【ロンドンＡＦＰ＝時事】第２次世界大戦中、旧日本軍によるビルマ（現ミャンマー）とタイを結ぶ泰緬鉄道の建設に携わった旧日本兵と、労働を強いられた元英兵捕虜が２２日、英ロンドンで対面し、和解の固い握手を交わした。
木下幹夫さ ん（94）とハロルド・アチャリーさん（96）は、市内の社交クラブで対面。2人は静かにソファーに座り、過去の体験を共に振り返った。実際に顔を合わせ るのは今回が初めてで、会話も通訳を介したものとなったが、それでもお互いに心を通じ合わせているのは端から見ても明らかだった。（写真は、握手を交わす 木下さん（右）とアチャリーさん）
８月の戦後７０年を迎えるのを期に、今回のような対面の機会を設けることで「死の鉄道」とも呼ばれる過酷な労働現場に携わった人々が互いに理解を深め、そして建設作業中に亡くなった犠牲者への追悼にしたいとの思いが２人にはある。
当時、若くして陸軍の大尉を務めていたアチャリーさんは、「今夜は木下幹夫さんと私の和解を記念する日だ。私たちがあの作業に携わってから７３年が経った」と語った。
さらに、人格ではなく、その人が偶然に属している集団から、その人となりを判断することは誤りだと述べ、「戦争は軍人ではなく（時の）政府によって行われるものだということを忘れてはいけない」と強調した。
泰緬鉄道は１９４２～４３年、ビルマに進攻した旧日本軍への物資輸送を目的に建設されたもので、６万人を超える連合軍の戦争捕虜が過酷な労働を強いられた。ここで命を落とした人は戦争捕虜が１万３０００人、労働に駆り出された現地の人では１０万人に上ると言われている。
英国放送協会（ＢＢＣ）で昨年放送された「死の鉄道」を題材したドキュメンタリー作品「Ｍｏｖｉｎｇ Ｈａｌｆ ｔｈｅ Ｍｏｕｎｔａｉｎ：Ｂｕｉｌｄｉｎｇ ｔｈｅ Ｄｅａｔｈ Ｒａｉｌｗａｙ」に出演している木下さんは、同作品を一人の視聴者として観た。そして、生還し た戦争捕虜の人々に会いたいとの思いが強くなったのだという。そのような木下さんの思いをアチァリーさんが受け止め、今回の対面が実現した。この作品で は、２人の他、元英兵捕虜と元日本兵の計１０人が取材に応じている。
木下さんは、会場となった社交クラブに集まった元英兵たちに対して「あなた 方にとても強い絆を感じる」と語りかけた。当時、オーストラリア兵の捕虜と共に鉄道建に携わったという木下さん自身は、現場での暴力を経験しなかったとい うが、他の現場での「残酷な労働環境」について耳にするたびにとても心が痛むのだという。
そして、自分の下で建設作業に従事したほぼすべての戦争捕虜に感謝の言葉をかけたことを明らかにし、「彼らにもう一度会いたい」と述べた。
木下さんは、ミャンマーでの戦没者慰霊式典に過去３９年間で２６回参列しているという。戦争については、戦勝国の人間であれ、敗戦国の人間であれ、巻き込まれた人々はすべて犠牲者だと話し、「このような悲しみが繰り返されないことを切に願う」と語った。
欧州への旅行は初めてという木下さんは、ロンドン滞在中にパブでフィッシュ・アンド・チップスを食べたり、市内のバスツアーに参加したりしたという。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2015/06/24-15:55）http://www.jiji.com/jc/a?g=afp_all&k=20150624032895a
→天台宗
大日本帝国軍部のお仲間だった真の敗戦国たる韓国なんぞに謝罪は一切必要なし。
戦勝国の英米に全力で謝罪すりゃええ。（爆ｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
After years of loathing and then decades of mistrust, it was the most civilised of greetings. A veteran of Japan’s brutal Imperial Army, who once instructed hundreds of Allied prisoners as they built the Burma Railway, shook hands with a British prisoner of war who worked further along the same track before using the only English phrase he knows to ask: “How do you do?”
They had never met in the jungles of the Far East, but Sir Harold Atcherley, 96, and Mikio Kinoshita, 95, still felt the need to reconcile after 72 years and a 6,000-mile journey.
Yesterday’s meeting, in a suite of a central London hotel, is thought to be one of the first times a British prisoner of war has ever met a Japanese veteran who worked on the “Death Railway”, built in 1943 to transport troops and supplies across Thailand.
But for Sir Harold and Mr Kinoshita it was merely a chance for two grandfathers to share their memories and finally bury the hatchet. They beamed at each other as Sir Harold presented his guest with a bottle of Scotch and asked: “Can I call you Mickey?”
Sir Harold invited Mr Kinoshita to make his first visit to Europe after he saw an interview with the Japanese veteran on a BBC documentary about the railway last year. “I wanted to extend the hand of friendship and human understanding after so many years of misunderstanding and hatred – before it is too late,” he said.
British POW breaks his silence
Scars of the Burma trauma that never healed
Then known as Captain Atcherley, Sir Harold was a 23-year-old intelligence officer in the 18th Infantry Division when he was taken prisoner by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942.
He was soon forced to begin work on the railway, which took only a year to complete, but cost the lives of around 13,000 prisoners of war and 100,000 native labourers. Japan refused to recognise international agreements on fair treatment of prisoners and her soldiers meted out cruel punishments and torture.
Sir Harold worked 18-hour days, clearing a path through the jungle. He was given only 250 grams of rice a day and had to forage for anything else. Of the 1,700 sent to work on his section of the railway, only 400 survived.
Mr Kinoshita was a reluctant warrior. He had just started work as a station master in his hometown of Osaka when war broke out and he was not keen to fight hundreds of miles away when he was conscripted in 1941.
“I really didn’t want to go,” he said. “It was my duty as a Japanese boy [but] I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t ever get used to it – the training was so unbearable.”
He, too, was put to work on the railway, in charge of a group of about 100 Australian prisoners of war in Burma, using elephants to carry timber to build a bridge. Although he never saw anyone abusing the prisoners, he soon learnt of the abuses that went on elsewhere. “Some of the Japanese treated the prisoners cruelly,” he said. “We did not do the right thing. I feel very sad about it. I am sorry.”
He also endured hardship, eating the same rations as the Australian soldiers, working in appalling conditions during the rainy season and living in constant fear of cholera, which killed many of his comrades.
For many years after the war, Sir Harold, who became a successful businessman at Royal Dutch Shell, chose not to talk about his experiences. Nor did Mr Kinoshita, who resumed his job at the train station, making a quiet pilgrimage to Burma each year to light candles in memory of his friends.
After so many decades of silence, Sir Harold wept when he watched the documentary, Moving Half the Mountain. A filmmaker travelled to Japan to interview Mr Kinoshita, who bowed and saluted to the camera, as a gesture to British soldiers, before expressing his desire to meet one of them.
Sir Harold immediately invited him to Britain. “There may well be a lot of people who don’t agree with me,” he said. “[But] if you go on hating till you are dead, what good does that do you? When I saw Mickey in the documentary, he came across as a man of real empathy.”
Mr Kinoshita was not fazed by the long journey. “Distance doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just wanted to see Sir Harold so much I skipped here.”
The pair spoke together for two hours, often chuckling. “He was very gentle and warm,” said Mr Kinoshita. “Of course he is getting old, as I am, and we share the same emotions. Even though I have just met him, I can feel it.”
He is making the most of his time in London. He went straight to the pub and ordered his first ever meal of fish and chips (“delicious”) before visiting the Natural History Museum. He now hopes to take a ride on a double decker bus and attend a reception with other prisoners of war tonight. He presented his hosts with a statue which took his daughter three months to make.
At the end of their meeting, the two sat together on the sofa, the Japanese veteran explaining that he was “emotionally overwhelmed” and felt like crying. Sir Harold clasped his hand, faced him and said: “So do I”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11689950/Japanese-Burma-Railway-soldier-shakes-British-POWs-hand-70-years-on.html
Carl Langbehn (6 December 1901 - 12 October 1944) was a German lawyer and member of the resistance to Nazism.
He was born in Padang, Dutch East Indies. During the Weimar Republic he was a member of the German People's Party. In 1933 he joined the Nazi Party, but during the 1930s he began to grow increasingly critical of the regime. He was an acquaintance of Heinrich Himmler as their daughters attended the same school. By 1943 he was aware that Himmler was interested in the idea of negotiating peace behind Adolf Hitler's back. He introduced him to Johannes Popitz who suggested a coup d'état as the war was lost, but Himmler was not interested.
Langbehn was also a friend and adviser to Christabel Bielenberg and her husband Peter. In September 1943 he travelled to Switzerland and met with Allen Welsh Dulles of the Office of Strategic Services to determine the intention of the allies and learnt that they wanted an unconditional surrender from Germany.
Upon his return he was arrested by the Gestapo, tried by the People's Court, sentenced to death by Roland Freisler and hanged at Plötzensee prison, Berlin.
、、、（爆ｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿