Through my meeting with Donald Versaw, a former U.S. Marine and Allied prisoner of war, I began to feel a simple yet strong desire: “I want to create a memorial for the Allied POWs in Moji Port.” Many of the prisoners who arrived at Moji died in Japan, a foreign land, without ever returning home. Local people were unaware of this history. I heard that even in the United States, the existence of POWs within Japan during the Pacific War went unmentioned for a long time. I thought to myself: what does it mean to be forgotten, despite having risked one’s life for their country?
Actually creating a memorial was no easy task. I began researching Allied POWs and Kitakyushu’s connection to the war. Before long, many questions arose: Why did the Netherlands, Britain, and Australia fight against Japan? I searched for answers online for everything I didn’t understand. I realized I knew nothing about Southeast Asia before and during the war.
In Kitakyushu, there was little interest in a POW memorial. I initially thought this might be because it concerned “enemy” prisoners. Then, I began looking into the existing war-related memorials in the city: the Cenotaph for the Great Yawata Air Raid, the Memorial Cross, and the World Peace Pagoda in Moji. The World Peace Pagoda, supported by the families of those who died on the Burmese front, had closed at the end of 2011 (it later reopened in August 2012 with support from the Myanmar government). I realized that for my generation and younger people, that war had become something disconnected from our lives. Visiting the Pagoda, I saw the deep feelings of those who remembered the fallen in Burma. Looking at the names carved in stone for donations felt like looking at distant events from the Showa era. I realized that even the Japanese who died in that war were being forgotten, perhaps even more so than the Allied POWs.
For a long time, I believed that Japan was a country to be ashamed of for starting that war. I never tried to look deeply into what Japan did or why it fought. However, through my meeting with Donald, I was compelled to research the war, and I discovered many events that were never taught in our history lessons.
Conversations about the war often lead to conflicting views. Through my research, I learned that there are vast amounts of information, diverse perspectives, experiences, and positions. Information and viewpoints differ by country; even within Japan, opinions clash between those who believe the war was justified and those who believe it was a mistake.
In the United States, many classified military and government documents are released after a certain period. The way we choose books today is entirely different from the past; we can now research a book’s content and credibility before buying it online or borrowing it from a library. I also learned that there were people in Asia who fought alongside Japan and remained pro-Japanese. While television, newspapers, and school education may have provided a general view of history until now, I feel there is much we can only know because we live in this current era.
The thoughts and feelings regarding the war and Japan differ between my grandparents’ generation and my parents’ generation (born in the 1930s and 40s). My generation’s perspective is different yet again. It seems that how one perceives and feels about the war changes entirely depending on their generation.
I do not have the expertise or knowledge to define what that war was. In the future, the amount of information and the ways of thinking will surely change again. Through my involvement with this history, I have gained many encounters, opportunities to think, lessons, and moments of deep emotion. I feel that the period surrounding the war holds a vital key to understanding the transformation into modern Japan.
That said, how will I think about the war twenty years from now? How will people currently in their twenties perceive and learn about it? And how will their children one day be taught and come to know about that war?
I feel that in the future, there will be ways of thinking and feeling that are different from those we have today.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who cooperated in the creation of this booklet: Mr. Takashi Deguchi, former Deputy Mayor of Kitakyushu; Mr. Akio Yamamoto, former President of IMAX Japan; Ms. Taeko Sasamoto of the POW Research Network Japan; author Mr. Shin’ya Ichijo; and photographer Mr. Ichiro Kidera. My sincere thanks to Mr. Yoichi Kudo for granting permission to use numerous U.S. documents and literature, and to all those who contributed to the production costs. I am also deeply grateful for the connections made during this project: Mr. Tom Seal of the 24th Division, singer Ms. Monica Lewis, and Mr. David Varley, who served as a guard for General MacArthur—connections made possible by the Korean War Memorial. And above all, to those who have watched over and supported me through Facebook, mixi, and my blog—it is because of your support that I was able to challenge this difficult theme of “war” in my own way. Thank you, always.
Seina
