TOKYO, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) — “I wish my father could have told me even a little about what exactly he did in China,” Ayako Kurahashi, 79, stated whereas standing in entrance of a monument bearing her father’s apology at a cemetery in Yoshioka, Gunma Prefecture, Japan.
Kurahashi’s father, Yukichi Osawa, served within the army police troop of the Japanese Kwantung Army throughout Japan’s invasion of China. He was stationed in locations together with Tianjin, Beijing, and Dongning in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
A WISH TO CARVE APOLOGY IN STONE
When Japan surrendered in 1945, Osawa was captured by Soviet forces however managed to flee and ultimately made his method again to Japan.
In 1986, as he lay dying, Osawa took a slip of paper from beside his pillow. “He handed me the note and said, ‘After I die, have these words carved on my gravestone,'” Kurahashi recalled.
“I served in the former Japanese military for 12 years and eight months, 10 of them as a junior officer of the army stationed in China (a former military police warrant officer)… I took part in the war of aggression, and I feel deeply remorseful for everything I did to the Chinese people. I can do nothing but offer my most profound apology to the Chinese people,” the be aware learn.
Kurahashi stated her father had instructed her he regretted collaborating within the warfare of aggression in opposition to China as a army policeman and wished a monument inscribed along with his apology, however he by no means spoke of what he had really accomplished in China. However, her uncle and elder brother strongly opposed the concept, believing it might shame the household.
“Why exactly did my father feel the need to apologize?” This query has all the time haunted Kurahashi.
Seeking a solution, Kurahashi contacted a former army police officer who had served with Osawa. She instructed him about her father’s deathbed apology and pleaded with him to inform her what her father had accomplished on the time.
“He was overwhelmed with emotion when he saw photos of my father in his later years, but he never opened up about what had happened back then,” Kurahashi stated.
With her questions unanswered, Kurahashi started collaborating in research classes and seminars on the historical past of Japan’s warfare of aggression in opposition to China. Through these actions, she met Li Suzhen, govt vp of the Sino-Japanese Oral History and Culture Research Association and a distinguished professor at Changchun Normal University in China.
“The Japanese military police wielded extensive powers of arrest,” Li stated, including that Kurahashi’s father may need been concerned in critical crimes, which might clarify why he wished to apologize.
A POWERFUL INSTRUMENT OF REPRESSION
For Japanese historian Seiya Matsuno, a researcher on the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University, the position of the army police in Japan’s invasion of China is important to understanding the historical past of the warfare.
“The military police were already present in China when the Kwantung Army was established,” Matsuno instructed Xinhua in Tokyo lately. “As Japan’s aggression expanded following the Sept. 18 Incident and the July 7 Incident, military police units were deployed to various parts of China.”
Matsuno, who has lengthy studied trendy Japanese historical past and Japan’s aggression in opposition to China, confirmed Xinhua copies of historic paperwork he had collected.
Among them was the Sakusen Yomurei, or Field Service Regulations, permitted by Japan’s Army Ministry in 1940. Matsuno pointed to a bit specifying the duties of army police, together with defending army secrets and techniques, trying to find spies, censoring communications and media organizations, in addition to suppressing civilians deemed “hostile” — together with those that resisted the Japanese military or refused to cooperate with the occupying forces.
“The military police served as the claws and vanguard of the Japanese army in suppressing local people during Japan’s invasion and occupation,” Matsuno stated. “They had enormous powers and were a very frightening organization.”
Matsuno additionally confirmed a replica of a secret report from a Kwantung Army army police unit. The doc described how an individual suspected of espionage needs to be handled.
The report concluded that the individual had no worth for “reverse utilization,” a time period referring to turning captured people into Japanese brokers, and really useful that he be “specially transferred.”
“‘Special transfer’ meant sending the person to Unit 731,” Matsuno stated.
Unit 731, formally often known as the Kwantung Army’s Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, carried out horrific human experimentation and organic and germ warfare throughout World War II.
Kurahashi’s father held the rank of warrant officer within the army police. Matsuno stated that army police warrant officers would usually have been accountable for directing subordinates in frontline operations, and Osawa could have been concerned in trying to find, arresting and suppressing individuals who resisted Japanese forces.
A DAUGHTER SEARCHING FOR TRUTH
Kurahashi remembers her father as a stern man. But one scene has remained notably vivid in her reminiscence.
One day, whereas watching a tv program about Japan’s warfare in China, Osawa started to cry.
“He said there were two kinds of people,” Kurahashi recalled. “Some people would cry out loudly and beg for their lives before being killed. But there were others who, even when they were about to be killed, would look straight ahead with determination.”
“I think my father must have suffered deeply when he remembered those people who were killed by them,” she stated.
Yet Kurahashi has by no means been capable of decide precisely what her father did throughout his years in China. His want to depart behind a public assertion of regret, nonetheless, stayed along with her.
After her elder brother, who had opposed erecting the monument, died, Kurahashi wrote to her nephew and obtained his consent.
In 1998, she had a separate monument erected in a nook of the household cemetery, along with her father’s full assertion of apology carved into the stone. Osawa’s ultimate want had lastly been fulfilled.
Kurahashi subsequently traveled to China a number of instances to specific her father’s regret. She visited the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, amongst different locations.
Seeing extra information relating to the Japanese invasion of China left a profound impression on her. “Every place had a tremendous impact on me,” she stated.
A former junior highschool instructor in Japan, Kurahashi stated that Japanese society has not sufficiently mirrored on the historical past of the warfare. In Japanese school rooms, lecturers could inform college students about among the locations the place the Japanese army was deployed, she stated, however usually don’t delve deeper into what Japanese forces really did there.
Kurahashi hopes that Japan will confront and replicate on its historical past of aggression, and that the phrases carved into her father’s monument of apology will attain a wider viewers.
Amid what she sees as a rising rightward shift in Japan and the resurgence of “new militarism,” Kurahashi has turn into more and more involved that the monument might be intentionally broken. She due to this fact determined this 12 months to donate a duplicate of the monument to Changchun Normal University.
“‘What disappears from before our eyes will also disappear from our hearts,’ I do not want that saying to become reality one day,” Kurahashi stated.
“I sincerely hope that this monument of apology will never be destroyed and will stand here forever, revealing the truth of history and safeguarding world peace,” she added.