Man Interned in Mongolia After WWII Recalls Harsh Living Conditions; Emperor, Empress Set to Visit Mongolia to Pay Respects
Ahead of the Imperial couple's visit, a 107-year-old man who is a former internee at the camp expressed his hope that the existence of Japanese internees who died in the forced labor camp will become more widely known.
During the visit, the Emperor and Empress will visit a memorial cenotaph for the Japanese internees who died.
Shuzo Yamada, who had to survive hard forced labor in Ulaanbaatar and other locations in Mongolia for about two years, recalled his fellow internees who died from hunger and the severely cold climate.
'I hope the visit by the Emperor and Empress will prompt as many people as possible to understand the sacrifice and hardship [we experienced] during the postwar detention,' he said.No hope of return
Yamada now lives in Nanto, Toyama Prefecture. When the war ended, he was a guard for aircraft fuel in Jinzhou, a city in present-day northeastern China. After he was disarmed, he was forced to board a cargo train.
When the train was passing near Mukden, another train carrying women and children going back to Japan passed by.
He then realized he and his comrades would not be returning to Japan. It was November 1945 and he was then 28 years old.
The cargo train traveled to the north. At Harbin Station, three Japanese men around the age of 18 or 19 who had tried to flee were shot to death by Soviet soldiers in front of his eyes. Yamada says the scene is still seared into his memory.
The cargo train entered the Soviet Union's territory and arrived at Naushki Station near the border with Mongolia. The journey took about 20 days.
No meals were provided during the travel. Yamada staved off hunger by eating small amounts of rice and hardtack that he concealed in his socks.
Soviet soldiers pointed guns at Yamada and his comrades, shouting a Russian phrase that means 'Hurry up,' and they were forced to walk for tens of kilometers through larch forests.
They were handed over to Mongolian soldiers and then forced to walk further. Finally, they were transported on military vehicles and entered the forced labor camp through a cave under the grassy plains.
Hunger, cold, hard labor
Water was not available on the plains and the temperature was below minus 30 C, so they would have to go to a river four kilometers away to get ice every morning.
Meals were given only once a day. They consisted of a soup made of sorghum and a small quantity of camel gut pieces. They were unable to bathe, so the sanitary conditions were awful. A 25-year-old in the same squad as Yamada wasted away and died.
In Ulaanbaatar, Yamada helped construct building foundations. The land underneath today's Sukhbaatar Square, where the national assembly building and theaters are located, was frozen to a depth of one meter in spring.
The soil was as hard as steel plates. Though Yamada tried to dig with a bar, the work did not progress. 'I felt miserable,' Yamada said.
He suffered from the triple hardships of hunger, extremely cold weather and hard labor. Sometimes he was sure that he would not be able to return home and would be killed.
In November 1947, Yamada boarded a ship for repatriating Japanese nationals and arrived in Hakodate, Hokkaido.
Hard efforts to console souls
Yamada's wife, Setsuko, who married him before he joined the army, waited for his return in his hometown in Toyama Prefecture. She died in 2015.
Yamada established a timber factory and worked hard. To console the souls of his fellow former internees in the forced labor camp, in 1998 he became a member of Zenkoku Kyosei Yokuryusha Kyokai, a Tokyo-based national association of former internees. He has served as the head of the association since 2019.
Yamada particularly devoted efforts to establish a memorial cenotaph in Toyama Prefecture for internees who died in Siberia. He also went to Mongolia to pay his respects to his fallen comrades.
Since his 80s, Yamada recorded his experiences in memoirs and films. Yurie Yamada, 71, the wife of his eldest son, said, 'He is glad that the Emperor and Empress will pay their respects and people will become aware of the internment in Mongolia.'
Yamada said, 'Japan must not wage a war again. I want young people to know that people were interned and then died.'575,000 internees
According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and other sources, after the end of World War II, about 575,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians in Manchuria, present-day northeastern China, and Sakhalin were brought to internment camps by the Soviet Union.
About 14,000 of them were placed in Mongolia. They were forced to work at construction sites, factories, farms and other various labor sites. About 1,700 died of malnutrition or from infectious diseases.
Imperial household empathizes
Members of the Imperial Household empathize with the internees' hardships and have continued to pay their respects to those who died.
In July 2007, when he was the crown prince, the Emperor visited Mongolia and offered flowers at a cenotaph in a suburb of Ulaanbaatar for Japanese nationals who died in the country.
The Emperor Emeritus, then the Emperor, in 1991 mentioned the issue during an Imperial banquet to welcome then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
At the time, he said, 'There was a period of hardship and sorrow between our two countries.'
The Emperor Emeritus has visited exhibitions of postwar internees even after he abdicated.
At the Chidorigafuchi National Cemetery in Tokyo, where remains of unidentified war dead and internees are placed, Imperial couples have visited to offer prayers. They are Emperor Showa and Empress Kojun; the Emperor Emeritus and Empress Emerita; the Emperor and Empress; and Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko.
In February this year, Prince Hisahito, the son of Crown Prince Akishino and Crown Princess Kiko, visited the Maizuru Repatriation Memorial Museum in Kyoto Prefecture.
The Imperial Household members have steadily continued efforts to pass on the memories of the war to future generations.
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