Manchukuo empire

Discussions on all aspects of the Japanese Empire, from the capture of Taiwan until the end of the Second World War.
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Balrog
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#61

Post by Balrog » 05 Sep 2003, 17:58

i mentioned ian fleming in an earlier post. right now i'm not sure if the man involved in the train incident was ian flemig or peter fleming, his brother.

peter fleming worked as a newspaper journalist in china in the interwar years and eventually rose to be a london times editor. both brothers were well travelled. i'm rereading some biographical information to find out for sure.

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Windward
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#62

Post by Windward » 05 Sep 2003, 19:11

Hey joel I go to Shanghai for weekend and can't scan the book in these two days, I appologize and will post them asap when I return Beijing.

The former manchukuo palace is "Wei Man Huang Gong Bo Wu Guan", or "Palace museum of puppet Manchukuo". It was used as schools, factories after manchukuo collapsed, later museum of Jilin Province, and now a special (and maybe the only) museum of Manchukuo era. Of course ther's exhibitons of manchukuo in other museums (as the national museum in beijing), but this one is the most professional.

Here's its official site, sadly chinese pages only. But you can see the pictures of its buildings, through the highlight url in text.

http://www.changchun.jl.cn/CCCMS/Main.n ... &gtjz&lgjj

or

http://www.changchun.jl.cn/CCCMS/Main.n ... jz&hgjz&01

You can see "Lai Xun Men", the front gate of palace on this page, and press the URLs on the left to view other buildings.

There're lots of legend about kawashima yoshiko in china, some are true and some are obvious unidentified tales. Nakajima was a Japanese expert of airplanes and was a zaibatsu. He imbursed yoshiko, that's identified. But nobody could tell us whether yoshiko had sex relationship with him. we could only guess and suppose. Nakajima Chikuhei was 53 years old in 1937. :) And another thing I can say is, most book I read about yoshiko said she was raped by kawajima naniwa, and those authers could not iddentify it too.


Here's a Japanese website in English language about Nakajima
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/airplane/museum/ ... ma-1e.html

PS, do you konw Nakajima Airplane Industries produce nice Subaru cars after the war?

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Last edited by Windward on 06 Sep 2003, 07:11, edited 2 times in total.


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Windward
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#63

Post by Windward » 05 Sep 2003, 19:22

joel pacheco wrote:i mentioned ian fleming in an earlier post. right now i'm not sure if the man involved in the train incident was ian flemig or peter fleming, his brother.

peter fleming worked as a newspaper journalist in china in the interwar years and eventually rose to be a london times editor. both brothers were well travelled. i'm rereading some biographical information to find out for sure.
His story may be true. Russians in Manchuria lived worse after Japanese occupy. I read the white Russian book and recall that nearly two thirds white Russians in Harbin became statelessness after 1926 or 1927. Rest of them received Soviet passports. Japanese treated them very bad. Extort, rob, kidnap and rape were familiar in Harbin, "the White Russian Capital". Japanese MP and police did not accept and hear such a case that a Russian woman was robbed or raped (by Japanese ronins mostly). Many Harbin Russian immigrants moved to Shanghai, Europe, Australia or North America then.

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Gott
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#64

Post by Gott » 06 Sep 2003, 06:32

Coat-of-arms of Manchukuo.

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Balrog
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#65

Post by Balrog » 07 Sep 2003, 17:51

i have been reading of the war crimes committed by the japanese in china from 1931 -45. i have read estimates at the number of non combatants murdered is from 3.1 million(lowest) up to 10.5 million.

in manchuria, it is difficult to get exact numbers, and records are supposedly scare. the japanese army forced 1 million people in manchuria into forced labor. of these 1 million manchurian slave laborers, 100,000-200,000 died under harsh conditions.(simply being worked to death, dying of untreated diseases, or being murdered by japanese soldiers.)

one of the most horrifying episodes in the japanese occupation took place in the suburbs of harbin, manchuria. the medical experiments carried out by the unit 731. estimates(conservative) place the number of chinese who died during medical experiments at 10,000. the chinese in the harbin complex were disected alive, infected with various diseases, used to test chemical and biological weapons, and died after be experimented on testing new drugs.

the complex had 150 buildings, 2 prisons, and at least three crematoriums for burning up the victims.

do any photos of this complex exist?

and finally, the systematic mass rape of chinese women by the japanese army. millions were raped and kept by the japanese army as sex slaves to be raped repeatedly. i don't know the numbers on what % of these women were abducted in manchuria.

no study of the japanese occupation of manchuria would be complete without mentioning this extremely unpleasant topic.

anyone that can add details to this please post them.

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#66

Post by Darius I » 28 Oct 2003, 01:09

Joel, have you ever seen the movie "The Last Emperor"? (An Italian guy directed it, can't remember who) The movie's about the life of Pu Yi, and a large section of the movie details with his life as emperor of Manchukuo and his relationships with the Japanese. I don't know whether or not the movie is totally accurate in its depiction of events, places, and people, but it's certainly worth seeing!

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#67

Post by DrG » 28 Oct 2003, 03:00

Darius I wrote:Joel, have you ever seen the movie "The Last Emperor"? (An Italian guy directed it, can't remember who)
That movie is by Bernardo Bertolucci (see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093389/). The director is a well known communist, but I've seen the movie and it doesn't seem too biased, and it *looks* accurate (but I'm pretty ignorant of Manchu history....well, untill I've read this excellent thread! :) thank you joel pacheco!). I liked that movie a lot (along with "Little Buddha" it's the only Bertolucci's movie that I liked, the others are rather morbid or too communist for my taste; it's strange: or I love his movies, or I hate them).

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#68

Post by Balrog » 28 Oct 2003, 05:00

while being well made and well photographed, the movie is far from perfect. the treatment of the emperor is not accurately shown in the film.

the begining where the red chinese are yelling "war criminals will not speak" at the emperor and his cabinent ministers is not accurate. the reality is that the red chinese treated the imperial party very well. at no point were they referred to as "war criminals". instead the chinese comissars told the emperor that he and his ministers should consider themselves as "students". the emperor did not slash his wrists as shown in the movie. i guess all this was added for dramatic effect. the manchko underlings did not fare so well. thousands did end up in chinese labor camps. many were executed or died under severe conditions.

in the film the emperor's wife was impregnanted by the chauffer. in reality, the empress did have an affair with the court driver, but i don't remember if a baby was born.(even dead, as shown in the film) the film shows the japanese army murdering the driver. that did not happen. the driver was dismissed. the the 1960's, the emperor was living freely and actually ran into the driver on a beijing street. the driver was deeply ashamed and ran away from the emperor. the emperor just called after him that all was forgiven...

the film shows the emperor playing tennis with his 2 wives in the forbidden city when a chinese warlord sends in troops to order him out of the city. that is not true. the emperor fled the city before the warlords troops could get hold of him. the general who occupied the city noted that the emperor had pushed the antique priceless chinese furniture aside and was surrounded by gaudy european furniture and cheap western bric brac.

the film was enjoyable, it won numerous academy awards, well worth watching. just don't believe everything you see dramatized in a hollywood film.

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#69

Post by michael mills » 28 Oct 2003, 07:59

Are there any ethnic Manchus, the indigenous people of manchuria, still in existence?

The last Empress of China, the Empress Dowager Cixi, also had a Manchu name, Yehenola. Presumably Puyi also had a Manchu name - does anyone know it?

I assume that Puyi and all of the members of the Qing Dynasty thought of themselves as Manchu rather than as Chinese, although they performed the traditional Chinese imperial role. Is it known whether Puyi or any of his entourage spoke the original Manchu language, or did they only speak Chinese? And did the Manchu language have any status in the state of Manchukuo, or was the official language Chinese?

I know that the Manchu language is closely related to Chinese, at least in its syntax. Many years ago, when I was still a public servant, I was sent to do a linguistic aptitude test. As part of the test, we were given a text written in Manchu, and asked to make a grammatical analysis of it; we had the text, and a list of all the words in the text with their meanings in English. No doubt the examiners thought that no Australian would have any knowledge of Manchu, and therefore we would be analysing a completely strange language. However, I had previously studied Japanese, so I could immediately recognise that the grammatical structure was the same as Japanese, although the actual words did not appear similar to Japanese words at all. Thus, I was able to do the test very well!

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Balrog
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#70

Post by Balrog » 28 Oct 2003, 14:39

one biography i read on the emperor claimed that pu yi never "mastered" the manchu language. this irritated the manchu nobility who considered themselves and their culture above that of the conquered chinese population. pu yi could speak/read/write it it, just not very well.

from what i've read( i've never studied manchu , cantonese, or any other chinese dialect) the manchu language is quite different from the other dialects of china. one writer on the forum claimed that the manchu dialect was indeed closer related to japanese than any other language.

remember, the manchu ethnic group that ruled the chinese empire represented only 1% of the entire chinese population. the manchu dressed differently(right down to their shoes!) and had different customs. the elite manchu stressed this separation(elitist) bent. they did,however, adopt some chinese imperial customs. i think it would be similiar to british rule in india. the british adopted khaki, some indian headress, a few words, but otherwise maintained thier "britishness".

i read that the manchu women never, never, practised "foot binding". that was a "han" chinese custom that was never adopted by the elite manchu's. that is one of the few differences i can think of from memory.


i don't know if manchu was an official language of manchukuo, but i have read two books(published by the japanese gov't in the early 1930's) that clearly state that manchu citizens are required to study japanese in the public school system.

and yes, the ethnic manchu's are still there, living in their native land. however, they are a minority. the chinese communist gov't has a policy of shippping in millions of "han" chinese colonists into it's outer areas in an attempt to keep local separatism at bay. for example, tibetians are now a minority in tibet, and in the outermost muslim ungar provience, millions of non muslims have been shipped in and mandarin is required as the official, and i believe , only language allowed to be used in the university systems in those areas.

china is still a kind of "asian EU". the country is made up of entirely different ethnic groups,tibetian, manchu, hakka, cantonese, etc, now dominated by the the "han" chinese.
Last edited by Balrog on 28 Oct 2003, 14:55, edited 1 time in total.

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Gott
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#71

Post by Gott » 28 Oct 2003, 14:49

Manchu is an Altaic language, similar to Mongolian or possibly Korean, but definitely had nothing to do with Mandarin Chinese.

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Balrog
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#72

Post by Balrog » 28 Oct 2003, 14:58

i grew up in south korea(for five years) and i did study the korean language. i can't read it now, but i can still tell the difference between korean and japanese.

could someone post an example of manchu writing as compared to korean and japanese writing? ( the actual caligraphy)

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#73

Post by Gott » 28 Oct 2003, 15:08

joel pacheco wrote:i grew up in south korea(for five years) and i did study the korean language. i can't read it now, but i can still tell the difference between korean and japanese.

could someone post an example of manchu writing as compared to korean and japanese writing? ( the actual caligraphy)
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/manchu.htm

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#74

Post by Balrog » 28 Oct 2003, 16:49

reading the link provided by gott, it is sad to know that today out of 9 million manchu's, at the highest number, only 1000 still actually read,write, and speak the manchu language. the rest(virtually all of them) speak only mandarin chinese. :cry:

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#75

Post by Balrog » 29 Oct 2003, 02:20

does anyone have photos of the emperor in re-education camp?

any photos of him after being released frm prison?

what happened to pu yi's "han" chinese wife after he died? does anyone have a photo of her or any biographical information on her?

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