Why an Outlier?
Not really growing up in Japan, Sawachi's narrative lacks the accounts of being a brainwashed Imperial daughter, of listening to the Imperial Broadcast and being shocked, and we do not find her talking about embraching "women's lib" and developing a new feminine consciousness. Her perspective is more of an outsider, one who had spent the last 10 years in Manchuria. Her schooling included local, Chinese children and does not seem to have been as regimented and ideologically super-charged as education on the main islands.
Things, no doubt, were different in Manchuria. Hisae's father had taken a test to become a South Manchurian Railway employee. She doubted her parents were very political or even understood much about what the Manchurian Incident was all about. That is probably why when she was older, she researched the history so thoroughly.
So, what does come through in her text? Sawachi was appalled at the way the officers of the Kwantung Army disappeared as soon as the Soviet troops drew near. The troops themselves shed their uniforms and tried passing themselves off as civilians. Others just dropped their weapons and surrendered without a hint of resistance. They would await being sent to internment camps in Siberia. This was the once vaunted Kwantung Army, the very same army that played such a leading role in getting Japan involved in Manchuria to begin with, and later, in all of China. And here they were either running, hiding or just giving up. It bothered Sawachi.
When she spent time looking closely at the Manchurian Incident, she marvels that a principal actor like Gen. Honjô was never held accountable or punished under the Army Regulations that he so blantaly violated. But, indeed, he never was.
There is the sad story of Sawachi's uncle who committed suicide with his family, his wife and children, in Korea, because his Engineering Unit was being shipped south and he knew he would perish there. For whatever reason, it seemed best to wire their home with explosives and immolate the entire family. a terrible, tragic waste.
She also evinced little sympathy for younger Japanese who do not seem interested in learning more about their own history, about the Manchurian Incident, and the greater war in China and Southeast Asia. Sawachi is not interested in hearing people say that they are too young and therefore not responsible for things that happened back then. Nor does she want Japanese falling back on the belief that they were just victims of their bad leaders. Therefore, it wasn't really their fault. But it was! A Japan that cannot face its own history honestly and without deceit will never be able to grow up and "graduate" from its own past.
Words worth heeding.