Japanese in the Chinese resistance to the Empire of Japan

Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese war (1937–1945), Japanese dissidents, and Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) joined the Chinese in the war against the Empire of Japan.

Nationalist-controlled China

Wataru Kaji, Japanese writer, and his wife in Hankow. (ca. 1938)

Wataru Kaji, a Japanese dissident who escaped to China before the war, stated that it took a while to convince the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the possibility that Japanese soldiers would surrender. According Andrew Roth, Japanese captives were thoroughly convinced that capture was a disgrace and that the Chinese would cut their hearts out or roast them alive. Japanese captives preferred suicide rather than capture. The KMT acceded as they were pulling out of Wuhan in October 1938. Kaji paid his first visit to Japanese POWs at the KMT Number Three POW camp in Hunan province, in a camp called Pighe (peace) village. He gathered about seventy Japanese POWs and began their reeducation. After August 15, 1939, Kaji moved to Chongqing to escape the approaching Japanese army, where he continued his activities in China. KMT sponsored Japanese POW propaganda troops traveled around China targeting Japanese forces. South of Guilin in Guangxi province, from December 29, 1939, to February 12, 1940, they patrolled the front with loudspeakers, appealing to Japanese soldiers.^{[1] [2]} Kaji, his wife Yuki Ikeda, and Kazuo Aoyama were the first to re-educate and use Japanese captives on the front lines in Asia.^[3]

An article from The Daily Times reported that the Chinese dropped one million leaflets on the Japanese islands, which were addressed to Japanese workers, peasants, intellectuals, and soldiers. Authorship was credited to Wataru Kaji.^[4]

Kaji Wataru was accused of indoctrinating the POW's with Communist ideology. By August 1940 the antiwar POW group was ordered to disband. Kaji returned to Chongqing. He continued to work with the KMT.^[1] After Kaji's work with the Japanese POWs was stopped, the prisoner converts were locked up as dangerous elements. They continued to study and hold discussions in preparing themselves for their roles in a democratic Japan. Tai Li agents monitored Kaji.^[3]

Communist-controlled China

The education of Japanese captives by the Eighth Route Army began in 1938. It was carried on near the front. Captives traveled with Guerilla units. The captives, or students, as they were called, were given reading material, which was supplemented by informal conversations with Japanese-speaking political workers. Converted Japanese engaged in propaganda activity. Because of their lack of political background, they required constant assistance from Chinese political workers.^[2]

They issued orders forbidding injury or insult to the captives or confiscation of their belongings. Captives received better food and more cigarettes than the Chinese soldiers, and special treatment was accorded to the sick or wounded. The objective was to recruit and train a group of Japanese to be used in the Political Department of the Eighth Route Army.^[2]

Peasants' and Workers' School

According to Andrew Roth "In November 1940 the Political Department of the Eighth Route Army established the Peasants' and Workers' School to answer its acute need for effective and self-reliant Japanese front line propagandists." The school, according to Koji Ariyoshi, was headquartered in the caves that pockmarked Pagoda Hill. The first class comprised eleven students. Only two of whom had any anti-fascist feelings, while the remaining students were frustrated and uninterested in their work. On May 15, 1941, the school had its formal inauguration in the Eight Route Army Auditorium, and was attended by Thousands of Eight Route Army soldiers, including General Chu Teh, there commander in chief, who addressed the audience. According to Roth, by 1943, the Japanese students had made enough progress to take over virtually all the posts in the school, including teaching. The school was turned over to the Japanese with the arrival of Susumu Okano (AKA Sanzo Nosaka), a founding member of the Japanese Communist Party, in the spring of 1943, who was given the post of principal.^[3][2] However, he arrived arrived in Yan'an in 1940.^[5]

The school was divided into beginning, intermediate and advanced classes. The school had three objectives: "first, the destruction of the militarist ideology; second, the imparting of a new structure of idea; third, to combine this new structure of ideas with practical work." Students of the school engaged in self-criticism, which was witnessed by Koji Ariyoshi with the help of Susumu Takayama, a prisoner convert who was superintendent of the school. According to Andrew Roth "One of the subjects discussed in the advanced class was what a people's newspaper should be like in Japan." They wrote articles and editorials for the "Battle", a wall newspaper posted at the school, and studied and wrote articles for the Liberation Daily, a Yenan newspaper.^[2][3]

Propaganda

Students were active in the spread of propaganda in Japanese occupied China. By the end of 1944 about forty graduates of the school had gone into the field. According to Andrew Roth, at the front propaganda work fell into three main categories: written propaganda, such as leaflets and pamphlets, "propaganda shouting", or the use of megaphones or loudspeakers against a stationary foe, and telephone conversations with Japanese army personnel over lines which the propagandists cut into.^[2][3]

According to Andrew Roth "In all propaganda work carried out the basic principle was to emphasize the urgent needs of the Japanese soldiers and to prove that Japan was doomed to defeat, as a means of fanning their discontent and dissatisfaction so as to cause internal strike in the Japanese army." The stand-by in pamphlet distribution was "The Demands of the Soldiers", a compilation of all the gripes of the Japanese enlisted man. It was so effective that the Japanese army authorities issued orders forbidding the soldiers to read it. Propaganda workers also issued leaflets adapted to the specific gripes in the units they were trying to demoralize and win over.^[2]

Researching

From 1940 to 1943, Nosaka's presence in China was kept a secret. Under a Chinese name, Lin Zhe, he directed the work of the Research Office of the Japanese Problem. His work with the Research Office in Yan'an brought Yan'an's intelligence information about Japan up to date. Nosaka collected newspapers and other publications from Japan.^[6] To research the enemy, Nosaka and his crew took care to analyze current events in Japan and China, which they did by stocking Japanese newspapers, magazines, journals, and diaries that were purchased or seized on the battlefield.^[7]

Organizations

According to a St. Petersburg Times article issued on May 7, 1944, membership in anti-militarist groups in prison camps had grown from 400 to 2,000 in 1944. Kaji stated that in a St. Petersburg Times that a number of anti-militarist groups have been organized in North China that same year. According to Kaji they had 34 branches under the Japanese Communist scholar, Susumu Okano, under whose leadership propaganda work was carried directly inside occupied cities and even into fortresses occupied by Japanese soldiers.^[8]

In December 1939, Japanese prisoners numbered about fifty. They founded the Japanese Anti-War League, with Wataru Kaji as their leader. They had a great deal of freedom. They were not compelled to remain in prison camps, and published their own magazine. They travelled from one POW camp to another to lecture to the unconverted. Twenty of them formed a dramatic group, which wrote propaganda plays that were performed for Japanese POWs and the Chinese.^[2]

In 1944, Okano established the Japanese People's Emancipation League (JPEL).^[2] According to Israel Epstein, propaganda materials of the JPEL appeared not only at the front but also in major garrison points such as Peiping to the north.^[9] An article from the Sydney Morning Herald in July 12, 1944 reported that the JPEL had existed since 1938 as an anti-war league, but changed its name to cover new prospects.^[10]

Response from the Empire of Japan

The Japanese military reacted with hostility to Japanese who joined the Chinese resistance. The Kajis' home was bombed by Japanese bombers. The Kajis survived, but had to keep there address a secret. According to Andrew Roth, Japanese troops in Communist China countered the anti-fascist propaganda by stepping up the military fascist indoctrination. Wounded soldiers who could not walk and thus might fall into the hands of the Eighth Route Army, were shot. The Japanese army sent assassins into Yenan to kill Okano and disrupt the activities of the Emancipation League.^[2]

List of Japanese in the Chinese resistance

• Teru Hasegawa

See Also

• Japanese dissidence during the Shōwa period

References