TY - BOOK ID - 137186246 TI - The gods left first : the captivity and repatriation of Japanese POWs in northeast Asia, 1945-56 PY - 2013 SN - 0520956575 PB - Berkley, California : University of California Press, DB - UniCat KW - Japanese KW - Internment camps KW - Prisoners of war KW - Repatriation KW - Imperialism KW - History KW - Social aspects KW - Manchuria (China) KW - Korea KW - Japan KW - Emigration and immigration KW - 1945. KW - allied bombing campaigns. KW - allied forces. KW - anthropology. KW - asian empire. KW - asian history. KW - captivity. KW - china. KW - contemporary records. KW - engaging. KW - forced labor. KW - historical. KW - history. KW - imperial japan. KW - japanese history. KW - japanese imperialism. KW - korea. KW - labor camps. KW - manchuria. KW - memoirs. KW - men at war. KW - page turner. KW - poetry. KW - political. KW - postwar japan. KW - primary sources. KW - red army. KW - reeducation camps. KW - repatriation. KW - retrospective. KW - siberia. KW - warfare. KW - warriors. KW - world war 2. KW - wwii. KW - Concentration camps KW - Concentration camp inmates UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:137186246 AB - At the time of Japan's surrender to Allied forces on August 15, 1945, some six million Japanese were left stranded across the vast expanse of a vanquished Asian empire. Half civilian and half military, they faced the prospect of returning somehow to a Japan that lay prostrate, its cities destroyed, after years of warfare and Allied bombing campaigns. Among them were more than 600,000 soldiers of Japan's army in Manchuria, who had surrendered to the Red Army only to be transported to Soviet labor camps, mainly in Siberia. Held for between two and four years, and some far longer, amid forced labor and reeducation campaigns, they waited for return, never knowing when or if it would come. Drawing on a wide range of memoirs, art, poetry, and contemporary records, The Gods Left First reconstructs their experience of captivity, return, and encounter with a postwar Japan that now seemed as alien as it had once been familiar. In a broader sense, this study is a meditation on the meaning of survival for Japan's continental repatriates, showing that their memories of involvement in Japan's imperial project were both a burden and the basis for a new way of life. ER -