Memory of detention in Mongolia still fresh for 107-yr-old Japanese
As Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako are set to make an official visit to Mongolia from Sunday to July 13, Shuzo Yamada recalls his internment experience in the country nearly 80 years ago, a memory that remains vivid for the 107-year-old Japanese man.
The Imperial couple will offer flowers on Tuesday at a memorial monument for Japanese who were captured by the former Soviet Union after the Pacific War, part of World War II, and died while being detained in Mongolia.
"Without water or food, I had an unimaginable experience," says Yamada, who heads the national association for former detainees, and now lives in Nanto, Toyama Prefecture, central Japan.
In July 1941, at age 23, Yamada received his draft notice, just six months after getting married. He was sent to former Manchuria, now northeastern China, where he was assigned to guard aviation fuel at an airfield, among other duties. While in Manchuria, he learned of the birth of his first son. But the baby died when he was three months old without ever seeing his father.
Yamada was at an airfield near Dalian, China, when World War II ended.
He thought he could return home, but he was captured by the former Soviet Union and forced into labour for the demolition of a coal-fired power plant in Manchuria for about three months from September 1945.
In December that year, he was transported to Mongolia. At the Harbin railway station, he saw three young soldiers being shot dead while attempting to escape.
In Mongolia, Yamada first lived in a cave in the meadow, and then moved to a camp near the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar in April 1946. He endured extreme cold, with nighttime temperatures dropping to minus 30 degrees Celsius. Even in July, he burned a stove fueled by animal feces.
"It's an unthinkable life for Japanese people today," Yamada says.
He returned to Japan in November 1947. Since then, he has dedicated his life to preserving the memory of his detention and commemorating the victims. He took the lead in installing in 2005 a memorial monument in Takaoka, Toyama, inscribed with the names of people who were born in the prefecture and died during detention in Mongolia. He attends a related memorial service every September.
Having witnessed a fellow detainee who had expressed despair the night before die the next day, Yamada never lost his determination to "definitely go home." Citing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the situation in Gaza, he stresses, "War should never be started."
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
