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Japanese Girl at the Siege of Changchun: How I Survived China s Wartime Atrocity
Over 150,000 innocents died of starvation in Changchun, northeastern China, after the end of WW2 when Mao's army laid siege during the Chinese Civil War. Japanese girl Homare Endo, then age seven, was trapped in Changchun with her family. After nomadic flight from city to city, Homare eventually returned to Japan and a professional career. This is her eyewitness, at times haunting account of survival at all costs and of unspeakable scenes of barbarity that the Chinese government today will not acknowledge. Homare Endo was born in China in 1941 and is director of the Center of International Relations at Tokyo University and Graduate School of Social Welfare.
304 pages, Paperback
Published October 25, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 21, 2018
While Endo's writing style can be a bit flowery and overwhelming, the suffering chronicled in this book stupefied me. And I've read plenty about suffering. This book is not only fascinating, it is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read.
February 5, 2017
It is often said that war is hell, but the same can be said of the postwar experiences of many. During wars people have been displaced, cities destroyed, there were shortages of food and medicine. And the losers are often at the mercy of the victors. Homare Endo’s experiences as vanquished Japanese in China are recorded in Stonebridge Press’s English version of Japanese Girl at the Siege of Changchun: How I survived China’s Wartime Atrocity (2016) translated by Michael Brase.
Homare and her family struggled for several years after Japan defeat in World War II in the former colonial state known by the Japanese as Manzhouguo. There the story begins in the capital, Changchun, where her father, Takuji, ran a pharmaceutical company, the Shinkyo Pharmaceutical Company. This company produced an anti-opiate addiction medicine called Giftol. Her father’s expertise and success would keep him and his family in China long after Japan’s defeat. Homare’s father felt responsibility towards his company’s workers and their fates in the face of defeat. Later his kindness toward his Chinese and Korean workers, as well as his success with the factory, would allow them to survive several life or death confrontations with Chinese authorities over the years.
The central event, the 1947 siege of Changchun by Mao’s Revolutionary Army in which they hoped to starve out the Nationalist Army out. This was done in spite of the large number of civilians that were still inside the city. The author briefly outlines the political motivations and historical context which is discussed more fully in The Afterword. Homare feels that as a survivor she must bear witness to this atrocity despite the fact that this event has been suppressed in China by the government. Most official accounts put the number of deaths as between 150,000 to 300,000. Homare suggest that at he very least there were hundreds of thousands base don the views of survivors and calculations of the city’s demographics. At any rate, a disturbing number of people perished. And many more suffered great hardships for survival as Homare’s story illustrates.
It was the aftermath of the Siege of Changchun that most strongly affected Homare and her family. The Qiazi, the no man’s land surrounding Changchun, was a horrific wasteland of rotting corpses that would haunt Homare all of her life. The family is trapped to remain in China during the civil war due to her father’s usefulness to the Communist Party and trapped by need for survival. They travel to liberated Yanji, which had a majority Korean population and was the first place that the reactionary rhetoric of the revolution would put the vanquished Japanese family at risk. But her father is singled out by a former acquaintance as treating his Korean workers well and encouraging them to go to night school while working at his factory. Takuji's scheming nephew, nick-named The White Rat-master of his own survival, was at the heart of the campaign to denounce Takuji.
Their struggle for survival continued until they reached the relative safety and stability in the large city of Tianjin. Here Honmare recovers from her malnutrition that almost killed her, Her extended recovery keeps her out of school. However, once she gets the opportunity to study in a Chinese school she became motivated with a steely resolve to succeed among the Chinese that still see her a reminder of the former colonizers and a “Japanese dog.” In spite of the bullying she succeeds at school, putting the other children to shame by having a foreigner out perform them in school. This took place in the wake of the Korean War, in which Japan manufactured munitions for the invading America Army and sign a treaty with them making them enemies of the allied communist states. It is in the aftermath of this that Homare and her family are finally repatriated to Japan-a place that Homare never has seen with her own eyes in 1953. Her postwar struggle had finally come to an end. It is a fascinating, harrowing story of resilience and struggle that has been overlooked by most people and historians. It is a story that needs to be told, in order that it will not be repeated.
Homare and her family struggled for several years after Japan defeat in World War II in the former colonial state known by the Japanese as Manzhouguo. There the story begins in the capital, Changchun, where her father, Takuji, ran a pharmaceutical company, the Shinkyo Pharmaceutical Company. This company produced an anti-opiate addiction medicine called Giftol. Her father’s expertise and success would keep him and his family in China long after Japan’s defeat. Homare’s father felt responsibility towards his company’s workers and their fates in the face of defeat. Later his kindness toward his Chinese and Korean workers, as well as his success with the factory, would allow them to survive several life or death confrontations with Chinese authorities over the years.
The central event, the 1947 siege of Changchun by Mao’s Revolutionary Army in which they hoped to starve out the Nationalist Army out. This was done in spite of the large number of civilians that were still inside the city. The author briefly outlines the political motivations and historical context which is discussed more fully in The Afterword. Homare feels that as a survivor she must bear witness to this atrocity despite the fact that this event has been suppressed in China by the government. Most official accounts put the number of deaths as between 150,000 to 300,000. Homare suggest that at he very least there were hundreds of thousands base don the views of survivors and calculations of the city’s demographics. At any rate, a disturbing number of people perished. And many more suffered great hardships for survival as Homare’s story illustrates.
It was the aftermath of the Siege of Changchun that most strongly affected Homare and her family. The Qiazi, the no man’s land surrounding Changchun, was a horrific wasteland of rotting corpses that would haunt Homare all of her life. The family is trapped to remain in China during the civil war due to her father’s usefulness to the Communist Party and trapped by need for survival. They travel to liberated Yanji, which had a majority Korean population and was the first place that the reactionary rhetoric of the revolution would put the vanquished Japanese family at risk. But her father is singled out by a former acquaintance as treating his Korean workers well and encouraging them to go to night school while working at his factory. Takuji's scheming nephew, nick-named The White Rat-master of his own survival, was at the heart of the campaign to denounce Takuji.
Their struggle for survival continued until they reached the relative safety and stability in the large city of Tianjin. Here Honmare recovers from her malnutrition that almost killed her, Her extended recovery keeps her out of school. However, once she gets the opportunity to study in a Chinese school she became motivated with a steely resolve to succeed among the Chinese that still see her a reminder of the former colonizers and a “Japanese dog.” In spite of the bullying she succeeds at school, putting the other children to shame by having a foreigner out perform them in school. This took place in the wake of the Korean War, in which Japan manufactured munitions for the invading America Army and sign a treaty with them making them enemies of the allied communist states. It is in the aftermath of this that Homare and her family are finally repatriated to Japan-a place that Homare never has seen with her own eyes in 1953. Her postwar struggle had finally come to an end. It is a fascinating, harrowing story of resilience and struggle that has been overlooked by most people and historians. It is a story that needs to be told, in order that it will not be repeated.
January 27, 2019
The outcome of China's civil war was determined in Manchuria, the Northeastern "rooster's head" portion of China bordering the Soviet Union and Korea. It was Jiang Jieshi's disastrous decision to confront Mao there, where Mao could be easily supplied by the Soviet Union, that led to his defeat and the communist takeover of China.
At the time of civil war, Manchuria had been a colony of Japan (ostensibly a separate country by the name of Manzhouguo) for several decades and had only just been returned to China. The capital of Manzhouguo was Changchun. The battle for Changchun was then, in a sense, the key battle in the fight for Manchuria.
In order to take Changchun, the communist army first encircled the city, building a barbed wire fence around the perimeter, and then cut off electricity and food. Then, they simply waited for everyone inside to starve to death. While this technique worked, the civilian victims far outnumbered military, as the Nationalist army inside Changchun continued to be supplied by airdrops (which were not distributed to civilians). Many civilians attempted to flee the city - however, the nationalist guards had a rule that once you left the city you could not go back in. After fleeing the city, refugees found themselves trapped between the city walls and the barbed wire perimeter constructed by the 8th route army (recently renamed the "People's Liberation Army", apparently without any irony intended). It is estimated that several hundred thousand civilians died trapped within these concentric rings.
This book is one of two first-hand accounts of the siege that I am aware of. Originally published in Japanese in 2012, it was only translated to English in 2016. It describes what it was like to be one of the lucky few refugees who did manage to escape. The other book, 雪白血紅 - literally "snow white blood red", as far as I am aware is only available in Chinese. It was published by a former PLA officer and gives the opposite account - what it was like to be one of the communist soldiers on the other side of the barbed wire fence, watching your countrymen die. This was, apparently, very hard on many of the soldiers, and in the case of this specific soldier, a man by the name of Zhenglong Zhang, enough so that he was willing to publish the truth about what happened even though it meant almost certainly being thrown in prison (which he was). 雪白血紅 is banned in China, but is available in Taiwan.
I think it is interesting to compare the siege of Changchun with the Rape of Nanjing, because they are both massacres involving a similar number of dead civilians in the same country around the same time (about ten years apart). The communist party has built a giant museum in Nanjing of the Rape. When I was there, I encountered many schoolchildren who appeared to be there as part of a mandatory school field trip. On the other hand, there is no museum of the siege of Changchun, and the one army officer with the courage to tell its story is in prison with his book banned. This, I think, is an excellent illustration of the hypocrisy of the CCP.
Although I have a copy of 雪白血紅 in my possession, it is currently beyond my ability to read. I hope that with another few years of work, I will be able to read it.
At the time of civil war, Manchuria had been a colony of Japan (ostensibly a separate country by the name of Manzhouguo) for several decades and had only just been returned to China. The capital of Manzhouguo was Changchun. The battle for Changchun was then, in a sense, the key battle in the fight for Manchuria.
In order to take Changchun, the communist army first encircled the city, building a barbed wire fence around the perimeter, and then cut off electricity and food. Then, they simply waited for everyone inside to starve to death. While this technique worked, the civilian victims far outnumbered military, as the Nationalist army inside Changchun continued to be supplied by airdrops (which were not distributed to civilians). Many civilians attempted to flee the city - however, the nationalist guards had a rule that once you left the city you could not go back in. After fleeing the city, refugees found themselves trapped between the city walls and the barbed wire perimeter constructed by the 8th route army (recently renamed the "People's Liberation Army", apparently without any irony intended). It is estimated that several hundred thousand civilians died trapped within these concentric rings.
This book is one of two first-hand accounts of the siege that I am aware of. Originally published in Japanese in 2012, it was only translated to English in 2016. It describes what it was like to be one of the lucky few refugees who did manage to escape. The other book, 雪白血紅 - literally "snow white blood red", as far as I am aware is only available in Chinese. It was published by a former PLA officer and gives the opposite account - what it was like to be one of the communist soldiers on the other side of the barbed wire fence, watching your countrymen die. This was, apparently, very hard on many of the soldiers, and in the case of this specific soldier, a man by the name of Zhenglong Zhang, enough so that he was willing to publish the truth about what happened even though it meant almost certainly being thrown in prison (which he was). 雪白血紅 is banned in China, but is available in Taiwan.
I think it is interesting to compare the siege of Changchun with the Rape of Nanjing, because they are both massacres involving a similar number of dead civilians in the same country around the same time (about ten years apart). The communist party has built a giant museum in Nanjing of the Rape. When I was there, I encountered many schoolchildren who appeared to be there as part of a mandatory school field trip. On the other hand, there is no museum of the siege of Changchun, and the one army officer with the courage to tell its story is in prison with his book banned. This, I think, is an excellent illustration of the hypocrisy of the CCP.
Although I have a copy of 雪白血紅 in my possession, it is currently beyond my ability to read. I hope that with another few years of work, I will be able to read it.
June 11, 2021
ARC courtesy of the publisher via the Amazon Vine program.
I am embarrassed at how long it took me to finish reading this book. I’ve read so many memoirs and biographies of the tragedies of wartime that I was gobsmacked by physically being unable to read more than a bit at a time of this book.
Thinking about it, there are only two other volumes about the cruelties of war that had that kind of visceral impact. One was a recounting of how Nazis were allowed to hide in plain sight without atoning for their actions. The other was the stark and beautiful recollections of Elie Wiesel.
Perhaps Wiesel’s memoir and this one by Homare Endo share a certain underlying commonality because they are narratives of what children endured because of the decisions of the adults leading various governments. Wiesel, of course, wrote of WWII relatively soon afterward, while multiple decades have passed since the events Endo writes about occurred.
There’s a truism widely stated that history is written by the victors. A lot of it is, yes. But it also is borne witness to by ordinary people in extraordinary times. Anne Frank’s father may well have sensed that when he pursued the publication of his murdered daughter’s diary. Ellie Wiesel certainly did as he sought publication. I am grateful that Homare Endo shared her story with the world at all, no matter when she did so.
I am embarrassed at how long it took me to finish reading this book. I’ve read so many memoirs and biographies of the tragedies of wartime that I was gobsmacked by physically being unable to read more than a bit at a time of this book.
Thinking about it, there are only two other volumes about the cruelties of war that had that kind of visceral impact. One was a recounting of how Nazis were allowed to hide in plain sight without atoning for their actions. The other was the stark and beautiful recollections of Elie Wiesel.
Perhaps Wiesel’s memoir and this one by Homare Endo share a certain underlying commonality because they are narratives of what children endured because of the decisions of the adults leading various governments. Wiesel, of course, wrote of WWII relatively soon afterward, while multiple decades have passed since the events Endo writes about occurred.
There’s a truism widely stated that history is written by the victors. A lot of it is, yes. But it also is borne witness to by ordinary people in extraordinary times. Anne Frank’s father may well have sensed that when he pursued the publication of his murdered daughter’s diary. Ellie Wiesel certainly did as he sought publication. I am grateful that Homare Endo shared her story with the world at all, no matter when she did so.
February 1, 2021
Again the horrors of war doesn’t take sides. A fascinating story of a little known bit of modern history.
June 30, 2022
This was a pretty greuling story.
Very well written by Endo.
Important and interesting book on China's wartime atrocities.
Would recommend!
You won't hear this story elsewhere.
4.8/5
Very well written by Endo.
Important and interesting book on China's wartime atrocities.
Would recommend!
You won't hear this story elsewhere.
4.8/5
May 24, 2020
The first half is worth 3,5 stars. The second half is a mess of random memories with no narrative thread to keep it all together. This book could have been half the length and a much more powerful story about living through a war that the world doesn’t really speak of. Disappointing.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews