/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/BOOKS-BRAZIL: The Samurai Who Denied Defeat

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 5 2000 (IPS) - The current Brazilian stereotype of the stubborn Japanese immigrant has its roots in a bloody incident, which investigative journalist Fernando Morais is attempting to rescue from the mists of time.

In ‘Coraçoes sujos’ (Dirty Hearts), Morais tells the story of a secret Japanese immigrant organisation, known as Shindo Renmei, that would kill compatriots for the bizarre reason that the individuals had admitted their home country had been defeated in the Second World War (1939-1945).

From January 1946 to February 1947, the group assassinated 23 people and injured another 147. The Samurai sword or knives to cut open the belly, as in ‘hara-kiri’ (Japanese ritual suicide), were the methods employed against the “defeatists,” who Shindo Renmei accused of having “dirty hearts”.

In that era there were some 200,000 Japanese immigrants and their children in Brazil. An estimated 80 percent, known as the “Kachigumi,” believed that their country of origin had been victorious in the war.

On top of this, according to Morais, was the lack of communication the Brazilian government imposed on Japanese immigrants during the war, after Brazil had opted to ally itself with the United States against the Germany-Italy-Japan axis.

Among other repressive measures, the government prohibited the Asian immigrants from access to radio or newspapers, and even banned them from speaking their native language in public, even though most had not yet learned Portuguese.

The fact that Japan had never suffered a military defeat in its long history, and the oddness of its people immersed in a foreign culture, may help to explain their terrible reaction to dissent within their community.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the world was shocked to find Japanese soldiers living in the jungles of the Philippines andr other countries, surviving in isolation because they refused to surrender to their enemy in a war that had ended two decades earlier.

But ‘Coraçoes sujos’ does not attempt to offer psychological or sociological explanations for the rise of Shindo Renmei. “It is just a journalistic account,” says the author.

Morais is a veteran reporter of Sao Paulo, and is now dedicated to writing biographies that reconstruct recent periods in Brazilian history. He began 20 years ago with ‘Olga’, about the German companion of Brazil’s historic communist leader, Luiz Carlos Prestes.

Olga Benario lived in Brazil in the 1930s. She was arrested and deported to Nazi Germany, where she died in a concentration camp.

Morais then wrote ‘Cható, o rei do Brasil’ (Cható, the King of Brazil) about Assis Chateaubriand, founder of Brazil’s first big communications empire, with a network of newspapers and radio stations that gave him enormous political influence from the 1940s to the early 1960s.

It was during the interviews he conducted for ‘Cható’ that he first had contact with the story of Shindo Renmei, previously only known in academic circles with limited dissemination.

The Japanese community in Brazil tried to put the matter behind them and to hide it, concluded Morais, and this made his research difficult. As did the language barrier – many of the now elderly immigrants still speak little Portuguese and are hesitant to discuss the events of 1946 and 1947 with a “foreigner”.

The book outlines the political scenario of the era, when Brazil was emerging from the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas (1930-1945), and details the methods of the group that used terror to uphold the belief that Japan did not surrender to the United States and the Allied forces.

The “defeatists” among the Japanese immigrants received notice prior to their execution. The words “traitor to the fatherland” would appear on the walls of their houses, along with notes that recommended: “Wash your throat”. It was a death threat. The clean neck was a reference to avoiding contact between the sword and the traitor’s dirtiness.

Shindo Renmei was active in the interior areas of Sao Paulo state, where Japanese immigrants were concentrated, largely in the towns of Baurú and Presidente Prudente. Its thousands of militants and followers meant the organisation was able to collect contributions totalling 750,000 dollars monthly.

To counteract news about Japan’s surrender, the group falsified statements made by Japanese Emperor Hirohito. Shindo Renmei members would also add texts written in Japanese to magazines, such as the US-published Life, altering reports about the end of the war to read that the United States had surrendered.

The group achieved greatest penetration among the poorer immigrants. Others who had grown wealthier in Brazil tended to be better informed and more integrated into local society, and accepted the fact that Japan had been defeated. They became the principal victims of Shindo Renmei executions.

The police were slow to intervene, doing so only after many attacks had already occurred. But they discovered one effective form of psychological torture: forcing the Japanese to forsake the flag of their country of origin. Anyone who refused was considered suspect.

A total of 31,380 of the immigrants were arrested, of which 381 were sentenced and imprisoned, but were amnestied 10 years later.