Newly Discovered Japanese Military Files in Jilin Provincial Archives

Peipei Qiu Documenting WarAtrocities Against Women: Newly Discovered Japanese MilitaryFiles in Jilin Provincial Archives Since the “comfort women”¹ redress movement arose in the late 1980s, history revisionists in Japan have continuouslydenied the forcible drafting of hundreds of thousandsof“comfort women” and the torturethese women suffered at the hands of the Imperial Japanese forces. Despite ample historical materials and victims’ testimonies confirmingthe crimes, Japanese officials insist that no evidence has been found to provethe existenceofthe sexual slavery in the Japa- nese military.Atthe same time, the Japanese governmentcontinues supporting efforts to removethe “comfort women” memorials and informationconcerning the issue in history textbooks. Facing the steadfast revisionist campaigns, Chinese researchers have put great effort into archivalresearch in recent years and unearthed new evidence for the Imperial Japanese military’sdirect involvement in setting up the “comfort women” system. This paper discusses the dedicated work and research findings of the Jilin Provincial Archives.² These findingsshow undeniably that the “comfort women” system wasimplemented by the Japanese nation-state to further its aggression in Asia; thatwomen from Japan and its colonyweredrafted into the “comfort stations” under Japan’s “National Mobilization Law;” that alarge number of Chinese women in occupied areas wereenslavedinthe Japanese military “comfort stations;” and that the Japanese military authorities had purposelycon- cealed information regarding the “comfort women” even before the war ended. Iuse quotationmarks around the terms “comfort women,”“comfort stations,” and “comfort facilities” to acknowledge that “comfort” was amisleadingeuphemism coined by the Japanese military to refer to sexual slavery.However,tomaintain the historical integrity of documents, when quotingfromhistoric Japanese military files, Ihavenot added quotation marks around these terms. Iwould liketoexpress my deep thanks to Zhao Yujie, Senior Research Archivist at the Jilin Provincial Archives, for her time and generosity in providinginformation and archival materials for this study. Iwould also like to thank Yi Baozhong, Professor at the Center for Northeast Asian Studies,Jilin University,for facilitating my contact with Zhao Yujie. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110643480-015 276 Peipei Qiu The Jilin Provincial Archives Jilin Provincelies in the center of China’sNortheast plain. The area was occupied by the infamous Japanese Kwantung Armyin1931, from the very beginning of Imperial Japan’saggressive war.In1932, the provincial capital, Changchun, was renamed Xinjing (also spelled Hsinking, meaning “New Capital”)and became the capital of the puppet state Manchukuo (Manzhouguoinpinyin) set up by Japan. The Kwantung (Guandong in pinyin) Armyalsoset up its headquar- ters there.³ “Kwantung” literallymeans “east of the Shanhai Pass.” It was a guarded pass, east of which was Manchuria. Followingthe Russo-Japanese War, Japan occupied Kwantung Leased Territory and established the Kwantung Garrison to control the region, which became the most prestigious armygroup in the Imperial Japanese Armyinthe 1930s and was largely responsible for the creation of Japan’spuppet state Manchukuo. Astaggering number of military and administrative documents werekept in the capital area duringthe fourteen years of Japanese occupation. At the end of the war,Japan carried out anational action to destroy the wartime documents, but the KwantungArmywas unable to destroy them all before the city wastaken over by the Soviet forces in alightningoffensive in August 1945,⁴ leaving behind alarge number of the files that werelater preserved in the Jilin Provincial Ar- chives. Jilin Provincial Archivesisone of the manynational archivesinChina. Es- tablished in 1959, it preserves bothhistoricaland contemporary documents produced by the local administrations. CurrentlyJilin Provincial Archivespreserves about 520,000 volumes/files(juan jian)ofhistorical documents dating from 1754 to 1949,ofwhich 100,000 volumes/files in 65 case-sets (quan zong)werepro- duced during Japan’sinvasion of China (Riben qin-Hua dangan,hereafter, RQD).⁵ These documents came from different places,includingboth materials This paper uses the pinyin systemtowriteChinese names and titles except for “Kwantung,” “Manchou,” and “Manchukuo,” which arecommonlyused in English publications. In August of 1945the Soviet Red Armydefeated the KwantungArmyinManchuria area with a well-structured offensive within seven days.See LTCDavid M. Glantz, “August Storm: The Soviet 1945Strategic Offensive in Manchuria,” Leavenworth Papers (Combat Studies Institute, U.S. ArmyCommand and General Staff College, 1983), 173. Jilin Provincial Archivesfollowed the categorization method of the former Soviet Union. The historical documents werefirst sorted into volumes (juan) and files (jian), which werethen placed into case sets (quan zong)according to the agents or institutions that produced them. Avolume contains multiple files, but some files weredirectlyplaced into acase set without Documenting WarAtrocities Against Women 277 left by the Japanese military police and the puppet state administrations in the area, and relevant files collected from other archivesoutside the province. Among the RQD documents, there is aunique set of files left by the Kwan- tung Army Military PoliceRegiment (Kempeitai). On 11 November1953, Chinese military construction workers in Changchun accidentallyfound alarge number of Japanese files buried at the siteofthe formerHeadquarters of the Kwantung ArmyMilitary Police. Hirota Toshimitsu, former head of the Guard Squad of Xinj- ing Military Police detainedatFushun WarCriminalsDetainment Camp (Fushun zhanfan guanlisuo)atthe time of the files’ discovery,confirmed thatthese documents belonged to the Kwantung Military Police Regiment,which failed to destroy them completelyatthe end of the war.⁶ Having been buried deeplyin soil for more than eight years, these documents wereinvery poor physical con- dition when they wereunearthed. Mr.Sun Yi, aretiree of the Archives, recalled that manyofthe files werestuck together and,when exposed to air,hardened like bricks. They had to separate and repair the damaged files pagebypage.⁷ After the initial cleaning and repair,the local Public Security Bureaucollected and preserved these files before handing them over to the Jilin Provincial Ar- chivesin1982. The Jilin Provincial Archivescarried out more systematic categorization and research of the RQD files in the 1990s, as China opened its doors to the world and the country’sNational BureauofArchivesissued provisional guidelines al- lowing organizations and individuals from the international community to use archivesinChina.⁸ Formore than adecade, four archivists(the number was later increased to eight) at the Jilin Provincial Archives worked on the RQD files with the help of anumberofretirees from local administrations, and finally beingorganized as volumes first,soboth “volume” and “file” areused as the basic counting units. Zhuang Yan, “Yong lishi dangan huanyuan lishi zhenxiang” [Reconstruct Historical Truth with Historical Files], in Tiezhengrushan: Jilin-sheng xin fajue Riben qinhua dangan yanjiu [Irre- futable Evidence: Studies on the Newly DiscoveredFiles on Japanese InvasioninJilin Province. Henceforth, Tiezheng], ed. ZhuangYan (Changchun: Jilin Publishing Group, 2014), 2. Writteninterview with Zhao Yujie, Senior Research Archivist of Jilin Provincial Archives, July 29,2017. “ Waiguo zuzhi he gerenliyong woguodang’an shixingbanfa” [Provisional Guidelines Regard- ing the Use of ArchivesinChina by Foreign Organizations and Individuals] was put into effect on 1July1992. The provisional guidelines allowedforeign organizations and individuals to read, copyand citethe declassifiedarchive files in China’snational archivesdirectlyorbymailingre- quest,but require the users to submit an application to the relevantarchives30daysprior to usingthe files.Currentlyonly25files that contain information on Japanese military “comfort women” have been released for public use. 278 PeipeiQiu completed the volume-level catalogue of these files in 2005.The task was both mentally and physicallychallenging. AccordingtoSenior Research Archivist Zhao Yujie, aleading memberofthe team,these files weremostlywritten in old-style Japanese—very different from the modern Japanese languagethat the archivistshad learned, and most of the files produced by the puppet Manchukuo administration werewritten in classicalChinese.The translation and categorization of each file took along time. At a2014interview with Xinjing-bao newspa- per,Zhao Yujie recalled thatfor along period of time, she suffered from night- mares and insomnia while workingonthese files, as the translation was mentally demanding and the Archivists often had to deal with records of brutal killingsand torture.⁹ Despite the difficulties and limited manpower,researchers at the Archives worked hard, and by 2005,havepublished ten volumes of research reports and collections of selected files from the RQD archives. They have also collabo- rated with Chinese and international institutions to produce TV documentaries and have held exhibitions of the archival materials.Starting from 2011, facing the steadfast denial of Japan’swar atrocities,the new leadership of Jilin Provin- cial Archivescommissioned alargerteam of specialists and graduatestudents to translate and conduct research on the RQD files.

Load more