Title The making of Karafuto repatriates Author(s) BULL, JONATHAN EDWARD Citation 北海道大学. 博士(法学) 甲第11184号 Issue Date 2014-03-25 DOI 10.14943/doctoral.k11184 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/55427 Type theses (doctoral) File Information JONATHAN_EDWARD_BULL.pdf Instructions for use Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers : HUSCAP 論 文 目 録 学位論文 題目：The making of Karafuto repatriates （日本語訳：樺太引揚者のイメージの形成） 冊数 3 冊 学位申請者 印 博士（法学）ブル・ジョナサン 学位論文題名 The making of Karafuto repatriates （日本語訳：樺太引揚者のイメージの形成） 学位論文内容の要旨 This dissertation examines the mechanisms through which Karafuto repatriates were constructed in the early period of the post-war. Existing research has focussed on the meaning of repatriates for Japan’s decolonization after 1945 and the difference between “repatriate” and “official” narratives of the former empire and its collapse in August 1945. By concentrating on Japanese repatriates who moved from Karafuto to Hokkaido, this dissertation moves away from other research which is overwhelmingly based on the example of Japanese who were in Manchuria. The time period chosen for analysis also includes the pre-war and wartime to place repatriates within a “trans-war” context. In the early years of the post-war, many repatriate groups were formed. Previous research has viewed these as an expression of the growth of civil society in the wake of the Occupation’s reforms to Japanese society. However, in the case of repatriates from Karafuto, many of the groups which formed in Hokkaido were dominated by “men of influence” from pre-war and wartime society. Their status in Karafuto society was what qualified them to take on positions of responsibility in the post-war. Repatriate groups were, therefore, less an expression of popular democracy than another example of the “passage through” to the post-war of wartime elites. The origins of repatriate groups such as Zenkoku Karafuto Renmei show that they were closely tied to the State. Previous research has argued that, on the subject of the former empire, the Japanese government was largely silent until the 1980s. By following the activities of repatriate groups in building monuments and writing histories, this dissertation argues that the State was influential in the construction of public narratives about the former empire during the first three decades of the post-war. Previously described as “repatriate activists”, the men who played influential roles in repatriate groups can be better understood as “semi-officials” who worked closely with government officials and politicians. One consequence of the actions of repatriate groups was the co-opting of dissonant narratives. The success with which alternative views of the end of the empire were incorporated into the narrative of the Karafuto repatriate (but before the boom in jibunshi writing in the late-1970s) has led to the misleading view that Japanese existed (and still largely exist) in a culture of silence and denial about the former empire. During the 1950s and 1960s alternative interpretations did exist but the influence of repatriate groups and the semi-officials who led them meant that they found increasingly less expression in public narratives. This was the foundation upon which the thousands of “self-histories” about the empire were later written. Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................... 2 Chapter 1 – Pre-war and Wartime Karafuto ................................................................ 52 Chapter 2 – Repatriate groups .................................................................................. 118 Chapter 3 – The Occupation ..................................................................................... 178 Chapter 4 – Interpretations of Karafuto ..................................................................... 252 Chapter 5 – Monuments of Karafuto ......................................................................... 300 Chapter 6 – Histories of Karafuto .............................................................................. 335 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 379 Works cited ............................................................................................................... 397 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... 418 Introduction The 48th floor of the Sumitomo Building in Tokyo’s “skyscraper district” of Shinjuku is the unlikely site for the Heiwa kinen tenji shiryō kan （平和祈念展示資料館・Museum for Peace and Reconciliation）. Opened in 2000, the museum collects oral history interviews and publishes materials about repatriates, Siberian detainees and veterans whose service was not long enough for them to qualify for a military pension. According to the museum’s website, a repatriate is someone who “at the end of the Second World War was living abroad and who had to return to the homeland. Facing great danger, they left all of their possessions behind and, experiencing great hardship, they aimed for the homeland. During repatriation many of them died.”1 Run by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the museum shows how the Japanese government commemorates the history of repatriates. 1 Heiwa kinen tenji shiryō kan (Sōmu shō itaku), "Heiwa Kinen Tenji Shiryōkan to wa," Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, http://www.heiwakinen.jp/taisen/hikiage.html (accessed 22nd September 2013). 2 Within the academic literature, the subjects of repatriates and repatriation have, since the 1990s, received increased attention. The basic statistics of the population movement after the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945 give an indication of the scale of what happened. In August 1945 there were approximately 3.5 million Japanese civilians living in the colonies and occupied territories of the empire. Added to this number were 3.2 million Japanese soldiers. These 6.7 million represented 9% of Japan’s population of 72 million. However, the mass movement of people was not restricted to Japanese but also included Koreans and Taiwanese. As Imperial subjects, some had chosen to move and others had been forcibly moved to Japan prior to 1945. After the empire collapsed, many of these people sought to leave Japan. About 1.6 million left Japan as “returnees” (送還者・帰国者) after August 1945. In addition, a further 1 million people are thought to have moved between Northeast China (Manchuria) and Korea shortly after Japan’s defeat. Therefore, in total, after the 3 collapse of the empire, 9 million people had moved within the space of a few years.2 As a population transfer resulting from decolonization, this was one of the largest movements in the 20th century. The remainder of this introduction will analyse the most important literature on repatriates and the collapse of the Japanese Empire. This is followed by a brief introduction to some of the research that exists on population movements in other parts of the world. The final section will outline the problem and approach of this dissertation. English language literature Only in the last few years has a book-length study of repatriates been published. Prior to this, two of the most famous scholars on Japanese history – John Dower and Andrew 2 Araragi Shinzō, "Ima, Teikoku hōkai to hito no saiidō o tō," in Teikoku hōkai to hito no saiidō - hikiage, sōkan, soshite zanryū, ed. Araragi (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2011), 6. 4 Gordon – had highlighted the subject as being one worthy of investigation.3 In 2009 two books appeared which took contrasting approaches. The following section will outline the argument of these important works and then suggest which areas require further research. When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan. By Lori Watt (2009) Watt’s book tries to answer the question of “what happened to a people mobilized for empire after the failure of the colonial project”?4 Her thesis is that the distinction that existed between Japanese during the time of empire as “gaichi no hito” (literally “a 3 John Dower, Embracing Defeat - Japan in the Aftermath of World War II (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 50; Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 230. 4 Lori Watt, When Empire Comes Home (Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 17. 5 person from the outer territories”) and “naichi no hito” (literally “a person from the inner territories”) transformed after August 1945 into “repatriates” (hikiagesha) and “ordinary Japanese” (ippan no Nihonjin). Japanese who had been living in the colonies and occupied territories were described as repatriates and this stigmatized them in post-war society. This stigmatization allowed metropolitan Japanese to distance themselves from the failed colonial project. In effect, repatriates became scapegoats for Japan’s imperial misadventures. The category of repatriate then became a term which could be associated with various post-war anxieties such as the contamination of Japanese women by foreigners and the indoctrination of Japanese men by communism. As such, the figure of the repatriate became an “internal other” against which “Japanese-ness” could be defined. The stigmatization of repatriates was shown to have ended by the 1980s when Chūgoku zanryū koji began to arrive in Japan. Instead of being called repatriates they were referred to using the