Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950-1975

Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 This book comprehensively charts the discovery and repatriation between 1950 and 1975, of so-called ‘stragglers’ – Japanese soldiers who had remained in hiding overseas, unwilling to believe the war was over – still fighting the Second World War on the edges of former battlefields in South-East Asia and the Pacific. It explores their return to Japan and their impact on the Japanese people, revealing changing attitudes to war veterans and war casualties’ families, as well as the ambivalence of memories of the war. Beatrice Trefalt lectures in East Asian History in the School of Liberal Arts, University of Newcastle, New South Wales. RoutledgeCurzon Studies in the Modern History of Asia 1 The Police in Occupation Japan Control, corruption and resistance to reform Christopher Aldous 2 Chinese Workers A new history Jackie Sheehan 3 The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya 4 The Australia–Japan Political Alignment 1952 to the present Alan Rix 5 Japan and Singapore in the World Economy Japan’s economic advance into Singapore, 1870–1965 Shimizu Hiroshi and Hirakawa Hitoshi 6 The Triads as Business Yiu Kong Chu 7 Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism A-chin Hsiau 8 Religion and Nationalism in India The case of the Punjab Harnik Deol 9 Japanese Industrialisation Historical and cultural perspectives Ian Inkster 10 War and Nationalism in China 1925–1945 Hans J. van de Ven 11 Hong Kong in Transition One country, two systems edited by Robert Ash, Peter Ferdinand, Brian Book and Robin Porter 12 Japan’s Postwar Economic Recovery and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1948–1962 Noriko Yokoi 13 Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 Beatrice Trefalt Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 Beatrice Trefalt First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. # 2003 Beatrice Trefalt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-48047-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-33754-9 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–31218–3 (Print Edition) For Evi and Hans-Peter Trefalt Contents List of illustrations viii Acknowledgements ix Notes on the text xi Introduction 1 1 The shared past: mobilisation for war 13 2 Creating stragglers: demobilisation, 1945–1950 24 3 ‘Five years on mice and potatoes’: exotic stragglers, 1950–1952 49 4 ‘Living spirits of the war dead’, 1954–1956 69 5 ‘But they are not gorillas’, 1959–1960 88 6 The past in the present: Yokoi Sho¯ichi returns from Guam, 1972 111 7 ‘In the jungle, the war was still going on’: Kozuka Kinshichi, Onoda Hiro¯ and the last of Lubang, 1972–1974 136 8 Nakamura Teruo: the last straggler and the issue of imperialism 160 Conclusion 179 Appendix: number and provenance of repatriates to Japan, 1945–1995 191 Notes 194 Bibliography 220 Index 236 Illustrations Figures 5.1 Cartoon by Kato¯ Yoshiro¯. Mainichi shimbun, 22 February 1959 101 5.2 Cartoon by Nasu Ryo¯suke, Mainichi shimbun, 1 March 1959 102 6.1 Shu¯kan sankei, title page and advertisement, 26 February 1972 114 6.2 Cartoon by Iwamoto Kyu¯soku, Shu¯kan yomiuri, 12 February 1972 130 6.3 Cartoon by Akiyoshi Kaoru, Yomiuri shimbun, 27 January 1972 132 7.1 Cartoon by Sato¯ Sanpei, Asahi shimbun, 23 October 1972 144 7.2 Yazaki Corporation advertisements, Bungei shunju¯, May 1974 148 7.3 Cartoon by Kato¯ Yoshiro¯, Shu¯kan asahi, 22 March 1974 151 8.1 Artist’s impression of ‘Nakamura City’, Sandee mainichi, 19 January 1975 162 Tables 2.1 Distribution of Japanese Army personnel in August 1945 26 2.2 Distribution of Japanese Navy personnel in August 1945 26 6.1 Opinion poll published by Sankei shimbun, 1 February 1972 131 Acknowledgements My greatest debt of gratitude goes to Dr Sandra Wilson, who supervised the doctoral thesis on which this book is based and continues to be an indispensable mentor. Without her encouragement I would not have embarked on this project, and without her expertise, advice, support, good humour and endless patience I would not have been able to complete it. Stephen Large, Michael Weiner and Kerry Smith provided useful comments and encouragement at a crucial juncture of this project, and I am grateful for their help. I have also benefited from the help of numerous institutions and individuals. The Australian government supported the research in its early stages with a postgraduate award, and the Japanese government provided me with the opportunity and funding to conduct extended research in Japan. I am grateful to Professor Banno Junji and staff at Tokyo University for providing advice and affiliation during my stay in Japan, and to Professor Yoshida Yutaka at Hitotsubashi for his generous help. I would also like to thank the Australian War Memorial and its staff for providing me with a scholarship in the early days of this project, and for opening my eyes to issues of memory and commemoration. I would like to thank, for their permission to reprint cartoons, the artists Iwamoto Kyu¯soku, Kato¯ Yoshiro¯ and Sato¯ Sanpei and the estates of Akiyoshi Kaoru and Nasu Ryo¯suke. I also thank To¯yo¯ Yu¯sen and Shu¯kan sankei for letting me reprint a title page and an advertisement in Chapter 6, the Yazaki Corporation for permission to reproduce the advertisements in Chapter 7, and the Mainichi shimbun for permission to reproduce the drawing in Chapter 8. I am particularly grateful to Nakayama Tsunenori at the Asahi shimbun for his generous help in locating copyright holders. There is not enough space here to acknowledge individually the many people whose encouragement and assistance at various stages made the completion of the project possible. I am thankful to the staff and my felow students in the History Department at La Trobe University (Melbourne) and the School of Asian Studies at Murdoch University (Perth) for providing inspiring and supportive study environments. I am also grateful to my colleagues and students in the School of Liberal Arts at the University of Newcastle. The members of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia and of the Australia–Japan Research Project at the Australian War Memorial have been generous with comments and x Acknowledgements suggestions. Thank you also to the staff at the Australian National Library in Canberra and at the National Diet Library in Tokyo. Finally, I wish to thank friends in Melbourne, Tokyo, Perth and Newcastle, and my family and friends in Switzerland, for their unfailing support and encouragement. Notes on the text Japanese names are given in accordance with national custom, with the surname first, except in the cases of authors writing in English who choose to reverse the order. Macrons have not been used in the case of well-known place names such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and Hokkaido. Introduction Much is remembered about the past, and more is forgotten. Debate about what must be remembered – and what can be forgotten – is an integral part of all societies. Nowhere has this been more obvious than in Japan, where the place of the Second World War in post-war public consciousness continues to provoke disputes regarding exactly what must not be forgotten. The war was a traumatic event of such proportions that forgetting might have been a preferable option. The process of forgetting was aided by the slow disappearance of tangible reminders of the war in the years following Japan’s defeat. Blackened ruins were removed and cities rebuilt; industries produced consumer goods rather than munitions; and a new generation was born and raised to enjoy peace and prosperity. Demobilised soldiers merged back more or less indistinguishably into the population, and eventually even maimed and begging veterans, reminders of the costs of Japan’s ill-fated war, disappeared from the streets. Yet even in the early years of the twenty-first century – over fifty years after the war’s end – war-related issues are continually present in the nation’s media. Though the war’s legacies are a matter of contest in post-war Japan, one might have thought that the boundary marking the end of the hostilities, at least, would be undisputed. The date of the surrender, 15 August 1945, has become a symbolic watershed in the popular consciousness, separating a nation committed to war from one committed to peace, and representing the cathartic moment when the Japanese people were released from the past and embarked on a new future. The return home of millions of demobilised soldiers in the first two years after the war seemed to underline the finality of what had occurred. No one who witnessed the return of such an enormous number of former soldiers could possibly have guessed that some still remained in hiding in the jungles surrounding Pacific and South-East Asian battlefields, and that it would take until 1975 for the last soldier of the Japanese Imperial Army to come home.

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