Gods Left First: The Captivity and Repatriation of Japanese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1945–1956 - Hardcover

Barshay, Andrew E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520276159 ISBN 13: 9780520276154

Verlag: University of California Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

At the time of Japan’s surrender to Allied forces on August 15, 1945, some six million Japanese were left stranded across the vast expanse of a vanquished Asian empire. Half civilian and half military, they faced the prospect of returning somehow to a Japan that lay prostrate, its cities destroyed, after years of warfare and Allied bombing campaigns. Among them were more than 600,000 soldiers of Japan’s army in Manchuria, who had surrendered to the Red Army only to be transported to Soviet labor camps, mainly in Siberia. Held for between two and four years, and some far longer, amid forced labor and reeducation campaigns, they waited for return, never knowing when or if it would come. Drawing on a wide range of memoirs, art, poetry, and contemporary records, The Gods Left First reconstructs their experience of captivity, return, and encounter with a postwar Japan that now seemed as alien as it had once been familiar. In a broader sense, this study is a meditation on the meaning of survival for Japan’s continental repatriates, showing that their memories of involvement in Japan’s imperial project were both a burden and the basis for a new way of life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew E. Barshay is Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Social Sciences in Modern Japan: The Marxian and Modernist Traditions.

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"In a gripping narrative, Andrew Barshay analyzes the geopolitical context of the Soviet internment of Japanese soldiers in Siberia, followed by a searching exploration of three wisely chosen individual cases. The result is a masterful account of the diverse and devastating experience of men seeking to make sense of loss on the desperate edge of Japan's wartime empire."—Andrew Gordon, author of Fabricating Consumers

“The Gods Left First bears witness to the little-known story of Japanese POWs in Stalin's postwar gulag. From among the thousands of scarred survivors who would eventually stagger back to Japan, Andrew Barshay singles out a handful who struggled for the remainder of their lives to wrest meaning from their Siberian internment through painting, poetry, and prose. His commitment to understand these men takes the author deep into the terrain of psychology, philosophy, and theology. A masterful, haunting account.”—Kären Wigen, Stanford University

“The fate of the many hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers captured by Soviet forces in the last days of World War Two is a story hardly known outside of Japan. Barshay’s sensitive rendering of the trauma experienced by the Siberian internees is told with the narrative gift of a first-rate historian. It brings to life a new dimension of the despair and pathos of ‘ordinary Japanese’ after surrender.”—Kenneth B. Pyle, Henry M. Jackson Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of Washington

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"In a gripping narrative, Andrew Barshay analyzes the geopolitical context of the Soviet internment of Japanese soldiers in Siberia, followed by a searching exploration of three wisely chosen individual cases. The result is a masterful account of the diverse and devastating experience of men seeking to make sense of loss on the desperate edge of Japan's wartime empire." Andrew Gordon, author of Fabricating Consumers

The Gods Left First bears witness to the little-known story of Japanese POWs in Stalin's postwar gulag. From among the thousands of scarred survivors who would eventually stagger back to Japan, Andrew Barshay singles out a handful who struggled for the remainder of their lives to wrest meaning from their Siberian internment through painting, poetry, and prose. His commitment to understand these men takes the author deep into the terrain of psychology, philosophy, and theology. A masterful, haunting account. Kären Wigen, Stanford University

The fate of the many hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers captured by Soviet forces in the last days of World War Two is a story hardly known outside of Japan. Barshay s sensitive rendering of the trauma experienced by the Siberian internees is told with the narrative gift of a first-rate historian. It brings to life a new dimension of the despair and pathos of ordinary Japanese after surrender. Kenneth B. Pyle, Henry M. Jackson Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of Washington

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The Gods Left First

The Captivity and Repatriation of Japanese POWs in Northeast Asia, 1945–56

By Andrew E. Barshay

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-27615-4

Contents

Maps and Illustrations, vii, 
Acknowledgments, ix, 
Note on Names and Terms, xi, 
Prologue: The Gods Left First, 1, 
The Siberian Internment in History, 8, 
Kazuki Yasuo and the Profane World of the Gulag, 46, 
Knowledge Painfully Acquired: Takasugi Ichiro and the "Democratic Movement" in Siberia, 81, 
Ishihara Yoshiro: "My Best Self Did Not Return", 121, 
Coda, 165, 
Appendix: How Many?, 189, 
Notes, 193, 
Bibliography, 220, 
Index, 231, 

CHAPTER 1

The Siberian Internment in History

THE PRINCE'S TALE

On August 16, 1945, the day following the imperial broadcast announcing Japan's surrender, Prince Takeda (Takeda-no-miya) Tsuneyoshi was called to the emperor's temporary residence on the palace grounds—temporary since the main residence had been bombed. Along with him, and by his testimony equally in the dark about the reasons for this summons, were three other imperial princes: Asaka, Kan'in, and Higashikuni. The purpose was soon made clear. Higashikuni was to become prime minister, though only for a matter of weeks, as it turned out. Asaka, Kan'in, and Takeda were each to be sent to different theaters of the just ended war. There they were to convey to the theater commanders the emperor's "sacred will" that all those who had fought in his name now put down their arms and surrender peacefully to the representatives of the Allied forces. For Kan'in, the mission was to the South Pacific, and Asaka's to China. Takeda was to be sent to Manchuria, that is, to the Kwantung Army.

Like the others, Takeda, at the time a lieutenant colonel, combined imperial rank with full military credentials. Both rank and credentials, it is fair to speculate, must have been thought necessary to ensure the mission's success. The entire situation was without precedent. On the one hand, Japanese forces had never before been defeated—had never surrendered to an enemy—on such a scale. On the other hand, over the years of the Asia-Pacific War, they had been thoroughly and effectively indoctrinated in the belief that surrender was an intolerable humiliation. There was no small measure of fear in official circles that, by itself, the imperial broadcast of August 15 might not be sufficient to overcome the stigma placed on the act of surrender. Even if it was certain that the rescript had reached scattered and remote forward units, it still had to be interpreted and backed with the further sanction that only a personal—and professionally credible—imperial emissary could provide. And just to make sure, a second rescript, addressed to "Our Soldiers and Sailors," was issued on August 17. With greater brevity and in somewhat plainer language, it called on Japan's soldiers to "comply with Our intention" to surrender.

The decision to send Takeda to Manchuria was more than sensible. Born in 1909, he had succeeded to the headship of his house at the age of ten, and at twenty briefly entered the House of Peers. The following year he had graduated in the forty-second class of the Army Academy, was commissioned a lieutenant in the cavalry, and by 1936 had risen to the rank of captain. After graduating from the Army War College in 1938, he was briefly commander of a cavalry unit in Hailar, in far northwest Manchuria. But what he really wanted was to serve in a frontline unit in China, and after repeated refusals from his superiors he was finally permitted to do so, finding it "not at all pleasant to have bullets flying toward me." At length, Takeda was recalled to Tokyo. Promoted to major in 1940, he served on the Army General Staff and at Imperial Headquarters, and was involved in strategic planning for the campaigns in the Philippines and Guadalcanal. At great personal risk, he was sent as an observer to the frontlines, notably to Rabaul. Promoted finally to lieutenant colonel in 1943, Takeda was transferred to the Kwantung Army staff. There he worked under the assumed name of "Miyata"—hardly a subtle disguise for one of his lineage—and settled along with his growing family in Xinjing (now Changchun), the capital city of Manchukuo. As a staff officer and strategist, Takeda gained considerable familiarity with (and some authority over) many of the Kwantung Army's operations and high-ranking personnel.

At the beginning of July 1945, Takeda was brought back to Tokyo, again joining the Army General Staff. By that time, Japan's cities had almost all been laid waste in Allied bombing raids, and Takeda left his family in Xinjing. This seemed prudent: Takeda shared the perception of virtually all its Japanese residents that Manchukuo, which had largely been spared combat and aerial bombing, was a safer place than the home islands. During July and August, Takeda himself, acting as liaison between Imperial Headquarters and the Kwantung Army, continued to shuttle back and forth by air between Tokyo and Manchukuo. The sense that Manchukuo was safe dissolved, of course, with the Soviet declaration of war at 12:00 A.M. (local time) on August 9. Despite the general panic following the Soviet onslaught, however, Takeda successfully recalled his family from Xinjing; they returned with nothing but the clothes on their backs five days before the emperor's surrender broadcast on August 15. From that point he might have remained with them in Tokyo, but fortuitously the summons from the emperor placed Takeda back on the scene. Prior to departing for Xinjing on the 17th, thinking that in his absence American occupation forces were likely to arrive, and not knowing whether he would even return alive from Manchuria, Takeda spent the night burning all the military-related documents in his possession and setting his affairs in order.

A military aircraft, escorted by four fighter planes, brought Takeda to Xinjing by the evening of the 17th. Met at the airfield, he was taken directly to Kwantung Army headquarters. Yamada Otozo, army commander-in-chief, and his assembled senior officers "reverently pledged to comply" with the imperial will: with this, Takeda's primary mission had been accomplished. The next morning, following a sendoff by his former Kwantung Army colleagues, Takeda's plane left for Keijo (Seoul), where he was to relay the emperor's will to the commander of Japanese forces in Korea. An engine malfunction forced the aircraft back to Xinjing for emergency repairs; an hour later, this time from an empty tarmac, Takeda again departed. As he would soon learn, Soviet forces occupied the city the next day.

Along with his mission to ensure a peaceful surrender in Manchuria, Takeda had one other task. Prior to leaving Tokyo, he had been asked by Higashikuni and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru to meet, if possible, with Pu Yi, the "last emperor" of Manchukuo and, if Pu Yi desired, return with him to Japan. The two men had been close since Takeda's earlier stationing in Xinjing and he was determined to carry out this second mission if it was within his power to do so. It almost happened: Takeda had proposed to Pu Yi, who was in Tonghua, that they meet in Keijo. But lacking an aircraft capable of making the tough flight over mountainous terrain, Pu Yi demurred, and proceeded instead to Fengtian (now Shenyang), where he was captured by Soviet forces. Takeda had been willing to go to Fengtian...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520276159
• ISBN 13: 9780520276154
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland