Satoko Kogure, center, is seen visiting the area near Kamaishi Port, where a prisoner of war camp once stood, in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, on July 20, 2021. They took off their masks only when taking photos. (Mainichi/Takuhide Nakao)

       KAMAISHI, Iwate -- A local museum in this northeast Japan city is displaying for the first time a former prisoner of war camp commander's notes on the events following Japan's surrender in World War II, as the city marked 76 years since U.S. and British allied forces killed nearly 800 people in two naval bombardments totaling 5,300 shells during the closing days of the Pacific War.

       The Iwate Prefecture city of Kamaishi held a memorial on Aug. 9, the day the second barrage ravaged the port city 76 years ago.

       Titled "Time of Surrender," the 132 pages of notes were written by the late Makoto Inagi, former head of the Kamaishi POW camp, and a copy is on display at the Kamaishi Historical Materials Display until Aug. 30.

       Inagi wrote in detail about the events between Aug. 15, 1945, when the war ended, and Sept. 15 of the same year, when POWs left from Kamaishi Port. His notes include accounts of his efforts to secure POWs' safety and organize their remains, as well as how he treated and transported about 20 wounded POWs who had been rescued from a fierce fire following the bombardment, and how he persuaded those who had tried to escape to surrender.

       This photo was taken at the Kamaishi prisoner of war camp on Christmas Day, 1944. In the center of the front row is Makoto Inagi, who was the commander of the camp. (Photo courtesy of Satoko Kogure)

       According to his granddaughter Satoko Kogure, 40, who provided the notes to the museum, Inagi was born in the prefectural city of Tono and studied English at a university in Hiroshima Prefecture. In April 1944, at the age of 28, he became the commander of the Kamaishi prison camp.

       After the war, Inagi was detained at Sugamo Prison for five and a half years as a "Class B war criminal" for his alleged responsibility for matters including safety management of POWs. Following his release from prison he became a reporter at the news agency Jiji Press, and in his retirement, he wrote "Time of Surrender" and other pieces.

       To Kogure, Inagi, who died when she was 7 years old, was "a sweet grandpa who used gestures to teach me English words while (I sat) on his lap," but his memoir she read in her second year of high school was full of shocking facts. Since then, Kogure has been tracing the footsteps of her grandfather who tried through the postwar period to clear his dishonor as a war criminal.

       When Kogure was a student, she visited the site of the "Bataan Death March" in the Philippines, an event known as an example of the mistreatment of POWs by Imperial Japanese forces. After becoming a reporter for the Japanese edition of the U.S. magazine Newsweek, she visited many places including the U.S. National Archives in Washington, D.C., where the records of the postwar Tokyo Trial were kept, and has interacted with former POWs and their families.

       Kogure heard from one of Inagi's former subordinates at the camp that her grandfather worked hard to procure food for the POWs, took them to a beach in the city and decorated a Christmas tree for them. She came to believe that her grandfather had "treated the POWs fairly" in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, as indicated by a letter sent to the Kamaishi Municipal Government from a former Dutch POW who wrote that the treatment at the Kamaishi camp was good.

       In July this year, Kogure visited Kamaishi Port and other areas for the first time with her mother, Harumi, 66, and others. Thirty-two conscripted workers from China and the Korean Peninsula and allied POWs were also killed in the two bombardments.

       Kogure said, "War hurts victims, perpetrators, and their families deeply for many years. Nothing is more foolish and vainer than this." She hopes that the exhibition will be seen by the younger generations in particular and that they will talk about the war with their families.

       (Japanese original by Takuhide Nakao, Sanriku Local Bureau)

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