In the fuzzy world of Japan's new democracy it seemed like a Shinto nightmare. Two thousand hard-jawed Japanese, in jackboots and military khaki, clomped down the gangplank of the transport that had brought them from prison camps in Siberia to their home in Dai Nippon. They clenched fists, bawled the Internationale and the Song of the Kolkhoz.
Many a shocked compatriot on shore remembered how these men had sailed away, in the days of the Co-Prosperity Sphere, with a similar purposeful spirit and disciplined jingoist chants. The official welcoming party—talkative bureaucrats, beaming Red Cross nurses, bustling newsmen—waited on a bare wooden dock in Maizuru harbor, with blue, cloud-flecked hills and stark rusted cranes of the former naval base as backdrop. The 2,000 lined up rigidly, listened stonily to the effusive greetings, responded with chilling precision. A close-cropped ex-army captain stepped stiffly forward. "Some of us," he barked, "have not seen home in ten years. All of us have been prisoners for four. We have made the greatest sacrifice." The 2,000 chorused: "Sono tori [exactly]!" The captain barked: "Full of hope, we have come to build a new democratic Japan on the Potsdam agreement." The men thundered: "Yoshi [good]!"
Members of the welcoming committee exchanged worried glances. These were not soft, war-sick homecomers but hard, aggressive strangers. In four years of captivity, their Russian jailers seemed to have taught them well.
"Join the Communists." They were the first of 95,000 whom the Russians had promised to send home this year. Some 300,000 other Japanese P.W.s were still unaccounted for. What had happened to them was anybody's guess.
The 2,000 spoke about their captivity in various ways. "The Russian treatment was on the whole good," some would say with jerky glances over their shoulders. "I say join the Communists in Japan, but I want to wait and see what conditions are really like first." At times, when one of the dyed-in-the-wool Communists passed, the voices would die to a murmur.
The men who led the lusty singing and shouted the stiff commands were more positive in their views. Artilleryman Sei-saku Akimoto, leader of the Russian-sponsored Minshu Ka Undo (Democratic Movement) in his camp, said: "The Russians trust us and we trust the Russians. We soon found out from our newspapers there how we had been duped by fascists and capitalists." Snapped former Pfc. Tsugio Kishimoto, prison company commander: "We must all join the Communist Party. It is our only chance to build a new, democratic Japan."
"I Never Had It So Good." The school in Siberia which had inculcated such thoughts and sentiments had begun bitterly. For two years the men were cold and hungry, worked unremittingly. Then the Russians eased up. For those who embraced Communism or at least paid lip service, living conditions took a sharp turn for the better. Recalled one repatriate: "I never had it so good. There was plenty to eat and the Russians were so easygoing."