ハンセン病を患った日本兵捕虜が見たカウラ事件

抄録

In Japan during World War II, there was a military code called "Senjinkun" which taught that it was a shame for a soldier to be captured by his enemy and that he had to die for the sake of his honor. The code was widely followed and believed, yet the daily lives and emotional state of Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) has not been adequately studied. This paper focuses on a Japanese POW who was captured in New Guinea and later diagnosed with leprosy and segregated in a separate tent at a POW camp in Australia when a massive and suicidal uprising (the Cowra Breakout) occurred in 1944. It looks first at how he lived in an isolated tent and witnessed the breakout from a close distance, then at how making artifacts such as suitcases from waste materials by hand changed his life. This was an eye-opening event that helped him to surmount his internal struggle and change his concept of values which was earlier dominated by a narrow definition of violent masculinity.