Imagined communities: Life in German POW camps in Japan during the First World War.

I will look at the treatment of German POWs in Japan during the First World War focusing on the Camp at Bando, Shikoku and try to frame it within the context of this seminar. It will also be apparent from Japan’s actions during the war that Japanese policy makers used the crisis in Europe very effectively to gain a foothold in Asia and expand the Japanese Empire into areas where it would have been impossible to do so during peacetime. To do this we will focus on the theme of imagined community and how the camp fits or doesn’t fit into the broader idea of violence, legitimate and illegitimate.

Matthew Stibbe in his work on British Civilian Internees in the Ruhleben camp in Germany focuses on the idea of the creation of an “imagined community” within the camp system. The model of Ruhleben is a good starting point as it gives us something with which to compare the Japanese camp at Bando. Stibbe’s analysis of Ruhleben is based heavily on Benedict Anderson’s analysis of the origins of Nationalism through language, culture and the creation of community.[1] In Ruhleben, the British prisoners were able to hold onto and cultivate their national identity through the setting up of various institutions, such as sports teams, educational classes, theatre and even a mock election to send representatives to the British parliament. In the camp one can see a microcosm of early twentieth century British society with all its attending social distinctions such as one Etonian who was able to hire servants from among the lower class prisoners in the camp. Stibbe views the camp in terms of a symbolic community and looks at how prisoners’ experiences varied depending on their education level, class, race and nationality.[2] This community is born both from the prisoners’ detachment from Britain and the converse need to establish closer connections with the nation under whose name they were being held captive. In Japan we see a similar situation, however, unlike Ruhleben the prisoner body remained stable with virtually no new comers during the course of internment and the racial make up of the prisoners was not as mixed.[3] Before going into the details of our case study camp, it is important to make a few remarks on how German Prisoners of War found themselves incarcerated in Japan.

Japan’s involvement in the First World War begins at the harbour town of Tsingtao on the Shantung peninsula in China. Tsingtao was taken by the German Reich in 1897 in reparation for the murder of German missionaries in Shantung (The Juye incident). The murders provided the excuse Germany needed to gain a Pacific base for German Naval operations. Once in control of the town the colonisers completely levelled it and rebuilt it along German lines from installing a sewage system to building modern German red-roofed houses.[4] The port gained an enviable reputation in Europe and was a popular holiday destination, often referred to as the Brighton of the East. The development of this port town may have been particularly galling for Japan, Germany, as leader of the triple intervention (with France and Russia) had directly intervened in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 to deny the Japanese their claims to territory in China. Riots had also broken out in Tokyo in response to Japanese feeling that they had again been denied the spoils of a successful war after defeating Russia and signing the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905.[5] Japan entered the First World War on August 1914 determined not to be denied their just rewards for a third time. No British or Japanese possessions were under immediate threat from the Germans, but Britain had asked Japan to join the war acting as a coastguard rather than navy in the Pacific. The Japanese foreign minister, Kato Takaaki realized that Japanese combative participation in the war and the taking of Germany’s colony the Pearl of the East, Tsingtao was a one in a million opportunity for the Japanese to gain political influence in China, and almost single-handedly brought Japan into the conflict. Although Kaiser Wilhelm II, ever mindful of the “yellow peril” remarked to the Governor of Tsingtao Alfred von Meyer-Waldeck, to lose Tsingtao to the Japanese would shame Germany more than to lose Berlin to the Russians, the garrison did not possess the necessary man power to prevent this.[6] The outcome of the siege of Tsingtao was a foregone conclusion. The combined Japanese-British force under Japanese command vastly out numbered the German garrison. With Europe distracted by the fighting at home, Japan could now press home advantage in China resulting in the infamous 21 demands to Yuan Shi’kai.[7] After the German surrender the Japanese gathered the 4,800 POWs and arranged to bring them to Japan for incarceration. With particular historical irony the Germans were evacuated from Tsingtao on November 14^th 1914; 17 years to the day they had first arrived there.[8] The German POWs would be in prison in Japan from November 1914 up to their release in early 1921.

Japan had earned itself a reputation for exceptional humanitarianism in their treatment of Prisoners during the Russo-Japanese war. They had followed the conventions on POW treatment in the Hague conventions to the letter. The government even allowed 400 Russian officers to return home after they submitted an oath not to re-join the fighting.[9] German officers were not offered parole but they were given quite comfortable daily salaries with which to buy food, clothing and other items.[10] Of particular importance, the German officers were allowed to keep their swords, a powerful symbol of martial spirit in Europe as well as Japan. Coupled with this Japan had close connections with Germany, the Meiji Constitution had been written using Germany as an example. Japanese doctors until after the Second World War had written their prescriptions in German. Most importantly for our study the Japanese military had been trained by Germans, the most influential being Major Jacob Meckel (he of Dagger in the Heart fame) who trained the Japanese military in the 1880’s. To highlight one relevant example the camp commander of Narashino (near Tokyo, and present day Narita airport), the Marquis Saigo (son of the famous Saigo Takemori) had spent extensive time in Germany.[11] On arrival in Japan and all through their incarceration there was considerable interest in how the Germans lived. Indeed their behaviour was considered so exemplary that a report on their daily routine was distributed by the government to secondary schools as a model of gentlemanly conduct.[12] Initially however, there were problems with the camp conditions. Many prisoners found themselves housed in Temples which were not up to the standard that the Germans were used to. After complaints to the Japanese government, filed through the American embassy based on information from Sumner Welles camp inspections and the Japanese governments’ own investigations, the authorities decided to make some changes.[13]

The most important of these changes was the amalgamation of the three camps in Shikoku into one huge complex at Bando. The Bando camp holds a special place in the historiography of internment in the First World War as it seen as the prime example of prisoner management. The Bando camp under its benevolent commander Major Matsue Toyohisa quickly became a model German village (albeit without women). The German prisoners in the camp quickly set about building a community. For the POWs life could return to some sort of normality, they were allowed to operate shops, such as butchers, barbers, even a hot spring spa, as well as tend to crops and livestock.[14] Complaints about the lenient treatment the Japanese afforded their Prisoners were aired in the British press, one such article under the title “Does Japan want sausages or roads?”[15] decried the fact that POWs were allowed to work as they saw fit in the camp rather than being used as labour in heavy engineering projects. Through the act of forming a community the prisoners were able to retain a sense of “Germanness” and were quite a successful propaganda tool for the German government. The prisoners helped introduce German methods of farming and livestock cultivation, even introducing the tomato to Japanese farmers. In March 1918 the inmates organised an exhibition of engineering, sport, food and handicrafts (Ausstellung fur Bildkunst und Handfertigkeit).[16] It was a twelve day event which sparked considerable interest in Japan with around 50,000 visitors of the course of the exhibition, even attracting enquiries from members of the Japanese Imperial household.[17] The prisoners had become local celebrities, some them having been hired by local firms to apply their skills such as in the construction of the German Bridge which still stands today.[18] Although some Prisoners had lived in Japan before the war and others had expressed an interest in Bushido (there was a certain fascination with hara-kiri among the officers) the cultural exchange was mainly one way, the majority of the Germans seeing themselves as teachers rather than students of the Japanese.[19] As stated in the first edition of the camp newspaper “Die Baracke” the prisoners were doing their utmost to ensure Germany’s future.

The Japanese were very lenient in most but they were wary of allowing any open expressions of nationalistic sentiment. Although they allowed the Germans an extra hour before lights out on the Kaiser’s Birthday they forbade any parades or shouting of patriotic slogans. In 1918 under the guise of a “tea-party” (not the last time in history that a “tea-party” should have ulterior motives) the prisoners organised a celebration for the Kaiser’s birthday and although the slogans were forbidden there was nothing stopping them from getting drunk and singing patriotic songs. The camp officers eventually gave way on this on realised that it was a necessary outlet to relieve barbed-wire –disease. Expression of national sentiment can be found through the concerts organised in the camp for instance in 1917 and 1918 there were concerts to commemorate Tannenberg.[20] Probably the most enduring event in the camp was the recital of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, being the first time it was performed in Japan. The inmates held lectures in the camp one lecturer Hermann Bohner stayed in Japan and became a well respected teacher of German language and culture in Osaka. Although only the titles of these lectures remain they offer an insight into what interested the prisoners, lectures on modern German history and Heimat studies were interspersed with talks on the inner dangers of Alsace-Lorraine and Poles in Germany and lectures relating to Jews in 19^th Century Germany. Coupled with this the newspaper ran a very popular competition calling for essays on the notion of Heimat. The sense of separation from Germany and following most Heimat stories a nostalgia for rural life are the prevalent themes at least through the three winning entries, with the runner up being completely written in a north German vernacular.[21]

From the case study of Bando it may be difficult to see how this fits into the theme of Violence. Bando is portrayed as an idyllic camp far away from the Horror of the trenches on the western front. To counter this I would like to borrow from Slavoj Zizek. He opens his book on violence with a joke: A factory worker is suspected of stealing by his boss. So every day the boss has the security guards check the contents of the worker’s wheel-barrow as he leaves the factory each evening. This goes on for a few days and yet the boss can find no evidence of stealing, until it finally dawns on him. What the worker is stealing is the wheelbarrows.[22] So in the case of the camp system, in looking for the usual examples of violence, beatings, torture, etc… we often forget the actual fact that the camp through its enforced confinement of prisoners is in itself a symbol of state violence. This follows with Alon Rachamimov’s argument of the familiarity of imprisonment in comparison with the more catastrophic events in Europe.[23] As with the Russo-Japanese war, the Japanese authorities did their utmost to ensure that their prisoners were dealt with according to the regulations set down in the Hague conventions. Indeed as Madeline Chi argues which may to a certain extent be true; on the entry of China into war in 1917 the British authorities refused to send the 3,290 German and Austro-Hungarian POWs to Japan. They preferred to send them to far flung Australia, one of the reasons being the exceptional treatment afforded POWs in Japan.[24] One reason for their humanitarian treatment of POWs may be that Japan was now focusing on consolidating power in China. The Japanese used the War and the occupation of Tsingtao as a spring-board for Imperial expansion. Once the German colonies in Asia and the Pacific had been defeated, the Reich no longer posed any threat to the Japanese Imperial mission. In fact the Japanese came to realise that the real enemy here was not Germany but the USA and in the post-War world a rejuvenated but non-colonial Germany might prove a useful ally.[25] However the Germans remained prisoners until 1921 longing to go back to their home country. In presenting the camp story the historian has the problem as Stibbe points out of making the boring, everyday existence of these people interesting when we have to balance it with the breakdown and revolutions of culture and society that the fighting of the First World War gave birth to.[26]

The question of how Japan’s treatment of POWs changed in the intervening decades can be attributed to the break down of the ideas of gentlemanly diplomacy, the experience of the Japanese army in fighting a prolonged guerrilla war in China and the fact that in the Second World War Japan saw itself as being involved in a desperate war for survival. Japan’s changing attitude can be briefly and bluntly summed up through the words of Lieutenant-General Uemura Mikio speaking about prisoners in the early 1940s, “in the war with Russia we gave them excellent treatment in order to gain recognition as a civilised country. Today no such need applies.”[27]

The study of German prisoners in Japan during the First World War is a growing field (as is study of WWI prisoners in general). The POWs forcibly interned there left a cultural legacy, through farming, engineering, even cooking that is still present in modern day Japan. Working these camps into the overall paradigm of Twentieth century warfare is an important part in our understanding of not only the development of Japanese and German relations, but incarceration in the years after the First World War.

Bibliography

Newspapers:

Die Baracke

The Japan Times

Websites:

Führer durch die Ausstellung für Bildkunst und Handfertigkeit Kriegsgefangenenlager Bando 1918 http://bando.dijtokyo.org/?page=object_detail.php&p_id=277

Rundgang durch das Lager Bando http://bando.dijtokyo.org/?page=theme_detail.php&p_id=3&menu=1

Secondary Sources:

Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, New York, 2006)

Barth, Johannes, Als Deutscher Kaufmann in Fernost Bremen-Tsintau-Tokyo 1891-1981 (Erich Schmidt Verlag Berlin 1984)

Best Antony, British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941 (Palgrave-Macmillan UK 2000)

Chi, Madeline, China Diplomacy, 1914-1918 (Harvard University Press, USA 1970)

Dickinson Frederick R., War and National Re-invention Japan and the Great War, 1914-1919 (Harvard University Press USA, 1999)

Gunther, Dierk, 青島戦ドイツ兵俘虜収容所研究会第七号 (Tsingtao-War German Prisoners Research Society Journal no.7) 板東収容所のドイツ俘虜達が書いたエッセーによる「故郷」のイメージ (Images of “Heimat” in the essays of German Prisoners interned in Bando.) (Tsingtao German Prisoners Research Society Journal 2009, Japan)

Gunther, Dierk, 青島戦ドイツ兵俘虜収容所研究会第七号 (Tsingtao-War German Prisoners Research Society Journal no.7) 板東収容所における愛国主義と国粋主義 (Patriotism and Nationalism in the Bando Prison Camp) (Tsingtao German Prisoners Research Society Journal 2009, Japan)

Kreiner, Josef, (Ed.) Japan und die Mittelmächte im Ersten Weltkrieg und in die zwanziger Jahren (Bovier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn) 1986

Nish Ian, Alliance in Decline a Study of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908-1923 (Athlone Press UK, 1974)

Rachamimov, Alon, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Berg 2002, New York)

Sims, Richard, Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Restoration 1868-2000 (Hurst and Co. London, 2001)

Steinmertz, George, The Devil’s Handwriting: Pre-Coloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa and South West Africa (University of Chicago Press USA 2007)

Stibbe, Matthew, British Civilian Internees in Germany (The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18) (Manchester University Press 2008, UK)

Tamura, Ichiro, 板東俘虜収容所の全貌 (The full story of Bando Internment Camp) (Sakuhokusha Japan, 2010)

Tomita, Hiroshi, 板東俘虜収容所 (POWs in Bando) (Hosei University Japan,) 1991

Weiland, Hans and Kern, Leopold In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenscahft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen Vol II (Vienna) 1931

Yap, Felicia, The Journal of Contemporary History POWs and Civilian Internees of the Japanese (2011)

Zizek, Slavoj, Violence (Picador, USA 2008)

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[1] For a full outline of these ideas see; Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, New York, 2006)

[2] Stibbe, Matthew, British Civilian Internees in Germany (The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18) (Manchester University Press 2008, UK) p.4

[3] POWs in Bando were mainly Protestant, but for a more detailed breakdown of the Prisoners by birthplace and religion see Tamura, Ichiro, 板東俘虜収容所の全貌 (The full story of Bando Internment Camp) (Sakuhokusha Japan, 2010) pp. 41-45

[4] Steinmertz, George, The Devil’s Handwriting: Pre-Coloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa and South West Africa (University of Chicago Press USA 2007) p. 434

[5] Sims, Richard, Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Restoration 1868-2000 (Hurst and Co. London, 2001) p.89

[6] Nish Ian, Alliance in Decline A Study of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908-1923 (Athlone Press UK, 1974) p. 135

[7] Best Antony, British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941 (Palgrave-Macmillan UK 2000) p.23

[8] Kreiner, Josef, (Ed.) Japan und die Mittelmächte im Ersten Weltkrieg und in die zwanziger Jahren (Bovier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn) 1986 p.6

[9] Checkland, Olive, Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan 1877-1977 (St. Martin’s Press London) 1994 p.47

[10] The Japan Times 3rd Februrary 1915

[11] Weiland, Hans and Kern, Leopold In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenscahft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen Vol II (Vienna) 1931 p.88

[12] The Japan Times (July 26th 1916)

[13] Although some POWs were not so happy to be moved to new surroundings: see Barth, Johannes, Als Deutscher Kaufmann in Fernost Bremen-Tsintau-Tokyo 1891-1981 (Erich Schmidt Verlag Berlin 1984) p.55

[14] Rundgang durch das Lager Bando http://bando.dijtokyo.org/?page=theme_detail.php&p_id=3&menu=1

[15] The Japan Times 24^th February 1915

[16] Führer durch die Ausstellung für Bildkunst und Handfertigkeit Kriegsgefangenenlager Bando 1918 http://bando.dijtokyo.org/?page=object_detail.php&p_id=277

[17] Die Baracke Band II p.124-125

[18] Tomita, Hiroshi, 板東俘虜収容所 (POWs in Bando) (Hosei University Japan,) 1991 pp. 112-124

[19] Weiland, Hans and Kern, Leopold In Feindeshand: Die Gefangenscahft im Weltkriege in Einzeldarstellungen Vol II (Vienna) 1931 p.80

[20] Gunther, Dierk, 青島戦ドイツ兵俘虜収容所研究会第七号 (Tsingtao-War German Prisoners Research Society Journal no.7) 板東収容所における愛国主義と国粋主義 (Patriotism and Nationalism in the Bando Prison Camp) (Tsingtao German Prisoners Research Society Journal 2009, Japan) pp.42-43

[21] Gunther, Dierk, 青島戦ドイツ兵俘虜収容所研究会第七号 (Tsingtao-War German Prisoners Research Society Journal no.7) 板東収容所のドイツ俘虜達が書いたエッセーによる「故郷」のイメージ (Images of “Heimat” in the essays of German Prisoners interned in Bando.) (Tsingtao German Prisoners Research Society Journal 2009, Japan) pp. 48-52

[22] Zizek, Slavoj, Violence (Picador, USA 2008) p.1

[23] Rachamimov, Alon, POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front (Berg 2002, New York) pp. 224-228

[24] Chi, Madeline, China Diplomacy, 1914-1918 (Harvard University Press, USA 1970) p. 134

[25] Dickinson Frederick R., War and National Re-invention Japan and the Great War, 1914-1919 (Harvard University Press USA, 1999) p.176

[26] Stibbe, Matthew, British Civilian Internees in Germany (The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18) (Manchester University Press 2008, UK) p.12

[27] Yap, Felicia, The Journal of Contemporary History POWs and Civilian Internees of the Japanese (2011)