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the visual report was outstanding in the way it examined factual numbers as primary sources. The book form of this documentary report was released in August 2017, publicly exposing war-related issues yet again. Whether they were victims or perpetrators, the human cost of war on both sides was immeasurable – not only because of the number of deaths but, more importantly, because of the impact of wartime trauma on family members, who did not understand why their fathers and brothers had become violent, alcoholic, or spiritless. According to wartime propaganda, no imperial soldier suffered from mental illness. The army had concealed the truth and any occurrence of mental

Citizens’ Reconciliation 167 illness in returned soldiers was regarded as shameful. A special report broadcast by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) in August 2018 – ‘Hidden trauma – a record of 8000 mentally ill soldiers’ – revealed one of Japan’s wartime secrets for the first time. Recalling how dreadfully inactive his father had been after repatriation, Kuroi Akio finally realized that his father must have been suffering from permanent post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).50 He regretted that he had despised his father. Campaigning for better understanding of this hidden and neglected condition, in 2018 Kuroi set aside part of his house as a museum for the PTSD of Japanese soldiers. Generations from both sides who have had nothing to do with the war are still inheriting its legacies – perhaps, as societies move on, negative attitudes will gradually change and more of these people will take Kuroi’s lead and acknowledge the PTSD of their relatives who served in the war. When it comes to peace museums in the world,51 only four countries have more than one. They are Japan (69 peace museums), the United States (43), Germany (16), and the Netherlands (11), reflecting the countries that were involved intensively in World War II. These peace museums now communicate globally with one another by belonging to networks, such as the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP) and the Japanese Citizen Network of Museums for Peace. The role of public education is one of the most important contributions that peace museums can provide, but they are often subject to criticism because of their perspectives and selections of materials. Japan has two national museums for peace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that show the cruel and destructive power of the atomic bomb. The most comprehensive peace museum is the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University, where Japan’s aggression and vulnerability are presented side by side. I have focused on wartime victims in the five representative examples: prisoners of war, forced laborers, air-raid victims, comfort women, and hibakusha. Japan’s responsibility for the suffering of these victims during the Asia Pacific War is quite clear. When it comes to matters relating to reconciliation, however, both parties (aggressors and victims) must work together in negotiations over compensation and apologies, and in devising plans for the ongoing education for generations to come. The Japanese government has played an ignominious role here by not apologizing straightforwardly – instead, it has continually challenged the authenticity of the evidence. This negative approach confuses and divides the Japanese people. In particular, the screening of school textbooks is still conducted by government authorities, so that some historical facts and descriptions may well be altered by the government and transformed into ‘accepted’ versions of history. The Japanese courts have rejected almost all compensation cases on the grounds that, while claimants have the right to lodge a claim, the Japanese state bears no responsibility because of the Statute of Limitations and on the basis that the state is not responsible for what had happened (国家無答責). A few court decisions have gone as far as to recommend that the government introduce legislation in order to bring relief for the victims. Having grasped the government’s rigid stance on these matters, many claimants have sued the companies instead. When they

168  Postwar Reconciliation were controlled by the companies, these workers had been forced to work for long hours with no proper food and care; their wages were ‘held back’ and ultimately remained unpaid, contravening promises the companies had made as well as principles of basic human rights. The total number of court cases had reached 90 by July 2012.52 Most claims against the state were finally denied on one, or both, of these grounds: that the events occurred under the Meiji Constitution (1889–1947), which stipulated that the state bore no responsibility for its people whatever it did; and that the state redress law (Article 17, 1947) of the new Constitution is non-retroactive. Japan’s new Constitution had come into force on 3 May 1947. Based as it was on the Meiji Constitution, the court decision showed a lack of humanity toward the complainants. It is beyond my ability to argue legal matters but, as discussed in the section on forced laborers from Asia, a successful reconciliation was achieved by the sympathetic stance taken by some courts in making additional recommendations about the paths that the companies should take (付言). Perceptions of the truth vary, so we must approach what we regard as the truth with a wider and deeper understanding. While claiming injustice one must also acknowledge one’s own wrongdoings. For example, the kidnapping of Japanese citizens and children by North Korea has been nationally and internationally documented. I have full sympathy toward the parents of people who have been subjected to this, considering what they have been forced to endure, and I feel outraged at what North Korea did to innocent Japanese girls and boys. That said, we also know what the Imperial Japanese Army did, by kidnapping Chinese and Koreans in order to force them to work in mines and on the construction of buildings. As far as I can see this fact is not mentioned, as if it were taboo. It is here that the Japanese government’s continual denials of wartime crimes have had a negative impact on Japanese citizens, who do not have a context in which to judge the motives for North Korea’s unjustified behavior and have been prevented by successive governments from learning the truth about Japanese actions during the war. According to the excellent report on the Pacific War prepared by the Mainichi Digital Broadcast Center,53 Japan lost the war because the nation state was not modern but archaic. Under the Meiji Constitution, the army was an independent body responsible to the Emperor, rather than the Diet or the public. The military went ahead with the war without the full agreement of the Diet or the consent of the Japanese people, who were drawn into the war without realizing it. This is a particular point that Ienaga Saburō raised – that the civil rights movements, which were almost obliterated by the state’s thought control at that time, were unable to oppose the Imperial Army’s arbitrary decision to go to war.54 Throughout the war, all Japanese individuals, children included, were expected to be supportive and all complied, with the exception of the socialists,55 who were detained in prison. Despite this disaster of compliance and ignorance, many Japanese citizens have come to be more alert and active in redressing the wartime damage inflicted on Japan’s neighbors.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 169 Notes 1 ‘Ichioku sōgyokusai’ (‘100 million scattered jewels’) was one of the slogans circulated by the Japanese military in the period immediately before Japan’s defeat; a sign of desperation, it indicated the preparedness of the total population to die in honor of the Emperor. 2 Netherlands Foundation for War Victims in the East: Japanese Archives and Contacts (SOO), ‘[Press release] NHK Program on Japanese Father Search is on air on 8 October 2017’, [contains link to Japanese language site] http://www.s-o-o.nl/default/contents/137, accessed 8 March 2022. 3 The film, The Railway Man, was based on the book with the same title, written by Eric Lomax (1919–2012), first published in 1995 by Jonathan Cape. The film was released in 2013, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, and directed by Jonathan Teplitzky. The story was also told in a documentary, Enemy, My Friend, directed by Michael Finlason and made in 1995, when Lomax and Nagase met for the first time since the end of the Pacific War. 4 For Lomax, the close connection with Japanese in the camp was through Nagase in his role as an interpreter, not the man who actually tortured him. The interrogator was Captain Komai Mitsuo, Deputy Director of the Kanchanaburi Camp, Thailand. After the war, Komai was convicted as a war criminal and hanged at Changi Prison. On the other hand, Nagase worked for the Allied War Graves Commission to help find grave sites. He returned to Kurashiki, Japan, and established an English language school. He and his wife visited Thailand many times for their reconciliatory activities, such as building a temple in memory of the war dead. 5 Nagase Takashi, ed. Gil Goddard, Crosses and Tigers and the Double-edged Dagger, the Cowra Incident of 1944 (Sheffield: Paulownia Press, 2010). 6 Masuda Yasuhiro, producer and director of TV documentary films on Nagase, Kuwaigawa ni niji wo kaketa otoko (The man who hung the rainbow over the River Kwai), 2016. 7 Denis Gray, ‘Remembering Nagase’s Bridges to Reconciliation’, Nikkei Asia, 7 July 2015, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Remembering-Nagase-s-bridges-to-reconciliation, accessed 8 March 2022. 8 Mori Shigeaki, Genbaku de shinda beihei hishi (A hidden history of American soldiers killed by the A-bomb) (Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2008). An English translation is available at https://hiroshima-pows.org/mori-book-index#the-secret-history-of-the-american-soldierskilled-by-the-atomic-bomb, accessed 26 August 2022. 9 Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017), 130–131. 10 United Nations Codification Division Publications, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, Charter of the United Nations, ‘Chapter X, – the Economic and Social Council, Article 17’, https://legal.un.org/repertory/art71.shtml, accessed 8 March 2022. 11 https://www.jnpoc.ne.jp/en/, accessed 20 August 2022. 12 Deductive law or logic is legal reasoning which is based upon a general rule to determine the appropriate outcome in a specific case. 13 Johan Galtung, ‘Cultural Peace: Some Characteristics’, in UNESCO, From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1996), 90, https://unesdoc. unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000105029, accessed 3 March 2022. 14 Researching Japanese war crimes records, https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanesewar-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf, vii–xi, accessed 20 August 2022. 15 The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was convened in April 1946 and adjourned in November 1948. A total of 7 of the defendants were sentenced to death and 16 to life imprisonment (A-class war criminals). ‘Lesser’ war criminals (B- and C-class war criminals) were tried by domestic/local tribunals across Asia and the Pacific by Allied Nations, concluding by 1949.

170  Postwar Reconciliation 16 An American war film, Unbroken (2014), features an American POW and Olympian Louis Zamperini, who was badly abused by Sergeant Watanabe Mutsuhiro at POW camps in Japan. After the war, Zamperini became a serious Christian under the guidance of Billy Graham and visited Japan to forgive former captors and guards. Watanabe went on hiding after the war to evade prosecution and remained unrepentant. 17 The city of Jōetsu was formed as a result of the merger of Naoetsu and the city of Takada in 1971. 18 Lewis Hill (1923–2015) was headmaster at a Melbourne school. He spent two years and nine months at the Naoetsu POW Camp, working 12 hours a day at the steel mill. When I met him in Tokyo, he talked about the futility of hate. The notorious Naoetsu POW Camp became a place for peace and reconciliation in about 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, when the Peace Park was established on the site of the camp. 19 http://www.powresearch.jp/en/, accessed 20 August 2022. 20 POW Research Network Japan, ‘Researches [sic.]’ http://www.powresearch.jp/en/archive/ index.html, accessed 3 March 2022. 21 Utsumi Aiko, Sengo hoshō kara kangaeru Nihon to Ajia (Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012), 29. 22 Maekawa Shizu, research coordinator in education at Rikkyo University, Tokyo. 23 Peter Bittner, ‘Mitsubishi Apologizes to Chinese WWII Forced Laborers: After 70 Years Justice for the Survivors and their families... but not for Everyone’, The Diplomat, 6 June 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/mitsubishi-apologizes-to-chinese-wwiiforced-laborers/, accessed 3 March 2022. 24 Nishitani Yutaka, Hitotsubashi University Repository 123, no. 2 (February 2000), 397–406. 25 World War II Data Base, https://ww2db.com/country/korea, accessed 20 August 2022. The exact number of Koreans who served in the Imperial Japanese Army is unknown. However, Brandon Palmer’s book, Fighting For the Enemy, Koreans in Japan’s War, 1937–1945 (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2013), 124, has a table showing the number of Koreans in the Japanese Military as 130,723 (1938–1945). 26 William Underwood, ‘Chinese Forced Labor, the Japanese Government and the Prospects for Redress’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, 3, Issue 7, Article ID 1693, (Jul 06, 2005). https://apjjf.org/-William-Underwood/1693/article.pdf, accessed 20 August 2022. Underwood quoted these figures from the Foreign Ministry report. 27 Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, 169. 28 See the English translation by Yasuko Claremont with the original Japanese poem side by side in the book, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, 150–174. 29 See Appendix in Utsumi Aiko, Sengo hoshō kara kangaeru Nihon to Ajia (Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012). 30 Martin Albrow, Hakan Seckinelgin and Billy Wong, Global Civil Society 2011: Globality and the Absence of Justice (Newark: Springer, 2010), 23. Because 20% of the ILO budget depended on Japan’s contribution, it would not be easy to put Japan under examination. 31 Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) was a Japanese feminist writer and activist. She was one of the most prominent socialist women in Japan before and after the Asia Pacific War. The Yamakawa Kikue Prize (1981–2014) was given to a researcher or a group of researchers who achieved high-quality outcomes on women’s issues. 32 Christine M. Chinkin, ‘Women’s International Tribunal on Japanese Sexual Slavery’, American Journal of International Law, 95, no. 2 (Apr. 2001), 335–341. https://www. jstor.org/stable/2661399, accessed 19 August 2022. 33 Saotome Katsumoto, Tokyo daikūshū – Showa 20 nen sangatsu tōka no kiroku (Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1971). 34 Saotome Katsumoto, Tokyo daikūshū.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 171 35 https://uub.jp/pdr/s/kushu.html, accessed 20 August 2022; https://uub.jp/frm/82200. html#82202, accessed 20 August 2022. 36 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151209/p2a/00m/0na/016000c. 37 See the discussion of the work of Mori Shigeaki at the end of the Introduction to this chapter. 38 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_13411.html, accessed 25 November 2022. 39 Kayano Jōji and Hirano Nobuto eds., Inochi tsunaide (Continue Living) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki shinbunsha, 2010), 138. 40 Kayano and Hirano eds., Inochi tsunaide. 41 ‘Kakure Kirishitan’ (hidden Christian), the descendants of the first Japanese converts to Christianity, who were driven underground in the seventeenth century due to the ban of Christianity and maintained their faith in secret in Nagasaki. 42 Hirano Nobuto, ed., Motoshima Hitoshi no shisō, (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Shinbunsha, 2012), in the Preface by Hirano and page 14. 43 Nobuto, ed., Motoshima Hitoshi no shisō, 152. 44 Takahashi Masaki, Dētā de miru taiheiyō-sensō ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu, (The Pacific War through the data, truth of ‘Japan’s failure’) (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Shuppan, 2017). 45 The seven topics are as follows: 1. How did 2,300,000 soldiers died at war?; 2. Did the divine wind kamikaze blow? – 4,000 ‘Tokkō’ died; 3. Did the Pearl Harbor attack crush the United States? The biggest gamble of Japan, a quarter of GDP of the U.S.; 4. Did they win without wanting anything? The pressure on the people’s daily life – the average height of children had shrunk; 5. Was the warship Yamato unsinkable? The Okinawa battle operation by sea. The success in battle was the shooting down of the three enemy bombers; 6. Was Okinawa ‘a sacrifice’?; and 7. Was Asia in one unity? The collapse of the empire – the death numbers went beyond 20 million. 46 Handō Kazutoshi (1930–2021), journalist and author, published many books on Showa history. He experienced a life-and-death situation during the Tokyo Air raid in 1944. 47 Kaneko Tōta (1919–2018), haiku poet, was well known for his avant-garde style. He was on Truk Island (Chuuk Lagoon) in the Pacific as lieutenant and became a POW of American Forces. 48 Donald Keene (1922–2019) was a Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University. He introduced Japanese classical and modern literature to the world through translation. He was an interpreter in the American Army and witnessed war on Attu Island and Okinawa. 49 Takahashi Masaki, Dētā de miru taiheiyō-sensō (The Pacific War through the data), 4. 50 These YouTube links are in Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g_pTH3zsww; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKiucepRRrU, showing a symposium on the PTSD of Japanese army soldiers held 9 August 2022, accessed 15 September 2022. 51 Yamane Kazuyo, Grassroots Museums for Peace in Japan, Unknown Efforts for Peace and Reconciliation (Riga: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2009). 52 Utsumi Aiko, Sengo hoshō kara kangaeru Nihon to Ajia (Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases) (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012). 53 The Mainichi (Japan Daily News), https://mainichi.jp/feature/afterwar70/pacificwar/, accessed 25 November 2022. 54 See Ienaga Saburō, ‘Thought Control and Indoctrination’ in The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese 1931–1945 (New York: The Pantheon Asia Library, 1978), 13–32. 55 Communists included Miyamoto Kenji (1908–2007), who was imprisoned from 1933 to 1945, and his wife, well-known author, and activist Miyamoto Yuriko (1899–1951), who was arrested several times and imprisoned from 1932 to 1942. Kenji was released after the war, only to face the red purge. Both were faced with hardship at work, yet they remained committed to their leftist beliefs about the rights of the working class, especially the status of Japanese women.

172  Postwar Reconciliation Bibliography Books Albrow, Martin, Hakan Seckinelgin and Billy Wong, Global Civil Society 2011: Globality and the Absence of Justice, Newark: Springer, 2010. Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Ienaga, Saburō, ‘Thought Control and Indoctrination’ in The Pacific War, World War II and the Japanese 1931–1945, New York: The Pantheon Asia Library, 1978. Hirano, Nobuto, ed., Motoshima Hitoshi no shisō, Nagasaki: Nagasaki Shinbunsha, 2012. Katō, Yōko, Soredemo nihonjin wa ‘sensō’ wo eranda (And yet, the Japanese chose ‘war’), Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2009. Katō, Yōko, Sensō made: rekishi wo kimeta kōshō to Nihon no shippai (Until the war: negotiations that decided the history and Japan’s failure), Tokyo: Asahi Shuppansha, 2016. Kayano, Jōji and Hirano Nobuto eds., Inochi tsunaide (Continue living), Nagasaki: Nagasaki shinbunsha, 2010. Mori, Shigeaki, Genbaku de shinda beihei hishi (A hidden history of American soldiers killed by the A-bomb), Tokyo: Kōjinsha, 2008. An English translation is available at https:// hiroshima-pows.org/mori-book-index#the-secret-history-of-the-american-soldiers-­ killed-by-the-atomic-bomb. Nagase, Takashi, ed. Gil Goddard, Crosses and Tigers and the Double-edged Dagger, the Cowra Incident of 1944, Sheffield: Paulownia Press, 2010. Palmer, Brandon, Fighting for the Enemy, Koreans in Japan’s War, 1937–1945, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2013. Saotome, Katsumoto, Tokyo daikūshū – Showa 20 nen sangatsu tōka no kiroku, Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1971. Takahashi, Masaki, Dētā de miru taiheiyō-sensō ‘Nihon no shippai’ no shinjitsu, (The Pacific War through the data, truth of ‘Japan’s failure’), Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Shuppan, 2017. United Nations Codification Division Publications, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, Charter of the United Nations, ‘Chapter X, – the Economic and Social Council, Article 17’, https://legal.un.org/repertory/art71.shtml. Utsumi, Aiko, Sengo hoshō kara kangaeru Nihon to Ajia (Reviewing Japan and Asia from postwar compensation cases), Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha, 2012. Yamane, Kazuyo, Grassroots Museums for Peace in Japan, Unknown Efforts for Peace and Reconciliation, Riga: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2009. Articles Bittner, Peter, ‘Mitsubishi Apologizes to Chinese WWII Forced Laborers: After 70 Years Justice for the Survivors and their families … but not for Everyone’, The Diplomat, 6 June 2016, https://thediplomat.com/2016/06/mitsubishi-apologizes-to-chinese-wwii-forced-laborers/. ‘Centenarian Woman Demands Compensation for Air Raid Civilian Victims’, The Mainichi, 9 December 2015, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20151209/p2a/00m/0na/016000c. Chinkin, Christine M., ‘Women’s International Tribunal on Japanese Sexual Slavery’, American Journal of International Law, 95, no. 2 (Apr. 2001), 335–341. https://www. jstor.org/stable/2661399.

Citizens’ Reconciliation 173 Galtung, Johan, ‘Cultural Peace: Some Characteristics’, in UNESCO, From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace, Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 1996, 75–92, https://unesdoc. unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000105029. Gray, Denis, ‘Remembering Nagase’s Bridges to Reconciliation’, Nikkei Asia, 7 July 2015, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Remembering-Nagase-s-bridges-to-reconciliation. Nishitani, Yutaka, Hitotsubashi University Repository 123, No. 2 (February 2000): 397–406. ‘Researching Japanese War Crimes Records’, https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanesewar-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf, vii-xi, accessed 20 August 2022. Underwood, William, ‘Chinese Forced Labor, the Japanese Government and the Prospects for Redress’, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, 3, Issue 7, Article ID 1693, (Jul 06, 2005). https://apjjf.org/-William-Underwood/1693/article.pdf. Websites Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, https://uub.jp/pdr/s/kushu.html; https://uub. jp/frm/82200.html#82202. Japan NPO Center, https://www.jnpoc.ne.jp/en/. The Mainichi (Japan Daily News), Pacific War Feature, https://mainichi.jp/feature/ afterwar70/pacificwar/. Netherlands Foundation for War Victims in the East: Japanese Archives and Contacts (SOO), ‘[Press release] NHK Program on Japanese Father Search is on air on 8 October 2027’, [contains link to Japanese language site] http://www.s-o-o.nl/default/contents/137, accessed 8 March 2022. Number of Atomic Bomb Survivors at the End of 2021, https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_13411.html, accessed 25 November 2022. POW Research Network Japan, http://www.powresearch.jp/en/, accessed 20 August 2022. Symposium on the PTSD of Japanese Army Soldiers: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=9g_pTH3zsww; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKiucepRRrU. World War II Data Base, https://ww2db.com/.

6

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts1

6.1 Introduction With Japan’s unconditional surrender and the subsequent socio-political reforms undertaken by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) during the occupation period, all the legislation related to wartime propaganda and regulations became instantly irrelevant and invalid, along with the tattered imperial belief of kokutai (national polity). MacArthur protected Emperor Shōwa (Emperor Hirohito’s formal designation) for the purpose of rebuilding Japan as a shield against empowering the communism of the Soviet Union. Although relieved that there would be no more warfare, this new state of affairs was hard to accept for most of the Japanese people. A sense of humiliation had cut deeply into the public consciousness – morally, they were at a loss, as if black had suddenly become white, or widely accepted truths had been transformed into massive lies. It was particularly the young who took it as a betrayal. They didn’t know who to believe. Two such prominent examples were the novelist Ōe Kenzaburō,2 who was 10, and the dramatist Inoue Hisashi,3 who was 11, when the war ended. They had been educated to become model imperial children at national primary schools (kokumin gakkō).4 Both of them documented how deeply they were disturbed at the news of Japan’s defeat, not knowing what to expect or believe, or on whom to rely. One of the aspects of Ōe’s creativity stemmed from his sense of being betrayed by adults around him. He frequently stated that his schoolteachers had said ‘kichiku beiei’ (The Americans and British are devils.) during wartime; after the defeat, the teachers had told the same students that the English and Americans were friends and they (the students) should say ‘Haroo’ (hello). Children are harsh critics of adult self-deception and pragmatic (and hypocritical) compromise. When they became adults in postwar Japan, both Ōe and Inoue produced critical works contesting the state’s policies, such as the U.S.-Japan Security Treaties and the Tokyo trials. They were not alone in their opposition, even outside Japan. Regardless of whether they had been at the war front or on the home front, they were typical of Japanese intellectuals, artists, and writers, who had experienced the war and its aftermath, were determined not only to keep a record of their experiences, but also to transform their memories into art forms, such as paintings, poetry, drama, and fictional stories. Their purpose was to prevent the memory of their DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-10

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  175 experiences from vanishing into oblivion and for their work to contribute to a better society for the people of Japan and other countries. In creating their art forms, they were able to come to grips with the complex psychological mechanism of that wartime society, in which everyone had taken part. On a visit to Auschwitz Maruki Iri and Toshi, whose work will be discussed in more detail in the next section, also recognized this mindset in the German people in wartime: AUSCHWITZ

‘Auschwitz’ is ‘Oswiecim’ in Poland Four million people murdered The folk of 29 countries Massive slaughter with Jews at the center The Nazi organization Executing their plan An organization formed of individuals And made to work by individuals

Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi,5 March 1977

Immediately after the end of the war there was a surge in the publication of children’s magazines, such as Aka-tombo (Red Dragonfly, 1946–1948), Ginga (The Milky Way, 1946–1949), and Shōnen Shōjo (Boys and Girls, 1948–1951). Takeyama Michio’s well-known story Biruma no tategoto (Harp of Burma)6 was serialized in Red Dragonfly from March 1947 to February 1948. It had a strong impact not only on Japanese children but also on adults. It was the story of a Japanese soldier who decided to remain in Burma after the war, as an act of atonement addressed to the spirits of a large number of the dead Japanese soldiers, whose remains were unburied and scattered in the wild. In battle, the Japanese had been surrounded by the Allies, who were closing in on them. Instead of fighting, they began singing Hanyū no yado (‘Home Sweet Home’), which appealed so strongly and powerfully to the hearts of the Allied soldiers that they laid down their arms and began to sing with the Japanese. The story is moving to read, even though there is no mention of the Japanese army’s cruelty. In this sense, the perspective of the story is one-sided and a glorification of humanity, like that of the temporary cease-fire between the opposing German and French armies on Christmas Day, 1914. This story of the small window of cultural connection between the two opposing armies is moving and the author, Takeyama Michio, may have been trying to give young readers a hope for humanity. In reality, however, the majority of demobilized soldiers did not want to talk about what they had experienced during the war, possibly their memories were tainted by guilt, horror, and anguish. It is painful to think that the war survivors kept their memories locked in their minds until the day

176  Postwar Reconciliation that they died. This applied not only to the Japanese, but also to people from other nations, such as the prisoners of war, Koreans and Chinese. Nevertheless, there are exceptions, such as some of the Japanese soldiers who were captured in China. Five men – Ōsawa Yūichi, Azuma Shirō, Shinozuka Yoshio, Itakura Kiyoshi, and Kaneko Yasuji – made confessions about their evil behavior that had been enacted in the name of Japan’s holy war.7 In doing so, some of them were forgiven by the families of the Chinese victims, although their crimes were not forgotten. The Japanese accounts were chilling because the crimes had been committed with no feelings of guilt. It is proof of the way in which war drives people into insanity.8 The role of artists is thus crucial to publicly conveying their critical understanding of the war and its consequences. Encouraging the general public to become mentally and emotionally involved in their creations, particularly those conveying themes of compassion and reconciliation, is a complex undertaking, since there are also countless people who believe in nationalism. An example is revisionist comic artist, Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), who affirms the value of the Asia Pacific War by celebrating the vision and efforts of the Imperial Japanese Army to ‘rescue’ Asian countries from Western colonialism.9 When they respond to, and share, their predecessors’ memories and efforts, generations who have no firsthand knowledge of the war are still able to produce pertinent stories and images. One of the best current examples is the work of manga artist Kōno Fumiyo. My discussion of the trans-generational output that focuses on Hiroshima can be found later in the chapter. On a personal level, in each individual, each family, and each nation, there are differences between the memories and inherited remembrances of the Asia Pacific War. Memories are not historical facts, but people’s responses to the memories of others can reflect the perceptions of those who experienced particular events. In this regard, I include paintings and drawings made by ordinary people. Known as ‘kiroku-e’ (recording art work), these have their own worth beyond artistic values. On the other hand, the perspectives of professional artists on the Asia Pacific War can differ markedly, depending on their emphasis on different issues or ideologies: heroism, militarism, feminism. In particular, we cannot ignore propagandist art works, for example, Fujita Tsuguharu’s Attsu-tō gyokusai (Decimation of the Attsu Island), in which Fujita glorifies the sacrifice of the Japanese soldiers. No matter how masterly this painting is, it is devoid of truth. Among many artistic works relating to reconciliation, I will discuss firstly references to the atomic bombings in paintings, poetry, works for the theater, and comics. Secondly, I will discuss the Hanaoka woodcut prints, and lastly, stories about Korean and Chinese forced laborers. These artistic works reveal not only the impact of these events, but also the profound sense of remorse felt toward victims on the part of the artists and the necessity for reconciliation. Their works drive further actions, such as exhibitions and overseas performances, involving translation into other languages and adaptation into animated films and feature films. This multiplicity of cultural expressions has the ability to nurture the power to foster a greater consensus toward understanding reconciliation and peace.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  177 With passing time, all iconic events fade into history. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki no longer has the same impact on the social consciousness of Japan that they once had. Yet, a chain of nuclear disasters, including mishaps during nuclear testing and nuclear accidents, has occurred, reminding us of the danger in the nuclear age we live in. The dangerous attacks on Ukrainian nuclear power stations that have occurred during the current Russian invasion of Ukraine have created a major security concern for everyone. Nuclear disarmament movements were started in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by citizens groups and continue to this day. In that, artists play a significant role, particularly as the hibakusha population is dwindling. 6.2  Visual responses to the atomic bombings 6.2.1 Paintings

Maruki Iri was born in Hiroshima in 1901. Shortly after hearing about the dropping of the atomic bomb, he and Toshi hurried to Hiroshima, to find out whether Iri’s family was still safe or not. It was then that they saw the aftermath of the horrible disaster. Iri and Toshi directed their attention to children, who were destined to live in a world with atomic weapons. In 1950, they published Pika don, a children’s picture book. Pika don is Japanese onomatopoeia for the dropping of the atomic bomb in a flash of light (pika) and with a roaring sound (don). They added a few descriptions to each drawing. One of the drawings has the title ‘A man of ash’ and contains a note ‘When I touched the shoulder of my soldier friend, “hey”, he crumbled all together into ash’ – he had been incinerated while standing. The Maruki’s Atomic bomb panels (genbaku-no-zu) (The Hiroshima Panels) – particularly the first three works – resemble Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Measuring 1.8 meters by 7.2 meters, these impressive panels also remind us of the horrors and madness of war depicted in Goya’s The Disasters of War (1808–1814). The first of Maruki’s panels, later renamed ‘Ghosts’, was exhibited in 1950 at the Tokyo Art Gallery with the title ‘6th August’, since the phrase ‘atomic bomb’ was unacceptable under the American General Head Quarters’ (GHQ) censorship regime. In the period between 1950 and 1982, the ‘The Hiroshima Panels’ series grew to 15. Each has a thematic title: (1). Ghost; (2) Fire; (3) Water; (4) Rainbow; (5) Boys and Girls; (6) Atomic Desert; (7) Bamboo Thicket; (8) Rescue; (9) Yaizu; (10) Petition; (11). Mother and Child; (12) Floating Lanterns; (13) Death of American Prisoners of War; (14) Crows; and (15) Nagasaki. Their use of two separate artistic skills – one derived from Iri’s traditional Japanese style of ink painting and the other from Toshi’s modern Western style of oil painting – has assisted them to keep historical memories of the atomic horror alive. The interaction can be seen in the way the human bodies are depicted. The ink painting is abstract, showing time, movements, and space in various shades of black (sumi) in different tones and shades, with the color red as fire, whereas Toshi’s painting of the bodies is realistic and figurative.10 The limited range of colors makes the panels more dynamic. The artists never allow the eyes to be

178  Postwar Reconciliation directed away from the human bodies which, more than anything else, show the magnitude of the destructive power of an atomic bomb. Their art is thus innovative, and it has a powerful impact on viewers. The attackers are not depicted in the atomic bomb panels, instead the invisibility of the enemy creates the effect of eerie, undefinable feelings. How can we fight or accuse someone who is invisible? This unknown enemy may be within ourselves, because this is the world that we have managed to create on this Earth. Mankind has arrived at the edge of its own extinction by its own hand. Those depictions of human bodies undergoing extreme suffering are a powerful statement demanding that there be no more nuclear weapons. John Dower11 pointed out that the two different techniques employed by the artists complemented each other in the panels. The artistic joint power lies here. Dower also recognized ‘beauty’ in them: From the horror the Marukis have depicted, we come away with a keen, even an aching, sense of beauty. The war scenes speak of peace, the death scenes of life. Overriding all the terrible destruction in these paintings is an overwhelming sense of the antithesis of destruction – a deep and pervasive sense of creativity. This is an extraordinary accomplishment ….12 The Maruki Gallery was established by the Marukis and their supporters in 1967 in Saitama, to permanently display the Hiroshima Panels and host peace activities. Okamura Yukinori, the curator of the gallery,13 noted that Iri and Toshi had to use testimonies of survivors at Hiroshima and their artistic imaginations to recreate the scenes of devastation in their work, because they had not witnessed what actually happened and the dead had no words to tell them.14 Thus, their creative projections on the panels represent their understanding of how people suffered from the effects of the atomic bomb. In the panels, however, life is resisting death. This is why the depiction of naked bodies with latent life is powerful – it is life, not death, that is the theme. In viewing the images in these panels, the viewers are horrified at the inhumanity and cruelty that had been imposed on the victims indiscriminately. Furthermore, in Panels 9 Yaize (1955) and 10 Petition (Shomei, 1955), Iri and Toshi depicted the protests of citizen groups against nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. Yaizu is a port for tuna fishing boats in Shizuoka prefecture. A fishing boat, Daigo Fukuryū-maru (The Lucky Dragon No. 5), had returned there from the Bikini Atoll on 14 March 1954, after being contaminated by nuclear fallout emitted by the U.S. hydrogen bomb testing. A crew member, Kuboyama Aikichi (1914–1954), died because of radiation. The impact of this disaster prompted the artists to draw the Japanese people’s responses to the U.S. nuclear testing. Panel 9 Yaize presents a group of fishermen and their families who stood firm and looked straight ahead in condemnation of the disaster arising from the fallout. Panel 10 Petition shows how ordinary Japanese people expressed their anger and condemnation against the U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific by signing a petition that began in the Suginami Ward in Tokyo. The Japanese people lined up en masse to

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  179 add their signatures to the petition to stop the nuclear bomb experiments in April 1954. Within two months, 54% of the residents of Suginami Ward had signed. Soon it had been distributed all over Japan and beyond, as the expression of Japan’s assertive wish for ‘no nuclear experiments’. This led to the First World Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, held in Hiroshima in 1955. The campaign began from the efforts of Sugawara Tomiko, a woman who was a local fishmonger, who raised concerns not just for her business, but also for the dietary danger to everyone’s health. Because of the strong involvement of women, this campaign has been often called the ‘housewives peace movement’.15 This activity of collecting signatures had its origin in the Stockholm Court of Appeal in 1950, when the United States threatened to use the atomic bomb against North Korea in the Korean War. Because of the massive power of civil opposition and the large number of signatures, the result of the petition was that the atomic bomb was not used. Similarly, since 1998, Hirano Nobuto has organized a nationwide project called ‘Peace Ambassador: Japanese High School students’.16 This project, where students collect signatures for nuclear disarmament directly on the roadside, has grown stronger each year. In 2015, students visited the UN assembly to hand in the petition. Because of their activities, they became known internationally as the ‘Peace Messengers’ and were nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2018. It is here that one can see a firm link between events that began with the artists’ determination to promote peace and the development of an ongoing citizens’ peace campaign. The Marukis were real fighters for promoting peace in Japan and beyond, as happened in 1970 in California where the Hiroshima panels were exhibited. It was there they realized that Hiroshima alone conveyed only part of the war story, because of the atrocities the Imperial Japanese Army had committed in China. This led to the creation of the large-scale mural that they named ‘Nanjing Massacre’ (1975), showing clear and uncompromising depictions of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army, such as a Japanese soldier cutting off the heads of Chinese victims who were alive. It is a mural showing the insanity and crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, as well as an indictment of Japan as an aggressor. On the other hand, the Hiroshima panels are a statement of the suffering of the atomic bomb victims. Iri and Toshi expanded their horizons further by depicting American prisoners of war (Panel 13 Death of American Prisoners of War, 1971) and Korean victims (Panel 14 Crows, 1972). Likewise, the Marukis’ painting of Auschwitz (1977) was produced in a bilingual Japanese and English print edition in 1988, which included Iri’s calligraphy and their poem ‘Auschwitz’. In the poem, they specifically assert individuals are responsible for the holocaust because, whatever organizations were formed, it was always individuals who were responsible for making them happen. The legacy of ‘no war and no violence’ to be found in the paintings of Iri and Toshi has remained inspirational to this day, because the people depicted in the paintings can almost tell you how they suffered. Maruki Gallery curator Okamura Yukinori commented on the way in which the paintings drew on what the Marukis had heard from the survivors, including Iri’s mother Suma, who had

180  Postwar Reconciliation

Figure 6.1  Maruki Suma’s painting, ‘Pika no toki’ (‘Atomic bomb dropped’), 1950. Courtesy of Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels.

only learned to paint when aged in her 70s. Suma’s untrained naïve images of the sufferers evacuating from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb were reimagined in the Hiroshima panels. Suma became artist in her own right and enjoyed popularity because of her use of bright colors and strong designs, mostly depicting the fullness of life in flowers, animals, and people. 6.2.2  Citizens’ paintings – Hiroshima

Citizens’ memories of the atomic bomb disaster are recorded in the works that are kept in the custody of the Hiroshima Peace Museum. These paintings and simple drawings were not by artists, and for this very reason, they were surprisingly impressive in their straightforwardness. The collection campaign began when 76-year-old Kobayashi Iwakichi brought his drawing to the NHK [Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, The Japan Broadcasting Company] Hiroshima office in May 1974.17 It depicted a scene from the atomic bomb disaster that he had never been able to forget. He had seen a TV drama series ‘Hatoko no umi’ (Hatoko’s Sea),18 in which a heroine, Hatoko, had lost her memory because of the shock of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima when she was child. This motivated him to draw his unforgettable

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  181 memory of what Hiroshima had looked like immediately after the bombing. Kobayashi was not a professional artist but wanted to keep a record of his memory, and to ensure that the people who had died from the atomic bomb – and who were depicted in his picture – would be remembered. One old Korean victim and two South Asian students were featured together, with descriptions of who they were in his notes. NHK Hiroshima decided to take up the idea of broadcasting citizens’ paintings and asked a local artist Shikoku Gorō for advice. Shikoku was a former Japanese army soldier who had fought in China. When the war ended, he was taken to Siberia and put to hard labor. He returned to his home in Hiroshima in 1948 to find that his younger brother had died 22 days after the atomic bombing, at the age of 21. The two brothers had a very close relationship and both had wished to become artists. Shikoku’s sadness and anger were irreconcilable. From then on, Shikoku was determined to use his artistic skills as an expression of opposition to any further nuclear war. On radio and on a TV show, Shikoku persuaded citizens of Hiroshima to draw their impressions in any way they could – with pencils, crayons, pens, or brushes. Between 1974 and 1975, 2,225 paintings and drawings were collected.19 Following the example set by Kobayashi, the citizens of Hiroshima wanted to keep visible records of their experiences for future generations. 6.2.3  Citizens’ paintings – Nagasaki

Similarly, in 1995, the President of the Nagasaki Society for Atomic Bomb Medical Card Holders, Fukahori Katsuichi, felt uneasy about the NHK Special Documentary film featuring the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It was based on footage taken by well-known Japanese army cameraman Yamahata Yōsuke.20 Fukahori knew the severest impact of the bombing had been felt in the first 20 hours and, because Nagasaki was a city of munitions factories, photography had been prohibited – Yamahata had entered the hypocenter one day after the bombing. In order to fill the vacuum of the first 20 hours, Fukahori invited the members of the Society to draw what they had seen in that period of the time. Sixty-four paintings – eyewitness accounts – were collected and published in book form.21 The citizens’ paintings represent the vivid memories of hibakusha in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By their nature, these paintings stand as a visual history of the citizens, with their added notes also serving as records. In the summer of 1946, Fukami Noritaka22 (1919–1952) made Kiyō no arashi (Storm over Nagasaki) – scroll paintings that included his diary entries, the devastation of the victims, and also a firestorm that engulfed the city. He had seen the mushroom clouds and went into the hypocenter three hours later to rescue the victims. Because the U.S. Press code suppressed all information about the atomic bomb, these images were not available for the public to see until 1982.23 Fukami was a graduate from the Hitoyoshi Middle School, Kumamoto, and later became a teacher there. He killed himself at the age of 31 because of his suffering from radiation sickness and trauma. In 2003, Hitoyoshi High School students collectively translated his diary into English and published it online.24

182  Postwar Reconciliation Beginning with the description of his intent in creating the scroll about the disaster – for all the people never to be forgotten – Fukami’s daily record traces realistically what happened around him in the days from 3 to 15 August 1945 and ends with notes. Among these, he writes of the bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August, ‘we were indifferent and paid little attention to it’. He had not given any consideration to the possibility of Nagasaki being subjected to atomic bombing three days later. His closing note is as follows: No one can express on paper the severity of the catastrophe in Nagasaki. I tried my best only to find it impossible. Here I leave only one-hundredth of what I want to describe. Now I put my brush down.25 It is quite moving that Fukami’s creative endeavor in making a scroll has been commemorated in such a useful way by students of his own school. It was a modern-day picture scroll of the atomic bomb disaster, just as important as the Maruki’s Hiroshima panels. The Maruki’s pieces were stand-alone pieces without descriptions within the paintings, whereas Fukami’s work used an authentic traditional Japanese emaki (picture scroll) style to accompany his narratives. Fukami’s lived experiences unfold slowly, day by day, from one scene to another. Each of the Maruki’s Hiroshima Panels has distinct themes and the artists’ statements are conveyed by the formation of structure, movements, and colors. Both styles have had an unparalleled impact on Japanese aesthetics. Fukami’s deliberate use of literary language (bungo) instead of everyday language (kōgo) heightened his depiction of the unimaginable catastrophe as he described ‘a city of destruction and carnage that was unbearable to see’.

Figure 6.2 Fukami Noritaka, Kiyō no arashi (Storm over Nagasaki), 1946, detail of a section of the scroll. Courtesy of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  183 6.3  Poets and writers respond to the atomic bombings The writers of Hiroshima, particularly poets and novelists such as Tōge Sankichi, Hara Tamiki, Kurihara Sadako, and Ōta Yōko, represent the first generation of post-atomic bomb activists. Having witnessed the horror, their first tasks were to record the scenes of the disaster in writing. Because of the power of their literary imaginations, these hibakusha poets and writers were able to share the pain, discrimination, and fear of radiation sickness with other hibakusha, and also with those who had no direct knowledge of the atomic bombing. I will now discuss the work of these artists in more detail. 6.3.1  Tōge Sankichi (1917–1953)

Tōge Sankichi was the first to organize literary circles among the young, such as Hiroshima seinen bunka renmei (Association of Hiroshima Youth Culture) and Jidō bunka kenkyūkai (Association of Children’s Culture Research). In doing so, he helped to support the great wish that people had for peace immediately after the end of the war. Together with Yamashiro Tomoe,26 he founded the Genbaku hibakusha no kai (Association for the Atomic Bomb Survivors) in 1952. Their efforts in keeping the atom bomb experience alive were the foundation for the publication of a book titled Genbaku ni ikite27 (Living Through the Atomic Bomb Disaster, 1953), which contained the witness essays of 27 hibakusha. The real citizens’ movements had started in Hiroshima before the Suginami Ward peace campaign, which I mentioned earlier. Tōge was instrumental in the early hibakusha peace movements. They were not politically motivated and their approach toward atomic bomb victims, including Korean victims, was far from the right-wing self-protectionist approach of the governments, particularly under the GHQ censorship. Tōge had been at his home, within three kilometers of the hypocenter of the atomic bomb. He recorded his firsthand account in his newly found writings titled ‘Memo-oboegaki-kansō’ (‘Notes-memorandum-impressions’, dated 1945) August 1945. Our country is at a crisis. It is impossible to write a diary every day, so this should form the memorandum for final entries. [All English translations are mine, unless otherwise specified] These entries later became the basis for Tōge Sankichi’s full diary, written from 6 August to 14 August 1945,28 which vividly describe what he actually witnessed on that day. Tōge’s Genbaku Shishū29 (Atomic Bomb Poems, 1951) also reveals that the sources of incidents had been already recorded in these memoranda and diary entries. In the aftermath of the disaster, Tōge was no on-looker – he was a selfless caregiver who visited neighbors in hospitals and medical aid stations. As his elder sister was a Christian, Tōge had also been baptized in 1942. He was a man of action, even though he suffered from lung necrosis throughout his life, as well as illness caused by the bomb. He was 28 years-old at the end of the war and died on an operating table at the age of 36.

184  Postwar Reconciliation Such a horrific experience caused a drastic change in his poetry – once symbolic, lyrical, and close to romanticism, it had now changed to realism. One of his well-known atomic poems was called ‘Preface’ and can be found in his anthology of poems, Genbaku Shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems, 1951). It reads: Preface

Give back Dad, give back Mum Give back elder people Give back children Give back me, give back human beings who Belong to me Give back peace that never Crumbles as long as Human society exists In the original Japanese, the words are all written in hiragana, giving the powerful impression of primitive syllabic cries from the human heart. The refrain ‘give back’ in its imperative form heightens the anguish of a loss that could never be recovered. This humble anthology of 20 poems, B6 size, 74 pages, printed by stencil with a cover drawn by his artist friend Shikoku Gorō. Even though over 70 years have passed, the red, white, and gray cover is still evocative in conveying the sheer agony of the atomic bomb victims walking in line.

Figure 6.3  The original cover of Genbaku Shishū. Drawn by Shikoku Gorō.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  185 In the following year (1952), the anthology was republished by Aoki bunko, Tokyo,30 with an additional four poems. In the postscript, Tōge wrote that the book was a warning for everyone who feared a new war that might break out. Obviously, he was referring to the war in Korea, and to President Truman, who was prepared to use the atomic bomb again if necessary.31 Tōge knew the ongoing suffering of the hibakusha, who fell into poverty while enduring their physical injuries, particularly women affected with keloids. His poem ‘Aru fujin e’ (‘To a woman’) describes such a woman: You live in hiding at the deep end of the lane with its drainage One year since that summer Hiding under an umbrella Commuting to hospital [Stanza 2] The transparent shadow of a B29 Fell suddenly onto your face Frozen from your eyelids to your nose The scars made by that flash You say that You will not look again at anybody until you die [Stanza 3] … I will speak out Making a time when my anger and your curse Will bear a more beautiful complexion! As we hear new explosive sounds [The final stanza] The time he was referring to was the outbreak of the Korean War. In the poem, ‘Bohyō’ (‘The Grave Post’), Tōge applauded the Korean children who were collecting signatures at Hiroshima railway station denouncing war. The poem is poignant in telling a story about the deaths of 150 Saibi primary school children, who all perished without trace in the atom bombing. Tōge’s later poems became more socially motivated than his earlier works, including tanka. In a last sequence of his tanka titled ‘Tatakai’ (‘Battle’, 1945), he remained as an onlooker among the crowds. For example, when Yokohama was destroyed by fire after an air raid on 29 May 1945, Tōge was there: ‘I was among the public mass who jammed around an enemy hostage in hatred’. And yet the next tanka describes his compassion: ‘In silence the enemy hostage tightened his lips and suddenly I could not bring out a single word of hate’. He stopped writing tanka after this sequence. Perhaps, the short tanka form became restrictive. After the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, and despite his ill health, he showed himself as a fighter for peace. Tōge and Shikoku Gorō jointly produced some 100 tsuji-shi (street poem posters half the size of a newspaper broadsheet) in which a painting by Shikoku and a poem by Tōge are assembled on the one page, promoting social awareness of the

186  Postwar Reconciliation danger of nuclear war, and the need for help for atomic bomb victims living in poverty. Each sheet was posted on the street walls, publicly and illegally under the U.S. censorship regulations. Only eight posters have been preserved. They still convey how courageous Tōge and Shikoku were in defying U.S. censorship of all information about the atomic bomb. In one memorable poster titled ‘Naze ni’ (‘Why’), Tōge depicted the last moments of a prostitute who committed suicide as a result of her poverty and hopelessness. In the center of the poster, a worn-out young woman crouches, against a background collage of newspapers and fragments of evocative words such as ‘fired … ’ and ‘committed suicide … ’. Why

The dusk came in ashamedly The kids around the station had fallen leaves sticking on their blood-stained knees The incomprehensible smell wafted From the alley filled with the gutter mud and intestines Grabbing the iron fence of the overhead railway at her back The prostitute never cries I dare not cry Her much-laundered skirt is smelling faintly like a dirty kitchen Breathe quietly and Held it tighter A roar! Flooded at once On the sharpened wheels and on her cheeks Spreading fire sparkles (I, too, a pan pan.) The bell resounds far and wide The bell resounds far and wide This poem ‘Naze ni’ (‘Why’) deals with two contrasting themes, the denigration of living and the vain longing for salvation. In it, Tōge depicts the misery and desperation of a woman asking why she has ended up in the lowest levels of society – the woman in the poem was a prostitute, commonly called a ‘pan pan girl’.32 The poem highlights the harsh conditions in postwar Japan. The refrain of the last two lines refers to Hymn 212 in the Anglican Hymnal, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, but here there is no notion of actual salvation. The desperation expressed in the poem is heightened by the defiance of ‘never cries’.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  187

Figure 6.4 Tōge Sankichi and Shikoku Gorō, Street poster with the poem, ‘Naze ni’ (Why?). Courtesy of Shikoku Hikari.

188  Postwar Reconciliation Yet, the poet has added ‘I, too, a pan pan’ to the poem. As I interpret it, he meant that he was one of the Japanese people who sold out the nation to a suppressive authority. The poem and the painting were equally poignant, each showing the unbroken spirit of the poor woman facing the death that trapped her. She kept saying, ‘I dare not cry’ as her defiance. 6.3.2  Hara Tamiki (1905–1951)

In contrast to Tōge Sankichi’s ‘Preface’ written completely in hiragana, Hara’s use of katakana and kanji in his poems is objective and deliberately emotionally detached from the subject of the atomic bomb ordeal. The hiragana strokes are circular in soft lines, whereas katakana strokes are straight in hard lines. In Tōge’s poem, the cry for the loss of family members – father, mother, elder people, and children – is intensely personal. On the other hand, Hara’s poem evokes the poet’s objective gaze, observing the hopeless disaster. Below is my translation of the poem, ‘This is a human being’:33 This is a human being

This is a human being Look carefully at changes made by the atomic bomb A body ghastly and bulging Men and women all put into one shape Oh, out of a scorched blackened festered ruined face A voice escapes from swollen lips ‘Help me, please’ A faint quiet voice The voice of a human being The face of a human being By emphasizing the anonymity of any human being, Hara was able to demonstrate the inhumanity of the violence of the atomic bomb attack. This is a poem of condemnation of the atomic bombing. Hara had been at home, 1.2 kilometers away from the hypocenter. Although he survived the atomic bombing, he committed suicide on a railway in 1951. It was often said that he committed suicide because he had become depressed on hearing the possibility of the atomic bomb being used in the Korean War. However, Hara’s serene, yet integrated, writings suggest that his sense of absolute loneliness became unbearable after he had lost his wife five years earlier. The first entry in Hara’s notebook Genbaku hisai-ji no Techō (A notebook at the time of the atomic calamity) is dated 6 August 1945: I wasn’t hurt by miracle. This must be my destiny that I should survive and tell what happened here.34

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  189 The detailed descriptions of his family’s movements, city scenes, and victims became the basis of his later masterpieces such as his sequence of three short stories, Natsu no hana (Summer Flowers, 1947–1949). The use of his language is translucent, detached, and descriptive, yet it evokes the magnitude of the disaster. Summer Flowers uses the ‘I-novel’ style (autobiographical novel structure in narrating the stories of his family life through a firstperson perspective). In the first story, ‘Prelude of the decimation’ the narrator as ‘I’ describes his brothers’ and sisters’ family life in wartime Hiroshima as he returned home from Tokyo to visit the grave of his wife, who had died in 1944. His family owned a military uniform factory in the center of Hiroshima. It is remarkable because with his detached, precise method of description, all characters become vividly alive in their daily activities, for example, when a factory worker receives a conscription letter: Shōzō asked ‘Did you have a roll call before?’ ‘It was ought to have earlier this year …. But all of a sudden, here it is. This greater war could be once in a thousand years or not.’ Katayama laughed. The old worker Mitsui who hadn’t come to work for a while due to his illness watched us wearily from a corner of the office. He came near to Katayama and said as if he was talking to his son: ‘When you become a soldier, you should be totally stupid. Don’t think of anything’.35 In the second Summer Flowers story, the narrator became reflective after he had survived immediate danger: I always thought that my survival would be half and half, but just now, my life and its meaning suddenly join together and become a snapshot of me. I whispered to myself that this must be written down.36 He witnessed the hellish scenes while riding in a one-horse carriage with his brother’s family and his sister. His brother saw his son’s body still dressed in his yellow shorts on the roadside. It was such an unexpected encounter and yet his tears were utterly dried out. The scenes unfolding continuously on the journey were like a ‘new hell’ and ‘in the midst of nothingness’. The narrator went on with his description in katakana as it fitted well in describing such scenes: Rubble glittering Grey white ashes Spread panoramically everywhere Strange rhythm of human bodies burnt red Did this all happen or was it all possible to happen … or could it even be a possible happening?

190  Postwar Reconciliation Instantly snatched away the world of afterlife Beside an overthrown tram The torso of a horse Its swollen body smells Like smoke burning from live electric wires37 ‘From the ruins’, the third and final story, tells how the narrator and many other atomic bomb survivors endured, not only with little food and medicine, but also with the haunting memories of so many ghastly deaths that were visible everywhere. The narrator stayed at his relatives’ home in the countryside, where he heard the Emperor’s declaration of the surrender. For so many victims, the announcement came too late. The story featured the daily life of common people after the bombing so realistically that the readers felt at once the truth of his descriptions. One such scene is his awareness of a baby’s crying in the jet-black burnt-out ruins, amid the smell of death and innumerable maggots: I thought that I could faintly hear a baby crying. I didn’t make a mistake because the crying was getting clearer while I walked along. The baby’s cry was quite lively and mournful, but what a fresh sound it was. I wondered whether some people were already living in this area and that even a baby could be heard crying. An indescribable emotion pierced deeply into my being.38 6.3.3  Kurihara Sadako (1913–2005)

Hiroshima-born Kurihara Sadako was a hibakusha. She recorded her creative draft notes in a private notebook with the title Akekure no uta (Songs of day and night, 1945). Contained in the notebook was a draft of her famous poem ‘Umashimen kana’ (‘Let us be midwives’, 1946).39 The poem featured the birth of a baby in an underground room in the midst of fatally wounded atomic bomb victims; the birth takes place during the evening of the day that the bomb was dropped. Written in free style, the poem celebrates the enduring power of life.40 Kurihara also wrote a series of tanka-style descriptions of the day of the atomic bombing, and the chaos and horror it inflicted on the people of Hiroshima. The tanka poem consists of 31 syllables. Within such a short form, Kurihara was able to unfold – in scene after scene – the emergency, intensity, and pain of the time. The refinement of her poetic art is manifest. What is distinct about her poetry is the dual perspectives of her works; they focus on real-life situations where we, as readers, find ourselves indirectly playing the role of both victim and aggressor. For example, in her poem ‘Hiroshima to iu toki’ (‘When you talk about Hiroshima’, 1972), she references the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nanjing Massacre, and other atrocities that the Imperial Japanese Army had committed. Together with her husband Tadaichi,41 who admired the well-known anarchist Ōsugi Sakae,42 Kurihara was also influenced by anarchism in her youth. During the

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  191 war, she read books hidden by Tadaichi about Kropotkin and Bakunin. She could analyze accurately what went wrong in Japanese society and spared no words in applying her criticism. Asai Motofumi43 praised her critical essays, by pointing out how well Kurihara had defined the culture of Hiroshima – that is, an anti-war culture opposed to all nuclear weapons. Because of her outspoken criticisms of the authorities and the imperial system, as well as her background in anarchism, she was at times alienated from the mainstream of poetry. Nonetheless, her poem, ‘Umashimen kana’ (‘Let us be midwives!’, 1946), remains respected. Throughout her life, Kurihara remained a staunch peace activist with uncompromising views. Poetry became her weapon to fight against discrimination, ignorance, and social indifference to the plight being endured by surviving atom bomb victims. Her mission as a pacifist was sustained by her belief in human rights, but anarchism still lies at the heart of her themes. 6.3.4  Ōta Yōko (1903–1963)

In the book, Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses, 1950), Ōta Yōko indicated that writing about the day when the atomic bomb was dropped was a responsibility for any literary person, like her, who had witnessed the disaster: ‘I am a writer. I am looking at them [the corpses] through two sets of eyes: the eyes of human beings and those of a writer …’. Because Ōta had published works in support of Japan’s colonialism and militarism during the war – such as ‘Tatakai no musume’ (Daughters in fight) and Sakura no kuni (The Country of Cherry Blossoms) – she was criticized by Kurihara Sadako in her explanatory note in Ōta Yōko shū (The Collections of the Works of Ōta Yōko, 1982).44 Kurihara pointed out that Ōta kept silent about her previous pro-war works while publishing her works on the atomic bomb disaster 6.3.5  Citizens’ narratives

Genshi-gumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic-Clouds, 1952)45 is an anthology of 120 poems, of which 101 were written by students from school or university, while 19 are poems sourced from the general public. It was compiled and published by Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe in 1952. The subtitle is ‘Voices from Hiroshima seeking peace’. It is an anthology filled with the advocacy of the editors, who belonged to various literary groups, such as the Association of Our Poetry and the New Japanese Literature Association, Hiroshima. As Yamashiro states in the Postscript, this grassroots campaign had no funding or prestige and was little known. Despite this, young university students, particularly Kawade Takeshi,46 overcame these difficulties and helped in the collection of the poems. The rationale for this kind of volunteer work derived from the determination to make citizens’ voices known and powerful enough to attract people’s attention, while supporting the need to campaign against any recurrence of the use of nuclear weapons. The collection echoed the support of the peoples for an absolute ban of nuclear weapons, as expressed in the

192  Postwar Reconciliation Stockholm Appeal in 1950. Most of the poems centered on the horror of the atomic bombing disaster and the loss of family members and others. The poems by grown-ups conveyed utter sadness in losing family members and friends in such a horrendous way. One of the poems was ‘Hiroshima no sora’47 (‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’) by Hayashi Sachiko (1929–2011), who was a member of the Association of Our Poetry. She was encouraged by Tōge to write a poem about her experience of that day. She had lost her mother and young brother from the atomic attack, as well as her father (from the effects of radiation) on 1 September 1945. It took a great deal of courage for Hayashi to write about it. In fact, her posthumously discovered notes and manuscripts at her home reveal a story of her being silent about the experiences she had on that day because they were such painful memories. She did not mention them, even to her own family.48 Obviously, it must have been too painful to discuss it particularly, as described in stanza ten, she shared her father’s agony for his inability to rescue his wife and son while still hearing their cries for help. Her poem thus became a memorial to her parents and brother. Hayashi’s trauma remained all through her life. ‘Survivor guilt’ has been identified clinically as well in literary works, such as this poem and Inoue Hisashi’s play, Chichi to kuraseba (The Face of Jizo, 1994),49 where the heroine was traumatized by the death of her father whom she could not rescue as he lay under their collapsed house on 6 August 1945. Hayashi’s poem, however, still ends with the consoling presence of the all-embracing blue sky. The Sky Over Hiroshima

Having stayed all night in the open air At last I was able to arrive at a place for evacuation I found only Dad Mum and dear Yu Were dead The sun in August Its reflection on the River Yawata streaming down in front of us, and Interrupting Dad and me crying On the next day Dragging our feet we went back to the burnt-out ruins of Hiroshima Dad carrying an empty cake box I was carrying a hoe Finally, we arrived at Hiroshima Filled with the smell of the dead still burning Similar to the grilling of saury Dad and I staggering as we crossed over An iron bridge half burnt out

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  193 More corpses than yesterday Were exposed to the heat of mid-summer Blown bodies Internal organs swollen Coiled intestines Dark black yellowish juice Melting and flowing from Noses, mouths, ears and eyes With faint sounds Oh, I can see only remnants of the stone wall of the storehouse This is all that is left of my dear home In the well pieces of half-burnt wood Were floating At the place where the kitchen was before A rice-cooking pot had rolled over In it the pumpkins instead of rice that we had eaten in the morning of the 6th Were scorched black Pieces of bowls were scattered everywhere When I was hoeing the roof-tiles Flung about everywhere in pieces When Dad was squatting down on the top of the titles He began taking them away by hand Dad was dead tired He began pointing, his voice faint I threw down the hoe and With our hands we both dug there desperately In silence The tiles were hot from the sun Ah Ah, I found Mum’s bones When I held them tight White powder swirled into the wind I put another bone into my mouth It tasted of loneliness Unbearable sadness overcame Dad and me. We were left behind Almost shouting with despair As we picked up the bones In the cake box They made rustling sounds My younger brother was nearby Mum Half bone

194  Postwar Reconciliation His internal organs weren’t fully burnt They rolled about at random The cotton of the futon mat clung to them I’d like to die! Dad was crying Holding the unburnt pieces to his body As he wept In the ruins iron pipes were sticking up Blowing out water like a fountain As if it was the only life that was left from that time The water shone in the sunlight I Filled a cracked cup with water and Placed it in front of my brother’s internal organs Dad Pulled out some dried rationed biscuits I closed my eyes tight Dad couldn’t do anything While hearing the cries of his wife and son Buried alive And then, for a while Spots began spreading All over Dad’s body but showed no injury Dad had lost all will to live Even so Thinking of me being a pitiable figure left alone He forced himself to eat the food he didn’t want I’d like to eat grapes Cucumbers will do It was on the morning of the first of September that I squeezed a cucumber Added sugar and Made juice Dad smiled looking at me Saying he felt revived But his voice was feeble As if weeping Casually, Dad Stared at the empty air and

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  195 Said The wind is strong A storm is coming…a storm He was breathing deeply And then just as he was He collapsed and Moved no more In less than one month I became all alone My life was without purpose After all my tears had gone I looked at the river Flowing in front of me The blue sky of Hiroshima Beautifully clear Hayashi Sachiko was 23 years old when she lost her parents and brother to the atomic bomb. She lived at Shōwa machi in Hiroshima – two kilometers from the hypocenter of the bomb. 6.3.6  Manga Narratives in reconciling war history

The representations of the atomic bomb catastrophe in manga, which is a powerful medium in its own right, have been effective and successful in reaching a wider readership. As technology is advancing, the versatility of manga adaptations in animated films and computer games has attracted an even larger audience. The versatility of manga in combining both visual and narrative forms encourages manga artists to be innovative in creating their own individual world, as seen, for example, in the works of Tezuka Osamu, Mizuki Shigeru, and Hasegawa Machiko. Their manga worlds are also completely different from each other. One series of the graphic atomic bomb manga is Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen, 1973–1985) by Nakazawa Keiji (1939–2012). It is quite distinctive, being based on his own experiences as a survivor. Its impact has been so great that it has been translated into ten foreign languages. These translations were undertaken by young international volunteers through the Project Gen that had its beginnings in 1976. Ten volumes in English had been completed by 2004. This anti-nuclear war story uncompromisingly describes the sufferings of Hiroshima hibakusha in horrible scenes, including the stoning of an American prisoner of war. Gen is the name of the boy hero in the story. He is active, masculine, and humorous, while the story remains seriously tragic. The strength of Nakazawa’s commitment is reflected in his concentration on the theme of force, which has been generated from images,

196  Postwar Reconciliation words, and layouts. Nakazawa was an outspoken critic of the Emperor’s responsibility for the war and the crimes committed by the Imperial Army. On the other hand, another manga artist, Kōno Fumiyo (b.1968) of Hiroshima, who had no personal connection with the atomic bombing disaster, focuses on the daily life of a young woman in her manga series. No harsh criticisms against the war and the atomic bombing can be found in Yūnagi no machi · Sakura no kuni (The Town of Evening Calm · The Country of Cherry Blossoms, 2004)50 and a wartime story Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World, 2008–2009).51 The latter was made into an animated production, which has become a huge hit in Japan. Kōno’s manga works contain a wealth of intertextuality not only making her works comparative but also linking the significance of history to what is happening in the present and hinting at the future. In the references in her book The Town of Evening Calm · The Country of Cherry Blossoms, she specified two major sources used in the construction of her own war manga: Ōta Yōko’s book Yūnagi no machi to hito to (The people and the town of evening calm, 1955) and Yamashiro Tomoe’s Genbaku ni ikite (Living after the atomic bomb disaster, 1953). Ōta’s book is pure fiction, based on all she had heard from poverty-stricken hibakusha living in the slums. One of the women is filled with anger against America, not just for its devastation of Hiroshima, but also for the fear of the deadly radiation illness. She was evicted from the slum by the Council because of the construction of the Peace Memorial Park. Kōno’s The Town of Evening Calm depicts the heroine’s symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in this case derived from being haunted by the horrors at the site of atomic bombing. The story ends ten years after the atomic bombing, with the death of the heroine. The heroine, Minami, was full of liveliness and humor; this can be seen when her lover visits her at home. Minami could not let him come inside in such a slum because her mother was almost naked, as all her clothing had been taken away for laundering, and slugs had been crawling on the floor, marking it, since the roof was leaking from the rainy night before. After he was gone, Minami and her mother went on their way to a public bath house: We just escaped crisis, Mum! You would have been found out being naked in bed because all your clothes were out on a washing line. That would be terrible! I would be mistaken for Marilyn Monroe! Minami’s spirit of defiance is shown in the delirious words she utters before her death: Are you happy? It’s been ten years now since you dropped your bomb. I wonder if you would be really pleased looking at me. Done it! One more person killed! This poignant story and the squalid description of a slum resembles what Yamashiro described in her book, Kono sekai no katasumi de (In a Corner of this World,

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  197 1965), except there was no mention of Korean and buraku52 survivors in Kōno’s story. Although Kōno made reference to Yamashiro’s Living through the atomic bomb disaster: atomic bomb survivors’ notes, no direct references are made, apart from the heroine’s unusual name, Minami, which is the name of a local area near the hypocenter in the city of Hiroshima. The story of Minami’s family continues into the next story – The Country of Cherry Blossoms – which has two parts. Fifty years have gone by since Minami’s death. Two young adult children of Minami’s brother, Akira, have faced up to the predicament of discrimination because they are hibaku-nisei (the second generations of hibakusha). The title, The Country of Cherry Blossoms, is the same as Ōta Yōko’s novel, Sakura no kuni (The country of cherry blossoms, 1940),53 which was awarded the 50th anniversary competition prize by the Asahi newspaper. Ōta’s Sakura no kuni deals with the pride Japanese women took in Japan’s wartime military achievements in China, describing them through the national symbol of cherry blossoms and leading to criticism of Ōta after the war. A frequently quoted comment made by Kurihara Sadako was that Ōta had not taken responsibility for what she had written about Japan’s invasion, yet she continued on to become an author of atomic bomb literature as a victim of the atomic bomb.54 There is no connection between Ōta’s and Kōno’s stories, apart from the use of the same title. Ōta uses cherry blossoms as a symbol of Imperial Japan, whereas Kōno uses them as a symbol of the continuity of human life. Toward the end of Kōno’s Sakura no kuni (Country of cherry blossoms), a sudden change to fantasy takes place: Before I was born… I watch them at that time I certainly decided to choose them and be born The scene was full of cherry tree blossoms spread over two pages and shows a young couple watching them from the bridge. The above quotation is the inner utterance by Nanami – the niece of Minami in the story of The Town of Evening Calm. In this conclusion, Kōno has compensated for Minami’s tragic death with the rebirth of her niece Nanami. As previously mentioned, Kōno’s Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World, 2008–2009) was successful and popular. The total circulation of this manga approached one million and by 2018 the animated film version had been seen by two million people. Kōno again references the same title used by Yamashiro Tomoe, Kono sekai no katasumi de (In this corner of the world, 1965). However, Kōno uses the ending postposition ni, instead of de. There is no difference between ni and de in meaning but grammatically ni indicates where things exist, whereas de indicates where action takes place. Kōno’s Kono sekai no katasumi ni is about a young woman, Suzu’s life experiences during wartime Japan. The title connotes humility, which refers to the heroine Suzu (see description below) in Kōno’s manga, whereas Yamashiro’s work is serious reportage delineating how hibakusha, Koreans, and buraku people ended up either huddling together in a slum called Genbaku suramu or living in the Aioi dōri along the riverbank.

198  Postwar Reconciliation Yamashiro focused on investigating the situations of the inhabitants of those places in order to make recommendations to the city. Kōno’s manga has no connection with Yamashiro’s work. The protagonist Suzu, from Hiroshima, was almost a stereotypical woman of wartime Japan – lively, kind, and hard-working. Suzu had a flair for drawing. By arrangement, she married a young man whom she had not known before and lived with him and his parents in Kure, 20 kilometers from Hiroshima. In the mid of an air-raid attack on Kure, her husband’s little niece Harumi had been killed and Suzu injured. She lost her right-hand and could no longer draw pictures. For the first time, Suzu herself confronted the brutality of war. Her brother had died in battle and her parents from the atomic bombing; her sister was suffering from radiation illness. Daily life, however, continued no matter what happened around her. All told, Kōno succeeded in creating a sense of ongoing normalcy through Suzu’s life, despite extraordinary happenings. The ending provides a positive notion of love, as a war-orphan girl from Hiroshima was adopted by Suzu’s family. Manga is instantaneous without complication, but its simplicity is expressive of the power of emotions. Kōno’s deliberate use of well-known titles and use of subject matter referencing the wartime experiences suggest that she pays respect to her literary predecessors. 6.3.7  Dramatic narratives on reconciliation

One feature of dramatic art is its power to bring to life issues that have an enduring relevance in society. An example of art as advocacy is Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879), a forerunner of women’s equal rights movements in society. It now is recognized as one of the great plays of the nineteenth century. A current example of the same kind is Chichi to kuraseba,55 written by the playwright Inoue Hisashi (1934–2010) and first performed in 1994. The English edition has the title The Face of Jizo56 for reasons that are discussed later. The play deals with the condition called victim’s guilty consciousness, caused by survivors’ feelings of guilt because they have been spared while others have died. This play, however, went further by introducing the theme of reconciliation, in this case within the heart of the protagonist who represents common humanity. It conveys the humanist emphasis that honored and distinguished Inoue’s works. As Hannah Arendt stated at the beginning of her book, The Human Condition, ‘… politically, the modern world, in which we live today, was born with the first atomic explosions’.57 In the same vein, Inoue contends that ‘the atomic bombing was not just dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but on mankind’.58 The ultimate danger of the atomic bomb hangs like a shadow over the lives of all human beings. Inoue’s plays are known for their witticism, musicality, word play, and reflection of Japan-specific culture. This makes the translation into other languages extremely difficult. The title Chichi to kuraseba means literally ‘while living with Dad’. When it was published in English in 2004, the translator Roger Pulvers renamed the play The Face of Jizo. Jizō is the statue of a deity who is honored as a guardian for children, including those stillborn. In this play, a girl’s father was burnt to death during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as he could not free himself from under the heavy

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  199 rubble of his house. His daughter, Mitsue, was there but could not rescue him. After that traumatic event, she found a jizō near the place where her father died. The jizō’s face was burnt on one side, which reminded her of her father’s face in the last moments before his death. In addition, Mitsue’s best friend was also killed by the atomic bomb, and the girl’s mother abused Mitsue, demanding to know why her daughter had been killed while Mitsue was saved. Mitsue was then determined not to seek her own happiness, because those she knew had been denied their life and happiness. This decision sprang from the guilt that haunted her because of her inability to save her father. ‘Survivor guilt’ has been documented as a typical aftereffect of traumatic experiences. In the play, the ghost of Mitsue’s father (Takezō) appeared on stage, giving her advice by encouraging her to accept her prospective husband’s marriage proposal. Since Takezō had died in 1945, his appearance was regarded as an embodiment of Mitsue’s mental condition. Their exchange of father-daughter conversation was humorous, recreating the family atmosphere they once had known. Without mentioning outright political criticism of America’s atomic bombing, Inoue was able to show the agony common people suffered in coming to terms with traumatic death and its aftermath. In one example, Takezō holds a roof tile damaged by the intense heat created by the atomic bomb, so that it is rippled with sharp spikes. He then performs the story of Issun bōshi (‘the one-inch boy’), a folklore tale for children. In that tale, the one-inch boy became a hero by conquering demons using his needle weapons. In this play, the ghost Takezō used the roof tile as a barbed weapon to protect himself from an imagined enemy. In another scene, the ghost of Takezō makes the following playful comments in an exchange with his daughter: TAKEZŌ: Yep. Think about it. I started showin’ up last Friday, right, when your heart started throbbin’ for the first time in a long time when you caught sight of that Kinoshita fellow comin’ into the library. My torso was born out of that throbbing. Then when he started to approach the checkout desk a soft little sigh slipped from your lips. Isn’t that right? My arms and legs grew out of that sigh. Then you made a silent wish, didn’t you? That he would choose your desk to come up to. My heart came to life out of that wish. MITSUE: Is that why you’ve been hanging and milling around, to get me to fall in love? (Takezō beams) Love is out of the question. I can’t fall in love. Stop pestering me about it. Okay? Takezō diagnoses what is wrong with Mitsue, concluding that she is suffering from what he calls ‘guilt-ridden survivoritis’. In the end, he is able to persuade her to go on living because of him: … so that the world will remember that tens of thousands of people have had to say goodbye like that and it’s inhuman. Isn’t that what that library where your work is for? To tell people those things?

200  Postwar Reconciliation It was a moving scene where Takezō and Mitsue were finally reconciled. They had overcome her sadness and turned it into a positive mindset for her future. The performance culture of both commercial and non-commercial theater had been well established in Japan and had continued even during the war. In that period, a traveling theater group experienced a well-known tragic incident. The ‘Sakura tai’ (Sakura troop) – headed by Maruyama Sadao, a famous actor – had the misfortune to be in Hiroshima on the morning the atomic bomb was dropped. (To be able to perform they had to be part of the Japanese military, which explains why they were known as a troop, rather than a troupe.) Within a few days, all eight members of the troop had died from atomic radiation. This tragedy inspired playwrights, actors, and actresses to fulfill the hopes that had been denied to the Sakura troop members. Inoue Hisashi’s play Kamiya-chō Sakura Hotel was the premiere performance for the opening of the New National Theatre in Tokyo in 1997. The play celebrates the magical power of art as performed by the Sakura troop. In the play, two spies and one from the kenpei (military police) were recruited to take part in the Sakura performance in Hiroshima. While being involved in preparing for the performance, the spies and the kenpei were gradually influenced by their interactions with the members of the troop. One spy had been the Emperor’s secret agent and was sent to investigate the readiness of the army to fight on the mainland of Japan (hondo kessen). After associating with the Sakura troop, he was acted instead on behalf of all Japanese whose lives had been cut short because of their leaders’ inability to make the decision to surrender – a decision that was only made later by the Emperor. The audience was fully aware of the fate that awaited all of the characters they played, that two months later they were killed by the atomic bombing. To put it mildly, the Emperor’s decision came too late for them to survive. 6.3.8  Civic theater in Hiroshima

Hiroshima has always been a culturally vibrant, middle-sized Japanese city. Playwright and director Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928) was born in Hiroshima and played a major role in establishing Japan’s new theater movement Shingeki, in which Western dramas were staged in Japanese. Prominent in the movement were the famous actresses, Sugimura Haruko (1906–1997), Okada Yoshiko (1902–1992), and the actor Kawarazaki Kunitarō (1909–1990). All three were born and raised in Hiroshima. As soon as the bombed ruins were being restored, the assertiveness of the people of Hiroshima also began to strengthen, restoring their confidence in life, first among the writers as I mentioned earlier, and then among the repatriated soldiers from Japan’s former colonies and the POW camps in Siberia. Susukida Tarō (1902–1967) is an example of this. While working as an announcer on NHK Hiroshima after his repatriation from the Pacific islands in 1946, he wrote Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes, 1949–1961),59 a series of essays. In the series, he recorded local histories of public entertainments and theaters, such as Miyajima Kabuki, shown in three successive periods, Meiji, Taisho, and Showa. The Hiroshima Civic Theatre was established in 1959, providing a venue for performance and publicity, not only by established theater groups, but also

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  201 by small theater groups such as those organized by workers, union members, teachers’ federation members, university students, and interested civil members. The history of these civil cultural movements had developed from the 1920s proletarian literary movements, where communists and anarchists encouraged workers to engage with cultural movements to spread their ideologies. All these movements were suppressed during the war. Immediately after the Asia Pacific War ended, Japanese communists were released from jail and welcomed into society. When the 1950s Red Purge began under MacArthur and the Korean War started, Japanese citizens once again experienced the despairing reality of politics. Performing artists in Hiroshima, in particular, focused on the denunciation of nuclear weapons as a major theme to be expressed in their dramatic art. The reality of this universal theme affects all humanity and goes far beyond political activism. The play Kawa (The Rivers),60 written by Tsuchiya Kiyoshi (1930–1987), was first performed in 1963 at the Civic Theatre in Hiroshima. It is still being performed in major cities in Japan by local theater groups, as well as by notable theater groups, such as Mingei, Kansai Geijutsuza, and Tokyo Engeki Ansanburu. In the play, the main character is modeled on a real person – ‘Tōge Sankichi’ – and its themes relate to his resistance to America’s censorship, its Red Purge, the unlawful dismissal of workers (Japan Steel Co.), the prohibition of industrial disputes, and the threat to use atomic bombs in the Korean War. During his life, Tōge encouraged young people to join him in the poetry circle, Warera no uta no kai (The Association of Our Poetry), with its flagship journal Warera no uta (1949–1953). As indicated in its subtitle ‘A group of youths in Hiroshima’, Kawa focused on these young people. ‘Kawa’ opens with the sound of a river boat carrying sand upstream. Tōge asks his artist friend whether that is the sound of a river boat and adds: Only the sound of the river boat hasn’t changed at all from the past, has it? [The friend agreed, saying:] Nothing has changed. Even the atomic bomb has made no change. It flashed and left burnt out ruins, so I thought the world could completely change. That’s fantasy. The Japanese will always be Japanese. We only changed our master. This play is concerned with Hiroshima in the 1950s, when people were struggling with poverty – particularly hibakusha facing the threat of dismissal from their employers because of their radiation sickness – as well as the censorship by America’s GHQ and Japanese authorities. The play features clashes between opposing sides. I shall point out just two. 1 Young people, particularly young communists, were treated suspiciously at work and in society. The 1950s was a period of reversal61 from the time immediately after the surrender, when the communists and socialists were released from jail and the people were delighted to welcome democracy and freedom of speech. In July 1950, however, coinciding with the outbreak of the Korean War,

202  Postwar Reconciliation a National Police Reserve was established, focusing particularly on the actions of communists. Japan allied itself to the United States and became a rightist nation again. 2 During this period of time, Tōge changed his style of poetry from symbolism to social realism. In June 1949, when he read his poem, ‘Ikari no uta’ (‘Song of Anger’), it brought the common factory workers of the Japan Steel factory labor union to tears. They had gathered at a meeting calling for industrial action. In the play, Tōge was criticized by his artist friend for making his poetry a tool of social resistance and movements. The artist stood by the art-for-art principle. These clashes make the play tense, generating dynamism among the characters. Nonetheless, toward the end of the play, they are fully aware of being betrayed by political power: … we were under the impression that the occupation army was the liberation army. We dreamt that if we formed a democratic government we would be accepted. The play ended with the whole cast reciting Tōge’s poem, ‘Sono hi wa itsuka’ (‘When would that day come?’ 1952). That day refers to ‘the day of explosion made by the anger of peace-loving mothers, children and sisters of the people who were driven into a war by the intimidation of an ugly ambitious will’. Tōge knew that ‘if freedom is chained/this country is enslaved indefinitely’. Kawa was performed on 23 and 24 December 2017 at the Yokokawa Cinema, Hiroshima. It had a cast of 20. The cast and the production team members gave all their available time to the production of the play. Their backgrounds varied from housewives, teachers, and artists to council workers. Yet, the professionalism in the composition of theme music, stage settings, and visual screening clearly showed their commitment. So large was the attendance that all seats were sold out for the four performances, and spare plastic chairs filled the aisles at each performance. Taking advantage of today’s technology, a cinema screen was used as the backdrop. The sound effects matched the visual images of newsreels and paintings. Tōge’s poems were effectively used to describe the tension between the police and the demonstrators on the commemorative day for peace, 6 August 1950. An actual episode of the anti-war bills flying around from the top of the Fukuya Department Store62 was performed in the play while the cast recited Tōge’s poem, ‘6 August 1950’ as below: At once they looked up at the department store From the fifth floor windows, the sixth floor windows

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  203 Scattering Scattering Against a backdrop of summer clouds Uncountable handbills flying In shade and in light Falling slowly Above upturned faces Into outstretched hands And into the bottom of starved hearts … Hayashi Sachiko’s poem ‘Hiroshima no sora’63 (‘The Sky over Hiroshima’) was also recited by Nakayama Ryōko, a journalist by profession, who volunteered to participate in the play. Nakayama is Hayashi’s granddaughter. Here, in this interconnection, lies the strength of citizen performances. This 2017 performance of Kawa was directed by Tsuchiya Tokiko (the widow of Tsuchiya Kiyoshi) and produced by Ikeda Masahiko (artist). Tsuchiya was a librarian at the Hiroshima Jogakuin University. Since her retirement in 2007, she has been involved in acting in two other plays: a solo performance, Hana Ichimonme in 2007, and a performance for two, Barakku (Barracks, 2011). The former was about the tragic story of a Manchurian pioneer group and the latter was a tragic-comedy story about a slum eviction in Hiroshima. Cho Baku (a zainichi Korean) performed with Tsuchiya Tokiko in Barakku.

Figure 6.5 Group photograph taken after the performance, The Rivers, by Tsuchiya Tokiko, 2017.

204  Postwar Reconciliation 6.4  Responses to war in other media 6.4.1  The woodcut prints of Hanaoka monogatari (Hanaoka story)

Hanaoka monogatari64 is a series of 57 woodcut prints, comprising 2 cover prints and 55 woodcut prints that have the story written in Akita dialect. The project was proposed by Suzuki Yoshio, a member of the Akita branch of the Japan-China Friendship Association and member of the committee involved in returning the remains of the Chinese victims at Hanaoka to China in 1953. The Hanaoka monogatari was completed in 1951 with the collaboration of four artists. A local playwright Sebe Yoshio65 wrote 55 narrative poems about the Hanaoka uprising. Three woodcut print artists – Nii Hiroharu,66 Takidaira Jirō67, and Maki Daisuke68 – made all their drawings carvings on cherry tree wood. Each of these artists was prominent in their separate fields. Their collaboration made this work even more powerful in expressing the feelings of anger, remorse, and repentance of the Hanaoka local people, most of whom had witnessed the Japanese police, kenpeitai, and the Kajima construction company workers cruelly torture and kill a large number of Chinese slave workers on 30 June 1944 at the Hanaoka mine. (See Section 5.5.1 of Chapter 5, Kajima Construction Company – Hanaoka Mine Incident.)

Figure 6.6  Display of all of the Hanaoka woodcut prints. Photo by Yasuko Claremont.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  205 The collaboration involved in making the woodcuts was a massive undertaking and a significant gesture by the Japanese people who wanted to keep a record of Imperial Japan’s cruel domination of their neighboring countries, particularly China and Korea. The story of the Hanaoka monogatari is about the condemnation of militarism in Imperial Japan exemplified by the massacre of the slave laborers and includes Korean laborers, as well as local Japanese who were also forced to work in the mine, like prisoners, for Japan’s war efforts at that time. The tone of the story is anti-capitalist and pro-communist, defending workers against the exploitation by capitalists as seen in the final woodcut print No. 55. Titled ‘Never forget’. Its story text reads: Never forget, women and parents Remember this in your heart, children … … … … Who are going to slaughter us? You can see that! We are prisoners, too. This is our country, yet We cannot step out of line Eating grass and being forced to work We are the same as the people who were exploited By Japan and Died here Learn from them! Never forget Hanaoka! Prior to the incident, many of Chinese slaves had been repeatedly tortured while at their work. Out of 986 Chinese slave workers, 418 were killed. Their corpses had been scattered and left untended. As I mentioned earlier in this book, the Japanese citizens’ ‘one hoe movement’ signified repentance. Altogether the remains of 560 of those killed were returned to the People’s Republic of China in 1953. The Japanese citizens’ delegation at the ceremony in Tianjin, China, admitted their grave failure in the following speech: … In the past, if we who love peace had possessed a strong will and made an enormous effort, we could have saved the lives of these martyrs. Regrettably, however, the truth was otherwise ….69 Furthermore, they swore that ‘Japanese and Chinese people must never again take up arms and kill each other’. This statement shows the courage of the Japanese and the hope for forgiveness from the Chinese people.

206  Postwar Reconciliation One of the strong civil supporting organizations has been Nicchū yūkō kyōkai (Japan-China Friendship Association) and their local branches. In relation to this, Yoshida Takashi refers to Franziska Seraphim’s study of postwar reconciliation between China and Japan70 in his book From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace, War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (Portland, Maine: Merwin Asia, 2014). In 1966, the local citizens of Hanaoka erected a 16-feet tall monolith to pledge ‘Never again war between Japan and China’ (Nicchū fusaisen). In October 1971, the Hanaoka no chi Nicchū fusaisen yūkō-hi wo mamorukai (Society to Preserve the Monument of Friendship and Never Again War between Japan and China in Hanaoka) was established. They have continued to organize an annual commemoration ceremony to this day. They also assist visiting researchers with their fieldwork and issue a newsletter with the title Ishibumi. After the war, the remains of approximately 2,300 Chinese forced laborers were returned to China.71 There are about 40 memorial monuments to the wartime Chinese forced laborers from Hokkaido to Nagasaki. The Nagano branch of the Japan-China Friendship Association, for example, organizes an annual commemoration ceremony; there are also student exchange programs, Chinese language classes, and a peace study summer school for children. As late as 2015, the remains of 115 Korean forced laborers had been returned to Seoul by youth volunteers organized by the Honganji temple. The Hanaoka incident was one of the earliest and severest involving Chinese and Korean forced laborers. It paved the way for reconciliation efforts by the local citizens and the Japan-China Friendship Association, despite disruptions caused by legal, social, and political difficulties. The breakup of the Japan Communist Party, because of the Red Purge, and the stalemate reached in the Hanaoka compensation cases are examples of such disruptions. 6.4.2  The enduring influence of the woodcut prints (hanga) movements

With the support of the China-Japan Cultural Research Centre, Japanese woodcut artists had heralded the New Woodcut Movement of China by exhibiting Chinese woodcut prints as early as 1947.72 This Chinese art movement had been founded by Lu Xun in the 1930s. Its artistic principle was that art should be not only appreciated but also practiced by common people, such as farmers in villages. Chinese woodcut prints present strong folkloric and dramatic elements. In 1931, Lu Xun invited a Japanese creative hanga artist, Uchiyama Kakitsu (1900–1984) to Yan’an, China, to give workshops for his students. Lu Xun had lived in Japan from 1902 to 1909. He would certainly have observed how Japanese hanga artists had modernized Japanese hanga art, for example, Yamamoto Kanae’s realistic woodcut print of ‘Gyofu’ (‘A fisherman’, 1904). This woodcut is far from the traditional ukiyoe woodcut prints. In 1918, the Japan Creative Woodcut Prints Association was established. The proletarian art and cultural movements in the 1920s and 1930s enlightened the people, as they were involved in art works, including creative woodcut prints.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  207 As soon as the Asia Pacific War ended, an art movement called sengo minshū hanga undō (‘the post war people’s woodcut prints movement’) sprang up in Tochigi prefectural areas. The movement aimed to help in the building of a democratic Japan through the mass education, development, and practice of art. The three hanga artists who created the woodcut prints of Hanaoka Monogatari were active members of Japan’s postwar people’s hanga movement. The exploration of the art of hanga between Japan and China has resulted in the exchange, connection, and the nurturing of each other – within political limitations. The case of the woodcut prints of Hanaoka Monogatari should be regarded as a type of cultural reconciliation. To me, the representation of art works, such as woodcut prints, adds a deeper dimension to the feeling and meaning that assists people to understand the evolution of society and the entrapment of civilians caught up in wartime Japan. Thus, the woodcut prints of Hanaoka Monogatari have contributed to a cross-cultural relationship and understanding between Japan and China. Now that China has become superpower in the world, the relationship between the two countries is more complex politically. This makes grassroots activities, especially in arts, even more significant in conveying friendship and reconciliation. It is also important to note that the Gwangju Museum of Art in South Korea houses one set of copies of the woodcut prints of Hanaoka monogatari. Considering that Gwangju was the place where a citizens’ uprising against the military government occurred in South Korea in 1980, this cultural exchange affirms the importance of friendship and reconciliation that features in a democratic society. The following example of hanga is taken from the Hanaoka monogatari. Their lodging was Chūzan-ryō. It sounds like a very good place, but actually it was an extreme hell. About 900 Chinese were maltreated there. Every day we [narrator and local residents] avoided looking at them. If they broke line just a little on their way to the worksites they were beaten almost to death with heavy rods. We heard that they had been brought out here to be killed through the joint agreement of a Japanese military clique and the Wang Chao-ming government because they were prominent anti-Japanese Eighth Route Army soldiers.73 As I mentioned before, the description was written in the Akita dialect, which emphasized the sympathetic point of view of the local people after the war. The use of this dialect gives authenticity to the location and those who were critical of the Japanese government’s decision to give priority to an anti-communist stance in alignment with the United States above making peace with its neighbors. They were compassionate toward the Chinese laborers who were once soldiers of the Communist Party. In the manuscript, signs of a conspiracy between the Japanese military clique and the Wang government can be seen, reflecting the pro-communist sentiments shared by the artists.

208  Postwar Reconciliation 6.4.3  A paper picture slide show called the ‘Never Again Hanaoka Incident’

The Home Page of the Society to Preserve the Monument of Friendship and Never Again War between Japan and China contains a kamishibai (paper picture slide show) – the ‘Never Again Hanaoka Incident’. It was made in 1968 by sixth grade students at Hanaoka Primary School and contained 21 slides which are based on a simplified version of the storyline of the Hanaoka monogatari. The notes were written in standard Japanese. Obviously, the students’ teacher, Shōji Tokiji, assisted them in writing notes for each slide. The slide show begins with a girl asking her father what the monolith was about and it ends with her father’s assertion that Hanaoka would never again repeat such an atrocity. One of the paper slides depicted such atrocity. The students saw the monolith as part of local history. Normally, a slide show is amusing, dramatic, and interesting. In this sense, the ‘Never Again Hanaoka Incident’ is an attempt to tone down the woodcut prints of Hanaoka monogatari to make it easier for children to read and understand, since the Akita dialect descriptions are outdated. This monolith was erected five or six years ago by the local people who wanted to be friendly with Chinese people. The inscription says ‘Here

Figure 6.7 Hanaoka woodcut print, soldier stomping on a worker. The narrator and locals are critical as they observe how the Japanese authorities treat the Chinese laborers. Photo by Yasuko Claremont.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  209

Figure 6.8  Hanaoka student’s drawing for the paper picture slide show. Photo by Yasuko Claremont.

stood the Chūzan-ryō where Chinese people who were murdered once had lived. Here was a grave where Chinese people were buried. We must never again start a Hanaoka incident, or go to war. My father said to me: ‘Hanaoka was once regarded as a lively mining town, but there was this terrible incident. Hanaoka people and Japanese people must never forget this incident’.

6.5 Summation Having examined some specific works, paintings, narratives, plays, and woodcut prints, in association with the themes of reconciliation and peace, it is clear that these representations of art works are so diverse that any simple summary would be inadequate. However, the compassion shown in the works of these artists and civilians compels us to reflect on the results of Imperial Japan’s militarism. These art works show that the current Japanese society is not ‘concealing or forgetting’ the nation’s misdeeds, and they stand in contrast to a few politicians’ denials. Obviously, art works have no immediate political power, but in the long run, they sustain people’s interests in the important topic of reconciliation.

210  Postwar Reconciliation

Figure 6.9 Monolith ‘Never again war between Japan and China’ (Nicchū fusaisen yūkōhi), Hanaoka student’s drawing of the monolith, the last slide. Photo by Yasuko Claremont.

Art works can transcend politics because of their impact on people’s emotions and their ability to foster ongoing culture of peace in Japan, and also overseas. For example, in a similar vein to the role that I have envisaged for these efforts in assisting cultural reconciliation, Amnesty International took up a campaign called ‘Art for Amnesty’ in 2016. Aimed at the protection of human rights, this campaign demonstrates the power of art to connect people globally.74 Art works are concrete and generate an immediate impact on people who view them. Even though most of us do not know the reality of war, each of us is responsible for maintaining peace in our society and one of the key elements in achieving reconciliation lies in acknowledging historical facts and truths, which can often be interpreted and reinterpreted differently – a process that creates a sense of distrust and controversy, involving as it does both the media and politics. The involvement of citizens in peace activities through art has resulted in groups promoting reconciliation through recognition of what had happened in the past. Actions such as this bring with them a further, or renewed, understanding, of not only the historical and political past, but also the relevance of the past to the current state of our society.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  211 For example, when the war ended, the Japanese people felt a grief, shame, and pain at the defeat that was not solely physical or financial; more importantly, they experienced anxiety about the loss of national and self-identity. Previously, the people had identified themselves with the Emperor and the imperial system of Japan. On 1 January 1946, Emperor Hirohito issued the Imperial Rescript, the socalled Humanity Declaration (ningen sengen) and in that he denied his divinity and – by quoting from the Five Charter Oath of 1868 –confirmed that Japan had been a democratic nation since Meiji.75 General MacArthur praised this Rescript on that same day.76 Hirohito was accepted as the Symbol of Japan by the general public. In addition, the denial of the Emperor’s divinity was restated in the new Constitution that was issued in 1947. His presence and new status united the Japanese people, as he continued to be an emblem of an important cultural identity that is fundamental to Japan. Hirohito was, however, no longer a spiritual identity to the individual Japanese in the way the Imperial Army had once forced the people to believe, in order to make them behave accordingly. Even school children had been expected to bow at the shrine (Hōan-den) every morning and pledge to die for Emperor. The mental vacuum that was brought in by the defeat was quickly filled by the daily struggle to survive and hunger for new knowledge. In particular, many people who had actively engaged in the war effort have gone through periods of deep reflection, almost all denouncing war and embracing peace. Donald Keene maintains that war diaries written by the Japanese soldiers and intellectuals are of significance as ‘source materials by those who have described the disaster of Japan’s Greater East Asia War’.77 An entry from Takami Jun’s diary, for example, pointed out that the cause of Japanese soldiers’ brutality toward other races was derived from the vicious circle of their maltreatment by other Japanese. He continued by saying that ‘this was because the rights and freedom of the individual were completely denied. In Japan there was no respect for human beings’.78 This approach to life and other people should remain a thing of the past, as long as the culture of peace continues to thrive through the people’s spontaneous actions. Art is certainly one measure of this. Conceived in the 1930s, Picasso’s Guernica is a classic example of the power of art in depicting the brutality of war. Goya’s The Disasters of War is another. While not on the same level of these masterpieces, Woodcut No. 15 ‘Kajima Construction Company’ is still a powerful evocation of human savagery. The color black dominates white, in the foreground the Japanese soldier stamps hard on the neck of his victim before striking him with a large rod. Held back by a Japanese soldier with his rifle and bayonet, all the prisoners watch, their prominent ribs testifying to their starvation. The word ‘reconciliation’ always implies ‘reconciliation from what?’ and in this case, it would be ‘from the horrors of war’ along with movement toward a culture of ‘mutual acceptance’. Certainly, the Chinese prisoners who survived would find it difficult to forgive and reconcile with the Japanese. Reconciliation requires spiritual strength, and the brutal scene depicted on Woodcut No. 15 would be the origin. Each is complementary to the other.

212  Postwar Reconciliation In contrast to Woodcut Print No. 15 is the tranquil scene painted on Paper Screen No. 21. Inscribed in seven characters on a monolith is the description: ‘The monument of friendship and never again war between Japan and China’ (Nicchū fusaisen yūkō hi). In the painting, the monolith stands firmly in the foreground. The peaceful background of the lake, mountains, and sky is clearly in tune with the theme of reconciliation – such is the expressive power of art. Notes 1 This chapter ‘Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts’ is an expanded version of ‘Anti-Nuclear Activism Through the Arts in Japan’, Chapter 5 in Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, eds., Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont, which is also in publication by Routledge. 2 Ōe Kenzaburō (b. 1935) is a prolific fiction writer of Japan and a Nobel Prize winner for literature (1994). He is a staunch pacifist and his writings criticize the right-wing elements of Japanese politics. 3 Inoue Hisashi (1934–2010) was a well-known dramatist whose sense of satire, humor, and meaningful themes contained in his dramas earned him accolades as one of the great dramatists in postwar Japan. His dramas are characterized by using plays on language, such as puns, as well as the use of music. 4 ‘Kokumin gakkō’ (National Primary School) was established in 1941 to deliver education based on the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) with a strong component of nationalism. 5 Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and Toshi (1912–2000) were artists with distinct areas of expertise. Iri was a traditional Japanese sumi artist and Toshi was a modern artist who used oil-based paint. They worked together to create a series of 15 panels with the title of the Hiroshima Panels (1950–1982). They visited Auschwitz and painted their depictions of it in 1977. This quotation was in their book, Maruki Iri and Toshi, Aushubittsu no zu (Paintings of Auschwitz) (Tokyo: Maruki Art Gallery, 1977). 6 Takeyama Michio, Biruma no tategoto (Harp of Burma) (Tokyo: Shincho bunko), 1946. 7 Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: The Oriental Society, 2017), 6–13. These people were detained in the Fushun War Criminals Centre, where they were treated humanely and subsequently pardoned without penalties under the lenient policies of Zho En Lai, who must have hoped that those Japanese war criminals would result in authentic friendly relationships between China and Japan in future. 8 For example, the subtitle of Itoh Hideko’s book, Chichi no yuigon (My father’s last words) (Tokyo: Kadensha, 2016), is ‘How war drove a human being “insane”’. Itoh’s father was a kempei lieutenant colonel and a war criminal, as he was responsible for sending antiJapanese Chinese activists to the Unit 731, which was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Those activists were victims of experiments conducted on the human body. He admitted ‘insanity’ in war. 9 Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1951) is an active revisionist of Japanese history, yet he maintains his support for anti-nuclear causes after the Fukushima disaster of 11 March 2011. This is usually a leftist stance. Such a contradiction can be justifiable as he acts on what he believed in. In relation to the Asia Pacific War, he placed value on the loyalty and courage shown by Japanese soldiers, instead of attacking the misguidance of the political leaders. 10 According to Toshi’s memoir of Iri, Iri used a sumi wash all over Toshi’s paintings of the human bodies on canvas, as he at times regarded them as too realistic. When dry, the color and the drawings were shaded and deepened. NHK Archives. https://www2.nhk.or.jp/ archives/jinbutsu/detail.cgi?das_id=D0009250067_00000, accessed 1 September 2022. 11 John W. Dower (b. 1938), a Ford International Professor of History, Emeritus, at MIT, has published many influential books relating to the sociopolitical relationships between

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  213 the United States of America and Japan, e.g., War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (London: Faber, 1986) and Embracing Defeat – Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999). 12 John W. Dower, 戦争と平和と美: 丸木位里と丸木俊の芸術, War, Peace, and Beauty: The Art of Iri and Toshi Maruki, edited by Yukinori Okamura and Masahide Tsuruta, translated by Rinjiro Sodei, (Higashi Murayama: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2014), 34. 13 The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels is located in Higashi Matsuyama, Saitama Prefecture. https://marukigallery.jp/about/maruki/, accessed 1 September 2022. 14 Okamura Yukinori (b. 1974), curator at the Maruki Art Gallery since 2001, has organized many important exhibitions and published catalogues. This comment refers to Toshi Maruki’s words ‘There was no one who can tell the story of the epicentre’ (Pica don) whereby artists must imagine what it was like using the power of imagination. The quote is from Hikaku geijutsu annai (An Introduction to Anti-Nuclear Art), Iwanami Booklet No. 887 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013), 6. 15 The success of this Suginami Appeal lies in its discipline, that is, it was not formed as a political movement but for the sake of peace and security of mankind. The final number of signatures was 32,590,907 (January 1955). https://www.suginamigaku. org/2014/10/h-gensuibaku.html, accessed 1 September 2022. 16 This article in the Asahi Digital Newspaper from 28 June 2018 features Hirano Nobuto, a hibaku-nisei, as a recipient of the Akitsuki Heiwashō (Akitsuki Peace Prize). https://www. asahi.com/articles/ASL6W41V6L6WTOLB002.html, accessed 1 September 2022. 17 This episode was described in Nagata Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no hyōgensha-tachi (Transmitting Hiroshima: a poet and painter, Shikoku Gorô and the expressionists of the atomic bomb) (Tokyo: WAVE shuppan, 2016), 10. 18 This was a popular NHK drama series shown for 15 minutes each morning throughout the year, April 1974 to April 1975. 19 Nagata Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no hyōgenshatachi, 12–21. 20 Yamahata Yōsuke (1917–1966) was a Japanese army photographer best known for his Nagasaki photographs. 21 Kūhaku no 20 jikan – Genbaku hibaku sanjōzu (The 20 hour vacuum: pictures of the atomic bomb disaster) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki hibakusha techō tomo no kai [Friends of the Nagasaki atomic bomb victims medical cards] 1997), 1. 22 Fukami Noritaka, 1919–1952, Japanese army clerk, was in Nagasaki, 4.4 kilometers away from the epicenter of the atomic bomb. He went into the city to rescue the victims. Ten months later, he painted what he saw on a roll of screen paper, a 30 cm x 11 meter scroll with words describing the situation. 23 ‘Kiyō No Arashi/Storm Over Nagasaki’, by Fukami Noritaka, is the subject of a YouTube clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, ‘Prayer of Nagasaki – Mozart Symphony Jupiter – I & II’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO2ePkHkpFo, accessed 11 March 2022. 24 See Fukami Noritaka’s diary in Japanese and English, at ‘Kiyō No Arashi / Storm Over Nagasaki, Part II’, clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, ‘Prayer of Nagasaki – Mozart Symphony Jupiter – III & IV’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQOWLz8y5qs, accessed 11 March 2022. 25 ‘Kiyō No Arashi/Storm Over Nagasaki, Part II’. 26 Yamashiro Tomoe (1912–2004) born in Hiroshima. She was a Marxist writer and an activist for better labor conditions in factories and villages. Her reportage, Kono sekai no katasumi de (1965), describes how underclass and poor people were forced to live in the so-called Genbaku suramu (‘Atomic bomb slum’) in Hiroshima. In recording details of how survivors lived, she included Korean hibakusha. 27 Yamashiro Tomoe, Gennbaku ni ikite (Living through the atomic bomb disaster) (Tokyo: Kei Shobō, 1991).

214  Postwar Reconciliation 28 These two new materials by Tōge were reproduced in Mirai e no dengon (A message to future), A Record of the Symposium on Atomic Bomb Literature Written by Hibaku Writers (Kurihara・Hara・Tōge) to be Registered in the World of Memory Program of the UN and a Collection of Resources (Hiroshima: Hiroshima bungaku shiryō hozon no kai [The Association for Preservation of Literary Materials of Hiroshima], 2016) 50–54. 29 Details about the original edition (1951) and the commercially published edition of 1952 are discussed in the more detailed exploration of Tōge’s work in 6.3.1. 30 Tōge Sankichi, Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952, reprinted 1982). 31 Carl A. Posey, ‘How the Korean War Nearly Went Nuclear’, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2015. The article also refers Truman authorizing the deployment of ‘atomiccapable B-29s’ to Okinawa during the Korean War. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ air-space-magazine/how-korean-war-almost-went-nuclear-180955324/, accessed 12 September 2022. 32 ‘Pan pan girls’ were street prostitutes for American soldiers in the late 1940s. 33 Translated from the Japanese version, in Ōhara Miyao, Kinoshita Junji and Hotta Yoshie, eds., Nihon genbaku shishū (Anthology of atomic bomb poems of Japan) (Tokyo: Taihei shuppansha, 1978) 36, 10th printing of the original 1970 edition. 34 This notebook by Hara Tamiki was entrusted for safe keeping at the Hiroshima Peace Museum by his nephew in 2015. The scanned images were published in Mirai e no dengon (A message to future) (Hiroshima: Hiroshima bungaku shiryō hozon no kai [The Association for Preservation of Literary Materials of Hiroshima], 2016), 45. 35 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana・Shingan no Kuni (Summer Flowers, The Land of Heart’s Desire) (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 2000), 93. 36 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 128. 37 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 139–140. 38 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 161. 39 First published in March 1946 in the first issue of Chūgoku bunka, which was published by Kurihara Tadaichi and Sadako. 40 See my English translation of the poem in Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, 30–31. 41 Kurihara Tadaichi (1907–1980), anarchist and a member of the Hiroshima Prefectural government, published a coterie journal, Chūgoku Bunka [Culture of the Chūgoku District, 1946–1948] in 1946 with his wife, Kurihara Sadako. 42 Ōsugi Sakae (1885–1923) was an anarchist and activist in the Meiji-Taisho period (1868–1925). He, his wife Ito Noe (feminist and author), and his young nephew were murdered by military police. 43 Asai Motofumi (b. 1941), former diplomat and former Head of the Hiroshima Peace Institute (2005–2011), published Hiroshima to Hiroshima [Hiroshima and Hiroshima], Kyoto: Kamogawa shuppan, 2011. 44 Ōta Yōko shū (Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō, 1982), vol. 3, 413. 45 Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe [also attributed as Committee for Compilation of Atomic Bomb Poetry] eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the atomic clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952). 46 According to Yamashiro, Kawade Takashi was a student of French at Hiroshima University. Both were members of the Association of New Japanese literature. Kawade was passionate about the publication of this anthology and collected poems, especially from school students and those active in working for the first world conference on banning atomic and hydrogen weapons. He worked hard to help atomic victims. In doing so, he was labeled as a Red, making it difficult for him to find jobs. He despaired and killed himself in 1960. Yamashiro said she would dedicate the proceeds from the sale of the reprint edition of the anthology to cover the publication costs of the posthumous works of Kawade Takashi.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  215 47 Hayashi Sachiko’s poem ‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’ first appeared in a coterie magazine, Warera no Uta (Our Poems), Vol. 10, December 1950 and later in Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the atomic clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952) 155–162. 48 ‘The Memoirs of the Author of the A-Bomb Poem “Hiroshima no Sora” Discovered’, Nikkei (electronic version), February 3, 2021. https://www.nikkei.com/article/ DGXZQODG29DUS0Z20C21A1000000, accessed 5 September 2022. 49 Inoue Hisashi, Chichi to Kuraseba (The Face of Jizo) (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2001). 50 Kōno Fumiyo, Yūnagi no machi Sakura no kuni (The town of evening calm the country of cherry blossoms (Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004) was first serialized in Weekly Manga Action before being published in book form in 2004. It has been adapted into a film, a novel, and a radio drama and is now available in many languages. 51 Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World) (Tokyo: Futabasha, 2008–2009). An edition of three volumes, this work was originally serialized in Manga Akushon from 2007 to 2009. 52 ‘buraku’ or ‘burakumin’ is a word of aged-old discrimination against a village/hamlet people whose jobs are low-status, such as butchers, tanners, undertakers. 53 Ōta Yōko, Sakura no kuni (The country of cherry blossoms) (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1940). 54 See Kaisetsu (Commentary) in Vol. 3, Ōta Yōko Shū (Collection of the work of Ōta Yōko) (Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō, 1982). 55 Inoue Hisashi, Chichi to Kuraseba (The Face of Jizo) (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2001). 56 Inoue Hisashi, The Face of Jizo, A Play by Hisashi Inoue, trans. by Roger Pulvers (Tokyo: Komatsu-za, 2004). 57 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958), 6. 58 Inoue Hisashi, The Face of Jizo, trans. by Roger Pulvers, 9. 59 Susukida Tarō, Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes), edited by his son Susukida Jun’ichirō (Hiroshima: Takumi Publishing, 1973), 4 vols. Susukida Jun’ichirō was a Hiroshima TV producer. His production of Ishibumi became one of the classics in Hiroshima documentaries. 60 Tsuchiya Tokiko and Yagi Yoshihiro, eds., Hiroshima no ‘kawa – gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (‘The Rivers’ of Hiroshima - playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s drama of a group of youths) (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019). 61 Part of a process that the Americans themselves refer to as ‘Reverse Course’. ‘Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952’, Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations, Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction, accessed 11 October 2022. 62 This refers to a peace meeting that was held at the store on 6 August 1950, at the time when assemblies were banned by GHQ. Tōge and others distributed leaflets promoting peace and opposing war. 63 Sachiko Hayashi, ‘Hiroshima ‘no sora’’ (‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’), Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, A-bomb memoir reading session, Atomic bomb poem, in Japanese or an English translation. Originally published in Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952). https://www.hiro-tsuitokinenkan.go.jp/ project/readers/sachiko-hayashi.html accessed 5 September 2022. 6 4 Richard Minear and Franziska Seraphim, ‘Hanaoka Monogatari: The Massacre of Chinese Forced Laborers’, The Asia Pacific Journal/Japan Focus, 13, no. 26 (2015) no. 1. https://apjjf.org/2015/13/26/Richard-Minear/4337.html, accessed 25 September 2022. This article on the Manaoka Monogatari, including reproductions of the woodcut prints and an English translation of the text, can also be downloaded as a pdf.

216  Postwar Reconciliation 65 Sebe Yoshio (1915–unknown) was a pen name of Kita Setsuji, playwright and poet in Ōdate, Akita. He not only wrote 55 narrative poems but also included the musical score of Hanaoka-bushi, local to Hanaoka, as a memorial to those killed. 66 Nii Hiroharu (1911–1974) was a member of the Japan Proletarian Artists League (1929– 1934). He was an artist specializing in woodcut prints with social themes, such as proletarian movements and industrial disputes in farming in the northern Japan. 67 Takidaira Jirō (1921–2009) was a popular woodcut, print, and cut paper artist. His artworks center around notions of nostalgia. 68 Maki Daisuke (1920–1990) was a pen name of Shimomura Shin’ichi, born in Kemanai, Akita. He was a Western-style oil painter. He was on the GHQ’s red purge list, which resulted in him losing his job at Hitachi in 1950. 69 Hanaoka jiken gojūshūnen kinenshi (Essays commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hanaoka incident) (Hanaoka no chi Nicchū fusaisen yūkōhi wo mamorukai, 1995), 209. 70 Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). See Chapter Four, People’s Diplomacy: JapanChina Friendship Association, 108–134. 71 Yoshida Takashi, From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea (Portland, Maine, MerwinAsia, 2014), 34–35. 72 The exhibition of Chinese woodcut prints was held at several places in Tochigi Prefecture, north Kanto region in 1947 and at the first Japan Independent exhibition in Tokyo in December 1947. Two of Wang, Shuyi’s woodcut prints that were shown are housed at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama. http://repository.tufs. ac.jp/bitstream/10108/59883/5/acs080011_ful.pdf, accessed 12 September 2022. 73 This refers to the Japanese-supported right-wing government in Nanking (Nanjing). Eighth Route Army soldiers were communist forces aligned with Mao Zedong, who were prominent in waging guerilla warfare against the Japanese and Japanese collaborators in China. 74 Amnesty International, ‘Art for Amnesty: Art is our Artillery’ [campaign], 29 August 2016. https://www.amnesty.org.au/art-is-our-artillery/, accessed 11 March 2022. 75 The Charter Oath (of the Meiji Restoration) 1868 has five oaths intended to ensure good governance: 1. Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by public discussion; 2. All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state; 3. The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent; 4. Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature; and 5. Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule. 76 National Diet Library of Japan, Birth of the Constitution of Japan, Documents with Commentaries. ‘3-1 Emperor, Imperial Rescript Denying His Divinity (Professing His Humanity)’. https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/056shoshi.html, accessed 12 September 2022. 77 Donald Keene, So Lovely, A Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 9. 78 Takami Jun’s diary entry, quoted by Donald Keene So Lovely, A Country Will Never Perish, 127.

Bibliography Books Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958. Asai, Motofumi, Hiroshima to Hiroshima [Hiroshima and Hiroshima], Kyoto: Kamogawa shuppan, 2011.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  217 Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Sydney: The Oriental Society, 2017. Dower, John W., War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, London: Faber, 1986. Dower, John W., Embracing Defeat – Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1999. Dower, John W., War, Peace, and Beauty: The Art of Iri and Toshi Maruki, translated by Rinjiro Sodei, Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2014. Dower, John W., 戦争と平 和と美: 丸木位里と丸木俊の芸術, (War, Peace, and Beauty: The Art of Iri and Toshi Maruki, edited by Yukinori Okamura and Masahide Tsuruta, translated by Rinjiro Sodei, Higashi Murayama: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 2014. Hanaoka jiken gojūshūnenen kinenshi (Essays commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Hanaoka incident), Hanaoka no chi Nicchū fusaisen yūkōhi wo mamorukai, 1995. Hara, Tamiki, Natsu no Hana・Shingan no Kuni (Summer Flowers, The Land of Heart’s Desire), Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 2000. Inoue, Hisashi, Chichi to Kuraseba (The Face of Jizo), Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2001. Inoue, Hisashi, The Face of Jizo, A Play by Hisashi Inoue, translated by Roger Pulvers, Tokyo: Komatsu-za, 2004. Itoh, Hideko, Chichi no yuigon (My father’s last words), Tokyo: Kadensha, 2016. Keene, Donald, So Lovely, A Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Kōno, Fumiyo, Yūnagi no machi · Sakura no kuni (The town of evening calm the country of cherry blossoms), Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004. Kōno, Fumiyo, Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World), Tokyo: Futabasha, 2008–2009, 3 vols. Fukahori Shōichi, et al. Kūhaku no 20 jikan – Genbaku hibaku sanjōzu (The 20 hour vacuum: pictures of the atomic bomb disaster), Nagasaki: Nagasaki hibakusha techō tomo no kai [Friends of the Nagasaki atomic bomb victims medical cards], 1997. Kurihara, Tadaichi and Kurihara, Sadako, Chūgoku bunka (Culture of the Chūgoku District, 1946–1948) [coterie journal], 1946–1948. Maruki, Iri and Maruki, Toshi, Aushubittsu no zu (Paintings of Auschwitz), Tokyo: Maruki Art Gallery, 1977. Ikeda Masahiko, Tsuchiya Tokiko, et al. Mirai e no dengon (A message to future), A Record of the Symposium on Atomic Bomb Literature Written by Hibaku Writers (Kurihara・Hara・Tōge) to be Registered in the World of Memory Program of the UN and a Collection of Resources, Hiroshima: Hiroshima bungaku shiryō hozon no kai [The Association for Preservation of Literary Materials of Hiroshima], 2016. Nagata, Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no hyōgenshatachi (Transmitting Hiroshima: a poet and painter, Shikoku Gorō and the expressionists of the atomic bomb), Tokyo: WAVE shuppan, 2016. Ōhara, Miyao, Kinoshita, Junji and, Hotta, Yoshie, eds., Nihon genbaku shishū (Anthology of atomic bomb poems of Japan), Tokyo: Taihei shuppansha, 1978. Okamura, Yukinori, Hikaku geijutsu annai (An introduction to anti nuclear art), Iwanami Booklet No. 887, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013. Ōta, Yōko, Sakura no kuni (The country of cherry blossoms), Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1940. Ōta, Yōko, Ōta Yōko shū, Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō, 1982, 4 vols. Rosenbaum, Roman and Claremont, Yasuko, eds., Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, London, New York: Routledge, 2023.

218  Postwar Reconciliation Seraphim, Franziska, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Susukida, Tarō, Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes), edited by Susukida Jun’ichirō, Hiroshima: Takumi Publishing, 1973, 4 vols. Takeyama, Michio, Biruma no tategoto (Harp of Burma), Tokyo: Shincho bunko, 1946. Tōge, Sankichi, Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems), Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952, reprinted 1982. Tōge, Sankichi and Yamashiro, Tomoe, eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the atomic clouds), Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952 [also attributed as Committee for Compilation of Atomic Bomb Poetry]. Tsuchiya, Tokiko and Yagi, Yoshihiro, eds., Hiroshima no ‘kawa’ – gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (‘The Rivers’ of Hiroshima, playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s drama of a group of youths). Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019. Yamashiro, Tomoe, Gennbaku ni ikite (Living through the atomic bomb disaster), Tokyo: Kei Shobō, 1991. Yoshida, Takashi, From Cultures of War to Cultures of Peace: War and Peace Museums in Japan, China, and South Korea, Portland, Maine, MerwinAsia, 2014. Articles Hayashi, Sachiko, ‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’ [poem], Warera no Uta (Our Poems), Vol.10, December 1950. Minear, Richard and Seraphim, Franziska, ‘Hanaoka Monogatari: The Massacre of Chinese Forced Laborers’, The Asia Pacific Journal/Japan Focus, 13, (26): no. 1 (2015)https:// apjjf.org/2015/13/26/Richard-Minear/4337.html. Posey, Carl A. ‘How the Korean War Nearly Went Nuclear’, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-korean-war-almostwent-nuclear-180955324/. Sachiko, Hayashi, ‘Hiroshima Sky’ (‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’) [poem], Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, A-bomb memoir reading session, Atomic bomb poem, in Japanese or an English translation, https://www.hirotsuitokinenkan.go.jp/project/readers/sachiko-hayashi.html. Websites Amnesty International, ‘Art for Amnesty: Art is our Artillery’ [campaign], 29 August 2016, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org.au/art-is-our-artillery/. Hirano Nobuto, a hibaku-nisei, recipient of the Akitsuki Heiwashô (Akitsuki Peace Prize), https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASL6W41V6L6WTOLB002.html. ‘Kiyō No Arashi/Storm Over Nagasaki’ by Fukami Noritaka, clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, ‘Prayer of Nagasaki – Mozart Symphony Jupiter – I & II’, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=FO2ePkHkpFo. ‘Kiyō No Arashi/Storm Over Nagasaki, Part II’, by Fukami Noritaka, clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, ‘Prayer of Nagasaki – Mozart Symphony Jupiter – III & IV’, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=gQOWLz8y5qs. Maruki painting technique, NHK Archives, https://www2.nhk.or.jp/archives/jinbutsu/detail. cgi?das_id=D0009250067_00000. Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, http://repository.tufs.ac.jp/bitstream/ 10108/59883/5/acs080011_ful.pdf.

Postwar Reconciliation through the Arts  219 National Diet Library of Japan, Birth of the Constitution of Japan, Documents with Commentaries. ‘3-1 Emperor, Imperial Rescript Denying His Divinity (Professing His Humanity)’, https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/056shoshi.html. The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, https://marukigallery.jp/about/maruki/. ‘The Memoirs of the Author of the A-Bomb Poem “Hiroshima no Sora” Discovered’, Nikkei (electronic version), February 3 2021, https://www.nikkei.com/article/ DGXZQODG29DUS0Z20C21A1000000. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, ‘Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952’, Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations, https://history.state. gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction.

7

Epilogue The Rise of Citizen Power in Support of the Spirit of Article 91

7.1 Introduction Two of the important theses I have explored in relation to the impact and legacy of the Asia Pacific War project will be discussed in this final chapter – first, the importance of autonomy of self or individualism and, the other, what the significance of Article 9 represents to the Japanese. In relation to the former, the following observation by Natsume Sōseki, ‘Wataskushi no kojin-shugi’2 (‘My individualism’), written in 1914, suggests that the concept of individualism was not embedded in Japanese culture and education: I started reading books that were nothing to do with literature to strengthen my own standing in literature, or rather than strengthening, reconstructing it anew. In short, I was at long last arriving at these four letters, ji-ko-hon-i (self-reliance), and to affirm the ji-ko-hon-i I was absorbed in thinking about scientific research and philosophical thoughts. …. I have become confident since I grasped the word ji-ko-hon-i.3 Written much later, a more scathing observation about the consequences of conformism is clear in this anonymous response to a lecture held at Tokyo University of Agriculture, 10 September 2022, in relation to a visit to the memorial monument for the victims at the patriotic farm in Manchuria4: It was a terrible policy [the state promotion of agriculture emigrants to Manchuria]. What we mustn’t forget was that these were all programs set up by the state. It was legitimate. The law is not necessarily always right. If we blindly followed the authority of the state any tragedy could happen. That’s why I believe that what school needs is not patriotic education but nurturing students to think by themselves. [My italics] The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prior to Japan’s defeat in the war has left an everlasting impact on concerned people all over the world. The war ended 77 years ago, yet there has been no cessation in events or activism related to peace and anti-nuclear movements. An example of this is the photographic exhibition, Art DOI: 10.4324/9781315408026-11

Epilogue  221 and Railway – 150th Anniversary of Railway in Japan,5 8 October 2022 to 9 January 2023, at the Tokyo Station Gallery. The exhibition includes a group of photographs titled ‘Silent History’. The images featured the people whose lives have been impacted by Japan’s Thai-Burma Railway construction, such as a Dutch woman whose father was forced to work at the railway, a former Japanese soldier who worked there, and a son of a former Korean guard on the railway. The photographic journalist is Obara Kazuma (b. 1985), whose mission is to visualize invisible scars of war and nuclear disaster. These photographs tell the stories of the past and its impact to this day. It goes without saying that the impact of the construction project was negative in the first place, but exposure through the art of photography has also conveyed a powerful message to viewers all these years later. That is to say ‘no more’ to the tragedy of war. In hindsight, the remarks a stranger made to me on the Sydney Harbor ferry way back in the 1970s – that the Japanese are a warlike race – opened a tiny window. At the time, I was upset because of my ignorance about Japan’s wartime atrocities but, ultimately, his comments set me on a pathway to discover what had seemed so difficult to comprehend – the intricate mosaic of Japan’s wartime and postwar history. The journey I have taken during my investigation into the history, impact, and legacy of the Asia Pacific War may well fit the classic model of a search for self-identity, particularly who am I as a Japanese person and what Japan means to me. This quest, however, has broadened my view beyond my personal inquiries and given me a wider perspective on how the history of the world has been built by the exercising of various types of power – such as politics, economics, culture, gender, military – all of which are transitory in nature. I have realized that, despite the succession of overwhelming disasters that war has caused in the world, something remains intact. That is, humanity at its best, and while this has become a cliché, it is liberating the power resting with individuals within a society that progresses our history for the better in the long run. The individual has an intrinsic power to change the world/society for better or worse, depending on his/her decisive action. Admittedly, political systems have the capacity to enact laws that govern specific matters that constrain the capabilities of individuals to campaign for change, for example, the 1938 National Mobilization Law that led Japan to total defeat and the indiscriminate red purge of the postwar era. I would like to conclude this book by depicting such a model of citizen power, by documenting instances where Japanese individuals have committed to promoting peace movements. Japanese society is prone to a form of conservative collectivism which has been dominated by the tendency of ‘tanin-hon-i’6 (dependence), to quote another of Sōseki’s phrases. Having this tendency so ingrained deeply into the culture of everyday life in Japan has meant that we seldom recognize our own lack of responsibility in decision-making. Japan was formerly an agricultural nation,7 and over many centuries, Japanese society and industries have used collectivism as a mechanism for safety and cooperation. Defeat in the Asia Pacific War changed Japan’s political culture from militaristic to democratic, yet the mentality and behavior that the people had been conditioned to accept did not change overnight. However, thanks to modern age of technology and worldwide media exposure, the Japanese people are becoming more aware of the virtue of autonomy and individualism. The Japanese government has also inadvertently fostered this awareness among some of the population.

222  Postwar Reconciliation In the 1990s, when the Japanese economic bubble burst, the Japanese government made use of this awareness, employing jiko sekinin (self-responsibility) as jargon to postulate that individuals are responsible for being fired and joining the ranks of the working poor. The young precariat,8 however, expressed their disagreement, because they knew that the government and industries had neglected their responsibility to provide welfare for employees, resulting in the creation of a society where economic and social gaps were widening. I agreed with their fightback and their rejection of the government’s narrow, punitive definition of individualism. A structure that promotes freedom of speech and human rights is crucial in advancing the health of the society. A strong river of the people’s willingness to create a better future will flow. Conversely, a society governed by militarism or autocratic policies loses its spirit of community, unless concerned individuals band together to maintain their resistance. The history of wartime Japanese society showed rigidity at a higher level. Japan was defeated as expected. Based on political elitism that favored the pro-emperor faction, the Imperial Army’s outdated hierarchical system was a huge hindrance. As long as the spirit of a community propelled by the efforts of autonomous individuals is valued, positive change and finding better solutions to issues such as climate change, racism, and militarization is achievable. I have discussed the achievements of key proponents of these values throughout the book without pointing out the essential element underpinning their principles – individualism. They are citizens from the grassroots with faith in humanity. In providing evidence for the way in which our world is made better by the endeavor of individuals, I will concentrate on highlighting only five contemporary examples of remarkable achievements undertaken by individuals who have helped us understand how the future can be better for all of us. They are not like superheroes, nor celebrities, but make those efforts selflessly. The power of the individual must be celebrated, fostered, and defended. Those people and the work they have been committed to are as below: 1 Utsumi Aiko (b. 1941), Emeritus Professor at Keisen Jogakuen University, social historian, and one of the founders of the POW Research Network, Japan; 2 Horikawa Keiko (b. 1969), Hiroshima-born former Hiroshima TV journalist, non-fiction writer, and producer of television programs; 3 Takeuchi Yoshio (b. 1948), retired high school teacher, photographer, peace activist issuing almost daily email information of ‘From Hiroshima to Hiroshima’; 4 Denny Tamaki (1959), independent politician, Governor of Okinawa since 2018. He was re-elected in 2022; 5 Sasebo high school students making a video on the history of the Sōtō dam in Nagasaki, 2022. 7.2  Utsumi Aiko Utsumi Aiko (b. 1941) is a prominent scholar and activist, specializing in human rights issues pertaining to minority groups in Japan, such as zainichi Koreans (Koreans residing in Japan), as well as human rights issues arising from the

Epilogue  223 actions of war criminals. She is also a leader in examining issues relating to POWs and Chinese forced laborers, and a pioneer in investigating the conduct of the Imperial Japanese Army in other countries during the war. Utsumi was awarded the Kim Dae-jung Prize9 in 2022. Her long-standing support for a former Korean guard on the Thai-Burma Railway construction site, the late Yi Hak-Nae (1925–2021), was remarkable.10 Yi was once on death row as a war criminal, but his sentence was commuted to 20 years. He had been conscripted as a gunzoku (civilian auxiliary) under Japanese rule, yet the Japanese government has never compensated the Korean wartime workers who were conscripted. Yi spent the remainder of his life campaigning for the fair treatment of Korean survivors. It is not only Utsumi who saw the injustice here – but most people also agree with her. Utsumi’s numerous publications on these war-related issues have become a reliable source for scholarship. 7.3  Horikawa Keiko Horikawa Keiko (b. 1969) is a prolific non-fiction writer of Japan. She is well known for her meticulous investigation of, and commitment to, serious subjects, such as capital punishment, issues relating to Japan’s war dead, and the work of a prison chaplain. Among her numerous publications are two works on contrasting topics: the faceless and nameless victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the high-ranking officials who were wartime Army Shipping Commanders at the Ujina Harbor, Hiroshima. These two works are Genbaku kuyōtō, wasurerareta ikotsu no 70-nen11 (Atomic bomb memorial mound, seventy years of the forgotten ashes), 2018, and Akatsuki no Ujina, rikugun senpaku shireikan-tachi no Hiroshima12 (Ujina of the Akatsuki forces: the army shipping commanders’ Hiroshima) 2021. Both books were awarded prestigious prizes for non-fiction.13 For Horikawa, the life of each individual has equal significance and, in particular, she has shown immense respect to those faceless and nameless people whose lives were cut short by war. Horikawa’s compassion toward victims of war is profound and, regardless of ranks or social status, she acknowledges the strength of committed individuals. Let me first start with Saeki Toshiko, caregiver for the Memorial Mound, followed by two Army Commanders at Ujina, and one Army General at Rabaul. By describing their lives and works to her readership, Horikawa in turn reveals her own human values and commitment to publishing her findings about those remarkable individuals. Horikawa is active in tracing the roots of facts in records, on foot, on sites, and interviews. 7.3.1  Saeki Toshiko14

Saeki Toshiko (1919–2017), a humble but no less powerful model of a committed individual, was a hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivor) who lost 13 members of her family in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Standing in a quiet corner of the Hiroshima Peace Park, the Memorial [burial] Mound (Kuyōtō) houses the ashes of

224  Postwar Reconciliation 70,000, mostly unknown, atomic-bomb victims. Although 814 victims have been identified by name and address, few families have ever come forward to claim their ashes.15 For over 40 years, Saeki continued to voluntarily clean and weed the area surrounding the Memorial Mound, as well as searching for the families to whom the ashes belonged. She was also active in engaging with students on school visits by talking about her experience of the atomic bombing and recorded her testimony to be sent to some peace organizations. She sensed that people have lost interest in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her efforts were in stark contrast to the formality of the official cenotaph that was placed in the center of the Peace Memorial Park. Horikawa, too, tried hard to find victims’ families using the names and addresses in a list of the dead; due to inaccuracies in the name and address list, the families were impossible to find. In the process, she unexpectedly came across several heart-rending human stories, including Saeki’s. In 1969, a bundle of the coroner’s reports concerning 8,341 people who had died due to the atomic bomb were found at Hiroshima Higashi Police station. In an effort to alert families who had been searching for missing family members, a radio station had broadcast the name of each of the victims. Saeki discovered that her mother-in-law and father-in-law had both been in the Memorial Mound for 24–25 years – she had been attending the Mound without knowing they were there. When Horikawa found herself unable to match the ashes with families using the names and addresses, Saeki remarked

Figure 7.1  Memorial Mound (Kuyōtō), Hiroshima Peace Park. Courtesy Kawaguchi Yūsuke.

Epilogue  225 that ‘it must be strange if the name and the ashes match together’. Saeki knew only too well how chaotic everything had been at the time of atomic-bomb disaster, yet she had continued trying to reunite the ashes with families until the day she was no longer able to do so due to illness. Horikawa, too, was encouraged to continue, despite the difficulties. These people have taken responsibility because they know so well the importance of returning the ashes to their families. Similarly, when one hears testimony of the atomic-bomb victims, one should also be responsible for doing something useful to oppose nuclear war and the development of nuclear weapons. One of the comments Saeki made to a group of school students visiting the Mound was poignant: ‘I understand without saying it [the importance of peace]. Even though I understand it understanding doesn’t bring out peace. If you like peace each one of us must make efforts in building peace….’16 7.3.2  Lieutenant General Tajiri Shōji and Lieutenant General Saeki Bunrō

Horikawa began working on her book Ujina of the Akatsuki forces: the army shipping commanders’ Hiroshima in search of truth – that is, to answer ‘why Hiroshima was chosen as the site of atomic bombing’. While examining U.S.’ archival material, she found that Hiroshima was always mentioned in a list of possible bombing sites. The U.S. archives described Ujina as ‘an important army depot and port of embarkation’. The U.S. policy centered around cutting the supply chain of Japanese munitions, known as the War Plan Orange,17 so the reason why Hiroshima was bombed was Ujina. We know that wasn’t the case in reality. The atomic bomb was dropped onto the city center, not the port. Horikawa also discovered much more than the answers to her initial question. She uncovered the previously unknown achievements of Japan’s Imperial Army Commanders at the Shipping Headquarters at Ujina, Hiroshima, and cast light on them in her book. Horikawa’s well-balanced attitude toward investigating who they were, what they did, and how they ended up, revealed a bird’s-eye view of Imperial Army personnel and the unrecognized efforts of the Commanders. Japan is an island nation. Shipping transportation has been crucial to all areas of the nation’s needs, yet little thought was given to its ultimate importance during times of crisis, like war. Without fundamental cooperation between its leaders, combining knowledge with sensible actions, Japan was doomed to fail even before starting the war. This failure to cooperate was one of the reasons why Japan was defeated. Horikawa highlights not only how Japan failed but, more importantly, how high-ranking commanders were coping or not coping with such difficult situations. It is rare research on the role of responsible insiders in the Imperial Army. They were unsung heroes in the true sense of the word. Horikawa’s book focused on Ujina, five kilometers away from central Hiroshima – one of the main military transportation ports in Japan facing the inland sea. A famous Imperial Navy port, Kure, is 24.2 kilometers away from Hiroshima. Ujina dealt with the transportation of not only soldiers and horses, but also essential supplies for the Imperial Army, including items such as

226  Postwar Reconciliation munitions, clothing, and shoes. Hiroshima had been a military capital from the Meiji times (1868–1912) to 1945. The responsibility for transportation belonged to the Army, and the Navy refused to participate, even though they possessed transport in the form of ships. Here lies a typical example of noncooperation between the army and navy – the Imperial Army had no ships and no knowledge of how to use them. They relied heavily on hiring the vessels and stevedores of private shipping companies. The conflict between army and navy stemmed from political elitism. When the new Meiji government was formed, consisting of former powerful feudal clans – who supported Emperor Meiji’s efforts to restore the throne and bring the country under direct imperial rule – there existed conflicts between royalists (kodō-ha) and those who did not have prestigious backgrounds. Horikawa discovered the importance of comradeship and individual commitment among the Shipping Depot Commanders. They were Lieutenant General Matsuda Makihei (1883–1942), the first commander, 1937–1938); Lieutenant General Tajiri Shōji (1883–1969), the second commander, 1938–1940; and, Lieutenant General Saeki Bunrō (1890–1967), the last commander, from 1940 to 1942 and from 1944 to 1945. None of them had establishment backgrounds, although in the end they were promoted to high ranks in the army through their own abilities. She also emphasized the significance of mutual understanding of the strategic military operations shared by Tajiri and Army General Imamura Hitoshi (1886–1968), particularly in deciding where to land in Shanghai in 1932. Tajiri Shōji (1883–1969), the second commander, 1938–1940

Tajiri Shōji had no important family background; in an organization with numerous army officers from prestigious families, his career seemed to be doomed. But his ability, and even his meticulous personality, earned him the position and the reputation of the ‘God of Shipping’. He was instrumental in building the military transport division to great heights by building innovative landing boats and also by setting up a special army training program for soldiers (船舶工兵) that dealt with landing boats and shipping ammunitions. However, he was discharged from the army after he took responsibility for a suspicious fire that destroyed a storehouse. It is more likely he was pushed away from the general staff office as the result of his independent petitions identifying the lack of resources, especially boats, being sent to all of Japan’s necessary ministries. He was an insider within the army system and knew that what he did had cost him his position. He had gone ahead – displaying extraordinary courage – his activism was a lone voice. Prior to that, his contributions had included the army’s strategic success in landings in China, and fostering a talented youth, Ichikawa Kenzō, who invented a carrier-ship. Tajiri’s working team succeeded in building a landing-craft, the first in the world, called a ‘Daihatsu’ which can carry a large number of soldiers (60) and goods. It was used successfully from 1937 to 1945. With some pride, Horikawa cast light on this dignified man.

Epilogue  227

Figure 7.2  ‘“Daihatsu” taken away by Australian Army’. Photo Courtesy by Wikimedia Commons.

As Tajiri had left the Imperial Army in 1940, he was unscathed by war crime interrogations and prosecutions at the Tokyo Trials, whereas Saeki Bunrō and Imamura Hitoshi were convicted and prisoned for nine years, respectively. In 1954, Tajiri was asked by the Ministry of Defense to collect, compile, and edit all materials about military shipping, as most records and material had been lost in air raids and other evidence had been destroyed just before the Allied Forces landed. With utter precision, he gathered the information into ten volumes with the title Past and Present of Strategies for Shipping. It took him six years. Saeki Bunrō (1890–1967), the last commander, 1940–1942 and 1944–1945

Saeki Bunrō took up his position as Commander in 1940, six months after the dismissal of Tajiri Shōji. Saeki came from the samurai class and had gone through the elite course in army education. His expertise was in munitions transport by ships and railways. Saeki was remembered for his prompt action in dispatching soldiers to rescue atomic-bomb victims – he acted immediately after the atomic bomb had been dropped and the soldiers were there within 35 minutes. Without waiting for orders from above, Saeki organized the army soldiers to move quickly to set up medical relief stations, as well as to secure roads, water, and food. Horikawa also discovered that he had worked effectively when the Great Earthquake hit Tokyo in 1923. She evaluated Saeki’s actions by comparing them with today’s army disaster rescue operations.

228  Postwar Reconciliation After the war, Saeki was accused of mistreatment of American POWs, who had been packed into a small space in a ship. He was convicted as a B- and C-class war criminal, resulting in a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment. His response – that Japanese soldiers had been packed into the ship in exactly the same way – was to no effect. Both Saeki and Tajiri were ‘insiders’ in the Japanese Army. They knew how they were expected to behave – notably with blind obedience, enforced from above. Yet they acted individually, for what they saw as the common good. Their contributions to the history of Japan’s military transport (Tajiri), and to rescue missions helping atomic-bomb victims and securing the city of Hiroshima (Saeki), were immense. 7.3.3  Imamura Hitoshi, Army General

Also mentioned in Horikawa’s book, Imamura Hitoshi (1886–1968) is another example of a powerful and committed individual. Imamura Hitoshi and Tajiri Shōji both worked in separate departments at the Army General Staff Office in Tokyo at the same time. Imamura’s background was similar to Tajiri’s, having no influential establishment family behind him, but both of them were bright and always at the top of the class at the Military Academy. They shared the same views about the army’s inadequacy in the preparation of munitions shipping. When the Manchurian Incident was triggered by an arbitrary decision of the Kwantung Army18 in 1931, Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi19 reluctantly agreed to send more soldiers from mainland Japan to China, on condition that the conflict should end as soon as possible. Tajiri was Commander on site, supervising a complex landing in Shanghai with support from Imamura, who stepped in to calmly argue the validity of Tajiri’s strategy when it was opposed by Navy officers. This was Japan’s first successful surprise attack, and became known as ‘Shichiryōkō kishū-sen’ (‘Surprise battle at Shichiryōkō’), and it resulted in a cease-fire. The Army’s landing craft ‘Daihatsu’ was first used on this occasion and proved its effectiveness. Imamura was critical of the Manchurian Incident, so he was shifted away from the General Staff Office as royalist army officers wanted to take over in Manchuria. He was in Rabaul when the war ended. We know of the starvation strategy of the Allied Forces, who cut the supply chain. Under Imamura’s leadership, the soldiers worked on cultivating vegetables. No soldier died from starvation under his supervision. This kind of leadership was remarkable, considering what was happening in other Pacific islands. In the newspaper of the NPO International Foreign Students Association,20 Imamura was featured as a model leader. However, he was convicted as a B- and C-class war criminal because of his mistreatment of foreign laborers from China, Indonesia, and India – an example was his slapping of prisoners’ faces, a common daily practice in the Japanese army. In endeavoring to prevent his fellow soldiers from being convicted of war crimes, he adamantly claimed his responsibility as their General. Imamura’s signature on the Instrument of Surrender of all Japanese Armed Forces in Papua New Guinea may be seen in the National Archives of Australia (2010).21 Imamura was respected by soldiers and officers of both sides, including General MacArthur who said that he first saw a ‘true bushido’ in Imamura.

Epilogue  229

Figure 7.3  28 January 2020. A wreath at the tip of the derrick of MS Kinugawa-maru. ©Keiko Horikawa 2021.

At the close of the Ujina section, I would like to add one moving photograph, courtesy of Horikawa Keiko. It is of a wreath on the tip of the derrick belonging to the MS Kinugawa-maru, which was sunk in the battle of Guadalcanal. The wreath was laid by the grandson of the late Nagashima Torakichi, Kinugawamaru engineer. The crew of these large transport boats were civilian seamen, who had worked in extreme conditions for army at the front line yet had no entitlement to army pension. Nagashima died of starvation, the impact on him as an individual transferring to generations that followed him. Nagashima’s ongoing family generations share his pain, suffering, and bravery. Horikawa’s book, Ujina of the Akatsuki Forces, reveals clearly the recklessness of Japan’s wartime decision makers. 7.4  Takeuchi Yoshio In 2016, Takeuchi Yoshio (b. 1948), a retired high school teacher, began organizing a lecture series on Hiroshima featuring guest specialists, because he had become worried about the general public’s lack of interest in Hiroshima. During the coronavirus pandemic, the lecture series stopped, but he continues transmitting news about Hiroshima and other war-related issues by sending email attachments, normally two A4 sheets of his handmade collage of events and newspaper

230  Postwar Reconciliation articles each day – Hiroshima Tsūshin: Hiroshima e Hiroshima kara (Hiroshima Correspondence: to Hiroshima from Hiroshima). The news that Takeuchi conveys each week is timely, and conveys information about topics such as field work tours and current peace campaigns. As this book was nearing publication, the newsletter gave notice of a petition that had been created by concerned citizens of Hiroshima, who wish to overturn the February 2023 decision of the Hiroshima City Education Committee to remove the anti-nuclear graphic atomic bomb manga, Barefoot Gen, from primary school teaching resources. The importance of this manga text was discussed in Chapter 6. I would like to refer to just two entries from Hiroshima Correspondence: 1 Hiroshima Correspondence, NO. 1820, 20 November 2022, gives notice about a forthcoming talk on the late Saeki Toshiko, and Takeuchi added how much he had been impacted by meeting Saeki over 40 years ago. He acknowledged that he wouldn’t have been who he is today if he hadn’t met her. He won the Peace Kyodo Journalist Funding prize in 2020 for his tireless peace campaign. Takeuchi is also generous in providing his own photographs to those who need them for their projects. At the time of writing this book, over 900 people were subscribers to Hiroshima Correspondence. 2 Correspondence No. 1725, 30 September 2022, features the unveiling ceremony for an Article 9 monument, erected for the first time in Tokyo on 19 June 2022, by the Article 9 Association in Senju. Coincidentally, Article 9 is pronounced in Japanese as ‘kyūjō’, which can also mean ‘globular’. Designed by Yoshida Kinji, architect, this globe-shaped monument in the form of a stainless-steel ball is inscribed with the words of Article 9. To read the words, visitors must circle the monument twice, mirroring themselves on the surface. Funded entirely by donations, the monument is placed firmly on the lawn, looking fresh. Article 9: the Renunciation of War Article 9 renounces the sovereign right of belligerency and aims at an international peace based on justice and order. The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the above aims, land, sea, and air forces with war potential will never be maintained. Twenty monuments for Article 9 have been erected in Japan since 1985, along with one in the city of Telde (Canary Islands) in 1996. The mayor of Telde was so impressed by Article 9, which he discovered on his visit to Japan, that he erected a monument in Spanish and placed it in a plaza called ‘Hiroshima ⋅ Nagasaki Square’.

Epilogue  231

Figure 7.4  Article 9 monument, 2022. Courtesy of Takeuchi Yoshio.

Article 9 appeals universally because it mirrors wishes of everyone who wants peace and stability in the world. It has a notion of Kant’s famous ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795). He states: The state of peace among men living side by side is not the natural state (status naturalis); the natural state is one of war. This does not always mean open hostilities, but at least an unceasing threat of war. A state of peace, therefore, must be established.22 Kant proposed a number of strategies how to create peace, including ‘the civil constitution of every state should be republican’ and ‘a league of nations’. Japan’s Article 9 needs people’s determination to uphold its spirit. It is too simplistic to join the arms race and we know that violence does not solve conflict. 7.5  Denny Tamaki Denny Tamaki (Tamaki Denī, b. 1959), Independent, was re-elected as the Governor of Okinawa Prefecture in a vote held in September 2022. He enjoys an immense support from the citizens of Okinawa as he represents opposition to the U.S. military base in Okinawa and the relocation of the Futenma U.S. Marine Corps Air Base to Henoko, an environmentally sensitive sea nearby.

232  Postwar Reconciliation The hard-core solidarity of Okinawan citizens in supporting Tamaki goes against the national government’s political agenda, laid out in the U.S. and Japan Security Treaty. The history of Okinawa tells us how Japan has made use of Okinawans’ loyalty to Japan, especially during the Asia Pacific War. Okinawa used to be called ‘gisei no shima’ (‘Island of Sacrifice’) as the Battle of Okinawa23 was the last bastion protecting the Japanese mainland. The U.S. Army have occupied Okinawa ever since the battle, even after the reversion took place in 1971. For a politician like Tamaki to openly oppose national policies that engage with the United States requires courage. 7.6  Trans-Generational contacts 7.6.1  Sasebo Nishi High School students

Three high school students were invited to a Memorial Ceremony in May 2022 at the Sōtō Dam in Sasebo, Kyūshū. The dam was constructed by American POWs between 1941 and 1944 and it still provides drinking water to Sasebo. Forty-seven POWs died of maltreatment during the construction of the dam. The students from Sasebo Nishi High School made an eight-minute documentary portraying the history of the dam and its impact on the local community, which was distributed to the Nagasaki Prefectural Library and other entities. Here again, one of the boys has thought deeply about the Memorial Ceremony and wanted to do something about it – he collected documents and interviewed people for the film, including Commander of the U.S. Navy base in Sasebo, David Adams. This is an example of the spirit of Japan’s historical wrongdoings being acknowledged and is a step forward toward reconciliation. Involving young people in reconciliation activities is not only educational but, more importantly, it is the key to continuing efforts to draw attention to what is just and what is unjust.24 7.6.2  Kōkōsei heiwa taishi (high school student Ambassador)

Kōkōsei Heiwa Taishi (high school student Peace Ambassador) is an example of numerous national and international peace activities. The program began in 1998, initiated by hibaku-nisei (second generation survivor), Hirano Nobuto, a school teacher in Nagasaki. High school students collect 10,000 signatures every year, which two representative students deliver to the United Nations – they also attend the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. It is revealing that around 130 of the POW camps that had existed, hidden from the public eye in wartime Japan, have become places for acknowledgment and reconciliation. They are organized by local communities such as those of Naoetsu, Fukuoka, Nagano, and Heiwa-jima (Tokyo).25 Involving young people in peace or reconciliation projects such as these is not only valuable in educational terms but also an important part of strengthening the values of a society. It is important also to acknowledge today’s civil society in Japan, with its many small, local groups and a few large national organizations. While it looks almost impossible to achieve full agreement in Japanese society, at the very least, the constitution now guarantees – and most people agree – that all voices must be heard and recognized.

Epilogue  233 Notes 1 The author acknowledges that this chapter is an extended version of ‘Epilogue: Celebrating Nuclear Activism and the Power of the Individual’, of Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to be published by Routledge in 2023. 2 Natsume Sōseki, Chikuma Nihon Bungaku Zenshū (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992), 425. Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) was a Japanese novelist best known for his novels, such as I am a Cat and Kokoro. He was sent to England to study literature by the Ministry of Education from 1900 to 1902. ‘My Individualism’ was delivered at Gakushuin, Tokyo, (peer school) in November 1914. 3 Unless otherwise specified, all English translations are mine. 4 Hiroshima e Hiroshima kara, Newsletter No. 1696, 16 September 2022. 5 Tokyo Station Gallery, ‘Art and Railway – 150th Anniversary of Railway in Japan’, 8 October 2022–9 January 2023, https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/gallery/english/, accessed 14 November 2022. 6 Natsume Sōseki, Chikuma Nihon Bungaku Zenshū, 424. 7 Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan. https://www. stat.go.jp/english/data/kokusei/2010/poj/pdf/2010poj.pdf, accessed 14 November 2022. 8 The ‘precariat’ are social groups, such as freeters, NEET (not in education, employment, or training) and hikikomori (social withdrawal), who are socially isolated and have been unable to connect contemporary Japan roughly from the new millennium onward. The autobiographical novel, Kueki ressha (Labor Train), by Nishimura Kenta (1967–2022) depicts the precarious nature of life for the working poor class in contemporary society. 9 Kim Dae-jung (1924–2009), former President of South Korea and a Nobel laureate for peace and democracy. 10 Utsumi Aiko, Kimu wa naze sabakareta no ka: Chōsenjin BC kyū senpan no kiseki (Why was Kim convicted? Traces of Korean BC class war criminals), (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2008). 11 Horikawa Keiko, Genbaku Kuyōtō, wasurerareta ikotsu no 70 nen (Atomic bomb memorial mound, 70 years of forgotten ashes) (Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 2018). 12 Horikawa Keiko, Akatsuki no Ujina, Rikugun senpaku shireikan-tachi no Hiroshima (Ujina of the Akatsuki forces: the army shipping commanders’ Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2021). 13 Genbaku Kuyōtō was awarded the Ōya Sōichi Non-fiction Prize and the Waseda Journalism Prize. Akatsuki no Ujina was awarded Osaragi Jirō Prize. 14 See the Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, Vol. 14, 12: no. 1, Article ID 4911, June 15, 2016, https://apjjf.org/2016/12/Horikawa.html, accessed 15 November 2022. 15 Every summer since 1968 the Hiroshima City Council has publicly released the names of the 814 atomic-bomb dead whose remains are housed in the Memorial Mound, in an effort to reunite the remains with family members. 16 ‘The testimony of Saeki Toshiko’, 1 August 1995, in Genbaku nōkotsu anchisho wo mamoritsuzukete, Saeki Toshiko-san no shōgen (Caring for the atomic bomb victims’ memorial mound, the testimonies of Saeki Toshiko), (Tokyo: Hiroshima Fieldwork Committee, 2022), 155. 17 The War Plan Orange evolved from around 1906 as a strategy to defeat Japan in any potential war. 18 From 1919 to 1945, the Kwantung Army was a powerful arm of the Imperial Japanese Army, responsible for the establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. 19 Inukai Tsuyoshi (1855–1932) was the Prime minister of Japan from 1931 to his assassination in 1932. Inukai struggled to keep the Imperial Army under control, but he was shot by 11 junior Navy officers.

234  Postwar Reconciliation 20 NPO, International Student Association/Kogaku Shimbun, ‘Hitoshi Imamura’, https:// www.ifsa.jp/index.php?imamurahitoshi, accessed 15 November 2022. 21 National Archives of Australia, ‘Instrument of Surrender – Surrender of all Japanese Armed Forces in Papua New Guinea’, [historical document and commentary], https:// www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/war/world-war-ii/ instrument-surrender-surrender-all-japanese-armed-forces-papua-new-guinea, accessed 15 November 2022. 22 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, trans. Mary Campbell Smith (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1903) [digitized], https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/50922/50922-h/50922-h.htm, accessed 15 November 2022. 23 The Battle of Okinawa, 1 April to 22 June 1945, was a major battle of the Pacific War involving local civilians. A total of 77,166 Japanese soldiers and over 30,000 Okinawans were killed. 24 See, ‘A Documentary about the “Tragic History” of “Equivalent Dam” that will not be Forgotten Sasebo West High Broadcasting Department’, Nagasaki Newspaper, 6 August 2022, https://nordot.app/928469079609491456 [Japanese text], accessed 15 November 2022,and Ichiro Komatsu, ‘Nagasaki: Film Remembers U.S. POWs Sacrificed for Dam’, The Japan News, 3 September 2022, https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/ features/japan-focus/20220903-55673/, accessed 15 November 2022. 25 See Yasuko Claremont, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, bilingual edition of Japanese and English (Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, Inc., 2017).

Bibliography Books Claremont, Yasuko, Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, bilingual edition of Japanese and English, Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, Inc., 2017. Genbaku nōkotsu anchisho wo mamoritsuzukete, Saeki Toshiko-san no shōgen (Caring for the atomic bomb victims’ memorial mound, the testimonies of Saeki Toshiko), Tokyo: Hiroshima Fieldwork Committee, 2022. Horikawa, Keiko, Genbaku Kuyōtō, wasurerareta ikotsu no 70 nen (Atomic bomb memorial mound, 70 years of forgotten ashes), Tokyo: Bungei shunjū, 2018. Horikawa, Keiko, Akatsuki no Ujina, Rikugun senpaku shireikan-tachi no Hiroshima (Ujina of the Akatsuki forces: the army shipping commanders’ Hiroshima), Tokyo: Kodansha, 2021. Kant, Immanuel, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay, translated by Mary Campbell Smith, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1903, [digitized], https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/50922/50922-h/50922-h.htm. Natsume, Sōseki, Chikuma Nihon Bungaku Zenshū, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1992. Utsumi, Aiko, Kimu wa naze sabakareta no ka: Chōsenjin BC kyū senpan no kiseki (Why was Kim convicted? Traces of Korean BC class war criminals), Tokyo: Asahi shinbun shuppan, 2008. Articles ‘A Documentary about the “Tragic History” of “Equivalent Dam” that will not be Forgotten Sasebo West High Broadcasting Department’, Nagasaki Newspaper, 6 August 2022, https://nordot.app/928469079609491456. Hiroshima e Hiroshima kara, Newsletter No. 1696, 16 September 2022.

Epilogue  235 Horikawa, Keiko, ‘Horikawa Keiko, The Forgotten Remains of Hiroshima: Tracking the Dead’, introduction and translation by Tsubuku Masako, Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus, Vol. 14, 12: no. 1, Article ID 4911, 15 June 2016, https://apjjf.org/2016/12/Horikawa.html. Komatsu, Ichiro, ‘Nagasaki: Film Remembers U.S. POWs Sacrificed for Dam’, The Japan News, 3 September 2022, https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/features/japan-focus/ 20220903-55673/. Websites National Archives of Australia, ‘Instrument of Surrender – Surrender of all Japanese Armed Forces in Papua New Guinea’, [historical document and commentary], https:// www.naa.gov.au/learn/learning-resources/learning-resource-themes/war/world-war-ii/ instrument-surrender-surrender-all-japanese-armed-forces-papua-new-guinea. NPO, International Student Association/Kogaku Shimbun, ‘Hitoshi Imamura’, https://www. ifsa.jp/index.php?imamurahitoshi. Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan. https://www.stat. go.jp/english/data/kokusei/2010/poj/pdf/2010poj.pdf. Tokyo Station Gallery, ‘Art and Railway – 150th Anniversary of Railway in Japan’, 8 October 2022–9 January 2023, https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/gallery/english/.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables, italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” refer to end notes. Abe Shinzō xiii, 74, 91–95, 98n14, 119, 122–123, 126, 136n29, 158 Acheson, Dean 35–36, 38 Adams, Walter 33 air-raid victims 117–118, 160–162, 198 Ajia rekishi sentā (Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records) 123 Ajia Taiheiyō Sensō (Asia Pacific War) 7 Akihito 84 Allied Nations 51, 113–117, 148, 159, 169n15 ambivalent reconciliation 120–122 Americans, British, Chinese, Dutch East Indies (ABCD) 10, 22–23, 38 Araki Sadao 13–14 Arendt, Hannah 198 Aristotle xv–xvi, xxiin10 Arita Hachirō 32 Art and Railway – 150th Anniversary of Railway in Japan 220–221 Article 9 xviii–xx, xxii, 4, 63, 71–76, 87, 91–97, 111, 142, 220, 230–231, 231 Article 14(a) 113–114 Article 14(a.1) 114 Article 14(b) 114 Article 96 94–95 ‘Aru fujin e’ (‘To a woman’) (Tōge) 185 Asai Motofumi 191, 214n43 Auschwitz 175, 179, 212n5 Ballantine, Joseph 34 Bataan Death Marches 134, 138n67 Beer, Lawrence 87 Berger, Thomas U. 108–109 Black Rain (Ibuse Masuji) 58–59, 64 ‘Bohyō’ (‘The Grave Post’) (Tōge) 185

Bowers, Faubion 79 Brussels Conference 18, 41n40 Buchel van Steenbergen, Willy 164 Bui Minh Dung 55 Butow, Robert J. C. 6, 13 Candlelight Revolution xxvin28 Center for the Tokyo Raids and War Damage 161–162 Chang Tso-lin 11–12, 41n25 Charter Oath see Gokajō no goseimon (Charter Oath) Chōhatsu-rei (Requisition orders) 54–55 Chiang Kai-shek 26–28, 41n25, 116 Chichi to kuraseba (The Face of Jizo) (Inoue Hisashi) 192, 198 The Chinese Laborers Transportation Policy (Kajin rōmusha naichi inyū hōshin) 54, 122, 137n41, 152 Cho Baku 203 Christianity 56, 66n28, 171n41 Civic Theatre (Hiroshima) 200–201 Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) 63, 112 civil society (shimin shakai) xvi–xvii, 47, 145–146, 232 class system 50 Cold War 74, 78–79, 85, 96, 98n12, 116, 129 comfort women xvii, xix, xx, xxi, xxivn6, xxvn26, 6, 48, 76, 117–121, 123– 124, 126–127, 131, 158–160, 162, 166–167 Commentaries on the Constitution of Japan (Ito Hirobumi) 83 compensation settlements 125, 125–129

Index  237 Constitution of Japan 71, 83–95, 111, 120 Cowra Breakout 53 Daihatsu 226, 227 Dai-Tōa Sensō (The Great East Asia War) 77 Dai-Tōa Sensō Chōsakai (Committee Investigating the Great East Asia War) xvi, xxi, xxiiin1, 99n36 Davis, Norman 18 Day of Infamy 34–37, 44n98 deaths and casualties 130, 130–132, 131 Defenders of Bataarn and Corregidor Memorial Society 145 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 85 The Disasters of War (Goya) 177, 211 Doi Takako 90–91 A Doll’s House (Ibsen) 198 do-nothing policy 30 Dower, John W. 49, 178, 213n12 Duterte, Rodrigo 134 Economic and Social Committee 145 Edano Yukio xxii Enola Gay 113, 135n13 Family Federation for World Peace and Unification 101n77 Featherston Breakout 53 forced laborers 152–158 foreign policy 31–33, 37 Freedom of Expression in Japan (Beer) 87 Fujita Tsuguharu 176 Fukahori Katsuichi 181 Fukami Noritaka 181–182, 213n22 Fukuzawa Yukichi 72, 97n4–97n5 Fundamental Law of Education 86, 88 Furyo jōhō-kyoku (Prisoner of War Information Bureau) 51 Furyo kanri-bu ((Management Office for POWs) 51 Furyo-ki (Ōoka Shōhei) 56 Galtung, Johan 146 Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes) (Susukida Tarō) 200 Genbaku hibakusha no kai (Association for the Atomic Bomb Survivors) (Yamashiro Tomoe) 183 Genbaku hisai-ji no Techō (A Notebook at the Time of the Atomic Calamity) (Hara Tamiki) 188–189 Genbaku Kuyōtō 233n13

Genbaku Shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems) (Tōge) 184, 184 Genbaku suramu 197, 213n26 General Head Quarters (GHQ) xxii, 63, 76, 78–79, 89, 112–114, 142, 154, 162, 183, 201 Geneva Convention 50–51, 65n16, 129 Genshi-gumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic-Clouds) 191 German Federal Government 127 German reparations 117–118, 127 Gluck, Carol 111, 125 Gokajō no goseimon (Charter Oath) 63, 68n70, 82, 211, 216n75 Goya, Francisco 177, 211 Guernica (Picasso) 177, 211 Gwangju Uprising xxvn27 gyokusai 52–53, 68n66 Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) (Nakazawa Keiji) 195 haiku poem xviii–xix, xxivn14, 64n2 Hamilton, Maxwell 32 Hanaoka mine 154–156, 204 Hanaoka monogatari (Hanaoka story) 204, 204–209, 208–209 Handō Kazutoshi 171n46 hanga 206–207 Hara Tamiki 188–190, 214n34 Hayashi Sachiko 192–195, 203 hibaku-nisei 162–164, 197, 232 hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivor) 67n55, 73, 96, 98n7, 133, 144, 151, 161–164, 177, 181, 183, 185, 190, 195–197, 201, 223 Higashikuni-no-miya Naruhiko Ō 63, 76 Hill, Lewis 170n18 Hirano Nobuto 163–164, 179 Hirohito 24, 37, 59, 63, 79, 159, 165, 174, 211 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing 3, 53, 58–60, 62–63, 71, 73, 77–79, 97, 99n34, 108, 113, 118, 132–133, 144, 152, 157, 161–164, 166–167, 176–183, 185, 189–192, 195–198, 200–203, 220, 224–226 Hiroshima Correspondence 230 ‘Hiroshima no sora’ 47 (‘The Sky Over Hiroshima’) (Hayashi Sachiko) 192 Hirota Kōki 14–15, 41n34 Horikawa Keiko 99n34, 222–229 Hornbeck, Stanley 17, 33 Hull, Cordell 16–18, 25, 27, 29–36 human cost 129–133, 166

238 Index Humanity Declaration (ningen sengen) 211 Human Rights Council 158 Ibaragi Noriko 54 Ibsen 198 Ibuse Masuji 49, 58–59, 67n50 Ichikawa Kenzō 226 Ichioku sōgyokusai (100 million scattered jewels) 169n1 Ienaga Saburō xxii, xxvin32, 6, 11, 79, 87–88, 168 Ikeda Masahiko 203 Ikuta Jirō 48–49, 53, 58 Imamura Hitoshi 226–229 Imperial Conference 22–23, 25, 36, 53 Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) 11 individualism 220–222 Inoue Hisashi 174, 192, 198, 212n3 Inoue Toshikazu 76, 99n25 Interagency Working Group (IWG) 147 International Labor Organization (ILO) 159 International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) 19, 50, 64n5, 75, 148, 169n15 Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) 91 Inukai Tsuyoshi 233n19 Ishiwara Kanji 10, 40n17 Ishizuka Shōichi 148 Itoh Hideko 212n8 Ito Hirobumi 83–84 Iwatake Hiroshi 59 Jan Ruff-O’Herne 118 Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) 123 Japan Creative Woodcut Prints Association 206 Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) 127 Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) 127, 145 Jiji Shinpō (the Current News) 72, 97n5 ji-ko-hon-i 220 jiko sekinin (self-responsibility) 222 junin-ron 162 Kaifu Toshiki 90 Kajima Construction Company 154–156, 204, 211 kakure kirishitan (underground Christians) 165, 171n41 Kamiya-chō Sakura Hotel (Inoue Hisashi) 200 Kaneko Tōta 171n47

kanji 188 Kanpu saiban (Shimonoseki-Fusan Trial from 1991 to 2003) 160 katakana 188–189 Katō Yōko xix, xxi, 6, 165 Kawa (The Rivers) (Tsuchiya Kiyoshi) 201–203, 203 Kawade Takeshi 191 Kayano Jōji 164 Keene, Donald 113, 135n14, 166, 171n48, 211 kenpei (military police) 54, 200 Kim Dae-jung 233n9 Kim Hak-Sun 118 kimin seisaku (hidden policies of abandoning their own nationals for political and economic reasons) 111, 115 Kim Jong-chul 127 Kingston, Jeff xxii, 122 Kishida Fumio 95 Kishi Nobusuke 54, 96, 102n83, 122, 137n43, 152 Kiyō no arashi (Storm over Nagasaki) (Fukami Noritaka) 181, 182 Kōkōsei Heiwa Taishi (high school student Peace Ambassador) 232 Kōno Yōhei 119, 123 Kobayashi Hideo Prize xix, xxvn19 Kobayashi Iwakichi 180 Kobayashi Yoshinori 39n4, 176, 212n9 Kokumin gakkō (National Primary School) 62, 174, 212n4 kokutai (national polity) 49, 81, 174 kokutei kyōkasho system 67n63 Konoe, Fumimaro 20, 23–24, 26–27, 31, 42–43n59 Kōno Fumiyo 176, 196–198 Kono sekai no katasumi de (In a Corner of this World) (Yamashiro) 196–197 Korea 9–10, 85, 115 Kowalski, Frank 93 Kuboyama Aikichi 178 Kurihara Sadako 96, 97, 183, 190–191, 197, 214n41 Kurihara Tadaichi 96, 97, 214n41 Kuroi Akio 167 kurokawa kaitaku-dan 134n4 Kwantung Army 9–13, 19–20, 26, 31, 40n13, 110, 228, 233n18 Kyūjō wo mamoru kai (Protecting Article 9 Society) 102n86

Index  239 Labor Standards Act (1947) 90 Leahy, William D. 29–30, 44n81 Lerch, Archer L. 51 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) xxii, 72, 79, 92–93, 95, 123–124, 158 Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA) 114 Li Keqiang 121 Liu Lianren 54, 120, 153–154 Lomax, Eric 144, 169n3–169n4 Luo Shanxue 160 Lu Xun 206 MacArthur, Douglas 55, 73, 79–85, 88–89, 93, 174, 201, 211, 228 MAGIC system 21–22, 37 Mainichi 166, 168 Maki Daisuke 204, 216n68 Malaya 8, 35, 54, 85 Manchukuo 13, 15 Manchuria 7, 9–13, 15–16, 23, 30, 32, 37–38, 40n17, 87, 110–111, 128, 134n1, 220, 228 manga 6, 195–198 Manmō kaitakudan (Manchuria pioneer farming groups dispatched to China by the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945) 110 Mao Zedong 116 Maruki Gallery 178–180, 213n13 Maruki Iri 177–180, 182, 212n5 Marukis 178–179 Maruki Suma 179–180, 180 Maruki Toshi 177–179, 212n5, 212n10 Maruyama Masao 62, 67n61 Maruyama Sadao 200 Masuda Yasuhiro 144 Matsui Iwane 20, 42n46 Matsui Yayori 159–160 Matsumoto Jōji 82 Matsuura Sōzō 162 Meiji Constitution xxiii, 10, 62, 67n62, 81, 83, 85, 92, 115, 120, 157–158, 160, 168 Meiji Japan 49 Meiji Restoration 82, 216n75 Memorial [burial] Mound (Kuyōtō) 223–224, 224 Merkel, Angela 119, 149 Ministry of Defense (MOD) 112 Ministry of Education 86–87 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare xxi, 57, 130–132, 134n3, 136n33 Mitsubishi Materials Corporation 122, 128 Miyagi Kikuko 64n9

Miyamoto Kenji 171n55 Miyamoto Yuriko 171n55 Miyazawa Kiichi 118 modernization 9, 40n20, 72–73 Moffat, J. Pierpont 17 Moon Jae-in 77, 118, 121, 126 Morgenthau, Henry Jr. 29–30, 35 Mori, Hideki 89 Mori Shigeaki 144, 162 Morishima Morito 12, 41n28 Motoshima Hitoshi 165 Mukden Incident (1931) 7, 12 Murai Shōsuke xix Murayama Tomiichi 119–120, 123–124, 126, 158–159 Mussolini, Benito 44n99 Nagano Osami 18, 25, 41n41 Nagase Takashi 144, 169n3–169n4 Nagashima Torakichi 229 Nakamura Teruo 116 Nakasone, Yasuhiro 93 Nakayama Ryōko 203 Nakazawa Keiji 195–196 Nanjing massacre xix, 40n9, 42n46, 49, 87, 119–120, 123, 127, 133, 147, 179, 190 Narcisa Claveria 160 National Archives and Research Administration (NARA) 147 National Diet Library of Japan 14, 19–21, 26–29, 75, 82–84, 91–92, 94–96, 112, 117, 123, 128, 131, 160, 168 national education 86–88 National General Mobilization Law 20, 34–35, 74–75 National Mobilization Law (1938) xxiii, 221 National Security Council 94 National Security Strategy (NSS) 112–113 National Siberian Detainees Association 129 Natsume Sōseki 220, 233n2 Natsu no hana (Summer Flowers) (Hara Tamiki) 189 Never Again Hanaoka Incident 208–209 New Guinea 8, 57–58 Nihon Izokukai 79, 100n39 Nii Hiroharu 204, 216n66 Niimi Takashi 155 Nine Power Treaty Conference 41n40 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) 48, 64n6, 95, 167 Nippon Yakin Kōgyō 156–157

240 Index Nishimatsu Construction Company 157–158 Nishi Toshio 82 Nishiwaki Junzaburō 58, 67n52 Nissan Motor Company Ltd. 91 Nobi (Ōoka Shōhei) 56 Nomura Kichisaburō 25, 43n63 Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) 145–146 Non-Profit Corporation (NPO Corporation) 96 Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) xix, 145–146 Obama, Barack 133, 138n66, 144 Obara Kazuma 221 Obinata Sumio xx, xxvn22 Ōe Kenzaburō 72, 97n2, 174, 212n2 Ōeyama Nickel Mine 156–157 Ogawa Masatsugu 57 Okamura Yukinori 178–179, 213n14 Okinawa 48–49, 55, 61, 64n9, 74, 96, 114, 166, 231–232, 234n23 Ōnishi Hitoshi xx, xxvn24 Onoda Hirō 116 Ōoka Shōhei 49, 56–58, 67n44–67n45 Osanai Kaoru 200 Ōsugi Sakae 190, 214n42 Ōta Yōko 191, 196–197 paintings 177–180 Panay attack 29, 33 Paris Peace Conference 50, 65n14–65n15 Patterson, Robert S. 80 Peace Constitution xx, xxii, 4, 71 Peace Preservation Law (1925) 10 Pearl Harbor attack 3, 5–7, 18–19, 27–28, 31, 36–37, 133–134, 190 Perpetual Peace (Kant) 231 Phillips, Peter 124 Picasso, Pablo 177, 211 Pika don 177 ‘Pika no toki’ (‘Atomic bomb dropped’) (Maruki Suma) 180 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 196 postwar generations xvi, xxivn5, 48–49, 76, 78, 96, 112 POW concerns 124–125 POW Research Network 146, 149–150 prisoners of war (POWs) xx, 48–54, 60, 62–63, 116, 122, 124–125, 128, 131, 143–153, 149, 150, 152, 232

Private Tamura 56–57 Pu Yi 13 Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) 73 racial discrimination 50, 65n13 Racial Equality Proposal 50, 65n15 The Railway Man (Teplitzky) 143–144, 169n3 Reagan, Ronald 79, 99n37, 125 reconciliation/compensation cases 146–148 Renunciation of War 111–112 reparation agreements 116–117 Republic of Korea (ROK) 85 Returned and Services League (RSL) 124 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 15, 17–18, 22–23, 27, 29–32, 35–37, 43n71, 44n74, 77 Russo-Japanese War 9, 40n13, 63, 72 Saeki Bunrō 226–228 Saeki Toshiko 223–225 ‘Sakura tai’ (Sakura troop) (Maruyama Sadao) 200 Sandakan Death Marches 53, 58 San Francisco Peace Treaty 63, 96, 101n78, 110, 113–117, 120, 126, 128, 152 Saotome Katsumoto 161 Sasebo Nishi High School 222, 232 Satō Eisaku 98n11 Satō Kenryō 10, 21, 40n14, 42n50 Satō Kojirō 9, 40n11 Satō Tatsuo 85, 100n55 Schmidt, Max 34 Sebe Yoshio 204 self-censorship xxviii, xxii, 119, 162 Self-Defense Force (SDF) 71, 74, 87, 93–95 Senjinkun (Instructions for the Battlefield) 51–53 Shōgun 14 Shichiryōkō kishū-sen 228 Shidehara Kijūrō xvi, xxi–xxii, xxivn2, 11–12, 76, 98n23, 99n36, 142 Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses) (Ōta Yōko) 191 Shikoku Gorō 47, 49, 59–61, 181, 184–186, 187 Shimada Toshio 26–27, 43n72 Shinto 49, 84–85 Shizuma Shigematsu 58–59 Shūkan Kinyōbi (Friday Weekly) xvii, xxivn8

Index  241 Shōnan Shinbun/Shōnan Times 65n12 Shōji Tokiji 208 Sino-Japanese War 9, 40n9, 62, 72, 115 The Sky Over Hiroshima (Hayashi) 192–195 Snow, C. P. 58 social oppression 10–11 sontaku xxivn13 Southeast Asia 7–10, 16, 21–22, 30, 32–33, 35, 37, 39 Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact 22, 23 State Department 16–18, 27, 29–30, 32–34, 80–81 State Redress Law 115 Stimson, Henry 15, 35 Straits Times (British) 65n12 Sugimoto Decision of the Tokyo District Court (1970) 88 Sugiyama Chisako 160–162 Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) 63, 75, 112, 174 Susukida Tarō 200 Suzuki Yoshio 204 Taiheiyō Sensō (Pacific War) 7 Taiwan 115–117, 128 Tajiri Shōji 225–228 Takahashi Masaki 138n59 Takatsu Decision in the Tokyo District Court (1974) 88 Takeuchi Yoshio 222, 229–231 Takeyama Michio 175 Takidaira Jirō 204, 216n67 Tamaki Denny 222, 231–232 Tanaka Giichi 12 Tanaka Yuki 132 tanka (Kurihara) 190 Teplitzky, Jonathan 169n3 Tōge Sankichi 183–188 Tōgō Shigenori 26, 43n67 Thai-Burma Railway 53, 121, 128, 143–144, 221, 223 The ‘Three Alls’ strategy of ‘Kill All, Burn All, Loot All’ (Sankō-sakusen) 55 Thucydides 5, 37, 39n1 Tōjō Hideki 10, 23–24, 26, 28, 38, 43n67, 51–54, 77, 99n32, 152; radio address 26–28; treatment of POWs 53–54 Tōge Sankichi 201–203 Tokyo Shinbun 48, 64n7 Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal 48, 50–51, 64n5

The Town of Evening Calm · The Country of Cherry Blossoms (Kōno Fumiyo) 196–197 The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security 68n69 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) 133 Trilateral Defense Ministers Meetings (TDMM) 72 Tripartite Pact 21, 23, 25–26, 33, 35, 38 Truman, Harry 99n35, 112–113 Trump, Donald xvii Tsuchiya Kiyoshi 201 Tsuchiya Tokiko 203, 203 Uchida Masatoshi 155 Uchiyama Kakitsu 206 Umi Yukaba 62, 68n66 Unbroken 170n16 United States xvii, 3, 5–10, 13, 15–19, 21–22, 24–39, 49–50, 53, 71–75, 77–80, 85, 92–93, 95–96, 112– 115, 118, 121–122, 124, 126–128, 133–134, 147, 151, 154, 159, 161–162, 179 unpaid wartime forced laborers 122 U.S.-Japan Security Treaty 93, 96, 102n82, 113–115, 232 Utley, Jonathon G. 31, 44n74 Utsumi Aiko xvii, xxivn9, 50, 120, 154, 222–223 Vichy France 22, 42n54 Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day) 133 Vincent, John Carter 33 War Investigation Commission 78, 99n36 War Plan Orange 15–16, 225, 233n17 Watanabe Mutsuhiro 148, 170n16 Wednesday demonstrations xvii, xxivn6 Wei Shaolan 160 Weizsäcker, Richard von xxiii, xxvin33, 76, 99n28 Western annexation 7 White, Harry Dexter 34 Wilson, Hugh 17 The Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) 160 women’s rights 90–92 woodcut prints (hanga) movements 206–208 workers’ rights 88–90

242 Index Yamada Toshio xviii, xxivn11 Yamakawa Kikue 170n31 Yamakawa Kikue Prize 159, 170n31 Yamamoto Isoroku 27 Yamamoto Kanae 206 Yamashiro Tomoe 183, 191, 196–198, 213n26, 214n45 Yamashita Tomoyuki 35 Yasuno Power Station 157–158

Yi Hak-Nae 128, 223 Yokoi Shōichi 116 Yomiuri shinbun 162 Yoshida Kinji 230 Yoshida Takashi 75, 98n18, 206 Zamperini, Louis 170n16 Zentsūji 53, 66n29 Zhou Enlai 55, 76, 99n29, 116