JAPAN: Graves Speak of Peace to the Living

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jul 18 2005 (IPS) - Isamu Endo, 65, has built a cemetery for Chinese foster parents who took care of hundreds of Japanese abandoned as children in northern China as their settler parents fled before advancing Soviet and Chinese troops at the end of the Second World War.

”Building a resting place in northern China for Chinese foster parents, many of them very poor, is the least we can do in return for taking care of thousands of Japanese children,” explains Endo, who was only six when he was orphaned and left behind in the former Japanese colony of Manchuria.

Endo, like many other Japanese war orphans who have returned, says he will never forget the kindness of his Chinese foster mother who looked after him and sent him to school despite the fact that he was the child of the enemy – Japan.

The Japanese Imperial Army which colonised Manchuria in the early 20th century is held responsible for pillage and death of thousands of Chinese civilians.

”There is a lesson to be learnt from my Chinese parents without whose care I would not be alive now. These old people can teach Japan the value of repentance, the most important step to transcending enmity,” says Endo.

The cemetery for Chinese foster parents built by Japanese war orphans has hitherto been largely unknown to the public.

But, 60 years after Japan’s defeat by the Allied Forces bringing an end to World War ll, peace activists have begun a campaign to turn the cemetery into a symbol of Japan-China friendship as well as compel the Japanese government to accept its war history and apologise to victims in Asia.

”Sino-Japanese relations have sunk to a new low after a bilateral peace treaty was concluded in 1972. By publicising the efforts of Japanese war orphans and other actions taken in China we can teach the public and the government to accept the past,” says Yoshihiro Ohrui, spokesman for the Japan-China Friendship Centre, a civil organisation.

Researchers have taken up the cause. Prof. Shoko Sakabe at Shiga University, an expert on Japan’s war history has discovered two other cemeteries built for Japanese civilians in then-Manchuria, that serve as poignant examples of reconciliation.

”The cemeteries were built after the war in Harbin, in the Heilongjiang Province, that was a base for Japan’s field army. Many poor Japanese farmers were encouraged to emigrate there and start new lives but were abandoned by the Japanese army after its defeat by the Allied Forces,” she explained.

While official records have not been published, activists estimate that as many as 20,000 Japanese civilians were left in northern China at the end of the war.

Ohruii says that the fact that the Chinese government permitted a burial site for Japanese dead must be publicised to teach the Japanese public the magnanimity of China.

The lesson of the cemeteries in China, he says, takes on a special significance as Japan debates the possibility of building a new war memorial for its war dead in the face of controversy over the Yasukuni Shrine where Japanese war criminals are buried.

Visits to Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and attempts to whitewash references to invasions by Japan has angered China, South and North Korea and many other Asian countries that were colonised by the Japanese Imperial Army.

Koiuzumi has said that his visits to the Shinto shrine – where the dead are deified rather than laid to rest – are only to pray for peace but countries like China and the two Koreas, which were victims of Japanese imperial aggression think otherwise.

As Japan seeks a more pro-active, international military role for its ‘Self Defence Forces’ as exemplified by sending some 1,000 troops to Iraq, protests in the neighbourhood have grown louder especially in China.

The former colonies have accused Japan of not accepting past atrocities and are demanding a formal apology but Japanese conservative politicians brush aside such sentiments pointing out that Tokyo has paid war reparation and the past is now over.

Against this painful backdrop, peace activists hope the small cemeteries in China built out of funds collected by private individuals and home to the souls of Japanese and Chinese civilians can send a message of reconciliation.

They believe that a better future can emerge if living symbols like the cemeteries can sway the hardliners of today and foster a climate that can fully accept Japan in East Asia.