Published on July 13, 2019.
Through the testimony of announcer Shiro Suzuki, this article records doubts concerning the Nanjing Incident narrative, accusations placed upon Japanese soldiers, the severe ordeal of repatriation from mainland China, and the unforgettable sight of cherry blossoms upon arriving in Nagasaki.

July 13, 2019
I suppose I was utterly exhausted, and the burden on my shoulders had finally been lifted.
I was apparently sleeping like a log, and in truth I do not remember it very well.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Was a False Charge Placed Upon Them?
The reason Japanese soldiers did not rape women was not merely that their discipline was high.
In fact, the sanitary conditions in the local areas were by no means good.
There were also concerns about venereal disease and infectious disease.
That is why comfort stations were necessary and why they were established.
There was a sufficient danger of contracting syphilis through sexual intercourse, so rape was completely out of the question.
Japanese soldiers did not have rape in mind, and first of all, they did not do it.
Stories have been spread saying that Japanese soldiers attacked women indiscriminately whenever they saw them, and even now there are Japanese who take such stories at face value, but the Japanese soldiers of that time were extremely cautious.
Their sense of hygiene was thorough.
Therefore, from the point of view of someone who knew those days, such stories are absurd and impossible.
Rather, there are many cases in which what Chinese soldiers did has been switched around and attributed to Japanese soldiers.
Professor Higashinakano Shudo has carried out photographic verification of the Nanjing Incident.
Among those kinds of fake photographs, for example, there were photographs of Japanese people who died in the Tongzhou Incident that were treated as if they were proof photographs of Chinese people massacred in the Nanjing Massacre.
There are also photographs of mounted bandits and brigands being punished.
When one looks at the method of execution, the photographs appear unmistakably to show a Chinese-style method of punishment, yet some of them have been presented as massacres by Japanese soldiers.
I believe that, in a considerable portion of these cases, acts committed by Chinese soldiers have been blamed on Japanese soldiers.
I was in China until the end of the war.
I often heard talk about the state of the war, but I never once heard anything like Japanese soldiers massacring residents in Nanjing.
If a massacre had truly taken place in Nanjing, one would surely have detected some trace of it, even fragmentarily, but there was none.
I believe that this is because the massacre said to have taken place in Nanjing, as it is spoken of today, was a complete fabrication, and while I am still alive, I want to clear the dishonor placed upon Japan’s soldiers.
The Terribly Difficult Repatriation
I was seven years old when the war ended.
I was in the second grade of elementary school.
It was regrettable.
Rather than being shocked, my mind went completely blank.
What had happened?
What did it mean that Japan had lost?
That was how I felt.
In any case, I could not feel it as something real.
However, I do remember that the attitudes of the Chinese and Korean people around us suddenly changed.
In particular, the change in the Korean people could truly be called a sudden transformation.
Some suddenly began acting arrogantly.
Some became overbearing and behaved outrageously.
There were even times when, upon seeing Japanese people, they held bamboo spears and threw them.
Fortunately, since I was a child, I was not attacked, but I had many unpleasant experiences.
Some of my classmates were beaten for no reason.
My father ran a trading company and had employed Chinese people and worked together with them, but there were also Chinese people who came to us and demanded that we hand over all our family property.
My family had vehicles with drivers and the like, and we were well-off.
However, my father took good care of his Chinese employees.
Because he had been involved in work related to military supplies, my father was nearly put on trial as a war criminal and was once taken into custody, but at that time, it was also Chinese people who helped him.
His subordinates and people who had worked with him appealed in various places, saying, “Suzuki is not a bad man; we will prove that,” and because of that, my father was released.
Because my father had been taken into custody in that way, it was extremely difficult for us to repatriate from mainland China.
My mother and I, leading my four-year-old and three-year-old younger sisters and carrying our luggage, walked 120 kilometers from Beijing and Tianjin to the port.
That was painful.
Repatriates were placed again and again into facilities like “detention camps.”
Chinese officials would say they were “inspecting the luggage,” but in reality they were seizing it.
On the way to the port of Tanggu, we were put into such “detention camps,” and each time, valuables were taken from us.
We were ordered, “Come here,” and taken into the facility.
That alone was unpleasant, but then my mother, my two younger sisters, and I were put into a shabby facility like a barrack and detained there for two or three days.
Cold wind came in mercilessly.
Then our luggage was taken, and every valuable item was stripped away.
My mother treasured a pair of boots that my father had given her as a present.
They were fine European-made boots.
My father was a captive, you see.
My mother must have not wanted to part with them, 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 boots with fur.
I quietly put them on and walked across mainland China.
At one point along the way, we were packed on top of one another into an open freight train.
It was not a matter of “boarding” or “being allowed to board.”
We were “packed in” like luggage.
Strong men were placed underneath as if serving as a base to support everyone from below, and women were packed on top of them.
The train only ran a short distance, but even a short distance meant that we did not have to walk that much.
The conditions were terribly poor.
If it had rained, it would have been the worst.
I think it is remarkable that I did not become ill.
On the way, my two young sisters often became fretful.
Of course they did.
No one could possibly walk 120 kilometers easily.
I think my mother was already gasping for breath.
My younger sister was three years old, so she had to be carried, and there was also the luggage.
I too had to walk while holding the hand of my other younger sister, otherwise we could not survive, but even I felt ready to give up.
In any case, I was told, “Shiro, you are the only male here.
Your father is now being detained, so do your best,” and I thought, “I am a Japanese boy; I will not be defeated.”
That was all.
At that point, there was no question of whether it was painful or anything else.
In a state in which I did not feel alive, I was simply desperate.
Then at last we reached the port and were put aboard an American naval vessel.
It was just before the ship left port that I was reunited with my father, who had been released.
Having cleared his name, my father rushed to the port in a car driven by a Chinese person and apparently made it just in time, at the very last moment before departure, but I suppose I was utterly exhausted, and the burden on my shoulders had finally been lifted.
I was apparently sleeping like a log, and in truth I do not remember it very well.
After that, there were times when I went out onto the deck of the vessel and looked at the sea.
I remember being astonished when the bright yellow sea changed into a blue sea.
The sea around China is truly yellow, just as it is called the Yellow Sea.
Until then, I myself had thought that the sea was yellow, so when I saw a blue sea I had never seen before for the first time, to be honest, I was frightened.
When we arrived at the port of Nagasaki, it was the season when the cherry blossoms were blooming.
In China, it was a strangely cold season, but Japan was in the warmth of spring.
When I saw the cherry blossoms, I thought, How beautiful they are.
I thought this was heaven.