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WAR / Japanese soldiers finally tell their story / Hell in the Pacific -- from vivisection to cannibalism
By Richard James Havis
March 17, 2002
Details of Japanese World War II atrocities are known all over Asia. Except, that is, in the place it matters most -- Japan itself.
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America's postwar desire to help build a strong Japan as a bulwark against Communist China entailed that only a select group of military leaders and diplomats be prosecuted at the Tokyo War Crimes trial. So most of those who committed atrocities were allowed to quietly rejoin society.
Since then, Japan's powerful patriotic right wing has ensured that details of the atrocities have been omitted from the country's history books. Consequently, two generations of Japanese have grown up ignorant of their countrymen's perverse behavior in China and other Asian countries.
Until now, that is. "Japanese Devils," a Japanese documentary by filmmaker Minoru Matsui, interviews 14 Japanese soldiers about their crimes in China from the beginning of the invasion -- 1931's Manchurian Incident -- to the end of the war in 1945.
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Calmly and accurately, the former soldiers relate, in great detail, their actions against the Chinese: mass murder, rape, torture, vivisection, cannibalism.
"Japanese Devils" opened in Tokyo in December. As the film illustrates in a prologue, many Japanese find the war crimes issue shameful and feel it should not be discussed. Those who do bring the subject up are accused of traitorous behavior.
But such was the interest shown by the public, young and old, that after three weeks the film was being listed by magazines as one of the top films of the year. Now, a queue of at least 50 people forms outside the Image Forum cinema every morning for the film's 9:30 a.m. showing.
The power of "Japanese Devils" -- a literal translation of the original title "Riben Guizi," a Mandarin-language insult coined by Chinese in the 1930s and '40s -- lies in the calm delivery of its subjects. Matsui wanted to create a historical record about events that have not been elsewhere documented in the Japanese language. Although the men who came forward for interviews all regretted their wartime acts, Matsui asked them to hold back on their emotions and relate their activities in a clear, accurate manner.
Credibility was also an issue. Although some of the interviewees felt highly emotional about the atrocities they had committed, Matsui asked them not to cry in front of the camera. In Japan, those who try to bring such events to light are sometimes dismissed as insane or victims of Chinese brainwashing. So Matsui wanted his interviewees to appear as clear-headed as possible.
To list all the various debaucheries would take up too much space here, but a select few will illustrate the inhumanity of the former soldiers' acts.
At the start of the film, Yoshio Tsuchiya, a former 2nd lieutenant in Manchuria, tells how he murdered Chinese prisoners of war by shooting them in the back of the neck and kicking them into holes.
Then, Yoshio Shinozuka, a corporal in the Infectious Diseases Unit, tells how he "murdered brutally," then dissected, five Chinese while testing plague viruses on them.
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Masao Shikada, a 2nd lieutenant in the army, recalls enjoying beheading a captive, in front of an audience, with a superior Kendo sword technique that left the head attached by a flap of skin at the front of the neck. He then kicked the head into a basket.
Others tell of women being raped and bayoneted in the genitals, or, in some cases, having their vaginas stuffed with rags soaked in petroleum and set alight. Children were routinely murdered in front of their parents.
If there can be a "worst" in such a litany of atrocities, it is the admission of Masayo Enomoto, a former sergeant major. Enomoto remembers raping a young woman, slicing her up with a meat cleaver, cooking her in a pot and distributing her as food to his troops, who were short of meat.
Director Matsui did not want to show any apologies on film, lest this shift the tone from historical record to confessional. But the ex-soldiers do try to give some reasons, even if they do not shirk personal responsibility for their acts. The fact that Japanese military training taught recruits that the Chinese were worth less than animals is cited: "We Japanese all thought about the Chinese the same way -- as subhuman scum," says Yoshio Tsuchiya.
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This does not, however, explain the sadistic glee that the men remember experiencing while committing the atrocities. "I lost my humanity. . . . The more I killed, the more I would enjoy it," remembers one man.
Others say peer pressure was a factor. The war veterans, who would often beat and humiliate new Japanese army recruits, called them cowardly if they did not participate in the crimes.
Nationalism, of course, was the greatest spur. These onetime fanatical Japanese nationalists showed no qualms about murdering and raping if they thought it would further the cause of Japan and increase the glory of the Emperor.
(The emperor was later absolved of all war crimes by the Tokyo War Crimes Trial, an act that enabled responsibility to be shifted to a select few in the military command.)
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Toward the end of the film, it transpires that these men had actually been punished for their crimes. In 1945, 570,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered to China, and were imprisoned in Siberia. Five years later, after the Communist victory, 1,100 were sent back to China for "re-education." The documentary says that they were treated humanely, forced to see the evil in their actions and returned to Japan in 1956 with a warning "not to invade China again."
The 14 were among that number. Nowadays, they want to tell of their activities so that Japanese youngsters will know the truth about what took place during the war.
"I am now 80 years old," says Masao Shikada. "For the rest of my days, I will talk about the war of invasion. . . . I must find a way to tell future generations that we must never commit such transgressions again," Shikada adds.
"That is the very least I can do to atone for my sins."
March 17, 2002
Richard James Havis
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