The following essay is essential reading not only for every Japanese citizen but also for people throughout the world.
It is filled with facts that people who only subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun and watched NHK knew nothing about… facts they were never told.
It is one of the finest essays written in postwar Japan.
Shoichi Watanabe was from Yamagata Prefecture, which borders Miyagi Prefecture, where I was born.
The people of Yamagata must continue to proclaim with pride to Japan and the world that they come from the same prefecture as this man, one of postwar Japan’s greatest intellectuals and a true treasure of Japan.
The people of Iwate should forever take pride in having produced Shohei Ohtani and Yusei Kikuchi, as well as Kenji Miyazawa.
Miyagi Prefecture should forever take pride in its tradition as the home of the First Higher School (the University of Tokyo) and the Second Higher School (Tohoku University), and in having faithfully carried on the remarkable governance of the extraordinary lord Date Masamune to create Sendai, a city of learning and a city of trees.
The other day, in a restroom at Takashimaya in Kyoto, I heard two office workers talking… “Sendai was the best place”… “I’m even thinking of living there after I retire”…
Miyagi must also forever take pride in having given birth to “The Turntable of Civilization.”
June 13, 2017
The following continues from the previous chapter.
The Lie of the “Nanjing Massacre”
I entered the old-system middle school in 1943, but the year before, when I was still in the sixth grade of elementary school, a boy in the neighborhood named Kazuo Ota, who was in his second year at a higher elementary school, said, “I hear Japan’s aircraft carriers, including the Kaga and the Akagi, have all been sunk.”
I remember being astonished and deeply displeased by this.
It was 1942, when the people around me were still saying, “We won! We won!”
Looking back, he was talking about the defeat at Midway.
The naval authorities were supposed to have concealed it completely, yet the information had indeed leaked out.
And the area where I lived was hardly a place where top-level classified information would be expected to leak.
This is what makes me think there is something strange about the “Nanjing Massacre.”
As I mentioned earlier, several people I knew had returned from service in the China Incident.
Yet not one of them spoke of any large-scale massacre in Nanjing.
That is strange, isn’t it?
The navy thoroughly concealed the sinking of its aircraft carriers in the defeat at Midway and kept those wounded at the time from leaving the hospital.
Even so, the information leaked out.
But no one spoke of a large-scale massacre having taken place in Nanjing.
There was a man named Masaaki Tanaka who had served as secretary to General Iwane Matsui, who was sentenced to death at the Tokyo Trial for the Nanjing massacre.
In a book he published after the war, The Fabrication of the Nanjing Massacre: On General Matsui’s Diary (Nihon Kyobunsha), he wrote that no massacre had taken place in Nanjing.
When I read it, I thought, “So it did not happen after all. That would make sense.”
Nanjing fell in 1937. At the time, Japan’s economy was not doing badly, and goods were not in short supply, so newspapers and magazines were very thick.
They contained a great deal of detailed information, from accounts of the fall of Nanjing to reports about the war.
Around one hundred reporters, including Japanese newspaper correspondents, went to Nanjing, yet not one of them reported any massacre.
Then, after the war, the story of a Nanjing massacre suddenly emerged at the Tokyo Trial.
Because the occupation forces’ press restrictions made it absolutely impossible to criticize the Tokyo Trial, all the media reported it as presented.
Ordinary people then thought, “Did we really do such a thing?”
Yet when I read Masaaki Tanaka’s book, it said that it had not happened.
Even as a child, I had collected many magazines from around the time Nanjing fell.
At the time, Japanese people could travel freely to and from Nanjing and Shanghai, so the magazines also contained many photographs.
I thought then, too, that it probably had not happened.
I Became Convinced There Had Been No Large-Scale Massacre
Later, a book titled The Illusion of the “Nanjing Massacre” by Akira Suzuki also appeared (republished by WAC in 2006). Wanting to know the truth, I bought The Verbatim Record of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, published by Yushodo.
It was like a ten-volume encyclopedia. I had no real reason to buy such a thing (laughs), but I bought it anyway.
I carefully examined the sections concerning Nanjing and became convinced that “there was no large-scale massacre.”
The reason is the testimony of a minister named Magee.
He was a graduate of Yale University who had lived in Nanjing for many years.
When Japan attacked Nanjing, foreigners established what they called a Safety Zone there and allowed ordinary civilians to take refuge in it.
Reverend Magee was an American and the head of the Red Cross in Nanjing.
He was therefore able to walk anywhere in Nanjing even after the Japanese army entered the city.
He took the witness stand.
At first, he said things such as, “I heard many people were killed over there” and “I heard many people were killed here.”
Then an American lawyer cross-examined him, asking, “That is hearsay evidence. How many people did you yourself see?”
Being a minister, and perhaps with his hand on the Bible, he did not lie. He said, “One.”
When the lawyer asked further, “Under what circumstances?” he testified, “A young Chinese man tried to run past a Japanese sentry standing at the boundary of the Safety Zone. The sentry told him to stop, but he did not. The sentry then chased him and shot him dead.”
That was all he himself had seen.
On a battlefield, if you run away instead of stopping when a sentry tells you to stop, any soldier will shoot you. Even today, if you go to New York and fail to stop when a police officer tells you to, won’t you be shot?
As for rape, Reverend Magee testified, “I went to an empty house and found a Chinese woman and a Japanese soldier there. When I arrived, the Japanese soldier was startled and ran away, forgetting his bayonet. I picked up the bayonet and chased after him.”
That was the single incident.
The testimony does not even establish whether this was before or after a rape, or whether the two had simply been talking.
Moreover, leaving a bayonet behind is a serious matter for a soldier.
Perhaps that shows how strictly his superiors had ordered him not to do such a thing.
Asked about looting by the Japanese army, Reverend Magee said only, “I saw a Japanese soldier come out of an empty house carrying a box for storing ice.”
He was in a position to walk freely around Nanjing. Japanese soldiers had also been strictly ordered not to harm foreigners, so he was in no personal danger; furthermore, he was the head of the Red Cross and a minister.
Those were the three incidents he saw.
There could not possibly have been a large-scale massacre.
To be continued.