Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist

The life and times of Manchuria and Japan from the pre-war to post-war eras are made physically and emotionally real in one person's memory of life and love and loss. This book, while not a literary masterpiece, is still strikingly good as a memoir, a history, and a slice of human experience. At its best, Ms. Kuramoto's book is similar to, or even better than, "Gone With the Wind", functioning as a tale, but a non-fictional one, of a uniquely determined woman survivor from the defeated and wrong side of a war. But in Ms. Kuramoto's case, the book is also of someone who is far more aware than the real Margaret Mitchell and fictional heroine Scarlett O'Hara that her own side was that of an oppressor. Even at its worst, Manchurian Legacy still holds up at as an honest account reaching the level of penetrating journalism and biography.Criticisms and weaknesses: I am perhaps overemphasizing the downside at this point to detail some issues that a reader may find off-putting or disappointing. For example, many interesting details from the author's childhood (e.g., interest in ballet, episodes in school) are only told after she is an adult and while she is remembering them during her adult period instead of giving us a full picture of them during the unfolding of the childhood part of her story. There is also not a lot of interpersonal dramatic tension in the narrative's style even though after she settles in Japan following the family's expulsion from Manchuria she faces social and economic deprivation, deep moral compromises, tense reunions, family alienation, bigotry, and abusive personalities. The story is a little too blandly told just at the point we can really get a "Gone With the Wind" sweep. There are also minor odd turns of phrase that sound like leftovers from English as a second (actually third for the author) language, or are simply bad edits. In general, though, her use of language -- English -- is mostly clear and rather compelling.Finally, on the more profound downside is a recurring sense that despite her intellectual realization of Japan's abusive rule in China (of which her father was a part despite being a decent and kind person in his own sphere, and respectful of the local Chinese), nevertheless the author did and does emotionally look down on the Chinese, and deeply resents their takeover of the place of her idyllic childhood. To a degree some of that emotion is understandable because expelling the Japanese of Manchuria, innocent and guilty, young and old, native and colonist may have amounted to one revenge too far. And worse, the direct terror and violence the Japanese settlers experienced from the newly liberated Chinese - and the author's family especially - was quite brutal. ("Colonist" in the title may contain a bit of willful irony as Manchuria was her only known home.)The sense of a continued anger and even condescension towards the Chinese from the author is supported in an encounter she has just before she and her family leave Manchuria. In that episode, the author's anger causes her to snarl contemptuously at a Chinese customer to the point that he in turn unjustifiedly slaps her, while somewhat more justifiably calling her a Japanese snob b*tch. Her narrative shows no regret then or now at her own admitted provocative rudeness. Also, interestingly, she never apparently has tried to go back to the hometown of Dairen in Manchuria though the doors have been wide open for decades.The above critical thoughts are ponderings that arise from the fact that this book is a profound and eminently readable one that makes you think and feel and learn, and those issues do not detract from the book's powerful value as a collection of eye-opening and historically important memories.Ms. Kuramoto's memoir should be assigned in schools in subject areas ranging from literature to history to anthropology/sociology. It also should be read by anyone looking to capture, and be captured by, the different experiences of human lives throughout this world, today and yesterday.

I ended up reading the book, Manchurian Legacy, in one sitting even though I had a lot of other things to do. That is rare for me. The story mesmerized me as I felt like I was learning something about my roots, my mother.My Japanese mother, to get away from the merciless firebombing of her city, at the age of 19 volunteered as a member of a repatriation team assigned to travel to Manchuria and to help in the repatriation of Japanese colonials there. After training for about a month, she flew to a city in the center of Manchuria on what happened to be the same day that the Russians invaded. She had quite an adventure hiding, being captured, incarcerated, starving, transported by rail in box cars and then force marched thru Korea, to be saved ironically by the enemy American soldiers that she was trying to escape. I am amazed at what she had to go through to get back to Japan.Not only did this book gave me an insight to what life was like in Manchuria for the Japanese during the end of World War II, it also gave me a glimpse of post-war Japan where both my father and father-in-law were stationed as part of the occupation forces. The stories about the period during the Russian invasion and how they and the local Chinese treated the Japanese colonials was very revealing. Even though Mrs. Kuramoto's experience was not so harrowing as my mother's adventure, the description of the area and the everyday life of the colonials helped me to understand this period of history in this part of the world.Even though the second part of the book about post-war Japan did not relate to my mother since she had a support system in place when she returned to Japan, the description of Mrs. Kuramoto's experiences with members of the American occupation force helped me to understand the situation that my father lived through during his term of duty in Japan.Enough of how the book impacted me. Here is a synopsis of the book: The Manchurian Legacy is a story about the life of a young woman born in Manchuria to Japanese parents living there during World War II. Her father is a minor Japanese government official which gave the family trappings of luxury which were not enjoyed by the local occupied Chinese residents. Kazuko was a patriotic 17 year old and to her parent's dismay, volunteered to join the Red Cross to aid in the war effort against the corrupt capitalists and communists. When Japan surrendered, the Russians invaded and the Chinese revolted, sending the Japanese colonialists into hiding. How the colonialists fared over the next year is a testament to their entrepreneurship and tenacious desire to survive in a culture hostile to their former oppressors. The post-war portion of the book focused on how Kazuko coped in Japan after being shipped there on U.S. transport ship and after being rejected by other relatives. This is also a story of her relationship with soldiers and contractors with the American occupation forces, and her struggles in a country not so accepting of the returning colonialists.A great read and highly recommended.

How you react to this book depends on your ethnic background. I am a Chinese born during the Sino-Japanese war. My parents and their generation suffered immensely from the war, and some of them were burnt by personal experience under the Japanese occupation. There is a general anti-Japanese sentiment among them, which is being transmitted to the later generations. The current generation of Chinese are also greatly influenced by the anti-Japenese propaganda which are being viewed everyday in movies and TV series. In all these media, Chinese were depicted as courageous victims, and Japanese as brutal and somewhat inefficient invaders. This book allows us to see the world again from a different perspective. The author was one of the colonists in Japan-occupied Manchuria. She viewed Manchuko as much as a British would view Hong Kong at the height of the colony under British occupation. Just as the British at that time, she would view the Japanese occupiers as benefactors to the backward society of their Chinese citizens, upgrading their standard of living as well as education. This book is especially moving because the author also describes in very personal terms the changes of her feelings during the collapse of the Japanese empire, and her exodus to the U.S. She reminds us that each of us is an individual first, a nationalist second. This book would benefit all those who view themselves as being benevolent occupiers, as well as all those who consider themselves suffering from foreign intrusions.