About : standard furniture warehouse
Title : standard furniture warehouse
standard furniture warehouse
produced bythe riben guizi productioncommittee yasukuni shrine - on august 15th,the anniversary of japan's defeat thank you. stop praising our deceasedrelatives as war heroes. revere our war dead prime ministerpray for our dead "...he never came home, "and i was never ableto see him again. "in this way,war is a place where
"people murder andare murdered." traitor! shameless! you shameless asshole! shameless idiots! "no matter what it takes,it is up to us women, “who birth and raise children, "to create a world without war, "to construct peace..." "the war heroes who restin yasukuni shrine,
"are war heroes who foughtto protect this nation. "if you don't like it,get out of japan! "get the hell out of japan!" japan did not fighta war of aggression at this rate, the imperial systemwill collapse. "stop the violence! "right wing groups,no more violence! "we lost family, too! "we lost family, too!"
our fathers and grandfathersbore arms in the name of a holy war,in fact a war of aggression.what did they do in that war...although much has been said of howthat war victimized the japanese,there has only been silence and denialabout how we victimized others. in remembering the war, it is easyto speak of our victimization, but difficultto address our own aggression.yet that aggression reveals the true faceof war, exposing as it does the terrible,weak natures of human beings.we give our truth to future generations,so they are not condemned to repeatour transgressions. riben guizijapanese devils riben guizijapanese devilsconfessions of imperial army soldiersfrom japan's war against china in 1931, tsuchiya yoshio, then 20 years old,passed the physical for the draft, and joined the manchurianindependence protection force. my family, was the poorest in our village.there was no one poorer
in our village then. becoming wealthy... tsuchiya yoshioformer 2nd lieutenant, mpbecoming wealthy... tsuchiya yoshioformer 2nd lieutenant, mp tsuchiya yoshioformer 2nd lieutenant, mpbeing rich, at the very least,means building your own house. tsuchiya yoshioformer 2nd lieutenant, mpto be seen asa prosperous man to be seen asa prosperous man i just had to build a house. i figured i'd go to manchuria,find work on the rail road, maybe,
and send money home for a house. it was just impossible to find work.not back then, not in japan. figured i'd go to manchuria,make something of myself, and send moneyback to my father, for him to build a house with. that's why i volunteered. in september, 1931, on the outskirts of mukden,the manchurian railroad was bombed. in fact a plot by japan's kwantung armywith designs on manchuria,
the japanese blamed the attackon china, and launched a full-out offensive. known asthe manchurian incident, it inaugurated 15 yearsof japan's war in china. i was overjoyed,about there being a war. i was extremely happy. i couldn't imagine suchwonderful, good fortune. that's how i felt. i never dreamedjapan would lose.
i was sure we'd win. that war might be good or bad, or dangerous, nevereven entered my head. i felt i'd struck a fortune,that this was my golden chance. because of coursejapan is so cramped. so if we couldgrab manchuria, japan would get awful rich. and that i would, too. that's the delusion i fell under.
i was happy. in no time at all, japan occupiedmanchuria, installing manchukuo,a puppet government, and continued its invasion. when the league of nationscriticized japan's aggression, japan withdrew from the league. defying world opinion, next japan seized jehol province,annexing it to manchukuo.
by signing an armistice treatywith the chinese government, japan forced china to recognizeits control of manchuria. about that time, tsuchiyapassed the military police test, and took up a post with theqiqihar military police. until japan's defeat, 12 years later,tsuchiya was a distinguished mp, dedicated to eradicatingresistance forces in manchuria. we'd tear through the town, whatever town,and surround an area. then we went house-by-house,
arresting all the chinesewho looked suspicious. we'd arrest 'em. after they went to bed,around 2 or 3 in the morning, we'd rush in andsurround the town and then entereach and every house, and kick 'em out of bed,while they slept. and we arrested all thesuspicious-looking young men, with hardly any investigation. because they hadn'tdone anything, you see.
and then, the police control committeeand the mps gathered. all the chiefs of the police sections gathered, to allot each sectionstrict disposals. "5 for your section,3 for yours, "for a total of 13,"or something like that. and they'd announce the date whenwe'd all do the strict disposals at the western gates of qiqihar.
because the kwantung armycommander ordered the japanese army, that it was all rightto kill them on the spot. the right of strict disposals.we all called them "strict disposals." you see, strict disposal meant "to kill."that's what strict disposal meant. strict disposal wasa synonym for murder. without benefit of trial, just kill any chinese you wanted. "hey, tsuchiya," i was told, "go watch the strict disposalat the western gates."
and i said, "yes sir." i'd just become an mp, you see. "go watch."so i went. i got on a horse and raced off. my very first time. and what i found was hundredsof chinese watching too. so there were policemen thereand holes in the ground. and they were forced to sit therelike this, next to the holes. so i got off my horseand went over there
and there wasa chinese commander. and he screamedsomething or other, and bang, bang, bang. there were 15 of 'em. blow away 15 of 'emwith rifles. from right here,from behind, bang. bang and their brains go splattering.bang. their brains splatter every which way.bang, bang. and some of it splattered on me.
it made me want to run away. so that's what strict disposalturned out to be. they weren't guilty of anything, but you got credit for it anyway. killing lots of people also provedyour loyalty to the emperor. it was an honor. get you a golden kite medal. it improved yourhonor as an mp. so in your monthly reports,
you'd fill out"so many strict disposals." that got you credit. and everybody did it.here, there, everywhere. ...there was a powerfulpro-soviet spy ring based in qiqihar, run by cho keimin. we arrested four, includinghis brother, i'm not sure about others. but then... how do you say...
we tortured the brother and cracked their organization. so we arrested 'em,arrested over a dozen, but only 8 of 'emwere actually involved. cho keimin absolutelyrefused to talk. no matter how muchwe tortured him. he said, "i'm a chinese patriot, "i don't have it in meto surrender to you. "go ahead, kill me if you want.
"no matter what happens, "i'll never surrender to you,to the japanese." a truly remarkable man. there was all kinds of torture. the worst torture wasforcing them to drink water. the way it worked was, there'd be a low bench,made of wood. you made them lie face up on it, and force theirhead back like this.
and then you tie them back, like this... and then you'd straddle them,forcing them to swallow lots and lots ofwater, their head lowered. through their nose and mouth. then you put a towelover their face. because, if you cover their face... each time they gasp for air,water gets into their lungs.
but if their lungs fillwith water, they'll die. so you give them a little air. covering themwith a towel briefly, means they get a little air,so they don't die. but you keep dumpinglots of water, from a big kettle. pouring... keeping water out of the lungs... so it goes into the stomach. and very soon,it starts to swell.
and when its swollen, since he's lying down... if you shove on the stomachthe water gushes out. and you do itover and over again. it makes them talk,oh, yes it does. but they don'tknow anything. so even if theywant to talk, they can't. but you think,"screw this bastard! "make him swallowmore, more."
that's what we calledwater torture. there's that branding iron...branding... i'm not sure what it's called,but it's like a hot iron. in those days,hot irons were like this. and you set it in a fire. in the flames' tilit's bright red. you take it andpress it on their backs. and smoke risesfrom their burning flesh. the room fills withthe smell of burning meat.
you can't stand the stink. it's so awful, even ifyou're the one doing it. doing it, i startedto sweat greasy sweat. can't believe there's such awfulnessin this world, and you keep doing it. and then you take wood,like a log, you know. you know those poles. you split the logthree ways. into pieces like this. shave it on both sides,so it looks like this.
and you lay them onthe ground, three pieces. and you make themsit on that wood, like this, but bare legged.just like this. so the flesh on their legswould tear along here. their skin would rip,like this, in 3 places. and you press down on them. it hurts andyou can see the bone. you can see the bone, here. 100-some prisoners escape
on new years' eve,105 prisoners escaped. they ran, their leg ironsstill on, jangling. some died along the way. bad frostbite,it was december 31, after all. so...after this incident... there was an emergency call-up,and we were sent out to capture them.and we caught... i think we caught half of 'em. the police controlcommittee debated,
and decided on strict disposalof any we caught. the next year - the incidenthad happened december 31. on january 4, they performed strict disposalof everyone we'd caught. strict disposal... killed 'em. under mp command. and the cho keimin incident, one day after killing the escapeeson the 4th, then on jan. 5th, that next day, they killedthe 8 from the spy ring.
we japanese all thought of chinese the same way. we called 'em "chinks.""chinks," you know. didn't treat 'em like humans. we didn't think of "chinks"as human, they were sub-human. if we thought they were humanwe couldn't have been so cruel. if we thought theywere living people... we thought they were scum. we did those cruel thingsimagining they weren't human.
we also believed the emperor was a direct descendant of god. and that our orderswere from that emperor. so in that war, we felt free to doanything because of imperial orders. after the war, in tsuchiya'sformal apology to the chinese, he confessed to his responsibility as an mp in qiqihar,for the murders of 328 people, and the arrest, torture andimprisonment of 1,917 others. the internal strife betweenthe chinese nationalists,
and the communist party'sred army, ended in a cease-fire in december1936, after chiang kai-shek was placed under house arrest.the opposing sides entered talks and considered joint nationalist-communist military opposition to the japanese. on july 7, 1937,chinese and japanese forces clashed at the marco polobridge, outside peking. even today, it is unclear,who provoked the confrontation. under military pressure,the japanese government
vowed to punish china andplunged into full-scale war. within 6 months, they hadoccupied 5 northern provinces. when china and the ussr signeda non-aggression pact against japan, japan signed the anti- cominternpact with germany then italy in china, the front expandedtowards shanghai, then nanjing. nanjing, the capital,surrendered, but the nationalistsresisted, moving their government to szechuan. the japanese army then
massacred prisonersand nanjing civilians. depending on the source, estimates of the number killedrange from 10,000 to 300,000. however, culpability for war crimesis not a matter of numbers killed. nagatomi haukudo,a university student was a protã©gã© of theright-wing activist, toyama. nagatomi toured nanjingshortly after its occupation as a member of thepatriotic student union. soldiers warmed themselvesaround bonfires they had built.
nagatomi hakudoformer sergeant, armysoldiers warmed themselvesaround bonfires they had built. nagatomi hakudoformer sergeant, army the chinese peoplestood in line forever, waiting to be issuedtheir citizen's passes. i remember an officer saying: "listen, you kidsfrom tokyo, "at first, we found so manysoldiers hidden "among the chinese, "we gathered them all,
"dumped gasolineover their heads, "and burned, incinerated them. "after that we lined them up,we lined them all up, "aimed our machine gunsat their backs, and rata tat tat... "killed them all." that's what the officer said. there were 100,maybe 200 people, all standing around, listening to him.
the officer spokethrough an interpreter. i wanted to hear whathe had to say: "now that the japanese,the imperial army, "has entered nanjing, "you have nothing to fear." he used achinese expression, "your lives will be tranquil." that's what he said. however, there were lots of
chinese soldiersamong the crowd. he told them,"chiang kai-shek, "hasn't paid youchinese soldiers "for a very long time.we salute your labors. "now that the japanese,the imperial army is here, “we'll pay your salaries, feed youand give you quarters. "we'll also giveyou employment. "we'll even payyour back-wages. "so you shouldall step forward."
that's how they separated the soldiers fromthe common peasants. nearly 20 peoplestepped forward. immediately then, soldiers took them,and made them get into cars. we students from tokyo wereordered to travel with them, so we climbedonto the trucks. what shocked me,
was the sight of thousands,tens of thousands, or corpses lined up on thebanks of the yangtze river. all lying dead. because of the terrible cold, all the corpses, were frozen completely solid. we rode down the one narrow roadamong the corpses, endlessly down that road,
with those 20 orso prisoners with us. then we finally arrivedat a rail road bridge. they made them sit, made the prisoners sit down, and the officer said: "tokyo students, "these soldiers are yours,do whatever you want, "but you have to kill them." and so because the patriotic studentunion members regularly practiced
karate and judo,and the like, we started throwing them,pushing them around, and so on. but they didn't die so easily. so the officer said: "watch, i'll take this one "and show you how to kill. "this is how you do it." with that, he swiftlydrew his sword,
and poured water on it. poured water on it,and then, taking the soldier in front, he jerked him forward, pulled his neck forward. he made himstick out his neck. and then from behind, he yelled and in a single stroke...
he sliced through hisneck at an angle. his head had beencut off cleanly cut off.it fell forward. and then, blood startedspurting everywhere, from his arteries. the chinese behind him,who saw this were in shock. and of course theydidn't want to die. they got up quicklyand started running, running straight for theyangtze river and diving in.
so then, i grabbed a riflefrom a japanese soldier, and hanging above them,waited 'til they came up for air, then shot 'em, bang. i didn't want to look weak beside theother students. i had to show themthat i was strong. that's why iborrowed that rifle, and shot 'em that way. but even so,
it was the first timei'd killed anyone. my whole body was shaking,and i felt shrunken. i can't even rememberno matter how hard i try whether we killedthose 20 people, with rifles or with swords... how exactly did we kill them... but we did indeedkill them all, right there... after serving in thespecial service agency, nagatomi joined thenorth china forces,
and was active in theinformation agency after japan's defeat, he joined theshanxi residual japanese army, and fought alongsidethe kuomintang forces, against the people's liberationarmy until 1949. the communist army united with chiang kai-shek'snational revolutionary army creating a joint anti-japanesenationalist-communist front. china's anti-japaneseposition solidified. japan, hoping to establisha sympathetic regime,
announced its intention toignore the nationalist government, shutting downprospects for peace. japan's stated goal was to ally japan,manchuria and china, into a new east-asian order.declaring a holy war, she expanded military operations. shinozuka yoshiowas 16 in 1939, stationed with theyouth detachment of unit 731, the kwantung army'sinfectious disease prevention unit,
outside harbin. shinozuka yoshioformer corporal, armythe nomonhan incident - japanese-sovietconflict in mongolia - had begun then. in the afternoons, underthe pretext of "research" we were charged withmass production of various disease bacteria. we were makingdysentery, typhus, paratyphoid... allin huge quantities. in vats the size of oil drums... although they seemedsturdier than oil drums.
we put the bacteria in the drums, and i think we addedsome amount of glycerin. and then soldered them shut. we put 2 drumsin a wooden crate and added dry ice, i think. we wrapped the crate in strawmatting and tied it with rope. supervised by petty officerswe took these drums, there were maybe2 or 3 petty officers, assigned to us.
2 of us boys from the youthdetachment carried each crate. i only went to that place... just once. it was a night train,traveling at night. that's how we gotthem to hailar. at hailar, we loaded them onto trucks,military trucks, from what was consideredthe frontline base at nomonhan.
once we'd broughtthe drums that far... at that point,we turned them over to the ikari risk unit -they had different orders than ishii's 731 unit -the infectious disease unit, risk unit actuallymeant suicide unit. we turned them overto the risk unit. about 2 of theboys who'd joined the unit with me could drive, so they wound upin the ikari risk unit.
from their whisperedconversations after they got back, i understood that the bacteria had been dumped into a river,upstream of the khalkha river. with the german-sovietnon-aggression treaty signed, and the outbreakof world war ii, the japanesesuffered heavily in the face of concentratedsoviet strength, signing their owncease-fire with the soviets.
among the soldiers, the japanesesoldiers evacuating from nomonhan, many had infectious diseases. we were ordered,to analyze their feces, i was eager for the assignment. the fact is, most of the men, from our unit, whowent to nomonhan wound up receiving medals. despite all the japanese soldiersbeing infected with disease, why were they awardedmedals of valor, and others?
because nomonhan wasa massive defeat for japan i remember being puzzledby this at the time. but looking back on it now... japan had succeededwith germ warfare. not in spite of, but because so manyjapanese soldiers were infected, it proved that bacteria could beemployed as a military weapon. i now believe that this was the lesson of nomonhan. after the youthdetachment disbanded,
shinozuka was officiallyassigned to unit 731. when i wasassigned to the unit... cholera, and the plague, what we now call anthrax, anthrax and cholera... the unit had begunmass producing these. studying preventive vaccines, against the relative strengths ofour manufactured bacteria... could our bacteriaoverpower the vaccines,
and cause infection? that was our mission. we used 5 chinese peoplefor this study. "used..." is not correct... we murdered them brutally. we were testing the plague. we began by testing thestrength of the vaccine. one of them was reserved as a control andwas not vaccinated.
the other 4 wereinoculated. the vaccine, a specialvaccine, had been developed in unit 731. we gave all of themshots of bacteria. the person we hadn'tvaccinated was on the verge of deathin 3 days' time. during the dissections,i was ordered to remove the internal organs. one section would bepreserved as bacterial culture.
the other sectionwas chopped up, there was a glass petri dish for each different organ, and followingwritten instructions, we smeared them onto dishes. this is the kind of work i did when i firstjoined the unit. that's how it was. after we finishedour work in the unit,
we always sterilized ourown bodies very carefully. then we left. that was my first experience,but we killed 2 other people in the same way. regarding theother 2 people... it wasn't us, and they weren't... yet near death... partly for these reasons,
we turned themover to the clinic. over to the unit 731 clinic. we referred to thosepeople as "logs." whenever we did vivisections, it was usuallyvery late at night, by the time we finished. on such nights, we returnedto our quarters, to take our baths with many otherswho had done similar work. our conversation would run,
"how many logs did you fell?" "we felled 2." this kind of exchangewas completely normal in those late nighthours in the bath house. we believed that our subjects had all engaged in behavior thatdeserved the death sentence. so we thought, one wayor another they'd be executed. that's what we believed. so we thought,
they might as well...be of some service to japan. given what we believed, it is a fact that we hadabsolutely no sense of guilt. it came down to our... thinking it was for our country,that we didn't have any choice. it's true that for us... ultimately...even our superiors... even ishii, our unit commander,would often say... there was no explanation.
"you have to do it.you have to do it." that's all. once, i participatedin the dissection... of one of my buddies. he was a good friend. when a low-rankingjapanese soldier got infected with the plague... the plague is very fast,once you contract it. consciousness fades.japanese went especially fast.
so of course we couldn't takethem to an army hospital. besides which, no japanesesoldier had any business contracting the plague. so they couldn't go to anyordinary army hospital. for these reasons, because we had to preserve secrecy, we ended up holding them, along with theother imprisoned vivisection subjects.
there was a clinic, so theymust have had treatment, but almost no onecame out of there alive. that dissection... i helped once... it was unbearable. even with my then dimunderstanding, i thought,"i'll wind up like this." so i was desperate to get out. i was due to becomea soldier soon,
and i vowed i'd neverreturn to unit 731. i remember that very clearly. when members of my ownsquad caught the plague, i remember once again, that i burned maybe2 of their corpses. it was outdoors. we piled up firewood. bodies burn very quicklywithout any internal organs. the organs would've beenremoved in dissection.
i did one after another ofthose kinds of things. in the 10 years before japanwas defeated, unit 731 killed some 3,000 people with human experiments forbiological weapons development. they engaged in germ warfarein many parts of china. after the war,the united states exonerated the unit leadersof war crimes, in exchange fortheir research data. in vast china,
the japanese schemedto expand their territories. through its army in manchuria, and its china detachment,troop strength ballooned, and japan reached its domesticlimits for reinforcements. in the name ofjapan-china peace, japan installed former km twang ching-wei as the head ofthe nanjing government. china's only lawful regime, but it was onlya puppet regime.
japan only actually controlled"points-and lines," major cities, arteries and rail roads. the un-proclaimed war,dubbed the china incident, stalled intolong-term engagement. the u.s. challenged japanfor annulling the japan-us. commercialpassage treaty funyu taisukeformer sergeant major, army unless we beat, chiang kai-shekand the soviets,
japan could not be secure. and it was also,for the emperor, for the japanese people. so young men hadno choice... but to shoulder weaponsand go to war. that's what we'd always been told,and what we believed. when you went off to war,you told your parents, "this is my last farewell. "i have no intention ofreturning home alive.
"my mind is made up, "and it's time for me to go." so i went off tomanchuria, crying tears. so when we wentto become soldiers, we knew we're leapinginto an unknown world, sacrificing, surrenderingour lives, in that leap, and we no longer had anyregrets about losing our lives. we were going to win the war. and within that context,i couldn't be outdone by others.
i felt that way...at least twice as much as most others. ebato tsuyoshiformer sergeant, army ebato tsuyoshiformer sergeant, armyi never convinced myselfthe war japan was fighting i never convinced myselfthe war japan was fighting was the holy war that the men who ruledjapan insisted it was. and yet... military service wasone of the three duties
of a japanese citizen. and i had absolutelyno intention of evading themilitary physical. in those days, evading the physical, meantevading military service. if i'd done that, society would notonly have ostracized me, my whole family wouldhave been seen as traitors. so finally,
when the inevitable arrived, i was resolved. back then weconstantly saw the returned remainsof the war dead. we were constantly,always seeing them. so the call tomilitary service, meant death onthe battlefield. essentially, you hadto resolve to die. and that turned out...to be a shock.
many of my students... i was in ueda at the time,so at the ueda station... decked out in my red sash... on the day wheni finally mobilized, my students assembled formally, lined up from the station,all the way to the river. they waved the flag of the rising sunand cheered me on my way. in that moment, i resolved that fighting, not onlyfor those who had raised me,
but also for those children whowould bear japan's future... that fighting for them, would eventually lead topeace for japan... how else couldi think about it... i realized that i was goingto die for their future, for peace. when i saw it in that light, i finally reconciledmyself to my fate... and i went to war,knowing i would die. taking advantage ofthe french surrender
japan, which had reacheda stalemate in china, planned a military expansioninto southeast asia. she intended to cutoffu.s. and british supply lines to chiang kai-shek and the nationalist government,and acquire oil and raw materials. this expansion led to the vision of the greater east asia (bo-prosperitysphere, under which east asia and the south seas would beunited under japanese influence. my first week at the front,
we were completely pampered. the seasoned soldierswho'd been there longer, they celebrated ourarrival and let us play. but after that first week, they made an especially pale recruittheir whipping boy, jeering, "hey, you... "that's the end ofyour selfishness. "the first week you were a guest,
"but not anymore." then, without a word,they started beating him. even though he'ddone nothing. and then there werethe spot inspections. at night, after dinner,before lights out, we'd line up in our room for roll call. most nights,they'd do spot inspections. for instance,
say you've got a leather pouchthat holds ammunition. you know... "hey, you, go get it. "it's hanging by yourbunk, go and get it." if it was at all dusty, he'd wipe itwith his finger, and beat you up. “get your shoes,“if they weren't polished right, "get your rifle."
if it wasn't maintained,they'd beat you on the spot. i was relatively... well, as we used to put it... i had a knack for things... i worked hard at everythingand did well. my superiors alwayslooked out for me. so the first month passed,and then the second, and i couldn't help but feel gladthat i'd become a soldier. when i'd finished grade,i mean elementary school,
i couldn't goon to middle school. and we'd had a fire at ourhouse and we were in trouble. so i was helpingwith the farming. but my older brotherwas physically weak, and couldn't do men's work. so i was taking his place,helping my parents out. when i became a soldier,that was all over. everything in the army...all boiled down to, protecting the emperor, that's it.
i protected mysuperior officer, that's all. and no matter whatcalamity came, it never touched me. at the time, i didn't see how you could beat that. so i was serious about laying a foundationfor my military future, and i was very diligentin fulfilling my duties. i lived through the kind of hell,that i had no idea existed
in japanese society. especially because i hada university education, i received absolutelybrutal treatment at the hands of seasoned soldierswho came from rural farms. first, i was slappedback and forth, without reason for having an attitude. but they didn't slapwith their hands. they used their regulation slippers. the rubber oneswere especially painful.
some were leather. they slap you with those. once when they slapped me,my face swelled up, and it upset my motherwhen she saw me that way. that's why usually... when we were out drilling,the 2 assistant instructors were the only veterans,so that was fine. but back in the barracks, each squad had 2 dozen soldiers.
a dozen of us greenhorns, and an equalnumber of veterans. and they were vicious. beating usdispelled their gloom and gave them pleasure. so for instance, present arms... if your rifle wasn't well-maintained,they'd have you bring it. hold the rifle at present arms
like this...but the rifle was so heavy... you'd never last 5 minutes and if you lowered it becauseit was unbearable, you'd get slapped aroundand you'd do it again. then there was mutual slapping. they made the newer soldiersface each other in rows. lined them up, and said,"to punish you for "such-and-such behavior today, “you'll slap each otherback and forth now.“
and made us slap each other. but you couldn't slapyour comrades. so the older soldiers wouldsay "this is how you do it!" and show us an example. the one he slapped, wouldslap his partner back seriously, out of pain and frustration. and the partner he slapped,got serious too, wanting revenge. it just kept escalating. the old hands found thisjust hysterically funny.
there were no limitsto the punishments they dreamed up.it was truly shocking. one routine, was called crying cicada. the way crying cicada worked... there was a pillar we proppedall the rifles against. they made us hold onto that pillar, and cry like cicadas. and they'd say,"these cicadas have weak voices."
“they're not cryingloud enough.“ beat us until we did. that was crying cicada. then there was the nightingale...there's the bunks. we had to crawlunder the bunks, crying out like nightingales. of course our crieswere too weak. over and over again, we cried like nightingales,crawling under the bunks.
we were grown men...it did make me want to cry. but what i hated the most, was called miss prostitute. it was a kind of punishment for things they didn't like.they made you poke your face betweenthe propped up rifles and wave and call ina high falsetto "say, there, mister, come on." but if you weren't feminine enoughor you were too quiet,
they'd beat you again, until they'd finally ok'd you. or if they disapprovedof your shoes, they'd put a ropearound your neck, and "go around the squads." they'd tie a pair of lace-upboots around your neck, one boot on each side, and send you to each squad: "private such-and-such,here on business."
"what business?" "i didn't polish my boots right, "and i'm here for instruction." and the veterans would laugh, saying, "they're pretty clean,why don't you lick them?" that's how they abused us. i was 29 years old at the time. i could neverbecome an officer... shikada masaoformer 2nd lieutenant, army
a reinforcement soldier,nearly 30 years old was bunked next to me. but this newsoldier, sumida, was somewhat, what we'd nowcall, "mentally retarded," and he was kind of slow. so he was the constant targetof the veterans' brutality. they'd beat him, and backat the barracks at night, if he had a weary smokeafter dinner, our superiors tore into him,“recite the military precept.“
he had to memorize that... and then there wasthat endless military pledge. “our military is under thecommand of the emperor... "originating with emperor jinmu..." had to memorize that wholelong, dumb thing. and so with all of that, sumida had a totalnervous breakdown. one morning, when we weregetting ready, he was dawdling. so i look over and realizethis 30-year old has wet his bed.
between the vindictive punishments,and the humiliation, he really couldn't take any more. so i felt sorry for him andcovered up for him. rolled the bedding up andtold him to wash it later. "shikada, over here!" my superior called me over. i wondered what it was. "grit your teeth!" he said. i wondered what was next."how dare you 1st year recruit!
"insolent bastard!mind your own business." they never came outand accused me of covering up the wet bed. "mind your own business!" "you're insolent for a1st year soldier." he'd taken off his slippers...actually, slippers were made from military boots, the oneswith tacks in the soles. they'd cut themdown into slippers. so he held that slipperand double-slapped me,
on both sides of my face. no matter howtight you clamp your teeth, they chew the insideof your cheeks apart i thought, "he got me good." instinctively clenching my fists, i thought, "you bastard," and was ready to attack him. so the corporal says,"gonna assault a superior officer?" “you'll get military detention,which is a criminal record.“
i was young, 24, andhe was 21 or 22. "you bastard," i thought. by then, i wasreally full of rage. but the minute he said that, i thought of my father,nearly 70 when i enlisted. he'd come to see me atthe barracks then. my father was the village chief,and the village would be disgraced if i got a criminal record here. if i bore it, i wouldn'tdisgrace them.
so i realized that andgrit my teeth hard, and just dug my heels in. our breakfastwas on the table. the corporal said,"drink this!" he took a steaminghot bowl of miso soup and dumped itdown my throat. it hurt so badly i couldhave leapt out of my skin. so that's what i faced,as a 1st year soldier. and so i swore,
"damn! i'll becomean officer candidate "and show you bastards!" i swore then and there,i'd become an officer. it really fired me up. japan signed the tripartite pactwith germany and italy and the sovietneutrality treaty, then pushed aheadto the south, and in china. elite japanese troops in chinawere sent to the southern front but japan's militarypresence in china remained massive.
700,000 in the kwangtung army inmanchuria, 680,000 troops in china. japan's military incursioninto french indochina provoked outrage inu.s., england and holland. the u.s. took retaliatorymeasures against japan. the japanese military maintained itshard-line on china and indochina, and resigned itself tou. s.-japan hostilities. at a diplomatic impasse,the entire konoe cabinet resigned. the new cabinet electedtojo hideki as prime minister. the 12th battalion of thechinese detachment army
mostly engaged the communist 8throute army in shandong province. that's where i underwent3 months basic training. suzuki yoshioformer sergeant major, army suzuki yoshioformer sergeant major, armyalready in training,we were forced suzuki yoshioformer sergeant major, armyto charge at living humansto kill them. to charge at living humansto kill them. they talked about pows, but in the japanese army,any chinese we caught were called pows.
didn't matter if they werepeasants or what. there were 3 mentied to stakes, all ready for us. i had appliedto be a petty officer, so i got to go first. my squad leader signaled me, shouting,"forward, forward, thrust!" but, it was by no means easyto thrust my bayonet
into a living person.i'd never killed anyone before. still if i was clumsy at it, it would affect my wholemilitary career. so i showed nomercy or leniency. it was an order. i always carried outorders to the letter, much more than anyone else. you had to bereally aggressive. so i just did it,i thrust into the man,
killing him withthe first blow. but after i stabbed him, i certainly can'tsay i felt right... and after i stabbed him, many, many othersdid the same. he was tied to a stake. all of his organswere dangling. because they tiedthe hands up high, they couldn't jointheir hands to beg,
but at first at least, they'dcry out desperately, “help!“ when you think about it, you really can't imagineanything more pitiable, really... we were unshackled fromany idea of humanity. "attach bayonets!"that was the command to draw bayonetsand attach them. kaneko yasujiformer corporal, armyto draw bayonetsand attach them. kaneko yasujiformer corporal, army kaneko yasujiformer corporal, armyon "charge!"i moved forward.
kaneko yasujiformer corporal, armybut the other guywas tied up. kaneko yasujiformer corporal, armyso we charged forward. kaneko yasujiformer corporal, armybut the truth is,i'd never been so scared. but the truth is,i'd never been so scared. the guy doesn't fight back. i've got my rifle and i charge but my hands slippedi got there, i lost my strength. don't know why,but i was scared. and he just stared at me.
so naturally i thrust at him,but my hands slipped. only thrust himso deep, frankly. then the lance corporalshouted, "you!" slapped me 10 times. made me do it overabout 3 times. i never did manage to do itright that time, that's the truth. but there was a guy my rank, named gouda, a monkfrom my home prefecture. a little monk, like a novice.
he couldn't even try,just sat down on the spot. "spare me," he said. so the lance corporalbeat and kicked him. then we had to do itagain the next day. we just had to keep doing it. finally, i stabbed his stomach,not his chest. it went straight through. the chest isn't like that. the ribs get in the way.
so the lance corporal says, "i'll show you howit's done, watch me." so we just watched. a bayonet's about this wide,about 20 millimeters. it's about this thick,3 or 4 millimeters. it's a bayonet. it's tight between the ribs. you can't just stab there.not just like that. but the lance corporalhad a trick.
he thrust and twisted it flat. made the bayonet thinand it slipped right in. that's how welearned the trick. that was how i firstkilled someone. so what i learned was thatin order to kill someone, you twist it flat and thrust. the gut's never lethal,the chest always is. flatten the bayonet and thrust. so gradually, i killedone, then two,
and finally it'sa daily competition. "how many'd you kill?i got 2" "i got 3" a daily competition. so i didn't feel a thingkilling people. once you've killed your 2nd or 3rd,you stop thinking about it. in my mind i wasjust killing chinks. so i wasn't scared at all. but the first time,i was really scared... gaining popular support, thecommunist 8th route army grew
in 1940, it launched thehundred regiments offensive, targeting japanesepositions and supply lines, delivering a devastatingblow to the japanese forces. in return, the japanese began arelentless mopping-up operation, focused on anti-japanesestrongholds. the chinese called it "the three-ails campaign."kill all, burn all, loot all. destruction, slaughter, plunder.
these became japan'sexplicit goals. around dawn, weencircled an entire village. and a platoon ofmen attacked. but there was nosign of any enemy. that was when colonelyamaochi, the colonel, ordered us to set it on fire. in a flash fire consumedthe once quiet village. the chickens weresquawking, and the... you could hear the housescrackling in the flames.
the sounds ofsorghum popping, dogs barking,people screaming... like all hell had broken loose. i think... in under an hour,just about the whole village had burned down. and we trainedour machine guns and gunned downevery last one of the villagers who tried to escapeto the mountains.
as for those in the village,the soldiers either bayoneted them orshot them. anyone who couldn't move, just burned to death,with their home. the smell of peopleburning, of flesh... it's a very strange smell indeed. it wafted everywhere. the unit commandertriumphantly ordered the unit to advance...
after we'd advanced2 kilometers, we could see 5 or 6 homeson our left, nestled into the mountains. so the commander said,"who wants to burn them down?" i leaped right out front,saying "i'll do it" and went to set the fire. the peasants didn'thave an inkling. the children were outfeeding the chickens, playing, a picture of peace.
but having volunteered,i had no choice but to burn. so i started setting fires. they were all desperate. not a man in sight. only old ladies in their 60sand children. they drew water, desperately trying to put out the flames, but of course they couldn't. and i then i wentover to set
the last remaininghouse on fire. the house wasrelatively new, so i thought i'd takesomething first. i went all the way tothe back of the house, and saw someonesleeping on a bed. wondering who,i lifted the covers, and found a woman who hadjust given birth to a baby. she must've been 34 or 35. she was shaking violently,
unable to speak.she'd just given birth. a chill came over me, like ice waterpouring down my neck. it just crept over me. but my next thought was: "how dare this chink!"that's what i felt. "how dare this chink havea good time and make a baby!" i was seized withthis boiling rage. "i'll just burn her to death."
i rushed outside and was about to start the fire, when i sawa 60 year-old grandma, standing in the doorway,desperately... begging me. she was begging meto spare their house. but i kicked her aside, and i tossed burningsorghum into the doorway, and millet husks,just kept tossing them until there wasa mountain of them.
kept throwingflaming things in, and tossed inbundles of millet too, until the doorway waschoked with smoke. you couldn't see inside. and i closedthe front door tight. from the outside,you could see bright red flames blowingout through the windows. i heard deathscreams inside. at that moment...
how can i say this... i couldn't keep myself fromwondering why i'd done it. what came to me atthat moment, were the words my mother gave meas i was leaving for war: "if you have to killin the war, that's fine, "but whatever you do, don'ttouch women and children." her words suddenly came to me. because that wasexactly what i'd done. i'm not sure...
that was still the firsttime i'd done it so maybe i still had a shredof conscience left. that i'd done something bad. "i didn't do this. "i was just following thecommander's order, hate him." that's what i told myselfto ease my conscience. and then, withouta backward glance, i walked straight back andjumped into my marching unit. the so-called, “hostage recoverytactics“ were unbelievable.
our grenade launcher and lightmachine gun had been taken, and 2 of our menhad been taken hostage. so we embarked on a horrible retaliatory subjugation mission . the so-calledadvance troops... spread out into the village, and everywhere i looked,we were killing. killing every last villager.
and even then i thoughtthat the most vicious thing, was the way theytreated the women. they stripped them anddragged them to the road. the villages always hada road down the middle with houses on both sides. they stripped everylast woman, and dragged them there. at the time,we were still privates, in our first year.
so our superiors told usnew soldiers, "stab 'em." it was... this was back in the fall... after returning from the campaignwhen i burned houses. it wasn't long afterthat, i think. so we were forcedto stab them, and stab them we did... stabbed them oneright after the other. but that wasn'tgood enough
for the older soldiers... so after we'd finished... they chose a womanalready dead, and stabbed her genitalswith a bamboo spear. and they left theirspears inside them. and said, "don't touch itthis is how you kill." they showed us by example... it was so... the organs had spilledout all over the road.
and there were so many of usmilling around as we did it. in that kind of situation, ho one... none of the women put upany resistance. on top of that...bayoneting a woman, doesn't exactly feel good. i remember wondering at the time,why we had to go this far. i remember that. but if you didn't do it,
they called you a coward,a chicken. and once you were a coward, if you got that reputation,you'd never get promoted. “whenever! engage in combat,your lovingly made amulet “is at my breast,a source of endless joy" i completely lost myhumanity, i lost my human conscience. i was just like a brutish fiend. the more i killed,the more i began to enjoy it.
in the winter, the soldierswould start a roaring bonfire, and warm themselves at it,bring a baby, and throw it into the fire, and we'd all just laugh. that's the sort of statethe majority of japanesesoldiers were in... i believe so... in the 8th route army territory,we burned everything in sight. burned everything, killedthe villagers, the women.
because they'd have kids. and those kids would grow upto defy the japanese army. the old people hadn't gotlong anyway, so them, too. these were ordersfrom the very top. chinese villagesall had ramparts. large villages had brickramparts 5 meters high. small ones had mud walls. and inside the wallswas a path a meter wide forpedestrians
and there were gates at theeast, west, south and north. just 4 points of entry. that's where we'dstart the fires. and then the soldiers, that's us, we'd stand outside the fourgates with our rifles aimed and when they came out,desperate, we killed them all. when they finally came out... machine guns, rifles, we killedthem all with those. it was awful, even wethought it was awful.
but it was fun, being theones doing the killing. they rarely crawledover the walls. they mostly stayed inside, runningin confusion, dying. that's what i've done... ...find some guy, and if there'sa woman, make 'em have sex. and when you thinkhe's about to climax, shoot your gun at him. just did it for the hell of it. an awful thing... shoot 'em deadwhen he's feeling good.
all over. that's truly murderingfor arousal. it was ultimatelyabout competition. i was conscious ofbeing a japanese soldier. and no soldier wants to hear,"i knew he didn't have the guts." so how many you've killedbecomes a standard of achievement. and the military's a strange place. in japan, in your country, arson and rape andmurder are felonies.
but in the military,the more crimes you commit, the better your record. enomoto masayoformer sergeant major, army ...so we raided the village. but all we found... were the abandonedwomen. there was nobody else there. and so... because we foundthose women,
and there were lots of soldiers,all of our buddies, we, how do you say... we made the women, we stripped them naked and made them lie down on topof watermelons, that's right. there was no military purpose,just “imperial army comfort.“ no enemies around. no information to be gained. we just... that night...
spent the night in the village. so we stripped 'em. and shoved cloth... up their vaginas, pouredgasoline on and set them on fire. and of course all of our... company commanders watched. they weren't spies or anything. just a message thatwe'd been in that village. in other words, it was...
often...in japanese... we called it entertainment, orcomfort troops. it was that... you set them on fire whileeveryone watched and you didn't justburn the woman but you burned her house down. imperial governmentreaches grave decision negotiations on japan-us. relationsbreakdown over china-japan war tripartite pact andsouthern advances
japan's sneak attack on hawaiiprecipitates the pacific wan. using its advantages, within4 months of the outbreak of war, japan occupied vast territoriesin southeast asia. at the time, everyone injapan was overjoyed. to have beaten englandand america. led by the emperor, we held sway over asia. it hadn't been a dream.we japanese were a great people. we were possessed bythese conceited notions.
in january, 1942, yuasa was postedas an army doctor to the japanese armyhospital in shanxi province. yuasa kenformer 1st lieutenantarmy medical corps the hospital director told the officersto gather in the dissection room, for surgical training.that's what we were told. there were 2 chinese prisonersstanding there. one of them was tall,taller than i am,
with broad shoulders. he must've been 30 or so, dressed in relativelygood peasant's clothes. he just stared at the floor. i assumed he was either, part of the then 8th route,now people's liberation army ora communist party member. he never flinched. the other man, next to him,
was of medium height, mediumbuild in his 40s or 50s. a peasant, no doubt. he held out his bound hands, and was nearly crying,“aiya, aiya.“ that's right, there weretwo operating tables set up, a red cross nurseassigned to each. they were laying out amputation knives,scalpels and scissors. the clitter-clatter of metal...
he knew we would cut him, he'd bethe subject of a surgical experiment, so he was crying. but what's most terrifyingwhen i think back now, is that all of us there,the doctors, nurses, and the unit armydoctors assembled there for training,about 4 of each, along with the 2 surgeonspresent as instructors, along withthe medical assistants, everyone was smiling .
we were going to cut upliving people and we were all smiling. that's right. none of us were able toexpress any of our fear or loathing or pity. we made them inhalechloral ethanol, a total anesthetic.they struggled a little, but soon were quiet. first we didan appendectomy.
usually, to find the appendixyou insert 2 fingers, and then youremove it surgically. but we doctors weren't skilled.probably our first time. and a normal appendix isn't hard, it'sslippery and hard to hold. the first excision fails,then another, then another, until finally thewhole appendix is remove. the vermiform appendixwas awful... then suture.
next, when a bulletstrikes the stomach, the feces causesantegrade peritonitis. so you clean it and join it.we practiced that procedure. i don't remember whetherit was that time or the next, i looked at the raw materialsleeping there and was seizedwith the desire to try it myself. i took the amputation knife, and sliced it right off.
i had no sense that this wasa person, it was just a thing. i sliced his arm right off. then i sawedthe bone off, of course. that's what i did. then while theypracticed other things... if a bullet strikes the chest,hemorrhaging causes suffocation. you do a tracheotomy.it's done swiftly, the blood's bright red. because it's full of oxygen. after about an hour and a halfof that, the surgery was over.
and after that, the unit doctorsand nurses left. it was left to us newly-posteddoctors and medics to clean up. and the peasant was no longer breathing so wedug a hole and dumped him in. but the stronger one, theone from the 8th route army, was still breathing... so our hospitaldirector said to
practice injecting his heartwe drew blood, and injected air, the air took so long to reachthe brain, he didn't die. the medic instructed me, and i filled a 5cc syringe with chloral ethanol, the anesthetic... i took that soldier's left arm,and into his vein, man it was thick, and by the time i'd injectedhalf, 2.5cc into his vein, he died of respiratory failure.
we did 10 vivisectionsthere on 6 different occasions as part of my medical training. once, what happened was... the hospital director said "a japanese drugcompany wants..." there's the cerebral cortex. there are hormones calledsteroids, effective against asthmaand arthritis. they needed research samples.
i remember the drugcompany had sent 10 bottles. so after each vivisection,we took brain samples and sent them off bit by bit. basically, we did anything. and one time...this was entirely my own idea. i wound upinstructing 23 medics. i figured that soldiers,only 3 months out of japan, were still gutless.
by teaching themanatomy on chinese vivisection subjects, i thought they'd learn better.that's what i thought. in fact, there were illustratedmanuals and drawings, as well as models... i was utterly heedlessof chinese lives. not the least bit. we were winning,so i could do anything. that's how fanaticali'd become in my beliefs.
i phoned the mp myself, and he turned over a subject. i anesthetized it, and cut open the stomach,pointing out, "here's the heart, the stomach,the intestines." one of the medicscollapsed from anemia. that happened, too. once, 40 of us had gatheredfor medical education. we'd all been called toa military prison, taiyuan.
before then, i'dnever really known. when we got there, i entered, and saw 2 men blindfolded. their hands were bound, i'm notsure, in front or behind them, but they were crouched. then a prison guard came, one with a white rank badge: "do it?" pulled out his pistol andbang, bang, bang, bang.
2 bullets into each. no anesthesia. 10 of us grabbed one of themand took him into the next room. another 10 grabbed the other,also, the next room. and that's where we start practicingsurgery, just like i told you before. the man in charge said:"keep them alive "until you've extractedthe bullets." but we're no good. they were bleeding,there was no oxygen,
no head stimulants. but it must havebeen the agony. it was the unbearable pain that finally killed 'em.i'm not sure when. but that didn't concern me. all we were supposed to dowas to practice our surgery. and then it was bang, bang, bang, bang.four more shots. there were 40 of usand 4 chinese. we vivisected them...
in order to destroy 8th routearmy supply bases, the japanese relocated peasantsinto specific areas, under a joint housing strategy all other areas wereoff-limits to chinese inhabitants. you'd climb a mountain ora high place and look down. if you saw houses,you burned them down. if you saw people, if you're close, your rifle, if far,your machine gun, kill 'em. that's all we did,day after day.
two 8th route army soldiers, right at the very peak,no more than than 5, 6 meters away,smack into 'em. and the 8th route army, saw we were superior,in terms of numbers as well. only 2 of 'em.they raced just ahead of us, jumped down to a lower cliff. the cry, "enemy!" went up. so course our soldierscame running.
and then i used my pistolgot both escaping men. killed 'em. in a field not 200 meters away, we found a man in his early 40s. in those days,in the villages, you rarely sawanyone of his age working the fields. "you involved with those8th route army soldiers?" "no"
"didn't stay here last night?" “ok, c' mere .“ i tied his hands behindhis back with rope, took him to a tree, andstrung him up over a branch. when you're strung upyour hands behind, gradually, as the arms rise, your shoulders dislocate and you wind upstrung up like this. so then i started a littlefire below, toasted his behind
put a fire to his dick, then torture. still knew nothing. then he gets groggy. in those days,a single "hey" from the unit leadercalling, "over there" and a soldier brought a shovel,started digging a hole. made the prisoner sit bythe edge of that hole. next i called up a newcomer.
a quiet soldier,lily-livered kid. "time for your training." put the bayonet on his rifle, and made him chargefrom 7, 8 meters away... so the average kidjust went green got close, started shakingand couldn't stab. "do it over," i said, and made 3 soldiers charge him. the man had completelylost consciousness.
and finally, i shot him twice inthe back with my pistol dumped him in the hole, threwdirt on him and went home. in that no housing area, i took my squad andclimbed up a mountain. we saw a house in the valley. i immediately sent a runnerto my commander. "found a housein the valley." he replied my squadshould dispose of it.
so i left my squad'smain force as lookouts on the mountain, and 2 soldiers and iwent down to that house. we found 2 boys there, about 5 and 3 years old. when we entered the house, there was a really old man lying there. looking cold.
"get out!" "run!" won't budge. figured if i burned the house,he'd come out. "hey goto, bring those sorghumand millet husks in here" i ordered goto and matsui,the two soldiers. stuffed the house withsorghum and millet husks. "set it on fire!"they set it on fire. gradually starts to burn.grandpa can't move.
the two boysare sobbing trying to help their grandpa, but they're too littleto do anything. they're screaming and cryingand running around. but i knew wecouldn't leave 'em there. before long, the 8th routearmy would pass by. and we couldn't have them sayingwhat we'd done that day. i realized that we had todispose of them. "goto, matsui, youshoot 'em one each!"
and from less than10 meters away, they shot thetwo kids dead. then, soon enough... the fire spread to the roof, the roof ridge collapsed andthat old man burned to death. whenever we cameto that kind of place, we'd take back anything useful forthe japanese to use. everything else,
we searched everywhereincluding the cellar and drag out every lastthing, and burn it. pots and pans, we crushed,so they couldn't use 'em. so even if the8th route army came, they couldn'tuse any of it. in june, 1942, the japanese suffered a crushingdefeat in the battle of midway, but imperial headquartersannounced it as a huge victory, deceiving the populace.
on the chinese front, the japanese began destroyingchinese air bases south of zhejiang, in order to preventtheir use by american planes. with the u.s. counter-offensive in full swing, japan faced acute shortagesof domestic labor and raw materials. the tojo cabinet resolved to import chineselabor into the homeland, initiating compulsory seizure,or labor kidnappings.
the idea was to export chinese,their labor potential, to japan, gathering themforcibly with military troops. this was the compulsoryseizure campaign. i participated in itin the autumn of 1942, for three months fromseptember to november, in shandong province. and we were an army...the 12th army. we had supreme powerthroughout shandong... it was a 12th army operation.
i think it was calledthe togo operation. about 15,000 japanese soldiers weremobilized for the operation. koyama ichiroformer sergeant, army healthy men between 15 and 45,capable of hard labor, that's what we werelooking to capture. that's what we did. i was involved in the mountain region.
we lined up side-by-side, each about 50meters apart, so a single squad was strung out toacross 500-600 meters. then the next squad, weformed an endless line. we were consistent, hung japanese flagsfrom the ends of our rifles, we moved forward... arbitrarily grabbinganyone in sight
and shoving them into our net. if they tried to run, we'd aimour guns, to stop 'em. just our 43rd battalion alone, pulled 400 or 500chinese into a village. and we culled them down, until we had about 300 who would be of real use.that's how many we'd caught. the farmers wereespecially unfortunate, because they'd taken lunchout to their fields
and that was the last theirfamilies heard of them. vanished, like they'dbeen spirited away. i'm sure that their familieswere really desperate. we also collected lotsof cows and pigs. there must've been300 of them... in the evenings, we made the peasants, whowere chained together drag them all the wayto the station, collection points wherebox cars would arrive.
as we all marcheddown the mountain, it was truly a strange sight. along string of humanschained together. around them, japanese soldiers,bayonets ready, one soldier for 15 or 20 men, walking besidethe line of chinese and the cows andhorses shuffling along, in the midst of it all. an endless column.
all the wayup the mountain i thought,"that's quite a haul." right inside the station, which wasn'tvery big, there was a red brick warehouse, for temporaryrain storage and such. metal doors, clanged shut.just perfect... that's where we shovedour prisoners, packed them like sardines. no window or anything, a single tiny air ventin the ceiling.
that was all. the next morning,it was still pretty early, apparently the box carshad arrived. our sub-captain andthe other officers went to check... to the station. and we stayed in our quarters,we had separate quarters. the sub-captain returned.he was laughing out loud. i was wondering why,when he and the others said, "we dragged 'em all the wayhere and half of 'em goners."
then a 2nd lieutenant said, "well, ifwe don't have enough, we'll get more." i heard them talking like that. of course they hadn't fed them, given them water,or let them relieve themselves. so they had to do it inside. the fact is, they treated them justlike cows, pigs or cats. treated people justlike you'd treat animals. "half of 'em goners..."
they just started cackling... that's how careless theywere about human life. i've had to think about that... after the war, the foreignministry reported that, of the 38,935 chinesesent to japan under compulsory seizure, 6,830 died. there was awheat gathering operation. basically, weplundered wheat.
those operations were directly implementedby operatives of japanese conglomerateslike mitsui and mitsubishi. they conducted house-to-housesearches of the villages. plundered every lastgrain of wheat. well i happened upon, a grandma,an old woman... she was carryinga small bag of wheat. when i tried totake it from her,
basically, she clungto my ankles begging,"please spare my wheat. "i have an invalidi have to feed. "this is all i have,please don't take it." she clung to my ankles,crying, begging. but my ears were deaf, as faras i was concerned so i kicked her aside,kicked that grandma aside, and took her wheat. but that old ladykept following me.
so near there,in that village, there was a creek,a small marsh. i dumped her into it. there were otherslike that, too. about 20 villagers in all, i pushed 'emall into the creek and machined gunnedthem all right there. but there wasn't muchwater in that creek, it became a river of blood.
so that's how, under ordersto plunder wheat, we committed murder. on the southern front, the u.s. forcesretaliated with overwhelming strength, and the japanese forcesbegan their retreat. tojo hideki coined a new slogan, "know not the shameof being taken prisoner " the suicides committed by so manyjapanese on various pacific islands, were a tragedy for the japaneseforces, disallowed surrender. in europe, the italian flank of thetripartite pact surrendered unconditionally
japan gathered leadersof her southern territories for an east asian conference, who pledged to fight the war, and protect the eastasian co-prosperity sphere. but this was no morethan a farce, far removed from an actual war that wastilting away from japan. with the cairo declaration, the u.s.,england and china proclaimed thatthey would fight jointly for japan 'sunconditional surrender
the 8th route army made guerillaforays from liberated territories, as japanese forcesengaged in a war of attrition with the nationalists,now bolstered by the u.s. the china detachment's11th army was, mainly engaged with chiangkai-shek's nationalist army but the 39th division,in hubei province, was the force closest to the nationalist capital,chongqing. tominaga shozoformer 1st lieutenant, army
i was orderedto lead a platoon. my company commander tookme to meet my men. that's where i first set eyes on the soldiersi was to lead. was the look in their eyes.hardly human. the eyes of tigers,of panthers. they had murderous,triangular eyes. they were bravewarriors who'd been in the thick ofbattle again and again.
i had no experience at all. knew nothing of war. could i really manageto command these guys? they shook my confidencein my ability as a leader. starting the next day, the officers-in-trainingassigned to that regiment, there were 22 of us in all.from the next day, we all began a week-long trainingsession for field platoon leaders. our education began.
the last day,at the end of that week, they tested our courage, of the new officers.we had to slice the headoff a living person. 2nd lieutenant tanaka began by saying, "this is how youcut off a human head." then he showedus by example. there were 20 or so chinese prisoners, blindfoldedoff to one side.
apparently, they'd been taken in anoperation right before i arrived. stood behind, held thesword high, at an angle. all at once with a yell... the head flew 2 meters. fountains of blood spurtedfrom the carotid arteries, and then it rolled andplopped into a hole. it goes without saying,that this was a first for us. how do you say,the awfulness of it...
i saw it and was paralyzed. my body went rigid. then we had to do it,starting on the far right. i was 4th in line andit was my turn. in that moment, i thought,"can this be allowed?" after all, i'd read my kant, his critique of pure reason, andthe idea of personal responsibility, i considered myselfsomething of a humanist. and the thought "can this reallybe allowed to happen?"
crossed my mind. but if i screwed up then, i knew i'd be done for.all i had to do, was exactly whathe'd just shown us, i told myself as i walked. and that's exactly what i did,and i sliced the neck easily. in that instant, somethingthudded in my belly. something like confidence,i'm not exactly sure what. but some of the others,
there were 22 of us in all, lost their grip and onlywounded the chinese, who reeled like madmen. the officer screamed, "stab himfrom behind," but they missed. "outta the way!" then 2ndlieutenant tanaka came over, kicked him, andsliced off the head. so that's how it went on. by the time all 22 werefinished, it was a sea of blood. and finally, there wasonly one prisoner left.
tanaka looked atthe officers and said, "anyone want to volunteer?" a veteran 1st lieutenantraised his hand. he walked forward,carrying a package. apparently he'd recentlypurchased a real sword. and he wanted to try it out. his movements werean absolute picture of calm. just like a walk in the park. he undid his package
pulled out his sword,sliced, and done. watching him move,i thought i'd have gone out of my mindin his situation. but he'd pulled it off inthe most matter-of-fact way. i was really shocked. that night at roll call,i faced my men i didn't feel theslightest inferiority. nor did i see an evillook in their eyes. no doubt the moment i'dsliced off a head for myself,
my own eyes had changed. none of us saw anythingwrong with the other. and then again, thatsomething like confidence... though they werehardened warriors, i felt no tinge ofreserve or inferiority. and very soon,i found myself in battle, over and over again,commanding "charge!" the regimental commander told us the entirevillage population
was in communicationwith the enemy. thus, all guerilla troops and anypositions should be decimated. and we should kill everyone,including all women and children. remove as many materialgoods as possible, and burn all houses to the ground when we left. his direct orders frombattalion headquarters. so we drank a toastin celebration, and set out.
this village, hakuyoji, was a village ofabout 100 houses. i was leading the platoon,so i divided the 30 or so menunder me into 3 squads. and we basically aimedat small clusters, of 6 or 7 homes. we set up a machine gunat the very edge, and on my command,opened fire as they slept. there was a river and weknew they'd run to it.
that's exactlywhat we wanted. set up the machine gun,and aim for the riverbanks i ordered them to shootanyone who escaped. we split into 3 squadsand waited for dawn. and then, in the distance, almost 1,000 soldiers surrounded the village,and i heard shots everywhere. looking down from a low hill, i saw an old woman with bound feet,struggling along the riverbank,
alongside old menfleeing with children. i saw some men watching,obviously bewildered and then someone ordered"shoot 'em on the riverbanks!" so then they started withthe machine guns, rata tat tat. must've killed 30 of 'em there. by the time this had goneon for 30 or 40 minutes, impatient guys startedsetting fire to thatched roofs and you could seesmoke rising all around. figuring things weremore or less taken care of,
my aide and i entereda large house. i went in and founda young woman, lying down in bed,shivering. one look and it wasobvious she was sick. the instant my aideand i entered, her father, a peasant... tried to shield the bedwith his body. as soon as i entered... her father, bowed down onhis hands and knees before me,
and putting hishead to the ground, said, "taijin, big man,please spare us. "my daughter is sick. "please spare mydaughter her life. "i'll do whateveryou wish, please." damn, the more he apologized, the more we felt wewere being humiliated. i thought howdare they insult us. i said, to my aide,"these peasants
"are also defying japan. "start by stabbing that woman. "don't waste the bullet.stab her to death without shooting! “hurry! stab her, kill her!“ i started screaming,and just then, her father, the peasant, starts hanging onto my ankles. just as i said, "how dare you!" bang!
there was a single shot. smoke spread throughout the tiny room. i'd shot the sick daughter before her own father's eyes. as soon as that was done,i said, "bring him over here." and so, my aide and i, dragged the peasantby his arms and took him outside.
other squadshad dragged others outside, maybe 5 or 6 of them. we strung the chinesepeasants together with rope, including the mani'd brought out, and then took the pigs and chickensthat the soldiers had killed, pigs dripping blood,their guts ripped open, and sacks of grains, and loaded them onto thepeasants' shoulders and backs.
"burn it all!"at my command, they set the whole placeon fire, including the woman i'd killed.we burned her, before her father's eyes. as a result,the entire battalion, wound up killing 200 andsome or so people. all of them innocent peasants, women and children. it was special forces,volunteer forces
special operations, really. we concealed our japanesemilitary affiliation, no loincloth. not even a pencil, made-in-japan.grow out your hair. and when necessary, we wore uniforms identical tothe chinese nationalists' and returned to set fires... kubota tetsujiformer sergeant major, army when we infiltrated the chineseas spies, it was scary. in such cases, when we stoppedin a village to rest,
there were still villagers... who'd serve tea and thank us,'cause of our uniforms. but when we left, we'd kill about 5 older men. we couldn't fire guns, right? we'd stab 'emthere'd be blood... threw 'em down a well. i was the officer-in-charge. i watched it all, those things.
all i cared about was my own life. i didn't even think about those villagers' lives. ...we'd lost 3 japanese, and 1 wounded,was the message. within a week, we'd arrested 5 people wefigured had information. tortured them thoroughly. an officer fromthe medics corps
experimented withshooting air into their veins to see how long they'd last. we did that. we needed an order from the battalion commanderfor vivisections. but you know, lowerofficers took over, just lost control,and did those anyway. even i could see thepurple lumps, surging from their armsacross their bodies.
"not dead yet, not dead yet." really, purple clumps surgingthrough their flesh yet they don't die. i thought, "well, even "if a doctor gets oxygenin a vein, it doesn't kill..." but finally,he just wouldn't die, so we dug a holeand killed him. the other 3...there were 5, sent 1 to headquarters.the other 4, we vivisected 1 . the rest, we made 'emdig their own graves,
and stood 'em in front. and you know, someofficers never killed anyone. "you kill 'em." "i don't want to.""you're gutless." "i'll kill 'em," saysa veteran and he does. "you're next," like that. give 'em a smokebefore they kill... but you know... peasants always beggedfor their lives 'til the end.
but i...i'd have my rifle aimed, to be sure theydidn't escape. ...yeah, that petty officer andthe officer are both still alive. "you killed 'em right?""yeah, what else could i do?" a company commanderon the banks killed 4 or 5. on the banks of the yangtze river,concealed from the houses there. kill 'em and into the river... that unit, where our machine guncompany #1 was stationed,
was even nicknamedunit murder. especially during my daysin charge of information... we abused pows,civilians, that is. even if we tortured them, they rarely ever confessed. of course, i never knewwhether or not they were really spies. don't know,so they can't talk.
looking back, i assumethat was mostly the case. no matter howwe tortured them they never said a word. if anything, they becamemore defiant. we kept them in thereover a month. but even then,they wouldn't crack. well, finally, i'dreally had it. i had already, beheaded several men...
so everyone gathered tosee me demonstrate. all of them watching. at the time, i wasactually bragging. "see a kendo - fencingmaster wield a sword. "it's not justany old beheading. "my technique is different. "i leave a layer of skinat the throat, "that's how a master does it,"because i was 4th rank. "now watch."
i strike a single blow, but then i holdmy strength. and in a flash, the head is severed... and dangles forward. and then the bloodgushes, spewing up almost 15 cmand he stops breathing. then i kick... the head into the waiting hole.
"did you see that?" i was so proud of myself. so i went homeafter that beheading. that night, i have to say, i didn't feel that great. i went out drinkingto dispel my gloom. i don't know whatkind of phenomenon it is, but i had nightmares about itfor the longest time. after i got married, my wife said“you cry out in your sleep.“
in the past few years, i haven't had them so often. maybe i'm getting older. i'm not sure,but in the nightmares, i'm being chased,or something like that. we were sent to gather supplies. mainly we were plundering kobayashi takeshiformer corporal, armymainly we were plundering kobayashi takeshiformer corporal, army
kobayashi takeshiformer corporal, armybut we had to get ridof the villagers. set up 2 machine guns,and shot 'em. shot 'em and checked thatthey'd all run away. "good, time for us to get ours." it was every man for himself. this was a large walled village. there wasa lance corporal murakami. we were always togetheron these plundering missions, never apart
he'd always grab me,"let's go together." so we went, and we entered whatwas a big house. and there was an old man in his 70s, lying down. lying on his bed a young woman near him. she was about 20 years old. so he says,
"hey, kobayashi, lookslike we found ourselves "some nice booty."this is great. and underneath the bed,they had some eggs. so the girl gets these eggs out. she must've been saving themfor her father, i guess. she gets them out, "takethese, but please spare us." "please spare my father." lance corporal murakamithrows the eggs away, and says, "do somethingabout this father,"
like it was an order, so at first... i started peeling off the covers, but that girl won't, she keeps covering him, she kept holding on to him. so finally, i just had to kick her aside. and then i draggedher father off the bed,
dragged him down. over in china, they mostlyhad dirt floors. so i poundedhim against that. and kicked him and all, and just killed him like that. and so, now that she was all alone,lance corporal murakami went in, and raped her. "hey, kobayashi,now it's your turn."
so i went in, and i raped her too. and then... as we left, that girl came flying out and seeing her father, she screamed,"japanese guizi devils! "unforgivable!" i didn't really understand,
but her whole appearance was pretty awful. i couldn't stand it and justflew out of there. but if i hadn't donethat sort of thing, i couldn't have beenpart of the group. it was just...it was like a... see a woman, can't rape her. see someone, can't kill. can't just steal things.
they shunned you. even your best buddies,wouldn't even look at you. chinese returnees journal -former war criminals murder, plunder and arson. you could say you wereordered to do it. but when it came to rape, youcan't say you had orders. it happened during the war, it was a problem thatcame up all the time, but you can't blame iton superior's orders.
if you confessed to it, you felt you had to takepersonal responsibility for it. i've told other people abouteverything else but this story... i've never told anyone. when i wrote my experiencesin that journal, my wife didn't evenknow about it. she didn't say anything... it's very difficultto speak publicly...
about this sort of thing... the veterans loved to rape.we always looked for women. we'd chase women downinstead of enemy soldiers. we'd enter a house,and behind closed doors... and when we went,it was always in pairs. while one did it, the other was outside,keeping watch. making sure nobody came. they'd take turns doing it.
way at the back ofthe house was a woman, sitting, hugginga 4 year old child. so the veteran said, "kaneko, go stand guard." i went outside.then from inside, i heard the woman screamingand crying... i heard the veteran shouting.in a little while, the veteran came out,dragging the woman by her hair. i asked what had happened,
"this damned bitch,won't let me do it," he says. "i'm gonna kill her, come on." still holding her by the hair,he dragged her away. a little ways ahead wasa public square with a well. he said, "grab her legs." so i grabbed her legs,and the veteran pushed her back againstthe edge of the well. i lifted her legs and splash,dumped her in. but there was a child, we'dcompletely forgotten about.
it was crying,“mama, mama,“ circling aroundand around the well. but it's so short, it can'tsee over the edge. the child goes home,returns dragging a chair, a box gets up on the box, and looks in the well.don't know what it saw, but without a single "mama,"it jumped, and splashed tothe bottom of the well. when we saw that,even we were shocked.
"we can't just leave 'em that way,throw in a grenade." so i threw a grenadeinto the well. now that i've had children, and even havegrandchildren, and they get to be that age,the memory always comes back. of course it was terribly cruel. how can i express it...it's always stayed with me. when we came to a village,
first, the veterans lookedfor women and gathered them in one place. and when night fell,we'd sneak visits. 7 or 8 soldiers wouldgang rape 1 woman. that's what we did and the companycommander looked the other way. pretended not to see. as far as i know,no one was ever sent to military court for rape. company commanders neversaid a word, ignored it.
would've damagedtheir own records. and we all knew that. so out on a campaign, wegot as much as we wanted. so looking back, our seeds werein a whole lot of women. that's something i feel,frankly speaking. all soldiers do it. anyone says he didn'tis lying, i think. you could die any time. young soldiers, maybe 22, 23.
even the older ones,sergeants are 24, 25. so you see a young woman,you rape her. so whenever wewent on a campaign, to this village or that,everybody did it. you see, rape is... how do you sayunder military code, rape on the battle fieldgets you the firing squad. that's the law. so you couldn't do it openly.
everybody hid it. and after you'd raped, you couldn't walk away,'cause word might spread. so you killed 'em right there.erased the proof. everybody did it. after you raped,you killed everyone. the china detachment begandestroying chinese air force bases to prevent u.s. bomber raids, initiated a massive,continental campaign for control
of the beijing-indiasupply line, but failed to captureany territories. at the same time,on the southern front, where air and navalforces succumbed to u.s. strength, suicides became common among theisolated japanese troops. taking responsibility for the lossof saipan, tojo's cabinet resigned. japanese forces were leftwith only one strategy against the u.s.the suicide bombing squads, which utterly discountedhuman life.
japanese forces in china sacrificedair supremacy to china and the u.s., and were collapsing againstchiang kai-shek's successful alliances with the greatwestern powers and mao tse-tung'spersistent strategy of enveloping japanese forces inthe sea of the chinese people. with an american invasionof china imminent, the china detachment beganbolstering anti- u.s. positions and embarked on a campaign towipe out the 8th route army there were 40 peasantswho'd failed to escape,
and wound upwith our battalion. of those, there were 30 men, who we spread outamong our 7 companies. for inspection. 4 men were assigned to us. at the time i was a novice,an assistant instructor. "i'm a peasant,please don't kill me." they all made thisdesperate plea. there was one boy with them,he was 14 or 15 years old.
he really affected me. he said, "only my motherand i are left..." "please let me go home... "don't kill me." as it happened,my own mother... was almost 70... and she lived all alone. that's why,
his words, really... pierced my heart however,i was incapable of granting his plea. injustice, things not being just, is always a part of war. i couldn't do a thing. that's what i kepttelling myself. and i turned all 4 menover to our utility men,
whose job it wasto tie them to stakes. a machine gun companyis different from a regular rifle company. rifle men attachthe bayonet to their guns. but we couldn't do that. no such thing ina machine gun company. we just had a smallbayonet on our belts. that's what we charged with.that's how we stabbed. so, on the commandof "charge!" we drew,
and everybody rushedforward like madmen, but then they stopped. couldn't stab, andmost stopped. "idiots! charge the enemy!" at the instructor's voice,they started again, but those bayonets were tough too high, too low,off to the side, and the instructor pointed toany actual wounds and said, "that's right! done."
and finally the first 4 soldiersfinished, then the next batch did the exact same thing. repeated the samething, 7 or 8 times. and then thelesson was over. but afterwards... i had no idea human intestineswere so incredibly long. all 4 of the chinesewere dead, their entrails hungall the way to the ground. that night, they gave
us all liquor in celebration. the rookies had passedinspection. all the veterans were saying,"congratulations, congratulations. "finally, you men havebecome real soldiers," and slapped them on theirshoulders and whatnot. but the kids all lookedlike death warmed over. the dark mood hung on... land-mine sweeping... making chinese peasantssweep for landmines was...
at the time we calledchinese "coolies," like the bearers who carriedprovisions and whatnot. coolie means strength to suffer. and regardless of the operation with the japanese army, you went to the labor bureau, and ordered them to assemble x number of cooliesby a certain time. the labor bureau
would allocate a certainnumber per village, and assemble them. ...they'd rounded upabout 100. and those peasants,the coolies, either carried the loads themselves orbrought donkeys if they had them. they loaded the provisionsonto the donkeys but they were the first to hit the mines. the roads were mined, so wewere ordered to use the fields but even when we walked there,a soldier hit a mine.
so what thecommander decided was to make the chinese, who had beencarrying our provisions, some of them, carrydouble loads... and put 20 of themin front of us. he lined them up in a singlerow across, ahead of us, followed by several japanese guardsarmed with rifles to prevent escape. unbelievable. we used live civiliansas mine sweepers.
we made them step on mines. well, after that there weren'tany more japanese casualties... there weren't... but among the 20who walked ahead, as i remember, about 4 or 5were blown up or wounded or died. if one of them was wounded,we'd dump them there, keep moving forward. never mind the dead,keep moving.
that's the sort of thing we did. we captured chinesewho hadn't escaped, or we'd found in the fields, and used them as coolies. and we used themthroughout an operation, but the chinese assumed they'd be set free whenthe operation was over. they'd stuck it out, desperate,waiting to be freed. but when the operation's aboutto reach its destination,
it occurs to our menwe can't set them free, they could give awayour positions. i happened to bein battalion hq then. and the company commanders allasked the battalion commander what to do with allthe prisoners, the coolies. "go ahead and dispose ofthem as you see fit," the commander said. "as you see fit." well that meant dowhat we always did.
so the company runnerstook their orders back. that night, as i walkeddown the road, i heard pounding feet,lots of yelling, and bloodcurdling screams. they were killing about50 or 60 men at once. unbelievably brutal... what they did... the next morning i noticed, the pond had gone red.
corpses floating... we left them there,and moved on... at the time,i was totally numb. i just thought,"they're at it again." "oh, man..." the u.s. steps up its bombingof the japanese mainland. japanese forces commitsuicide on iwo jima. u.s. forces begin landingoperations on okinawa. in the european theatre,germany surrenders to the allies.
with the landing of u.s. forces onthe japanese mainland inevitable, the military continues to pin itshopes on a final battle, intoning, "imperial country fight to the death“"100 million suicides" the soldiers ofthe china detachment, unaware of straitenedcircumstances at home, continued to wagetheir campaign. what was awful was.. that for amonth-long operation, we had only 2 days'worth of rations...
in our backpacks. "procure the rest locally." well, procure the rest locally,meant grab it where you can. you stayed in civilian homes. in summer, you just threw them out.tossed the owners outdoors. and in china, there wasn'tmuch to burn. so you smashedall their furniture. smashed it and cookedrice over it. and in the summer,
we'd boil water anddump it in a huge pot and take baths. smashing all their furnitureto build our fires. and in winter, well,we'd throw them all outdoors and keep fires all night long,in the middle of the floor surrounded with bricks,cooked rice. made a hole in the rooffor a chimney. otherwise smokefilled the house. once we entered a village,
we'd kill the pigs, the chickens,eat all the vegetables. a whole battalionis about 1,000 men. 1,000 soldiers all takingover a village like that. we'd wipe it out. apparently it took a village8 years to recover economically. let's see, our detachment wasstationed there about 2 weeks. and because of that therewas no more meat to be found. and then, one day... in the 1st company...
we heard a rumor thatsomeone had eaten human flesh. hadn't had any meat forever. none to be found.no vegetables in the villages either. but you see, strange as it sounds,there was a young woman. no one else was around, i was the only one there,so i raped her. and after i did her,i killed her.
it occurred to me then, there's no meat,i'll give them this meat. i was sergeant major then, and was in charge of thecompany mess. so i figured i'd hand thismeat out to them. as soon as i thought of iti killed her. every village has cleavers. so i cut it up, just taking the bestpans of her meat.
i did it on my own, and afterwardsreported to the company commander. i said, "this isn't pork." told him exactlyhow and why... it was human meat. told him to make upa company report make it up as meat sentby the battalion hq, that we were feeding the men. the company commandersaid nothing. i'd taught himeverything he knew.
i'd taught him, he'd justturned 1st lieutenant. there weren't any officers. finished officer candidate schooland became company commander. he'd been at war 3 years. i was in my 6th year. company commanderwas speechless. just kept saying"yes, yes." so we called over allthe units' kp guys, told 'em we'd gottenmeat from battalion hq.
handed it all out there. everybody was surehappy to have it. nobody'd eaten meat inover 2 weeks, after all. it tasted...tasted better than pork... japan ignoredthe potsdam declaration, intended to provide a finalopportunity for surrender, but on august 15, 1945,after the atomic bombs hit hiroshima and nagasakiand the soviets entered the war against japan,japan accepted
the potsdam declaration,accepting unconditional surrender 575,000 of the japanesesoldiers who were in china when japan surrendered were interned insiberia and assigned hard labor by the soviets. 55,000 of them died therewithout repatriation. in china, the nationalists andcommunists fought 4 more years, before the victoriouspeople's liberation army established the people'srepublic of china,
in october of 1949. in july, 1950, the soviets turned over 969 of the japanesesoldiers still held in siberia to the people's republic asanti-chinese war criminals, and held them in the war criminalsadministration in liaoning province. another 140 japanese soldiers, who stayed on after the defeat and joinedthe nationalist fight against liberation forces in shanxiwere confined
under the shanxi warcriminals administration. the 14 witnesses in this film, were among thoseheld in those facilities. following chou en-lai's motto"even war criminals are human, “respect their humanity,“the newly created people's republic gave these war criminalshumane treatment. staff at both facilities overcametheir personal enmity any corporal punishmentor verbal abuse was forbidden,
and prisoners were treatedwith extraordinary warmth and humanityin every way, from food, medical care andexercise, to education, and culture. the war criminals, who hadexpected severe punishment, were both profoundly movedand remorseful. their treatment eventuallyawakened their own consciences. they acknowledged theircrimes during the occupation and apologized tothe chinese people. in june, 1956, after six years ofconfinement in china,
a special militarytribunal was convened under the supreme courtof the people's republic;. of the 1,062 japanese held,only 45 were indicted. those who'd died or committedsuicide were excluded. tearing a babyfrom its mother's womb, suzuki hirakuformer lieutenant general, armytearing a babyfrom its mother's womb, suzuki hirakuformer lieutenant general, army suzuki hirakuformer lieutenant general, armyi dashed it against the ground. slashing a pregnant mother's womb,burying alive...
throwing grass on top, to burn to death... and using all manner of weapons,rifles, machine guns, i deceived allthe villagers at once, and victimized so many,a total of 1,280 or more, peaceful citizens,in the three all campaign. i killed approximately 119 fujita shigerulieutenant general, armyi killed approximately 119 fujita shigerulieutenant general, army
fujita shigerulieutenant general, armyrightful chinese citizens, fuji ta shigerulieutenant general, armyand 12 prisoners. and 12 prisoners. i also acknowledgethat i burned down approximately 100civilian homes. i am now painfully aware of how brutalmy deeds were, how bereft ofhumanity i was. my acts trulydeserve your enmity.
i committed grave crimes. i await and accept the severe sentenceof the chinese people. nagatomi hakudoformer sergeant, armyi commanded aspecial plot information unit i commanded aspecial plot information unit in shanxi province alone, i killed 130 people capturing chinese peopleand killing them all. when i found houses,i burned them.
when i found animals,horses, cows, i plundered, seizing themfor our army they called me, the king of hell. that's what they called me. that's how manyheads i severed. when i captured2 young ladies, they asked me to spare them, i assumed they werefemale spies for
the 8th route army, i made them diggraves in a field, and buried them both alive, covering them with dirt.though both young ladies, clasped their hands and begged, i smothered them with dirt, burying them alive. also, i threw a maninto a burning house,
just like that, burning him alive. the moment his head caught fire, he died. the suffering ofthe chinese people, must have beenso terrible. it is beyond my imagining. i attacked with machineguns and rifles,
wounding, but not killing at once. if they didnot die at once, but were wounded,wounds... they cried "help, help" but no one helped them. "father, mother." their suffering,their sadness. what it must have been like.
none sentenced to deathor life imprisonment, their terms ran 8 to 20 years, including all previousconfinement. most were released beforeserving their full terms. the other 1,017 war criminals were treated generously,spared any indictment and rapidly released, betweenjune and august of 1956. eleven years after defeat, they were allowed toreturn to japan, their home.
when they returnedto japan in 1956, the government had announcedeconomic expansion and modernization. the popular slogan was,"the postwar is over!' but upon their return,they were greeted by suspicion that they hadbeen brainwashed by communists. under secret police surveillance, they encountered many obstacles and taunts asthey searched for jobs. war exhibition for peace
did the chinese do thisto the japanese? no, they didn't. they didn't? i was able to kill people asthough it didn't mean a thing. it's as though every partof me was soiled, unclean. i became a vile human. i truly sank tothe level of a brutish fiend. when you returned to japan, youwere accused of being brainwashed. when you returnedhow were you welcomed
by your family, community? how did they treat you? i should've just said,"thanks to you, i'm finally home." instead i said, "i'm a person whodid terrible things. "thanks to china,i'm back home. "i'm grateful to china."that's what i told them. and that was the problem. they decided that i hadbeen brainwashed in china.
that's what they thought. so no matter how hardi looked for work, i couldn't findany jobs. no one would hire me. i had no choice butto start as a milkman. but not a single familywould accept my milk deliveries. "5 years in the soviet union,6 in china, "11 years with the reds, "he must be a terrible red.
"can't be seen with a red." the first time my memoirs were published in "invasion," my wife read them... she was shockedout of her skin. "so this is whatyou did over there." nobody back here had a clue, that the imperial armywas killing civilians over there. they all believed we'd beenoff fighting a just war.
that we'd faced the enemy, been lucky to liveand come home. and she asked me,why i had to speak out. no matter what happened, if i'd just kept my mouth shut...why'd i have to go blabbing things that brought shame on me. my wife couldn'tunderstand that. the true face of war... saying truthfullywhat i've done,
is what tellingthe real truth means. no matter how shameful itis for me, i have to admit it. otherwise, my wordshave no meaning. lately, she seemsto understand, but she sure didn't at first... we doctors, and our nurses, we justified it as orders. if we didn't do it, we'd bepunished for disobeying. we didn't haveeven a shred of guilt.
thought it was unavoidable. but no one said a word.that was the problem. it was war, after all, andmany things happened. but nobody said a word. this is also true... of the murder,rape, plunder, all the terrible things that all the otherjapanese soldiers did. couldn't talk, wouldn't talk.
still a million peoplelike that still alive today. do their consciencestorment them? i wonder what they think... when we were leaving,our chinese teacher told us, "go home and makefine families, have children. "make fine families... "but don't ever pick up a rifleand invade china again... "never again." i am now 80 years old,
for the rest of my days, i will talk about the war,the war of invasion, i will bear witness, with as much detail as possible,to the younger generation i'll say, "this was the war." forget theoretical conceptsof wars and other wars... this is what actually happened. i must find a way to tellthe younger generations, that we must never commitsuch transgressions again.
that's the very least i cando to atone for my sins. it is impossible to modifyor deny the past.however, those who close their eyesto the past are blind to the present.whoever refusesto remember the inhumanityis prone to new risks of infection.- richard von weizsã©icker the witnesses:tsuchiya yoshioformer 2nd lieutenant, mpnagatomi hakudoformer sergeant, armyshinozuka yoshioformer corporal, armyebato tsuyoshiformer sergeant, army funyu taisukeformer sergeant major, armyshikada masaoformer 2nd lieutenant, armysuzuki yoshioformer sergeant major, armykaneko yasujiformer corporal, armyenomoto masayoformer sergeant major, army yuasa kenformer 1st lieutenantarmy medical corpskoyama ichiroformer sergeant, armytominaga shozoformer 1st lieutenant, armykubota tetsujiformer sergeant major, armykobayashi takeshiformer corporal, army staffcamera, sound:oguri ken'ichimusic:sato ryosukeassistant to the director:hanai hiromifilm development:yokocine d.l.a. the producers wish to thank:chugoku kikansya renrakukaithe organization of prisoners of warthe organization to document huludaodirectors system co., ltd.aihara hiromi foundation "umverteilen!" berlinsumoto yukiko-schwanrubelt-medien, dr. ortdud rubeltd.net.sales producers:matsui minoruoguri ken'ichiwritten, edited, directed by:matsui minoruproduced by:the riben guizi productioncommittee
english subtitles by:linda hoaglund