Wednesday, September 30, 2015

People's Liberation Army of China

     China celebrated 3 September 2015, for the first time, as the day of victory over Japan.  On this day seventy years ago, two Japanese, representing the Government and the Military respectively, signed the surrender documents on the USS Missouri off the Japanese coast.

     Not many first-rank leaders of the world attended the ceremony at Tiananmon Square, but Mr. Putin, Ms. Park of South Korea, and Mr. Ban Ki-mun, the UN Secretary-General, were conspicuous by their presence.  The DPRK did not send a high-class delegation, and they were to be seen only at a corner.

     President Xi addressed the selected audience for a little more than ten minutes, and then went on an almost solo inspection of the armed forces waiting outside the Square. After his return to his place the military parade of about 12,000 troops started, to show hundreds of new weapons including ICBMs.  Planes were flying overhead in various formation.

     All that was old news.  Still, while Xi is attending the UN, let me ask a few questions about the People's Liberation Army.  Xi said in his speech that it is the people's army.  That is what its name says.  But really?  The war veterans were certainly shown respect and were among the proud marchers in the parade.  But the ordinary people were not even allowed to have a glimpse of the parade, let alone to be admitted into the Square.  There was no civilian, non-military element in the ceremony.  It was not for the people who were apparently not in a position to enjoy it, not at all.  Is it not how the common people are treated in China now? After all the common, non-military people played an invaluable role in defeating Japan.  It would be impossible to write the history of the war without properly evaluating their role.  If so what was the purpose of the glamorous parade on this day?  One might wonder if it was not for the sake of showing off to the foreign experts for export.  That way China is fast becoming a military power.  But what for?  The tiny territorial questions with Japan and some ASEAN countries would explain it?  On the contrary, these powerful missiles are enough to give enough excuse to the ultra-nationalists ubiquitous in these countries, and also in the US.  News came this morning that China would strengthen her PKO in Africa.  I would strongly hope that she would distinguish democratic forces from others and help only the former.  In the past she has so often aided dictatorial regimes.    

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

War Veterans Began to Speak

     On 20 September, a public hall in central Tokyo was fully packed to hear some 20 persons, including three women, all veterans of the last war, speak their own experiences of the war.  It was organized by a small private museum, located in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, intent on collecting first-hand testimonies on the war.  They are inviting the still surviving veterans to speak up, and their slogan is "Let us speak before we die".  They have started the work as the veterans are usually known to keep silent on what they did and saw in the war.  They are aiming at collecting the testimonies of 150,000 war survivors.

     I was not able to be present at the above meeting.  But fortunately I was able to get the printed summaries of what the 22 persons were going to speak on that day.  Their average age is said to be 92. Two of them could not come and it was 20 persons who actually spoke, each for a short time.  Together they fought on almost all the fronts that Japan did during the war.  Some of them were very young then.  The three women were residents of Palau, Okinawa and Tokyo, respectively, who met the US bombing there.

     What impressed me most out of these summaries was the very first one.  Its narrator volunteered to be an airman at the age of 15.  His first appointment was in Inland Japan, but later he was transferred to the Chinese Northeast, was captured by the Russians and engaged in hard labour for two years.  One in every six died thus.  When they were sent back to Japan and reached Nahotoka, a Siberian Port on the way, they dipped their hands in the sea and wept, saying that this sea would take them back to their country.

     But he found his house burnt down by an air-raid.  The one he mourned for most was his elder brother, who was killed by a torpedo at the age of only 18.  He was gone without knowing the era of peace which was very sad, he concluded.

     The museum can be contacted by
                 http://www.jvvap.jp
     Their email is senjyou@notnet.jp