Old-timers among Japanese POW converts in Chinese Communist-led areas used to tell me that during the early years of the Sino-Japanese war, a stray Japanese captive was apt to be lynched or tortured to death by angry mobs of peasants. I asked them questions in great detail for I was then, in the late fall of 1944, making a survey of Chinese psychological warfare and prisoner re-education program.
The Chinese took revenge, they told me, because of the death and destruction the Japanese invaders perpetrated in village after village. But the Chinese Communists early decided that such retaliation was detrimental to the re-education of Japanese prisoners. Preferential treatment of POWs from the moment of capture was considered essential to facilitate reeducation.
I had several long sessions on this question with the political department officials of the Chinese Communist-led 18th Group Army (amalgamation of the 8th Route and the New Fourth Armies) who told me that all available personnel was used to orient millions of peasants in liberated areas and in new guerrilla bases behind Japanese lines.
The peasants were told that the Japanese soldiers were potential allies once they dropped their guns. Re-educated, they would be on their side.
The task of educating millions of peasants under war conditions when they were taking the brunt of Japanese punitive and raiding expeditions can be appreciated when we consider the strong anti-Japanese feeling that still prevails in the Philippines. More than a year ago in Manila, a South Korean diplomatic official was beaten up because he was mistaken for a Japanese.
The POWs Had "Race" Superiority Complex
"After long efforts, we succeeded in our persuasion," Li Chu-li, former head of the anti-Japanese militarist psychological warfare work, told me. "For several years now the peasants have been apprehending escaped captives and spies and sending them back to headquarters. Peasants are vigilant and we do not use guards in rear areas to watch over prisoners."
"But we had other difficulties," Mr. Li said, "and these were posed by the students."
Mr. Li, who had studied in Japan and handled Japanese very well, said that the captives brought all their prejudices with them. They looked down upon the Chinese as an Inferior people. In addition to this, the poor living standards in the guerrilla areas made the captives complain about food, although they received better rations than the Chinese Communist soldiers themselves.
At the earliest stage of the prisoner re-education program, the POWs, who were called students in Yenan, refused to study.
Spies Confessed the Roles Assigned Them
"They slept all day and sold their school supplies to get additional spending money," Mr. Li said. "And some would not even get up to wash their faces."
By the time Sanzo Nosaka, the Japanese Communist, arrived in Yenan in the early forties and took over Mr. Li's responsibilities, the students were cooperating. But another problem confronted the prisoner conversion project, and that was the infiltration of spies from the Japanese army into the Japanese Workers and Peasants School and the Japanese People's Emancipation League. Some confessed later, after months of re-education, that they were sent into the guerrilla areas with instructions to assassinate Nosaka.
My next step in the survey of prisoner re-education was the observation of student attitudes and the methods used in the Japanese Workers and Peasants School to remould them. I sat down one day with Susumu Takayama, a prisoner convert himself, who was superintendent of the school. We went over the curriculum, discussed the lectures and group discussions and came to self criticism.
The Superintendent Explains The Function of Criticism
I told Mr.Takayama that I wanted to sit in at one session at least. He looked at his calendar and gave me a date.
"We must thoroughly remould an individual," he said to me. "At least we try to."
Tutoring alone is not enough, he explained. Changing one's self is extremely difficult and this requires outside assistance. Group endeavor and mass pressure" are therefore important.
"What is self criticism?" I asked the superintendent.
And this was his explanation: "Criticism is the mirror by which the students see themselves inside and out. It reflects their good and bad points. Criticism among new students is mild; among advanced students, on a higher plane."
For the new captives, self-criticism is difficult to understand, he said, for they believe in unmei (fate)—unquestioning acceptance—and they are so accustomed to domineering leadership and blind following. Freedom of expression is a new experience to them. Polite ceremony and face-saving methods, which Takayama labelled as the characteristic behavior of a feudal society, hampered self-criticism, he said.
A Section Leader Evaluates Himself
One night I went to observe self-criticism sessions. The cave I entered was dimly lighted by a small, chimneyless lamp There were about 20 of us and about a dozen crowded around two charcoal braziers to warm their hands. The chairman and the secretary sat at a table. The first to be criticized, a student in his mid-thirties, moved his stool up to the table. He was a section leader, in charge of students living in three caves. As he began his self-criticism, eyes stared at him from smoke-filled recesses of the cave.
"It has been pointed out to me in previous criticism that I am conceited and do not mix with others," he began. '"I know I am egotistical and individualistic ... I am now studying hard but lately I have not been using my syllabus and notes, therefore others may think I am not studying . . ."
It Was Unlike Anything I Had Seen
He covered a broad ground and finally when he stopped, the chairman asked for criticism. There was an apparent hesitancy and as the students meditated, shadows from the flickering lamp played on the wall. First to volunteer was a student somewhere in a dark corner. He said the section leader had not improved a bit since coming to Yenan, although he had been given a responsible position.
The next student said: "You once said, "This school is like a prison.' Now, tell us what you meant by this?"
The chairman, whose face was flushed red by lamplight, asked for an answer. The section leader said he had mentioned it as a joke. Two students immediately corrected him for telling such a joke and the section leader accepted the! criticism.
As the session continued I was impressed by the fact that here in this cold and dark cave, human attitudes and thinking were being remoulded. It was unlike anything I had seen The atmosphere was charged with the seriousness of this earnest group of men searching for truth. Their past was dead, so they felt. The Japanese army had sent ashes' to their homes and their families were mourning for them.
"Do Stories of Prostitutes . . . Boost Morale?"
A student criticized the section leader for reminiscing about good times he had had in Japan—about (teahouse ladies who had poured him rice wine, etc. He said, "This shows our section leader is confused in his thinking. He cannot serve a new Japan, not with his approach to problems."
Another student wanted to know why the section leader lived in his past. The answer was to "boost the morale of students" in his section. At this he was asked pointblank:
"Do stories of prostitutes and drinking boost our morale?"
And so the discussion went on into the night, taking into account the section leader's political thinking, expressions and daily conduct. In the bitterly cold cave the frosty air spurted from the mouths of students as, like Old Testament prophets, they belabored their colleague's weaknesses.
"I Am Only Human . . . But I Will Do My Utmost . . ."
A towering shadow leaped on a wall as the chairman rose to summarize the criticism. The section leader took copious notes, blowing his breath on his hand to keep it warm.
"I am only human," he said. "It is impossible to reform overnight but I will do my utmost from tomorrow."
Here several colleagues raised their voices and suggested that he change "not tomorrow but from this very minute." At least, they asked that such an attitude be adopted.
Some Sessions Were Personal, Others On Higher Plane
Another section leader was brought up for criticism. On Pagoda Hill that night, five other criticism meetings were going on. Some were more theoretical and probing while others of new students, like the one I first observed, were more elementary, personal and superficial.
I visited a few, each time stepping out of the serene Chinese! night into a smoky cubicle where confused men of Japan crouched, seeking the truth in themselves—if only a glimmer as small as the glow of the light around which they collected.
"Each and Every One Must Help the Other"
I came back to the first meeting in time to hear Superintendent Takayama, who had sat through the meeting, give his views of the night's session. He thought the criticisms far from satisfactory, poor in quality and content for students who had been in school for almost half a year.
Then he concluded touchingly: "All of us have died once." Most of the students stared at the dark ground. A few upturned faces near the table glowed red and shadows played on their faces.
Takayama continued: "We are now building the foundations of our new lives. We have made mistakes as soldiers of aggressive militarism which we cannot afford to repeat. If bad points crop up, they should be erased through self-criticism and criticism by others must be given in good faith, constructively and not destructively. Each and every one must help the other . . . Those! who are criticized must improve from that minute! At least that should be the attitude. We must not only remould ourselves but we must be vanguards to change the militaristic Japan into a democratic, people's country."
The session over, I walked out of the cave and down the steep hillside, and over the frozen ground back to my cave in the U. S. Army Observer Section to type my notes while my observations were fresh.