Abstract
Fuyuko KAMISAKA (1930-2009) was born the year before the Manchurian Incident and experienced Japan's defeat at the age of 15, so she was well aware of both the excitement and the misery of the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War. After graduating from high school, she joined the human resources department of Toyota Motor Corporation in her hometown, where she observed labor union activities firsthand and wrote Portraits of My Workplace, making her debut as a writer. Initially, she wrote many books targeting unmarried female office workers, but in 1975, the International Women's Year, she could no longer keep up with Japan's radical women's liberation movement, which she believed was destroying traditional Japanese culture and family values. She then shifted her focus to non-fiction, interviewing those involved in the war to uncover its hidden stories.
Ms. KAMISAKA traveled not only in Japan but also in the United States, Australia, Russia, South Korea, China, Indonesia, and other countries around the world, interviewing many people and writing many books. Among them, she shed light on historical figures of interest to readers, such as Iva TOGURI,known as “Tokyo Rose,” who conducted propaganda broadcasts targeting American soldiers during the Pacific War; Yoshiko KAWASHIMA, known as “the Mata Hari of the East,” who was a princess of the Qing Dynasty and became a spy for the Japanese army; and Wang Jingwei, who worked tirelessly for peace with Japan as the head of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing. Additionally, she conducted numerous interviews with Haru Reischauer, the Japanese wife of Edwin Reischauer, who served as U.S.Ambassador to Japan under the Kennedy administration in the 1960s, and with Lee Teng-hui, the former Japanese-born president of Taiwan who democratized the island, crafting vivid biographies of these figures.
Fuyuko KAMISAKA was a renowned nonfiction writer who could converse on equal terms not only with the president of Toyota Motor Corporation but also with Japanese prime ministers such as OHIRA,NAKASONE, and OBUCHI. However, she did not only interview famous people. She also met with and listened to many unknown individuals who had endured hardships during and after World War II. These included former Japanese soldiers who contributed to Indonesia's independence, Japanese women who had married Koreans and were then living out their retirement in the Japanese-only nursing home in South Korea, and Japanese people who had survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima but were still battling the fear of atomic bomb-related illnesses in places like Amami Oshima Island or the United States (Seattle, Hawaii, Los Angeles, etc.).
This article is an attempt to introduce 50 books by Fuyuko KAMISAKA, who longed for marriage but remained single, created these books as “her own children.” While all of her books are noteworthy, the most outstanding are the three volumes she wrote after interviewing the families of Class B and C war criminals who were executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison after being separated from their loved ones following the end of the devastating war: Sugamo Prison Gate 13 (1981), The Wives Left Behind (1983),and The Atonement Is Complete (1995). After seven years of occupation by Allied forces, Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and regained its independence as a peaceful nation. As a foundation for this, over 1,000 former soldiers were ruthlessly put to death, not to mention the well-known execution of the 7 Class-A war criminals, including General Hideki TOJO, who was the prime minister at the outbreak of the Pacific War. By the 50th anniversary of the war's end, even the Japanese had forgotten this fact.The atonement for the war was completed through their sacrifices. All Japanese people deeply felt the tragedy and folly of war and vowed never to wage war again. Fuyuko KAMISAKA wanted this fact to be known not only to the Japanese but to people around the world.
