TOKYO, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- "I wish my father could have told me even a little about what exactly he did in China," Ayako Kurahashi, 79, said while standing in front of a monument bearing her father's apology at a cemetery in Yoshioka, Gunma Prefecture, Japan.
Kurahashi's father, Yukichi Osawa, served in the military police troop of the Japanese Kwantung Army during Japan's invasion of China. He was stationed in places including Tianjin, Beijing, and Dongning in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.
A WISH TO CARVE APOLOGY IN STONE
When Japan surrendered in 1945, Osawa was captured by Soviet forces but managed to escape and eventually made his way back to Japan.
In 1986, as he lay dying, Osawa took a slip of paper from beside his pillow. "He handed me the note and said, 'After I die, have these words carved on my gravestone,'" Kurahashi recalled.
"I served in the former Japanese military for 12 years and eight months, 10 of them as a junior officer of the army stationed in China (a former military police warrant officer)... I took part in the war of aggression, and I feel deeply remorseful for everything I did to the Chinese people. I can do nothing but offer my most profound apology to the Chinese people," the note read.
Kurahashi said her father had told her he regretted taking part in the war of aggression against China as a military policeman and wanted a monument inscribed with his apology, but he never spoke of what he had actually done in China. However, her uncle and elder brother strongly opposed the idea, believing it would disgrace the family.
"Why exactly did my father feel the need to apologize?" This question has always haunted Kurahashi.
Seeking an answer, Kurahashi contacted a former military police officer who had served with Osawa. She told him about her father's deathbed apology and pleaded with him to tell her what her father had done at the time.
"He was overwhelmed with emotion when he saw photos of my father in his later years, but he never opened up about what had happened back then," Kurahashi said.
With her questions unanswered, Kurahashi began taking part in study sessions and seminars on the history of Japan's war of aggression against China. Through these activities, she met Li Suzhen, executive vice president of the Sino-Japanese Oral History and Culture Research Association and a distinguished professor at Changchun Normal University in China.
"The Japanese military police wielded extensive powers of arrest," Li said, adding that Kurahashi's father might have been involved in serious crimes, which could explain why he wanted to apologize.
A POWERFUL INSTRUMENT OF REPRESSION
For Japanese historian Seiya Matsuno, a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University, the role of the military police in Japan's invasion of China is essential to understanding the history of the war.
"The military police were already present in China when the Kwantung Army was established," Matsuno told Xinhua in Tokyo recently. "As Japan's aggression expanded following the Sept. 18 Incident and the July 7 Incident, military police units were deployed to various parts of China."
Matsuno, who has long studied modern Japanese history and Japan's aggression against China, showed Xinhua copies of historical documents he had collected.
Among them was the Sakusen Yomurei, or Field Service Regulations, approved by Japan's Army Ministry in 1940. Matsuno pointed to a section specifying the duties of military police, including protecting military secrets, searching for spies, censoring communications and media organizations, as well as suppressing civilians deemed "hostile" -- including those who resisted the Japanese army or refused to cooperate with the occupying forces.
"The military police served as the claws and vanguard of the Japanese army in suppressing local people during Japan's invasion and occupation," Matsuno said. "They had enormous powers and were a very frightening organization."
Matsuno also showed a copy of a secret report from a Kwantung Army military police unit. The document described how a person suspected of espionage should be dealt with.
The report concluded that the person had no value for "reverse utilization," a term referring to turning captured individuals into Japanese agents, and recommended that he be "specially transferred."
"'Special transfer' meant sending the person to Unit 731," Matsuno said.
Unit 731, formally known as the Kwantung Army's Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, carried out horrific human experimentation and biological and germ warfare during World War II.
Kurahashi's father held the rank of warrant officer in the military police. Matsuno said that military police warrant officers would generally have been responsible for directing subordinates in frontline operations, and Osawa may have been involved in searching for, arresting and suppressing people who resisted Japanese forces.
A DAUGHTER SEARCHING FOR TRUTH
Kurahashi remembers her father as a stern man. But one scene has remained particularly vivid in her memory.
One day, while watching a television program about Japan's war in China, Osawa began to cry.
"He said there were two kinds of people," Kurahashi recalled. "Some people would cry out loudly and beg for their lives before being killed. But there were others who, even when they were about to be killed, would look straight ahead with determination."
"I think my father must have suffered deeply when he remembered those people who were killed by them," she said.
Yet Kurahashi has never been able to determine exactly what her father did during his years in China. His wish to leave behind a public statement of remorse, however, stayed with her.
After her elder brother, who had opposed erecting the monument, died, Kurahashi wrote to her nephew and obtained his consent.
In 1998, she had a separate monument erected in a corner of the family cemetery, with her father's full statement of apology carved into the stone. Osawa's final wish had finally been fulfilled.
Kurahashi subsequently traveled to China several times to express her father's remorse. She visited the Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, among other places.
Seeing more records regarding the Japanese invasion of China left a profound impression on her. "Every place had a tremendous impact on me," she said.
A former junior high school teacher in Japan, Kurahashi said that Japanese society has not sufficiently reflected on the history of the war. In Japanese classrooms, teachers may tell students about some of the places where the Japanese military was deployed, she said, but often do not delve deeper into what Japanese forces actually did there.
Kurahashi hopes that Japan will confront and reflect on its history of aggression, and that the words carved into her father's monument of apology will reach a wider audience.
Amid what she sees as a growing rightward shift in Japan and the resurgence of "new militarism," Kurahashi has become increasingly concerned that the monument could be deliberately damaged. She therefore decided this year to donate a replica of the monument to Changchun Normal University.
"'What disappears from before our eyes will also disappear from our hearts,' I do not want that saying to become reality one day," Kurahashi said.
"I sincerely hope that this monument of apology will never be destroyed and will stand here forever, revealing the truth of history and safeguarding world peace," she added. ■
