| Tatsuji Suga | |
|---|---|
Lieutenant Colonel Tatsuji Suga |
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| Born | September 22, 1885 Hiroshima, Japan |
| Died | September 16, 1945 (aged 59) Borneo |
| Allegiance | Empire of Japan |
| Service/branch | Imperial Japanese Army |
| Years of service | ? -1945 |
| Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
| Commands held | Prison Camps |
| Battles/wars | World War I Second Sino-Japanese War Pacific War |
Lieutenant-Colonel Tatsuji Suga (菅辰次 Suga Tatsuji) (22 September 1885 – 16 September 1945) of the Imperial Japanese Army was the commander of all prisoner-of-war (POW) and civilian internment camps in Borneo, during World War II. Suga committed suicide five days after being taken prisoner by Australian forces in September 1945.
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Suga was born in Hiroshima, the second son in his family. Although the family held Buddhist-Shinto beliefs, his older brother converted to Christianity and became a Protestant missionary: he had a church and founded the YMCA in Hiroshima. As a teenager, Suga played the music in his brother's church, and was profoundly influenced by him. (Hudson Southwell, an Australian missionary interned in Borneo, later wrote: "During our time in the internment camp, Colonel Suga had often come into the church services in the women's section and sat near the back. Once he told Winsome [Southwell's wife] directly, 'I'm a Christian.' This was a startling admission for a Japanese officer to make to a prisoner during wartime."[1])
Suga graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in Tokyo, as a Second Lieutenant. At around this time he married a woman with the given name Tern; they were to have two sons and four daughters. Suga was an affectionate father and ensured that all of his children went to university, at a time when only five per cent of Japanese went beyond the fifth or sixth grade. He was an expert horseman and a keen practitioner of kendo.
Toward the end of World War I (during which Japan was an Allied power), Suga served in Siberia, Korea, Manchuria and China. In 1924, he took early retirement as a Major, and decided to pursue a career teaching English. He sailed to the United States, leaving his family in Japan, supported by his pension.
Suga studied to become a certified teacher of English as a second language, at the University of Washington in Seattle. He supported himself by taking a series of jobs, such as dish-washing, and by fishing. He was interviewed in Seattle in 1924 by William Carlson Smith as part of Smith's research on race relations, later used for his book Americans in the Making, which was published in 1939.[2]
Suga taught English in Japan, Korea, China and Manchuria, before he was called back to active service in 1937, to serve in the Second Sino-Japanese War. He became ill with diabetes and retired again in October 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Suga volunteered for service as a prison camp commander, believing that his language skills would prove useful. He was appointed commander of all POW and internment camps in Borneo.[3]
On Borneo there were Japanese-run internment camps at Batu Lintang, Kuching, Sarawak, Jesselton (later Kota Kinabalu), Sandakan and briefly on Labuan island.[4] Suga was based at Batu Lintang but was often absent on business at the other camps.
Suga is described in Three Came Home, an account by Agnes Newton Keith, a female civilian internee at Batu Lintang:
Rosemary Beatty, an Australian who was a small child when she was interned at Batu Lintang, recalled Suga's acts of kindness to her and other children:
Brutality by the guards at Batu Lintang increased when Suga was away; internees wondered whether he left instructions for this to happen or whether the juniors left in charge took advantage of his absence to further abuse the prisoners.[7]
The atomic bombings in Japan at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, followed by that of Nagasaki on 9 August, precipitated the abrupt end of the war. On 15 August 1945, Japan announced its official unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers. On 24 August, Suga officially announced to the prisoners at Batu Lintang that Japan had surrendered.[8] Suga was a broken man: he believed that his entire family had been killed in the bombing of Hiroshima.[9] In fact, his wife and four of his children survived the bombing.[10]
Suga attended the official surrender of the Japanese forces in the Kuching area by their commander, Major-General Hiyoe Yamamura, on board HMAS Kapunda on 11 September 1945.[11] Later that day Suga officially surrendered to Brigadier Thomas Eastick, commander of Kuching Force — a detachment from the Australian 9th Division — at Batu Lintang camp.
The following day Suga, together with several of his officers were flown to the Australian base on Labuan, to await their trials as war criminals. Suga committed suicide there on 16 September. Other officers were later tried, found guilty and executed.[12] Southwell wrote:
As Commander of all POW and civilian internee camps, Suga was responsible for the many atrocities that took place in these camps, including the Sandakan Death Marches. It is probable that had he not committed suicide, Suga would also have been found guilty of war crimes and executed.
Although Keith admired some of his personal qualities and felt that he had saved the life of her husband, who was also interned in the camp, she also recorded: "Against this, I place the fact that all prisoners in Borneo were inexorably moving towards starvation. Prisoners of war and civilians were beaten, abused and tortured. Daily living conditions of prison camps were almost unbearable." Keith added:
Another internee at Batu Lintang, Australian civil servant Ivan Quartermaine, said that by the time the 9th Division liberated the camp, the health of the prisoners was so poor they believed they had only "three months to live, the whole camp. We were in pretty bad shape."[14] After liberation, he and other prisoners sought weapons from Australian soldiers, to take revenge on Japanese personnel, but were refused. On reflection, Quartermaine said, he believed that Suga was powerless in regard to the actions of the Japanese secret police, the Kempeitai.
In the 1950 film adaptation of Keith's book, Suga was played by Sessue Hayakawa.