excerpts from Japan at War
"The three men in this chapter, and Tominaga Shozo in chapters I and 24, are all members of the Chiigoku Kikansha Renrakukai [The Association of Returnees from China], a voluntary group of those arrested as war criminals and held in the People's Republic of China after the war. Some were first confined in the Soviet Union, before being handed over to China. In 1956, Chinese military courts formally indicted forty-five for crimes, and the remainder, about eleven hundred, were set free after their confessions. Bv 1964, all had returned to Japan. None were executed by the Chinese Communists.""The members of this group publicly admit that they took part in an "aggressive war" and were retained in China because they were "war criminals." The group takes the collective position that its members, "due to the generous policies of the People of China," having reflected upon the crimes they committed against humanity, wish to contribute to peace and friendship between China and Japan. To that end, unlike most Japanese who served in that war, they write of their acts as "victimizers" and speak out about their crimes. They also openly raise that they consider to be the war responsibility of the Showa Emperor. They have been denounced by their detractors as "brainwashed.""