Chapter 174 - Name and Reality 97 {125 Alone} (299–300: The Mystery of the Removed Belongings and Wartime Tako-beya Labor)
"At this exact point, there's something I've been wanting to ask you, Onodera-san!"
Nishida voiced the doubt he had long harbored to Oshima.
"What is it?"
Oshima looked slightly sour at having the flow of his story interrupted, but Nishida had neither the reason nor the time to worry about that.
"It seems it was recorded in the reports regarding the mine accident at Konomai at the time that, for some reason, Kuwano-san had taken his belongings out of... the Konomai dormitory? When Kuwano-san was treated as missing after the accident, it was speculated that he might have intended to go somewhere from the start because of that. And that was supposedly the reason why it didn't become a major issue despite him going missing in the middle of an accident. In the first place, wasn't the reason you had the deed because it was inside those belongings Kuwano-san had taken out?"
"...That's right. You could say that was a stroke of gyoukou, so to speak."
"Gyoukou?"
Yoshimura reflexively asked back at the unfamiliar word, but Oshima explained as if to instruct him, acting as if nothing had happened.
"To put it simply, I suppose you could call it an unexpected piece of good luck."
Without giving Yoshimura time to offer thanks or impressions, Nishida struck out directly with his disbelief.
"So it was strictly a coincidence!? The timing is far too good for that... That's incredibly lucky!"
In response, Oshima said calmly,
"Umu, it's only natural that you find it hard to believe. However, while it's true that the timing was perhaps too coincidental, if you consider the state of the times, there was an aspect of it that wasn't entirely without necessity."
"The state of the times?"
Nishida was bewildered by the unexpected phrasing.
"That's right, Nishida-kun! Needless to say, the leftist ideology Kinya-chan followed back then was considered treasonous under the wartime regime and the Peace Preservation Law. He didn't belong to any specific organization himself—he was what you might call a 'stray' leftist—but he had a fair number of comrades and acquaintances, so he was always aware of and prepared for the danger of being discovered by the authorities. Furthermore, information had reached our ears that the police... likely the Tokkou (T/N: Special Higher Police), might conduct a raid on the Konomai Gold Mine. Apparently, leftist activists occasionally hid in such places, so it was likely related to that... And our position allowed us to pick up information from the heart of the workplace more easily than the average miner. Blasters were treated better than miners as a skilled group, if I do say so myself."
Both men possessed this as knowledge, but it was their first time hearing such an experience firsthand.
"That said, he didn't seem to have any active intention of leaving the relatively stable workplace at Konomai. Even for Kinya-chan, I don't think he wanted to return to a place with poor treatment if he could help it. The relationships with those around him were also good. Of course, he shouldn't have been able to leave me behind, either. However, he wasn't the type to abandon his principles. His flexibility and realism led him to treat it more as a refuge... Perhaps because he lived with that sense of crisis, he made it a point to wrap up a set of items, including a few daily necessities, in a furoshiki and take them to the work site every day, both to ensure his leftist books and such wouldn't be found in a raid and so he could flee immediately. That's why he made an effort to live a life with as few possessions as possible. In addition to that, it seems his experience with the tsunami was quite significant."
"Experience with the tsunami?"
When Yoshimura asked with a bewildered face, Oshima replied,
"As I mentioned earlier, when Kinya-chan went to Second High School, he took his important belongings from his family home to his lodgings in Sendai. The experience of being saved by that when his family home was swept away by the tsunami must have been deeply ingrained in him. So, for those two reasons, he had gone out that day without leaving anything in his room. In modern terms, you'd call it his version of crisis management."
"I see. So those two factors led to a situation where he had taken most of his luggage with him."
Nishida was fully satisfied with this answer regarding the mystery he had held. Needless to say, Takeshita was not present, but he too had found the mystery of Kuwano's missing belongings hard to swallow; Nishida thought that if he were here, he would have been honestly delighted by such a clear solution.
"Returning to the story, at the stage where you thought of the impersonation or the swap, you immediately reported to the policeman that two other employees, including 'yourself,' had died, right?"
Nishida brought the conversation back to the main point.
"That's right. Thinking there was no time like the present, I stripped only the hanten from the mass of flesh to take as a memento, and ran headlong back across the beach, which was stained with fresh blood and in an uproar with injured people and rescuers. Then, after going to get Kinya-chan's furoshiki bundle, I immediately told a nearby policeman false information about which members of the Konomai group had died. However, at the time, many policemen themselves had become victims, and because many members of the fire brigade (Civil Defense Corps) had been caught up in it, the police were leading the scene. The fire brigade members and local people were crowding the surviving policemen, almost to the point of throwing punches; it was a state of considerable chaos... While I thought that situation was convenient, I also felt uneasy about whether what I told them would be properly recognized. But I couldn't afford to be leisurely, so I left the scene immediately and headed for the nearest station. I was desperate then."
"At that time, you couldn't have thought as far as what to do next, right?"
"That's only natural. I had my hands full just leaving that place. Doing something without a thought for the consequences—that was exactly it. I had no money on me, so if it hadn't been for the money in the wallet inside Kinya-chan's furoshiki, it might have been difficult... And above all, it was significant that I was able to inherit the deed even in that emergency, and simultaneously obtain something that could prove my identity for living as Kuwano Kinya. Back then, there was no need to use photographs for identification."
When Oshima answered Nishida, he nodded as if he were truly convinced by his own statement.
And at this time, Asai Inazo—the common-law stepfather of Aida Izumi, the boss of Yusen, and a policeman stationed at the Barou post under the Engaru Station—had also lost his life in the mine accident. Ironically, Nishida had completely forgotten that Aida Izumi, who was an elementary school student at the time and had come to watch the demolition, was also at the scene. The lives of Aida Izumi and Oshima Kaiji, two people who should have had no connection and were of different ages, had secretly intersected.
"Did you remain unaware of what happened with the mine accident after that?"
"Yoshimura-kun. To be honest, I have almost no memory of the rest of that day, but I remember vividly after I bought a newspaper at Asahikawa Station the next day and confirmed the accident was reported. Since I was there, I knew well that it was quite a tragedy, but I was honestly surprised that over a hundred people had died... By the next day, I finally had the leeway, or rather a change in mindset, to grieve for Kinya-chan's death. Looking at the article, I remember tearing up, thinking I had finally become truly alone in the world..."
Even though he had left immediately, this testimony spoke of how chaotic the scene and Oshima himself had been.
"What did you do after that? Our information is completely missing from that point until you appeared with Isaka at the Sada family in Otaru after the war, so I definitely want to hear about it."
Nishida felt a bit hesitant toward Oshima, who was likely immersed in deep emotion remembering the scene where he once again strongly realized his cousin's death, but as Nishida, he couldn't avoid hearing the story.
"At first, I went as far as Sapporo, intending to return to either my hometown of Ryori or the Asaka Shoten in Sendai where I had lodged, but there I was made to realize something important... Or rather, to be honest, I felt pathetic for not realizing it myself. No matter how much the village had suffered great damage from the tsunami, if I returned home, I couldn't say for certain that there was absolutely no possibility of someone who knew my face being there, even if I didn't know them. In Sendai, there were definitely people who knew me and Kinya-chan... or rather, it was only natural since I was trying to return to the people I knew. That would make the meaning of living as 'Kuwano Kinya' completely vanish. Even if I tried to live in a place I didn't know at all, I was going to be exempt from conscription due to my 'finger disability,' so if the war dragged on and I wasn't called up, there was a possibility people around me would find it suspicious. Given that, I had no choice but to think that living in the most 'shady' place possible was the safest method."
For the two interrogators, the meaning of "shady" wasn't immediately clear, so they were about to ask for clarification, but Oshima, perhaps sensing this, began to speak on his own.
"I had heard various things from Kinya-chan about the hanba (T/N: labor camps) in Hokkaido, so I had the knowledge that while they weren't good environments, they were perfect places to live in hiding. In other words, I made up my mind to live in hiding by moving from one hanba to another in Hokkaido until the war ended."
"In other words, you continued that for three years, from the early summer of Showa 17 (1942) until the end of the war?"
Yoshimura reacted immediately upon hearing that, but Oshima's expression suddenly turned bitter.
"However, I would soon realize that choice almost nullified the fact that I had gone to the trouble of becoming Kuwano Kinya so I wouldn't have to go to the front lines," he said in a suppressed voice.
"Nullified?"
Nishida didn't understand the meaning of the roundabout expression and questioned him about it.
"Literally, just as I said..."
Oshima stated curtly. Seeing that the two still didn't quite get it, Oshima felt the need to explain in detail and began to talk of his own accord.
"I had heard from Kinya-chan about the harshness of the hanba and coal mine labor in Hokkaido at the time, not just when we were in Konomai, but also in letters and when he came to Sendai, but I had only heard it as information. So, when I actually started experiencing it myself, I came to regret it, thinking, 'I've come to a terrible place.' And that situation... even within the country and not at the front, as the war situation worsened... though at the time I was already in a place where I couldn't get proper information and the news itself was under control, so I was just speculating based on things before that... In addition to the worsening war situation, as young Japanese men, the workforce, were sent to the front one after another, the situation became even more desperate. Supplies and food decreased, the number of laborers decreased, and combined with the harsh natural environment of Hokkaido, it was a living hell of overwork. The situation was undoubtedly worse than in Kinya-chan's time... And to supplement the lack of laborers, Shina-jin... well, Chinese prisoners of war as they're called now, and Koreans who were brought over after being talked into various things, plus the Koreans already in Japan, what we now call Zainichi Koreans, were brought in to work. Even though Koreans were technically treated as Japanese back then, they were treated as second-class citizens, so their treatment was even worse than the Japanese thrown into the tako-beya (T/N: 'octopus rooms' - forced labor camps). If they were malnourished or worked poorly, they were beaten by the bogashira (T/N: labor foremen) or the hanba-gashira, and like the Chinese, they collapsed one after another... Well, we Japanese also had older men and youths the age of middle schoolers whose bodies weren't fully developed collapsing in significant numbers... By that time, I spent night after night in the bed of the hanba I had barely reached, asking myself, 'Would it have been better to just go to the front lines?' The end of the war found me at an Army airfield construction site in Eastern Hokkaido. When I learned we were being liberated, my first thought wasn't joy, but simply that I had somehow survived..."
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During the war, because many Japanese men in their prime were conscripted as soldiers, Chinese laborers (most of whom are believed to have been prisoners from the Second Sino-Japanese War) and Korean laborers already in Japan or from the Korean Peninsula were mobilized for physical labor sites such as civil engineering construction sites and mines.
In Hokkaido specifically, due to the harsh natural environment and the low temperatures and heavy snow during the winter, there was an overwhelming shortage of laborers, so in addition to Japanese laborers, a considerable number of such workers were mobilized.
Regarding Korean laborers, while it might not be called "forced removal" in all cases, there were many instances where they came lured by quite forceful recruitment or fraudulent treatment. It is said that among Chinese and Korean laborers, even more so than Japanese laborers, cases of death or escape following terrible treatment occurred frequently. (While there is debate about the nature of forced removal, the escape drama of Mr. Liu Lianren is famous as a case of long-term escape by a Chinese laborer. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8A%89%E9%80%A3%E4%BB%81)
Furthermore, in labor management under such conditions, the methods of "tako-beya labor" used in the Jomon Tunnel construction were still employed. This situation, combined with the shortage of food and other supplies during the war, led to a large number of victims, including the Japanese, whose mobilized numbers as laborers were few.
Specific examples include (in the following materials, the term "forced removal" may appear regarding Korean labor/laborers, but as the problem regarding this point is a separate issue, please replace it with harsh labor or forced labor):
Asajino Airfield construction in Sarufutsu Village, Northern Hokkaido (http://www.asajino.net/gaiyo.html)
Keinebetsu Airfield construction in Betsukai Town, Eastern Hokkaido (http://betsukai.jp/blog/0001/index.php?ID=16)
Agricultural reservoir and power plant construction in Higashikawa Town, Central Hokkaido (https://town.higashikawa.hokkaido.jp/living/press/pdf/2010-12/2010-12-06KYOUSEI_ROUDOU.pdf http://ouenkitanodaichi.web.fc2.com/douhokubunkazaihtml/kyousei.html)
Uryu No. 1 and No. 2 Dam construction in Horokanai Town, Central Hokkaido, known for Lake Shumarinai (http://hidenaokoh.sapolog.com/e383164.html)
Incidentally, the Uryu Dam construction is rare among large-scale wartime civil engineering projects in Hokkaido for having an overwhelmingly higher death rate among Japanese laborers. It is speculated that the harshness and danger of the initial construction where Japanese were mobilized were extremely high, and as a result, it led to the subsequent mass mobilization of Koreans, which may have resulted in fewer Korean victims.
Also, the fact that the construction itself began in Showa 14 (1939) and was completed in Showa 18 (1943) meant it finished just before the war situation worsened rapidly, which is likely another factor in the low death rate of Korean laborers. Seiichi Morimura's novel "Sasa no Bohyo" is a social mystery work related to this dam construction.
Other mobilizations in Hokkaido for work in coal mines in various locations are also famous, but there is also a theory that many deaths occurred during construction in what are now the Northern Territories, and the reality is that the exact number of victims is unknown. Furthermore, it is said that at the time, the place name "Hokkaido" was sometimes passed down as an infamous name in the Korean Peninsula by Korean laborers who had somehow returned alive from there.
On the other hand, stories of Japanese labor victims from that time hardly ever come from the left, and the right has a strong tendency to deny the "forced labor" of mobilized laborers, including Allied and Chinese prisoners of war, as a whole, so unfortunately, the current situation is that they have been quite buried.
When talking about war damage, it is extremely regrettable that only the hunger and air raid damage of "soldiers," "civilian employees of the military," or the "citizens" on the home front are emphasized.
In fact, there is a story that even among men of conscription age during the war, due to the peculiarities of the call-up papers (because the targets were managed by the family register of their permanent domicile, it seems there were surprisingly many cases where their location could not be grasped even through temporary residence registers afterward; some people seem to have remained missing without even undergoing a physical examination for conscription), there were more men than expected who did not receive their call-up papers and did not have to enlist (Author's Note: Unfortunately, I cannot provide an online source, but in the case of Hokkaido, I read in a book dealing with the history of the prefecture a few years ago that there were quite a few men who went missing after leaving their hometowns, and call-up papers often didn't reach them, though I have forgotten the title). If we consider that these types of people were highly likely living as day laborers, the possibility of them overlapping with laborers living in hanba is high. The possibility that people buried in the darkness of history were sacrificed unknowingly is by no means low.
Also, after Japan's defeat, it is said that cases where liberated Chinese and Korean laborers who had been in such abusive states then rioted and lynched the Japanese on the monitoring and employing side in a form of "revenge" occurred frequently in coal and other mines, leading to further grudges. It is said that a riot occurred after the end of the war even at the Itomuka Mine, famous as a unique mercury mine (a closed mine in the Rubeshibe district of Kitami City along Route 39. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88%E3%83%A0%E3%82%AB%E9%89%B1%E5%B1%B1).
Note: The "cumulative numbers" in the materials may include the number of laborers, including daily overlaps, multiplied by the number of construction days (especially for Keinebetsu Airfield).
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