Research Catalog

Title

The gods left first : the captivity and repatriation of Japanese POWs in northeast Asia, 1945-56 / Andrew E. Barshay.

Author

Barshay, Andrew E.

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2013]

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Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 239 pages : illustrations, maps; 24 cm

Summary

At the time of Japan's surrender to Allied forces on August 15, 1945, some six million Japanese were left stranded across the vast expanse of a vanquished Asian empire. Half civilian and half military, they faced the prospect of returning somehow to a Japan that lay prostrate, its cities destroyed, after years of warfare and Allied bombing campaigns. Among them were more than 600,000 soldiers of Japan's army in Manchuria, who had surrendered to the Red Army only to be transported to Soviet labor camps, mainly in Siberia. Held for between two and four years, and some far longer, amid forced labor and reeducation campaigns, they waited for return, never knowing when or if it would come. Drawing on a wide range of memoirs, art, poetry, and contemporary records, The Gods Left First reconstructs their experience of captivity, return, and encounter with a postwar Japan that now seemed as alien as it had once been familiar. In a broader sense, this study is a meditation on the meaning of survival for Japan's continental repatriates, showing that their memories of involvement in Japan's imperial project were both a burden and the basis for a new way of life. -- Publisher website.

Subject

• 1900-1999
• Japanese > Siberia > History > 20th century
• Internment camps > Siberia > History > 20th century
• Japanese > Siberia > Biography
• Internment camp inmates > Siberia > Biography
• Japanese > East Asia > History > 20th century
• Repatriation > Japan > History > 20th century
• Imperialism > History > East Asia > 20th century
• Japonais > Sibérie > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Camps d'internement > Sibérie > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Japonais > Sibérie > Biographies
• Détenus de camp d'internement > Sibérie > Biographies
• Rapatriement > Japon > Histoire > 20e siècle
• Internment camp inmates
• Internment camps
• Emigration and immigration
• Imperialism > Social aspects
• Japanese
• Repatriation
• Japanischer Kriegsgefangener
• Kriegsgefangenenlager
• Concentration camps > Siberia > History > 20th century
• Concentration camp inmates > Siberia > Biography
• Manchuria (China) > History > 20th century
• Korea > History > 20th century
• Japan > History > 20th century
• Corée > Histoire > 20e siècle
• China > Manchuria
• East Asia
• Japan
• Korea
• Russia (Federation) > Siberia
• Mandschurei
• Sibirien

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 220-230) and index.

Contents

I. Prologue -- The Gods Left First -- Sources and Method -- II. The Siberian Internment in History -- The Prince's Tale -- The Soviet-Japanese War -- Hot War to Cold -- The Soviet-Japanese Conflict : Prehistory into History -- Toward Internment -- The Internment Remembered -- III. Kazuki Yasuo and the Profane World of the Gulag -- Icons of the Profane -- The Red Corpse -- "My Vision Broadened Tenfold" -- The "Siberia Style" -- From Image to Text -- The Responsibility of the Artist -- "The Beauty only I Can Grasp" -- IV. Knowledge Painfully Acquired : Takasugi Ichirō and the "Democratic Movement" in Siberia -- Thank You, Iosif Vissarionovich! -- A Humanist Interprets the Gulag -- Siberia, School of Democracy -- Ogawa Gorō Becomes Takasugi Ichirō -- In the Shadow of the Northern Lights -- The Gate of Hell -- Toward Epiphany -- Toward Return -- Knowledge Painfully Acquired -- V. Ishihara Yoshirō : "My Best Self Did Not Return" -- Prologue: Ishihara Yoshirō and Viktor Frankl -- The Survivor's Question -- The Primitive Accumulation of Memory -- The Life before the Death -- Into the Gulag -- At Lowest Ebb, Stirrings -- Kano Buichi, Enigma -- Was this Domoi? -- VI. Coda -- The People Stalin Didn't Care About -- "A War to Live" : Fujiwara Tei's The Shooting Stars Are Alive -- The Meaning and Message of Survival -- Appendix: How Many?

ISBN

• 9780520276154
• 0520276159
• 0520956575
• 9780520956575

LCCN

• 2013008849
• 40022749142

OCLC

• 833146367
• SCSB-13782473

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library