The Association of Returnees from China (中国帰還者連絡会, Chūgoku Kikansha Renraku Kai), was an organization formed on 24 September 1957 following the repatriation to Japan of soldiers from the former Imperial Japanese Army who were interned as war criminals in China's Fushun War Criminals Management Centre, where interns were subjected to intensive indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party. While the Chinese government chose to prosecute the top Japanese leadership, it repatriated accused lower-ranking soldiers to Japan.[ citation needed ] Once in Japan, they gave testimony about their experience with crimes such as Unit 731, comfort women, and the Nanking Massacre, but often received stringent opposition from Japanese nationalists and militarists, who proclaimed them to be communists or "brainwashed" by the Chinese communist government. Its members included Yoshio Shinozuka, Yasuji Kaneko, Tadayuki Furumi, Shigeru Fujita and Ken Yuasa; the association was disbanded in 2002.
1109 individuals were interned by the People's Republic of China, 969 in the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre and 140 in the Taiyuan War Criminals Management Centre, on suspicion of having committed war crimes within China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Those held in Fushun had been captured in Manchuria by the USSR and after enduring internment in Siberia were transferred to China in 1950. They included many Japanese soldiers as well as Chinese such as Puyi and Zhang Jinghui. Those held in Taiyuan included Japanese soldiers who after the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War had joined the Nationalists and fought against the communists during the Chinese Civil War.
In contrast with their time in Siberia, Japanese POWs were given better treatment from the Chinese communists. [1] However, a long-term "crime recognition campaign" was imposed at the same time on those soldiers who were believed to have undertaken, supported, and witnessed Japan's numerous and inhumane criminal acts during the war. This involved them reflecting on their own actions up to then and confessing their sins voluntarily, a process later described by Chukiren's detractors as "brainwashing". During the campaign, some interns killed themselves.
Under the authority of the "Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Concerning Punishment of Japanese Troops Who Invaded China" of April 1956, the trials of 45 leading war criminals were undertaken in extraordinary military tribunals set up in Shenyang, Liaoning, and Taiyuan, Shanxi, between June and July. All the rest of the war crime suspects were pronounced at special courts within their internment centres to be exempt from prosecution and to be released immediately.
In 1957 some of these repatriated former war criminals whose sins were forgiven by the Chinese founded the Association of Returnees from China and launched an anti-war, pacifist movement and a campaign for Sino-Japanese friendship.
At the heart of Chukiren's mission was exposing the foolishness of war, especially through testifying to the things that they themselves did in the war and on the battlefield. They were known for being very active in testifying about and cooperating with witnesses of things such as Unit 731, forced labor recruitment of Koreans, comfort women, and the Nanking Massacre. Because of this, many of the returnees ended up being branded as "red" regardless of their personal beliefs and experienced mistreatment in post-war Japan.
Writers such as Toshio Tanabe have also argued that the Japanese officers and men interned at Fushun were brainwashed by China. [2] The returnees who gained their freedom thanks to China's lenient pardon when they should have been sentenced to a long-term or indefinite imprisonment or death were deeply grateful to the Chinese government, but they don't go so far as to deny the fact that China's true intention was that they, due to their ideological training, were useful people to be set free as disseminators of their ideas under a debt of gratitude to China for letting them off. [3]
Due to the aging of its members, the Association of Returnees from China was disbanded as a national organization in 2002 and its work was carried on by the "Continuing the Miracle of Fushun Society" composed of younger activists. [4]
The Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanjing in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on December 13, 1937, the massacre lasted for six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other atrocities such as mass rape, looting, and arson. The massacre was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II.
The Battle of Nanking was fought in early December 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of the Republic of China.
Iwane Matsui was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the commander of the expeditionary force sent to China in 1937. He was convicted of war crimes and executed by the Allies for his involvement in the Nanjing Massacre.
Hajime Tanabe was a Japanese philosopher of science, particularly of mathematics and physics. In 1947 he became a member of the Japan Academy, and in 1950 he received the Order of Cultural Merit.
Yasuji Kaneko was an ex-soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army, and a former detainee of both Siberian Internment by the Soviet Union during 1945–1950 and Fushun War Criminals Management Centre in China during 1950–1956. He was known for his extensive war crimes testimony, including his alleged involvement in the Unit 731. His testimony appeared in the 2001 film Japanese Devils and the 2007 film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking. He was a member of the Association of Returnees from China.
Tomomi Inada is a Japanese lawyer and politician serving as a member of the Japanese House of Representatives, representing the 1st Fukui Prefecture since September 2005. She previously served as the 14th Japanese Minister of Defense from August 2016 to July 2017, resigning in response to a cover up scandal within the Japanese Ministry of Defense. She spent time as the Chairwoman of the Policy Research Council of the Liberal Democratic Party in her fourth term as a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet. She is a native of Fukui Prefecture.
Fushun War Criminals Management Centre, also known as Liaodong No. 3 Prison or Liaoning No. 3 Prison, was the site of the 're-education' of Manchukuo, Kuomintang and Japanese Empire prisoners of war, held by China from 1950 onwards. It was located in the Xinfu District, Fushun, Liaoning. Among the inmates were Puyi, the last emperor of China and former puppet emperor of Manchukuo, his younger brother Pujie and several other important World War II figures such as Xi Qia, Zang Shiyi and Zhang Jinghui. Part of the prison site currently remains in use, but the older section has been turned into a museum depicting the history of Fushun war criminals management centre and the life of the people who worked or were interned there.
The Japanese repatriation from Huludao refers to sending back to Japan the Japanese people who were left in Northeast China after the end of World War II in 1945. In this operation, done by the American forces' ships under the auspices of the Republic of China government, over one million Japanese were carried back to their homeland, from 1946 to 1948.
The Hundred Regiments Offensive also known as the Hundred Regiments Campaign was a major campaign of the Chinese Communist Party's National Revolutionary Army divisions. It was commanded by Peng Dehuai against the Imperial Japanese Army in Central China. The battle had long been the focus of propaganda in the history of Chinese Communist Party but had become Peng Dehuai's "crime" during the Cultural Revolution. Certain issues regarding its launching and consequences are still controversial.
The Republic of China (ROC) was commonly recognised as the official designation of China from 1912 to 1949, when it was a country in East Asia based in Mainland China, prior to the relocation of its central government to Taiwan as a result of the Chinese Civil War. At a population of 541 million in 1949, it was the world's most populous country. Covering 11.4 million square kilometres, it consisted of 35 provinces, 1 special administrative region, 2 regions, 12 special municipalities, 14 leagues, and 4 special banners. The People's Republic of China (PRC), which rules mainland China today, considers ROC as a country that ceased to exist since 1949; thus, the history of ROC before 1949 is often referred to as Republican Era of China. The ROC, now based in Taiwan, today considers itself a continuation of the country, thus calling the period of its mainland rule as the Mainland Period of the Republic of China in Taiwan.
Kenichi Ara is a Japanese political commentator and researcher on modern history. Until the 1980s, he used the pen name Hideo Hatakenaka.
Akira Fujiwara was a Japanese historian. His academic speciality was modern Japanese history and he was a professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi University. In 1980 he became a member of the Science Council of Japan and was a former chairman of the Historical Science Society of Japan.
Minoru Kitamura is a Japanese historian. He is a professor at Ritsumeikan University whose academic speciality is modern Chinese history.
Tamaki Matsuoka is a Japanese activist who challenges Japanese perceptions of the country's war crimes in the Rape of Nanking during Second Sino-Japanese War.
The total death toll of the Nanjing Massacre is a highly contentious subject in Chinese and Japanese historiography. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese Imperial Army marched from Shanghai to the Chinese capital city of Nanking, and though a large number of Chinese POWs and civilians were slaughtered by the Japanese following their entrance into Nanking on December 13, 1937, the precise number remains unknown. Since the late-1960s when the first academic works on the Nanking Massacre were produced, estimating the approximate death toll of the massacre has been a major topic of scholarly debate.
The Gegenmiao massacre, also known as the Gegenmiao incident, was a massacre conducted by the Soviet Union's Red Army and a part of the local Chinese population against over half of a group of 1,800 Japanese women and children who had taken refuge in the lamasery Gegenmiao/Koken-miao (葛根廟) on August 14, 1945, during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
Takeo Imai was a Japanese Major General of the China Expeditionary Army who was born in the Nagano Prefecture. He played a notable role during the Sino-Japanese war and the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II. During the Bataan Death March, he freed prisoners as the orders violated his Bushido code. He served as a Vice-Chief of the General Staff of the China Expeditionary Army, as well as worked for the Japanese embassy in Beiping following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. In this role he met with Chinese officers at Chichiang to negotiate surrender. Taking on important military roles in China and the Philippines, he was a significant actor throughout Japan's invasion of China and held an important role in negotiating and maintaining peace between the two countries. He was particularly influential in his responsibility of postwar processing and allowing for smooth demobilization transitions. He retired in 1947.
Shigeru Fujita was a career military officer and lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.
Fang Chih or Fang Zhi, courtesy name: Xikong (希孔), was a politician, provincial governor, diplomat, author and a high-ranking Kuomintang official of the Republic of China.
The Tonghua incident was a mass killing of rebelling Japanese soldiers that occurred on 3 February 1946 in southern Jilin, China.