A piece written on July 3, 2019.
Through testimony about the slanders placed upon Japanese soldiers, the fabrication of photographs related to the Nanjing Incident, and the brutal repatriation from the Chinese mainland after the war, this essay records postwar truths that Japanese people must never forget.
It recounts the discipline and hygienic awareness of Japanese soldiers, the sudden change in the behavior of Korean and Chinese residents, the looting of family property, the hellish 120-kilometer journey on foot with two small sisters, and even the cherry blossoms seen upon arrival in Nagasaki, offering a deeply moving witness to war and defeat.

2019-07-03
There can be no one other than employees of the Asahi Shimbun, the so-called cultural figures who sympathize with it, and NHK employees, who could read this chapter without tears.
This was a chapter I published on 2018-07-03 under the title, The reason Japanese soldiers did not rape women was not only because they had strict discipline.
There can be no one other than employees of the Asahi Shimbun, the so-called cultural figures who sympathize with it… and it goes without saying that Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami are representative examples… and NHK employees, who could read this chapter without tears.
All Japanese other than them should be unable to refrain from weeping bitterly.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Have False Charges Been Imposed?
The reason Japanese soldiers did not rape women was not only because they had strict discipline.
In fact, local sanitary conditions were by no means good.
Venereal disease and infectious disease were also concerns.
That is why comfort stations were necessary and were established.
Since there was every possibility of contracting syphilis through sexual relations, rape was absolutely out of the question.
Japanese soldiers had no interest in rape, and in the first place they did not do it.
Stories have been spread saying that when Japanese soldiers saw women, they assaulted them indiscriminately, and now there are Japanese who believe such things, but the Japanese soldiers of that time were in fact extremely cautious.
Their sense of hygiene was thorough.
So from the perspective of people who knew that time, such stories are absurd and impossible.　
Rather, there are many cases in which what Chinese soldiers did has been switched around and said to have been done by Japanese soldiers.
Professor Higashinakano Shudo has conducted photographic verification of the Nanjing Incident.
Among those fake photographs, for example, there were some in which photographs of Japanese who died in the Tongzhou Incident were treated as though they were evidence photographs showing Chinese being massacred in the Nanjing Massacre.
There are also photographs of mounted bandits and brigands being executed.
Looking at the method of execution, there are photographs that by all appearances seem to show a Chinese-style method of execution, and yet they were said to depict massacres by Japanese soldiers.
I think that in a considerable number of cases, acts by Chinese soldiers have been pinned on the Japanese.　
I was in China until the end of the war.
I often heard talk about the war situation, but I never once heard stories saying that Japanese soldiers massacred residents in Nanjing.
If there had in fact been a massacre in Nanjing, one would surely have sensed some trace of it, even fragmentarily, but there was nothing of the kind.
That is why I believe that the massacre now said to have occurred in Nanjing was entirely fabricated, and while I am still alive, I want to clear the dishonored name of Japan’s soldiers.
The Difficult Repatriation.　
I was seven years old when the war ended.
I was in the second year of elementary school.
It was regrettable.
More than shock, my mind went blank.
What had happened?
What did it mean that Japan had lost?
That was how it felt.
At any rate, it did not feel real.
However, I do remember that the attitudes of the Chinese and the Koreans around us suddenly changed.　
Especially the change in the Koreans was such that one could call it a complete transformation.
Some suddenly became arrogant.
Some began behaving in a high-handed and insolent manner.
There were even times when, on seeing Japanese people, they threw bamboo spears at us.
Fortunately, because I was a child, I myself was not attacked, but I had many unpleasant experiences.
Among my classmates, there were some who were beaten for no reason.　
My father ran a trading company and employed Chinese people and worked with them, but there were also Chinese who came and said, “Hand over all your family’s property.”
Our household was wealthy, with such things as a chauffeur-driven car.　
However, my father treated his Chinese employees well.
Because he had been involved in war-related work, my father was almost put on trial as a war criminal and was once detained, but it was also Chinese people who helped him at that time.
His subordinates and those who had worked with him appealed in various places, saying, “Suzuki is not a bad man, and we will prove it,” and as a result my father was released.
Because my father had been detained in that way, it was terribly difficult to repatriate from the Chinese mainland.
My mother and I, leading my younger sisters aged four and three, walked with our luggage one hundred and twenty kilometers from Beijing and Tianjin to the port.
That was truly hard.　
Repatriates were repeatedly put into facilities like “internment camps.”
Chinese officials would say, “We are inspecting your luggage,” but in reality they were plundering it.
Before reaching the port of Tangku, we were put into such “internment camps,” and each time valuables were taken from us.
We would be ordered, “Come here a moment,” and taken into the facility.
That alone was bad enough, but then my mother, my two younger sisters, and I would be put into a ramshackle barracks-like facility and held up for two or three days.
Cold wind came in mercilessly.
And then our baggage was taken, and anything valuable was stripped away completely.　
My mother treasured a pair of boots given to her by my father.
They were magnificent European-made boots.
My father was being held captive.
My mother must have thought she did not want to let them go, because she said to me, “Shiro, I’m sorry, but please wear these.”
“Wear them home,” she said.
If I was wearing them, the Chinese would not take them.
But they were women’s fur-lined boots.
I silently wore them and walked across the Chinese mainland.　
Along the way, there were also times when we were crammed on top of one another into open freight cars.
It was not a matter of “boarding” or “being allowed aboard.”
We were “packed in” like cargo.
Strong men would get in first, as if forming a base underneath, and then women would be crammed on top of them.
They only ran a short distance, but even a short distance meant one did not have to walk that much.
The wretchedness was terrible.
If it had rained, it would have been the worst.
I often think it is amazing that we did not fall ill.　
During the journey, my two little sisters often cried and fussed.
Naturally so.
No one could possibly walk one hundred and twenty kilometers.
I think my mother must already have been at the end of her strength.
The younger of my sisters was only three, so she had to be carried, and in addition there was luggage.　
I too had to walk holding my other sister’s hand, or we would not survive, but I too felt I was about to give up.
At any rate, I was told, “Shiro, you are the only male here.
Your father is in detention now, so do your best,” and so I thought only, “I am a Japanese boy, I will not be defeated.”
That was all.
There was no question anymore of hardship or anything else.
In a state where life itself did not feel real, I was simply desperate.　
At last we somehow reached the port and were put aboard an American ship.
I was reunited with my released father just before the ship departed.
My father, whose dishonor had been cleared, rushed to the port in a car driven by a Chinese man and apparently arrived just in time before departure, but I was utterly exhausted and must have felt my burden fall from my shoulders.
I was told that I was sleeping like the dead in mud, and in truth I do not remember it well.　
After that, I sometimes went out onto the deck of the ship and looked at the sea.
I remember being astonished when the completely yellow sea changed into a blue sea.
The sea by China really is yellow, just as it is called the Yellow Sea.
I myself had thought until then that the sea was yellow, so when I first saw the blue sea, something I had never seen before, I was honestly frightened.
When we arrived at the port of Nagasaki, it was the season of cherry blossoms.
In China it had been a strangely cold season, but in Japan it was gentle spring.
When I saw the cherry blossoms, I thought, how beautiful they are.
I thought this must be heaven.