"Sir, please help me. Japanese soldiers have carried off my wife !"
"Get her back, please.....we have just been married !"
so pleaded a young Chinese man, who clutched my arm with both his hands, his face distorted in anguish.
It was early January of the year Japan lost the war. Six of us cadets, who had completed Officer's Candidate School in Nanking a month before, departed Wuchuan, a large city on the Yangtse River, heading southwest for Hengyang with about 300 fresh recruits from Japan we were to deliver them to their respective units at the front. After two months or so of forced marches we finally made it to our destination and had turned over what was left of the recruits to their unit representatives.
Freed from our first duties as officer-in-training, the six of us were walking light heartedly along the military road toward Kweiling to join our units deployed in Kwangsi Province when this happening occurred. A long line of refugees fleeing the devastation of the fighting up front moved slowly toward us and began to pass us by with caution and fear. It was just at that moment when a young man sprang out of the throng and ran toward me, his voice pleading in bitter grief. The one who interpreted this young man's plea to us was Cadet Minoru Matsuoka, who had a degree in Chinese languages from the Tenri Foreign Language College.
"How outrageous, those bastards ! Let's go and get her freed somehow !" said Matsuoka, facing the young Chinese husband as if talking to him. During our march, Cadet Matsuoka had displayed more leadership than the five of us put together. He was robustly built, round faced, and his big dark eyes would flare up in intense interest whenever the subject of talk touched on the opposite sex. He was indeed handsome. Now, his sense of justice struck the five of us.
"Sure, by all means, let's do something about this !" we chanted in agreement, showing off our macho spirit to noone but ourselves. "Let's go !" said Cadet Tagaya as he clenched his fists and began to crack his knuckles like mad. He hailed as a "karate" champion from Kansai University and knew no fear. "Sir thank you, thank you" repeated the young Chinese husband as he fell in line and began to follow us.
After about two hours of marching we came across a sentry standing under a row of tall acacia trees which lined both sides of the wide military road built by a warlord of this region some years ago. Questioning the sentry we learned that an infantry battalion was preparing to bivouac for several days, and that a number of young Chinese women had been captured and brought there. About two kilometers inland from the military highway soldiers were preparing for their good earned rest. We approached a sergeant who happened to be nearby and asked to see the officer in command. After waiting for ten minutes or so there appeared from inside a farmhouse a lieutenant of the medical corps, a mature man in his forties.
The lieutenant admitted the fact that more than a dozen Chinese women had been rounded up. They had already been put through the medical checkup and were soon to "begin business" of giving comfort to our soldiers. This he told us in a quiet, composed manner.
Cadet Matsuoka then took the young Chinese man and made him stand in front of the medical corps lieutenant. "His bride might have been brought here. If so, isn't there any way she can be released ? Surely you can manage with one girl missing." Matsuoka pleaded ardently and spoke as one human individual to another, forgetting he was speaking to an officer of superior rank. "No, no way!" the medical lieutenant this time lashed out at Matsuoka. "They were requisitioned by military orders!" Without flinching Cadet Matsuoka asked in a matching loud voice, "Then can't he be allowed to find her here and see her even for a glimpse?"
The young Chinese husband keenly watched the scene of animated conversation taking place between the two men. Although he could not understand the talk being exchanged, it seemed that Matsuoka's desperate plea was being communicated from mind to heart. "All right. If it's only to see each other..... I will permit that ... it could be their last moment together, if she's there. I hope she isn't . With a deep sigh, the medical officer grabbed the trembling young Chinese husband's arm. Twelve eyes, blurred with tears, followed the two figures as they disappeared into the village.
After thirty minutes or so, the Chinese husband appeared alone. On his face tears had not yet dried, and yet he came forward to us and managed to put on a smile. "Sir, thank you, thank you. My bride was in there, and we were able to see and talk to each other. We both have nothing to regret." "Sorry we couldn't be of more help to you because of our low rank" said Cadet Matsuoka as he lowered his head in shame. Seemingly overwhelmed at these words, the young Chinese husband stood at stiff attention in front of us and shed large drops of tears, tears of deep grievance mixed with sincere gratitude. The five cadets were so impressed at the sight of these two young men, transcending race and country, that they struggled to swallow their sentiments that kept swelling up in their throats.
"Now we must go. Let's hurry !" someone said. At this signal all of us returned to our normal selves and began to pick up our heavy luggage. Just then the young husband cried out, "I've now seen my wife. As a sign of gratitude to you all, at least allow me to carry your luggage." And he busily divided up our luggage into two even piles, attached them on each end of a carrying pole and he began to walk off. Dumbfounded, the six cadets could only follow.
After a few days of marching it came time for the cadets to part and leave the military road, each going in their respective directions toward their home regiments at the front. I, only, was left to continue to trod further along the highway with the young Chinese husband carrying my luggage and his meager belongings. Several days later, I finally reached the regimental headquarters of the 34th Division Transport Regiment, my home unit, deployed near Chuanhsien. Immediately I was appointed chief intelligence officer to fill the position vacated by an officer killed in action only a few days ago, and was given an orderly to manage my belongings. The young Chinese husband stayed on happily helping my orderly.
Several days later, Operation Chikiang went into action, and our regiment prepared to move toward this bastion defended by Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek's crack troops of the New 1st and 6th Armies. The young Chinese husband also prepared to come with me. It was not without difficulty that I talked him out of coming. He departed in high spirits, waving his hand high above his head. Dangling from his belt were two pairs of my socks filled with salt, the only parting gift I could think of which would have some bartering value on the road. He told me he would return to his home village and see if his bride would be there. If not he would make a search of the whole region. Needless to say, there was little chance of his ever finding his beloved bride because it was consistent practice for front line Japanese forces to destroy all evidence after utilizing local women to comfort them.
The outcome of the Chikiang Operation turned out to be a fiasco for the Japanese troops. What was left of the Japanese divisions had to be pulled out of central China. Left behind was a nominal force of three infantry battalions to bring up the rear, and included in this rear guard force was a platoon of forty or so soldiers led by our hero, Cadet Matsuoka. His platoon fought to block two Chinese regiments. Totally outnumbered, they all went down fighting to an honorable death. The fighting occurred on 14 July 1945, only two months or so after the parting of the six cadets, including our Chinese friend, at a certain point on the military road leading to Kweiling and Luichiao. Cadet Matsuoka's heroic fighting at Zhang Shiling, southwest of Chuang Hsien, so impressed the Chinese forces that they recovered his personal belongings and turned them over to the Japanese side after the war, in a rare show of respect to an enemy officer. I heard about this one day in March 1946 at the Chinese Army Headquarters at Shanghai where I had been posted as liaison officer.
Speaking of the husband of the newly wed bride who had been abducted by Japanese soldiers to be gored by their fangs, and of our good fellow, Cadet Matsuoka, who had fervently pleaded on behalf of the Chinese husband to an officer of higher rank and gaining a special favor, unheard of, given to an enemy citizen by the Japanese Army at the front lines. These two young men each had unwillingly sacrificed the life of one's most beloved wife, and one's own life filled with rich promises, both as prey to the cruel and ruthless demon named War.
Such a tragedy had been played over and over many thousand times for a long run of two decades or more on the stage throughout China. The Nanking Massacre was merely a single frame in a contiguous roll of tragedies taking place daily all over Japanese occupied China. These are facts we, the war experienced, have a duty to convey, with all the rawness of War, to the following generations of our nation who know little of War. Is it not a way, by doing so, to requite the bitter grief of those countless heroes like those spotlighted in the story above?
Also, the lesson learned from the War is that all and each Japanese citizen must never allow its nation to be involved in war again, for whatever reasons. This earnest wish of the Japanese people to avoid war is crystallized in Article 9 of our Constitution, and it should never be allowed to be misinterpreted in any way by anyone. Such is my sincere inner feeling of late.
Minoru Kawamoto October 27, 1994 At Katase Enoshima
Author's Note -
Article 9 of The Constitution Of Japan
"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international dispute.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."