Main title of this HP
Sino-Japanese War: From my father’s album
My father never said a word about Second Sino-Japanese War. He couldn't.
(1) In life, my father did not say a single word about the experience of the war in China to me (my age 60s as of 2013). Later I realized he practiced what he thought were nameless deeds. His contemporaries too --- my friends' fathers --- almost kept silent on that Second Sino-Japanese War. Admitting he just obeyed the national command, the devilish behavior of devastating other countries and killing the people there was probably anything but the narrative to his beloved children. His conscience cannot possibly be acquitted only by any excuses that he was washed off by some manipulation of public opinion or that no senior accepted the blame.
(2) Taking photographs was his only hobby. Not so rigidly restrained at that time, perhaps, his photographs might have been sometimes convenience to his unit. Truly he was silent, but the photo albums he left speak of the truth of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
"Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present"
Richard von Weizsäcker.
(3) Recently some say that school libraries should not open to children "Barefoot Gen" --- a cartoon, which depicts how a boy, one of the A-bomb victims, struggled to survive, for the reason that the scene of beheading is too cruel to young people. My view is completely opposite. All of us should learn the fact that over seventy years ago by the official order, millions of Japanese young men were involved with the brutality that was too shameful for them to tell to their own children later.
(4) The purpose of this web site is to make the photos my father left help to fulfill world peace. Downloading and linking is welcome, as long as it serves the purpose.
Trying out a new sword
Taken on Sep.13, 1938 at Shucheng, located between Nanjin and Wuhan
[ Original Caption] Private first-class Kawana at Shucheng self-made sword requisitioned jacket Tetsuchin a popular fellow acknowledging being chief hand in mechanization section.His dream in boyhood was allegedly being a student of an art school.
* (author's comment) This is the only brutal picture of my father's photo albums. It was taken by him at the age of 23. With no emotional comment, this shot suggests those scenes are not uncommon those days. Probably this soldier, nicknamed Tetsuchin (Mr.Iron), asked my father to take a picture wanting to show off the sword of his own making. He wore the requisitioned jacket in case his own jacket would get stained with the blood in the murder.
The strangeness of daily life while being invaded by other countries
1938 Zhenjiang
* When I see the album, I feel it is strange that while going about daily life, like sunbathing or washing clothes, we were invading another country. Do people accept and adopt that kind of circumstance once they are thrown into it even if they think it is absurd? Education, which only taught to obey the order without question, must have been powerful.
Village of a battlefield
1938 Zhenjiang, Jurong
* They seem to be heading to collect requisition supplies.
Smoke drifts in the village.
1937 Near Nanjing
Daily life entertainment
1938 Zhenjiang
* These are pictures of a talent show and a group entertaining the soldiers.
They will of ordinary people enjoing this kind of entertainment
[ Original Caption]
Girls song team
[ Original Caption] 1938 King Record Entertainment Group
December 1937 My father was in Nanjing.
* When I saw "December 1937, in Nanjing”, I froze. I did not know my father was there at that time.
1937 Going to Nanjing by truck
December 1937, Nanjing Field Hospital
[ Original Caption] 1937 Mt. Zijin, near Nanjing
Athletic festival
1939 Xinyang
Athletic festival at Xinyang barracks
* It looks like the straw bag pass competition. You can only see Japanese flags, not other countries’ flags. You can read messages on them. They look like group efforts the soldiers received when they left home.
1938 Xinyang Centipede competition
1938 Xinyang A bread eating contest
Battlefront
May 25, 1938 Zhenjiang, Jurong
* The young man wearing a sword walked toward a foreign country. I wonder how anxious he was. He may have wondered why he was there.
On the other hand, I wonder how Chinese people felt seeing Japanese soldiers invading their land while holding Japanese flags and burning their villages.
Because a sunny sky is seen in the top right corner, the background smoke must be from a war battle.
1938 *The soldier advances with the Japanese flag along the ridge
Keeping a dove
1938 Zhenjiang
* I do not know whether that it is a pet or a military dove, but it looks like daily life is peaceful.
* This man is writing a letter, maybe to his parents or siblings. Chinese people also have family members.
It is too late after the beginning of war. Ordinary men are forced to become murderers in the war.
I feel strange when I see my father’s album because the Japanese soldiers are gentle to children and enjoying an athletic festival. But on the other hand, they are committing genocide. It is hard to understand from today’s point of view. It is a contradiction. But most of the soldiers seem to be able to adopt and get used to most of the circumstances, no matter how much they do not make sense.
However, my father never said anything about these few years that were a nightmare after the war.
After he returned home from the Sino-Japanese War, he studied very hard and became an engineer in an arms factory so that he could avoid being called up for the Pacific War. He later worked as an office worker, a job totally unrelated to weapons.
It is too late after the war began. If this album helps to convey what will happen to ordinary people once war starts, it is worthwhile that my father took these pictures 70 something years ago.