Michiharu Shinya: Beyond Death and Dishonour

By REBECCA WALSH

More than 50 years after the Second World War, a Japanese prisoner of war has apologised for atrocities committed by his countrymen.

In a book just released in New Zealand, Michiharu Shinya, a naval officer who was captured off the coast of Guadalcanal during the war and interned in the Featherston Prisoner-of-War camp, expressed a "deep apology to those ill-treated soldiers and their families.'

In the epilogue to his revised book, Beyond Death and Dishonour, Mr Shinya said that despite what he calls "the incident" of February 25, 1943 - when 48 Japanese prisoners were killed by their New Zealand guards - the Japanese were well treated by their captors.

But he said after the war it became clear that Japanese forces had not been hospitable to the prisoners which they held.

"The ethic which we held in those years about the superiority of the Japanese race, and the unsurpassed shame of being taken prisoner, meant that we had little respect for foreign prisoners or the worth of an individual."

Mr Shinya is one of very few Japanese POW's to tell his story. His original book, titled The Path from Guadalcanal was released in New Zealand in 1980.

The epilogue and apology have been added to the updated version, which was officially launched in Auckland on Thursday.

While the "Featherston Incident" may weigh heavily in the minds of New Zealanders, it is Mr Shinya's own psychological upheaval - the conflict between the human will to survive and the cultural desire to die - that dominates the book.

"To become a POW was the ultimate disgrace and a serious crime deserving no less than death. Though still living in the flesh, I could no longer live in Japanese society. My life as good as ended when the Americans plucked me from the water."

As he grappled with the shame of being taken prisoner, tensions in the camp were mounting over the Japanese POWs being forced to work.

On February 25, 1943, events erupted. That night Mr Shinya learnt that about 240 unarmed prisoners had faced an armed guard of 47 men.

A warning shot was fired and in less than a minute 122 Japanese lay wounded or dead.

"However much the Japanese POWs disobeyed orders, these were excessive measures against unarmed men," he said.

During his years as a POW Mr Shinya came into contact with Christianity. Initially opposed to what he saw as a Western religion, he eventually joined the Bible Study group and was "touched by the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ."

On his return to Japan at the end of the war he trained to become a Pastor and has since written a number of Bible commentaries.

More than 50 years after his capture, Mr Shinya, now 81, said the Featherston Incident, in which one New Zealander was also killed, demonstrated a lack of understanding on both sides.

In an interview with Pastor Naoyuki Makino, head of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship in Japan, he said: "I feel that the incident does not judge which party was right or wrong, but it does teach us that the root cause lay in the view of Japanese POWs."