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IN 1942, THE JAPANESE ARMY IN NORTH AND CENTRAL China launched a large-scale mopping-up campaign. They applied their “three-all” policy of burning all, killing all and looting all, thus making a no-man’s-land of certain areas. Yoshioka once told me of the different tactics used by the Japanese Army against the Communist armies of North China, such as “iron encirclements” and the “use of a fine comb.” He said that “the fighting history of the Imperial Japanese Army has been immeasurably enriched” by these experiences. After listening to his account, I asked a few questions, thinking to please him. “Since the Communist armies are so tiny, why does His Majesty the Emperor of Japan use all these new tactics?” I asked.

I didn’t anticipate that my question would lead to sarcasm. “If Your Imperial Majesty had any experience in real warfare you would not ask this kind of thing.”

“May I ask why?”

“The Communist army is not the same as the Kuomintang. There is no distinction between soldiers and the people, uh, no distinction at all, uh. It’s like, uh, red beans mixed up with red sand. It’s like fish eyes mixed with pearls.” He then went on to say that when the Japanese Army was fighting the Eighth Route Army or the New Fourth Army it often found itself completely surrounded. The enemy armies were becoming bigger and bigger and their members were not deserting after a year of service, which was unprecedented in the history of China. “Terrifying, quite terrifying.” He sighed and shook his head. The sight of an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army describing the enemy in these terms made me so uneasy I did not know what to say. I finally screwed up my courage to remark, “They really are dreadful the way they burn and kill and the way they communize property and wives.”

“Only an idiot could believe that,” he interrupted rudely. A few moments later he stared at me with a mocking expression and said, “That was not an official comment. Your Majesty must now listen to the report of the Chief of Staff of the Kwantung Army.”

Later, I gradually came to realize that Yoshioka’s unofficial comments were comparatively closer to the facts than the official briefings of the Kwantung Army’s Chief of Staff.

As I listened to the radio news broadcasts, however, I gradually came to understand Yoshioka’s anxieties more clearly. There were increasing reports of Japanese military defeats on all fronts and these were confirmed by reports of “smashed jade” and “heroic sacrifices” in the Manchukuo press. Even in my isolation, I could see that there was a shortage of supplies and materiel. Doorknobs, spittoons and other articles of brass and iron began to disappear from the palace, and the officials of the inner court came to me for assistance because of the shortage of food for their families.

What made the deepest impression on me was the fear that the Japanese Army began to reveal. Tomoyuki Yamashita, who had been so proud and arrogant when he had been transferred to the Northeast after capturing Singapore, was a changed man when he came to take his leave of me on being reassigned to Southeast Asia in 1945. Covering his nose with his hand, he started weeping. “This is our final parting,” he said. “I shall never come back again.”

I saw even more tears at a farewell ceremony for “human bullets”—soldiers selected from the Japanese Army for stopping aircraft and tanks with their own bodies. Yoshioka always spoke of such kamikaze conduct with the greatest respect, but it horrified me. This particular ceremony had been arranged by the Kwantung Army so that I could encourage the men who had been chosen and wish them success. It was a cloudy day and there was a dust storm blowing. The courtyard of the palace was made even more depressing by the sandbags that were piled up as an air-raid precaution. The dozen or so “bullets” were drawn up in a line in front of me, and I read out the speech of good wishes that Yoshioka had written for me. Only then did I notice the ashen gray of their faces and the tears flowing down their cheeks, and I heard some of them sobbing.

The ceremony came to a tawdry end in the swirling dust, and as I hurried back to my rooms to wash, my mind was in turmoil. Yoshioka followed close behind me, so that I knew he must have something to say and waited for him to catch up. He cleared his throat, hummed and hawed, and finally said, “Your Majesty spoke well and moved them deeply, which is why they were shedding such manly Japanese tears.”

You really are frightened, I thought. You’re frightened that I’ve seen through your “human bullets.” Well, if you’re frightened, I’m even more scared.

The German surrender of May, 1945, made Japan’s position more desperate than ever, and it was now only a matter of time before the Soviet Army entered the war in the East. Even I realized that Japan’s situation was hopeless.

The collapse finally came. On the morning of August 9, 1945, the last commander of the Kwantung Army, Otozo Yamata, and his Chief of Staff came to the palace to report to me that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan.

Yamata was a short, thin, elderly man who was normally grave in manner and slow in speech. But on this day he was completely different; he gave me a rushed account of how well prepared the Japanese troops were and told me that they were confident of victory. Before he could finish speaking an air-raid siren sounded and we all went to the shelter. We soon heard bombs exploding nearby and he did not refer again to his confidence in victory before we parted after the all-clear.

From that time onward I slept in my clothes, kept a pistol in my pocket, and ordered martial law in the palace.

Yamata and his Chief of Staff came again the next day to tell me that the Japanese Army was going to withdraw and hold southern Manchuria so that the capital would have to be moved to Tunghua. Realizing that it would be impossible to move my large household and all my property so soon, I asked for and won a delay of two days.

I now underwent new mental torments. These resulted from a further change in Yoshioka’s attitude as well as from my own morbid suspicions. After Yamata had gone, Yoshioka had pointed out: “If Your Majesty does not go, you will be the first to be murdered by the Soviet troops.” He uttered these words in a sinister tone, but what made me even more frightened was the obvious implication that the Japanese suspected I did not wish to go and was planning to betray them.

I therefore re-enacted a scene I had used over ten years earlier to demonstrate my “loyalty and sincerity” in front of Yoshioka. I sent for the Prime Minister, Chang Ching-hui, and Rokuzo Takebe, the Director of the General Affairs Office of the State Council, and said: “We must support the holy war of our Parental Country with all our strength, and must resist the Soviet Army to the end, to the very end.”

I then turned to see Yoshioka’s expression, only to find that the Attaché to the Imperial Household, who normally stayed with me like a shadow, had vanished. Full of terrible forebodings, I paced up and down the room. At one point I looked out of the window and saw some Japanese soldiers advancing toward the building with their rifles at the ready. My heart almost jumped into my mouth and I thought my hour had come. Realizing I had nowhere to hide, I went to the top of the stairs to meet them. But when they saw me the soldiers went away.

I decided they must have come to test whether I would run away or not. The more I thought of this the more frightened I became, and I picked up the telephone to ring Yoshioka. But I could not get through to him. It looked as though the Japanese had gone without me, and this terrified me too.

Later I managed to reach Yoshioka. His voice was very weak and he said that he was ill. I expressed my concern, said a few kind words, and heard him reply, “Thank you, Your Majesty.” He then rang off. Later I realized that I had not eaten all day and was very hungry. I asked my personal servant, Big Li, who had been with me since my Tientsin days, to bring me something. He reported that all the cooks had fled, so I had to make do with some crackers.

A little after nine in the evening of August 11th, Yoshioka showed up. My brother, sisters, brothers-in-law and nephews were already at the railway station, and of my entire family, only I and two of my wives were left in the palace. Yoshioka addressed me and the servants who were still with me in a peremptory tone:

“Whether we walk or go in automobiles, the sacred objects to be carried by Toranosuke Hashimoto will go in front. If anyone passes the sacred vessels they must make a ninetydegree bow.”

I stood respectfully and watched Hashimoto, the President of the Bureau of Worship,³⁸ carry the bundle containing the sacred Shinto objects to the first car. I got into the second and, as we left the palace, I looked around and saw flames rising above the National Foundation Shrine.

The train took three days and two nights to reach Talitzukou. The original plan had been to go via Mukden, but the train was rerouted along the Kirin-Meihokuo line to avoid air raids. Throughout the journey we ate only two proper meals. We saw Japanese military vehicles all along the route, and the men in them looked like a cross between soldiers and refugees. The train stopped at Meihokuo for Yamata, the Commander of the Kwantung Army, to come aboard. He reported to me that the Japanese Army was winning and had destroyed numbers of Soviet tanks and aircraft. But his story was disproved by what I saw at the Kirin station. Crowds of Japanese women and children, screaming and shouting, were pushing toward the train as they wept and begged the gendarmes to let them pass.

On August 13, I arrived at Talitzukou, a coal-mine town set amid mountains whose beauty I was too terrified to appreciate. Two days later the Japanese surrender was proclaimed.

Yoshioka said, “His Imperial Majesty has proclaimed our surrender, and the American government have given guarantees about his position and safety.” I immediately sank to my knees and kowtowed to heaven, intoning, “I thank heaven for protecting His Imperial Majesty.” Yoshioka also knelt down and kowtowed.

Yoshioka then explained that the Kwantung Army had been in touch with Tokyo, and it had been decided to send me to Japan. “But,” he added, “His Imperial Majesty cannot assume unconditional responsibility for Your Majesty’s safety. This will be in the hands of the Allies.”

This remark made me feel as if a death sentence were beckoning to me. When the Japanese decided that I was to go to Tokyo they arranged for the secret return to Changchun of the Premier, Chang Ching-hui, and Rokuzo Takebe, the Japanese Director of the General Affairs Office of the Manchurian State Council, to make arrangements for the future. When Chang got back to Changchun he made radio contact with Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking and announced the establishment of a Committee for the Preservation of Public Order that was preparing to receive Kuomintang troops. He and his group hoped that they would be able to make a quick change into representatives of the Republic of China before the Soviet troops arrived, but the Soviet advance was much quicker than they had expected. The day after the Soviet Army reached Changchun, Chang Ching-hui’s hopes were shattered when he and his fellow ministers were put into an aircraft and flown off to captivity in the USSR.

On August 16, Yoshioka told me that I was to go to Japan the following day. I nodded rapidly in agreement and pretended to be very pleased. He explained that I would have to decide whom to take with me. As we would be flying in a small aircraft I only chose my brother Pu Chieh, two brothers-in-law, three nephews, a doctor and my personal servant Big Li. One of my minor consorts asked me, amid sobs, what was going to happen to her. “The plane is too small,” I explained. “So you will have to go by train.”

“Will the train get me to the coast and to a boat to Japan?”

“Of course it will,” I answered without a moment’s thought. “In three days at the most you and the Empress will see me again.”

“What will happen if the train doesn’t come for me? I haven’t got a single relation here.”

“We’ll meet again in a couple of days. You’ll be all right.”

We landed at Mukden where we were to change to a large aircraft at eleven in the morning, and sat in the airport waiting for the second airplane.

Before we had been waiting long, the airfield reverberated to the sound of aircraft engines as Soviet planes landed. Soviet troops holding submachine guns poured out of the planes and immediately disarmed all the Japanese soldiers on the airfield, which was soon covered with Soviet troops.

The next day I was put on a Soviet aircraft and flown to the USSR.