Editor’s note: The freighter referenced in this column has subsequently been released, following a payment of approximately US$29 million by Mitsui O.S.K Lines as compensation.

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　　　On April 19th, a large Japanese freighter owned by Mitsui O.S.K. Lines of Tokyo —the 226,434-ton Baosteel Emotion—was abruptly ordered to be seized by a court in Shanghai. The seizure was in connection with a lawsuit filed by a Chinese shipping company demanding compensation for two ships leased to Mitsui before Japan and China went to war in 1937. A succession of law suits have simultaneously been filed in Chinese courts against other major Japanese corporations, including the Mitsubishi Group, by Chinese citizens claiming they were moved to Japan for forced labor during the Asia-Pacific War.

　　　In China, the judiciary is placed under the guidance of the Communist Party (CPC), and this series of lawsuits directly reflects the intentions of the communist administration. This new turn of events demonstrates China’s determination to challenge Tokyo to an all-out confrontation on these issues and other areas of controversy.

　　　The truth of the matter is, however, the Chinese government until recently disallowed such claims in its courts. In point of fact, Article 5 of the Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China, exchanged on the occasion of normalization of relations between the two countries, clearly states: “The Government of the People’s Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparations from Japan.”

　　　But the Chinese government asserts that, although past issues in the state-to-state relationship have been settled, matters pertaining to relations between Chinese individuals and the Japanese government should be treated differentlyーan interpretation of international law that would not stand anywhere else in the world. Obviously, the generally recognized rule of law of the international community doesn’t apply to China.

　　　Indeed, China’s behavior under President Xi Jinping is far from normal. And the latest show of abnormal thinking on the part of Beijing, as reflected in its interpretation of the Japan-China joint communique of 1972, will likely be aggravated as Beijing resorts to tough measures towards Japan. The more serious its domestic problems become, the tougher will be China’s stance, subjecting Japan to an insidious public relations offensive. We must fully bear in mind China’s real intention and be determined to cope resolutely with it.

　　　We cannot afford to lose this new battle over history by not refuting the Chinese claims—as we failed to do in the case of the so-called Korean “comfort women.” Because we failed to vigorously refute this accusation, Japan was unjustly accused of movingyoung Korean girls from their domiciles and forcing prostitution on them in brothels around Japanese military camps during the war. This was a fabricated story based initially on an August 1991 report by the Asahi Shimbun, a mass-circulation liberal daily. Now, here in the year 2014, many Japanese have at last come to understand that that there was no forced prostitution and that the “comfort women” were not “sex slaves” of the Japanese military. But there was a long period in which even ordinary Japanese took falsified Asahi reports at their face value.

Testimony by Former Imperial Army Soldiers and Officers

　　　Once lies and fabrications are allowed to circulate freely, it takes enormous time and energy to rectify them. Now that the initial and grave misunderstanding on the part of the general Japanese populace regarding the “comfort women” issue, based significantly on the Asahi’s reports, has largely been laid to rest, Japanese have begun to more assertively get out our side of the story to the international community. Among other actions, Japanese citizens’ groups in the US have taken legal measures aimed at seeking the removal of a statue of a “comfort woman” in a public park in Glendale, California. It has taken nearly a quarter of a century for us Japanese to share the same sentiments about this issue.

　　　In our struggle to resolve the misunderstandings about the “comfort women” with the international community, however, we are barely beyond the starting line. We will need much time to get our message across effectively, and the real fight has yet to begin. That is all the more reason why we must cope expeditiously and resolutely with China’s ongoing, unsubstantiated accusations about our past, and in order to do that we must confirm to what extent Chinese accusations are true or fabricated. Pondering in this vein the question of “kyosei renko”—forced transportation of Chinese laborers to Japan for war-time labor—one is astonished to realize how little we really know about this matter.

　　　Researching this subject, one quickly comes to grips with an unsettling reality: while it is easy to locate reference materials written or compiled by left-wing researchers and scholars who claim Chinese laborers were “forcibly moved to Japan” or “brutalized in Japan,” those reflecting the opposite view are extremely scarce. In other words, the conservative camp in Japan has yet to fully grapple with research into this pertinent subject.

　　　The Fallacy of Forced Transportation of Chinese and Koreans (edited by “Choices for Tomorrow” editors at Japan Policy Center [JPC]; Tokyo; 2004) is one source that does provide useful information in this regard.

　　　This 95-page book explains that the “migration” to Japan of Chinese workers was decided at a cabinet meeting in 1942, and then implemented on an experimental basis between April and November the following year. Because the results were “generally favorable,” a formal movement of Chinese laborers was agreed upon at the end of 1944, subsequently bringing into Japan a total of 38,935 Chinese workers by May 1945.

　　　Incidentally, after the Chinese government initially claimed that 2.76 million Chinese workers had been brought into Japan, it curiously increased the number to 5.69 million. The Chinese government has manipulated the numbers for Chinese “laborers” it claimed were forced to work in Japan in the same way as it has dealt with the number of Chinese victims of the Asia-Pacific War—from 3.2 million (right after the war) to 5.79 million, then to 21.68 million when the Communists triumphed over the Nationalists in 1947. The number abruptly jumped yet again to 35 million in 1995, with then President Jiang Zeming making the claim during a memorial ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the victory of the Allies in World War II.

　　　Even so, what the book depicts was startling to me. In a report entitled “Questions about the Forced Transportation of Chinese Laborers, ” JPC director Kunihiro Okada reveals that the fabrication of Japan having “hunted” for Chinese workers and forcibly brought them to Japan for war-time labor originated from accusations brought forth by former Japanese officers and soldiers detained in China at the end of the war. What Okada describes reminds me of the book by Seiji Yoshida, in which he wrote how he had forcibly recruited young Korean women in Chejudo, an island off South Korea’s southern coast, as prostitutes—“comfort women”—for the Japanese military. Yoshida later publicly admitted his account was a fiction.

The Second “Comfort Women” Scandal

　　　It was former Imperial Japanese Army soldiers and officers who, before the Chinese, charged the Japanese government with having “hunted” for and “forcibly transported” Chinese workers to Japan, Okada points out. The book is full of dreadful anecdotes one can hardly bear to read. One such anecdote appears in a section by Toshio Tanabe, a writer specializing in the history of the war period, entitled: “Testimony on ‘laborer hunting’ is fabricated.” He cites the following “evidence” obtained from the testimony of one Japanese soldier:

　　　“I killed a young Chinese girl, made slices of her flesh, and distributed them among the 70 members of our troop.” Hard though it may be to believe, a former Japanese soldier gave the “evidence” that the Japanese army had engaged in such a demonic deed. I am firmly convinced that the Japanese are not the type of people who could bring themselves to engage in such an abominable act. This we know better than anybody else from our own experience, honed by the history of our nation which has nurtured a very gentle civilization and people. But then who are the soldiers who testified about the outlandish behavior of war-time Japanese soldiers, including the hunt for Chinese workers?

　　　Tanabe noticed something strange as he dug deep into various research materials pertaining to the “hunt.” He found that, in all of Japan, only eleven of these soldiers and officers had testified against the Japanese government in connection with forced transportation. What is more, these eleven had all been detained in China following the end of the war, nine of them having been attached to the 59th division of the 12th Japanese Northern China Area Army.

　　　What Tanabe managed to establish through his extensive research was that 1,109 Japanese soldiers and officers detained by the Chinese following the war had been subjected to a tenacious Chinese campaign to have them “admit their guilt.” Tanabe explains what the Japanese detainees went through was nothing less than a thought-reform campaign, in which the former officers and soldiers were incessantly pressured to admit their guilt if they ever wanted to go home again.

　　　Tabane writes that these detainees were tortured day and night—until they revealed their supposed guilt. The torture was so severe some soldiers took their own lives. That is how the fiction about “forced transportation” became the “truth.” Eventually, 47 of the 1,109 detainees died in detention, the rest finally being repatriated to Japan beginning in 1956. Once home, nearly half of them formed the Liaison Committee of Former Detainees in China, primarily engaging in dissemination of false information pertaining to sinful wartime deeds committed by the Japanese army, including the “laborer hunt.” Tanabe notes that the Asahi’s well-recognized house reporter Katsuichi Honda was in the vanguard of the daily’s campaign to disgrace Japan. So, the Asashi is not only responsible for fabricating reports about the “comfort women.”

　　　The important thing now is for us Japanese to launch full-fledged research on our own into the facts of the “laborer hunt” and “forced transportation,” as well as the work environment of the 38,935 Chinese workers who were actually brought to Japan during the war. Unless we come to grips with the facts and get the real story out, these controversies will likely unfairly plague us in the same way as the “comfort women” issue.

(Translated from “Renaissance Japan” column no. 605 in the May 1, 2014 issue of The Weekly Shincho)