Japan’s wartime occupation of Myanmar left deep human, financial, and historic wounds that should not be forgotten.
by Zhou Xin
During World War II (WWII), to maintain its wartime industrial system, Japan formulated the Southern Expansion Policy, geared toward invading Southeast Asia and plundering strategic sources comparable to oil and rubber. After capturing Burma (present-day Myanmar) in 1942, Japan dedicated quite a few atrocities, inflicting catastrophic struggling on the native inhabitants.
RESOURCE PLUNDER
During its occupation, Japan conscripted younger and middle-aged individuals for compelled labor, seized giant numbers of livestock for logistical functions, and destroyed huge areas of rice paddies, inflicting a drastic decline in Myanmar’s agricultural output. By 1944, Myanmar’s whole rice manufacturing had plummeted to simply 3 million tons — lower than half of pre-war ranges.
The Japanese army enforced a grain requisition system, forcibly seizing 100,000 tons of rice between 1942 and 1943, which triggered a devastating famine. It additionally extensively plundered oil reserves and ruthlessly exploited timber, minerals and different sources to gasoline its warfare machine. Moreover, Japan recklessly issued invasion forex in Myanmar, resulting in extreme inflation and eradicating the wealth of numerous civilians.
According to data such because the War Damages Claimed by Myanmar housed within the Diplomatic Archives of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Myanmar suffered whole losses amounting to three.84 billion U.S. {dollars} throughout the Japanese invasion. This included 2.66 billion {dollars} in property and infrastructure injury and 1.18 billion {dollars} in losses from invalidated invasion forex.
MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS
On Dec. 23, 1941, the Japanese military launched its first large-scale air raid on Rangoon (now Yangon). Employing roughly 70 bombers and 30 fighter jets, the assault killed about 2,000 individuals and injured 1,500. Two days later, on Dec. 25, a second raid involving round 100 warplanes struck town once more.
In 1944, following a army defeat by the Chinese Expeditionary Force, the Japanese commander in Myanmar, Heitaro Kimura, was reported to have instructed his subordinates in anger, “For every Japanese soldier lost, we will kill twice as many Burmese civilians.” He subsequently ordered the mass execution of quite a few Burmese prisoners of warfare and civilians.
On Jul. 7, 1945, on the orders of Japanese Major Seigi Ichikawa, troops carried out a brutal bloodbath in Kalagon village. Villagers had been divided into teams of 4 to 10, led to wells, blindfolded, bayoneted to demise, and thrown into the wells. The complete village was razed, and ladies had been raped throughout the atrocity. An estimated 600 to 1,000 villagers perished.
FORCED LABOR AND “COMFORT WOMEN”
In June 1942, Japan started developing the Thailand-Burma Railway, mobilizing 62,000 Allied prisoners of warfare and forcibly conscripting over 350,000 laborers, together with about 180,000 from Myanmar. Driven by ruthless coercion, a challenge that will usually have taken six years was accomplished in simply 18 months.
Under excessive labor circumstances, extreme malnutrition, and rampant illnesses, some 12,000 prisoners of warfare and greater than 130,000 laborers perished, together with about 40,000 Burmese (estimates vary from 30,000 to 80,000). With almost 150,000 deaths general — a mortality fee of 37.5 p.c, equal to 1 life misplaced for each three meters of monitor — the railway turned infamously often called the Death Railway.
The 1958 Academy Award-winning movie The Bridge on the River Kwai displays this darkish historical past. Lin Yong Dylan, writer of A Personal Account of the Hard Labor on the Thailand-Burma Railway, witnessed Japanese abuse on the Thanbyuzayat focus camp. He described an aged laborer being crushed and kicked; when the person’s son tried to intervene, he was shot useless by Japanese troopers. Laborers subsisted on skinny bean soup with no oil or greens. Prisoners of warfare and laborers had been compelled to toil from earlier than daybreak till after 10 p.m. utilizing primitive instruments, and had been crushed for even a quick pause in work.
After occupying Myanmar, Japan stationed greater than 100,000 troops there and established “comfort stations” in about 60 areas throughout the nation. According to maps in Myanmar’s National Archives, there have been greater than 100 such amenities. “Comfort women” included native Burmese ladies in addition to ladies from China, Korea and Japan who had been trafficked throughout borders. Many had been coerced or deceived with false job affords, comparable to nursing positions.
IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL AND FALSE PROPAGANDA
Japan imposed a curriculum and educating supplies advocating fascist rule in Myanmar and enforced Japanese-language schooling. By the top of 1943, 25 Japanese-language institutes had been established. Japan additionally arrange an Army Junior School and an Army Officer School in Rangoon, which had skilled greater than 100 graduates throughout three cohorts by the warfare’s finish. Some college students had been chosen as government-funded “Southern Special Students” to review in Japan, a program designed to domesticate collaborators to help Japanese army rule.
To strengthen ideological management, the Japanese army established a Broadcasting Control Bureau beneath the Rangoon Broadcasting Station to advertise the so-called “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” It translated and printed books comparable to Bushido and Warriors and Troops, disseminating the false narrative that “Japan is the liberator of Myanmar.” Japanese forces even claimed that “the Japanese Emperor is the reincarnation of the Buddha,” exploiting Burmese Buddhist religion for propaganda functions. The Japanese intelligence unit Minami Kikan fabricated tales of heroic figures who “saved Myanmar,” deceiving individuals into offering info and intelligence.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN
Regarding Japanese warfare crimes in Myanmar, U Nu, Myanmar’s first prime minister, wrote in his e book Five Tumultuous Years in Myanmar: “For a nation like Japan, you would never believe how cruel and inhumane it could be until you have experienced it firsthand. Japan attempted to rule the whole world and implemented a genocidal policy of burning, killing, looting and raping in China. There are countless horrific stories that Burmese politicians are unwilling to read or dare to hear.”
Thakin Chit, a member of the Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association), recalled, “The Japanese were extremely cruel. They would arbitrarily arrest people based on any accusation, and the fate of those arrested was uncertain. The Japanese tied people upside down with their hands and feet bound, whipped them with iron rods, poured boiling water down their throats, and pried out their fingernails with bamboo sticks.”
More than 80 years in the past, Japanese militarism wrought bloody devastation throughout Asia. Today, greater than eight a long time later, right-wing forces in Japan are making strenuous efforts to whitewash and revive militarism. Faced with irrefutable proof of their crimes, they present neither regret nor reflection, and are accelerating army enlargement regardless of worldwide opposition. All peace-loving individuals worldwide should stay vigilant, see by their true nature, and resolutely safeguard the outcomes of the World Anti-Fascist War and the post-WWII worldwide order.
Editor’s be aware: The writer is an observer on worldwide affairs.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate these of Xinhua News Agency.