From POW to editor and translator of New China

In the summer of 1946, a train fully loaded with repatriated Japanese POWs was pulling out slowly of the railway station in northeast China's city Yanji. Before long, there came from the station a Japanese young man carrying a traveling bag on his back. The man's nightmare-like experience could have ended along with the victory in the Chinese War of Resistance Against Japanese aggression, however, he remained in China because he was 10 minutes late for the train. This young man is Kawagoe Tositaka, who still lives in China today.

In fact, Kawagoe could go back home sooner or later if he wished to. In 1952, he was assigned a new job in Beijing. Just at that moment, China's ship loaded with the second batch of repatriated Japanese POWs was about to sail to Japan. But this time he again chose to stay in China.

"That was about half a century ago," this phase of experience is still fresh in his memory whenever he mentions it. "It was only half year after I came to work in the Ministry of Finance upon graduation from the Imperial University of Kyoto in 1943, a notice of conscription I received turned me into a soldier of the Japanese Army. At first I was dispatched to Korea then transferred to Harbin where I served as an interpreter. Although I escaped becoming a direct war criminal by luck, I always regard this phase of experience as a stain in my history."

After Kawagoe was transferred to Beijing, he was engaged mainly in editing, translating and polishing work relating to news and books. Besides translating many important documents for every CPC's Congress and material for China's foreign publicity, he participated in translating Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi, Selected Works of Zhude, Selected Works of Chen Yun and Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping.

Kawagoe's wife also came to China in 1943 in the capacity as a medical worker in the Japanese army. "I volunteered to serve in the army. After the surrender of Japanese troops in 1945, I demanded to stay in China in order to take care of the Japanese POWs. Two years later, I came to see clearly that China's War of Resistance Against Japan is a just war, and the Chinese Army is a great army, that's why I earnestly requested to join the PLA and became a women soldier." She said.

In the opinion of this Japanese couple, China, as the world's experimental center that shoulders historic missions, is enjoying an increasingly important status in the world. They are happy to see with their own eyes this best located world experimental center.

Source: People's Daily Online