Japanese veteran recalls "3 Alls"

cctv.com 08-30-2005 14:14

The "Three Alls" was the name of a policy to "burn all, kill all, and loot all", pursued by the Japanese army when they invaded China over sixty years ago. Now, in the third installment of our special series, Buried Voices, we meet another Japanese veteran of the war. Kanazawa Masao took part in what his army called "clean-up" operations in East China's Shandong Province.

In March 1943, Kanazawa Masao was sent to China as the bugler for his detachment. He remembers clearly the brutality of the three alls.

Japanese Veteran Kabazawa Masao said, "I remember we were on horseback, and we saw a house in the distance. It wasn't on our map, so we went up closer and found it was a civilian's home. We were ordered to burn the house. We lit a torch and went in. There was a teenage boy inside. We frightened him so much he began to cry. I'm not a devil, but what we were doing was more horrible than man could imagine. "

The three alls turned Kanazawa Masao and many other young Japanese soldiers into ruthless killers. Kanazawa Masao was imprisoned in the northeast of China after the war. Released in 1956, he returned to Japan. He found a cold welcome.

Japanese Veteran Kanazawa Masao said, "I didn't have a job when I went home. I found discrimination everywhere... people thought I'd been brain-washed in China. Finally I got a job, but I only held on to it for six months. I was fired when the police came to investigate me."

Kanazawa Masao went through job after job, each one ending in his dismissal. Having no other alternative, he rented a piece of land and farmed for a living. It was a tough life, but things slowly got better. Kanazawa Masao now owns his own farm. His spare time he devotes to promoting friendship between China and Japan.

One of the things he's done is invest in the building of a memorial for the 87 Chinese laborers who died in an accident in Hokkaido in 1944. They were among hundreds of Chinese captured by the Japanese military and forced to labor in Japanese mines.

In June this year, Kanazawa Masao and another three Japanese veterans returned to China. They offered apologies for what they did to the Chinese people in that dark period of history.

Editor:Liu Fengming  Source:CCTV.com