TOKYO, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- 100-year-old Mitsushige Maeda, the first Japanese man who joined the Chinese Eighth Route Army during the World War II, told Xinhua recently about his story before the 72nd anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in the war and called for reflection upon the history.
Maeda was born in 1916 in Kyoto. Coming from a family of scanty means, he worked as an apprentice at a store after graduating from a primary school. In June 1937, he went to the city of Shenyang in northeastern China, then under colonial rule of Japan, to work for the Southern Manchuria Railways Co..
The Southern Manchuria Railways Co., or Mantetsu for short, was a company founded by the Japanese in 1906. The company was not only in charge of the railways, but also involved in intelligence collecting and colonial activities in northeastern China.
Maeda was taken captive by the Chinese Eighth Route Army in 1938, and during the several months as a "prisoner of war," he gradually learned about the injustice of Japan's invasion of China and the truth about this war.
One incident that shocked him particularly was that he witnessed a village plundered by the Japanese army, with villagers cruelly killed and houses burnt to the ground there.
"As a Japanese citizen, I felt ashamed and angry (when I saw what Japan had done)," he said.
The incident precipitated Maeda's awakening, and in January 1939, he volunteered to join the Chinese Eighth Route Army, an army under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party to fight against Japan's invasion of China.
"The Chinese Eighth Route Army is a great army with strict disciplines," Maeda recalled, adding that he felt honored to be a member of the army.
His role in the army was to preach peace to soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and tell them the truth about the invasion war Japan had launched against China. In November 1939, he and seven other Japanese soldiers founded the "Alliance of the Awakened Japanese Soldiers," which was the first anti-war group formed by Japanese citizens in the Eighth Route Army.
After Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces in 1945, Maeda worked in an aviation school in northeastern China for several years and returned to Japan in 1958.
But due to his experiences in China, Maeda was considered pro-communist and could not find a proper job back in Japan. He had to do part-time jobs to support his family.
Despite the hardship, Maeda continued to tell people about his experiences in China and the atrocities that Japan had committed in China, and published articles in newspapers.
In 1984, he and another Japanese veteran Takashi Kagawa coauthored and published the book titled "Japanese Soldiers of the Eighth Route Army."
Now aged 100, Maeda lives in a nursing home. A couple of years ago, he donated over 10 boxes of books and materials about the history of China's War of Resistance Against Japan to a civil group formed by Japanese veterans of China's Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army.
"I hope these historical materials will be well preserved and could help the younger generations in Japan to know more about the history," he said.
