Japan Press Weekly

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2015 October 7 - 13 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Universities pressured students from Japan’s colonies to volunteer for Japanese military in WWII

During World War II, Japanese universities pressured their students who had come from Japan-occupied countries to enlist in the Japanese military.

Ritsumeikan University Professor Kurata Akira on October 7 contributed to Akahata an article about the wartime cooperation of the university.

The Imperial Japanese government in October 1943 started the full-scale mobilization of schools and universities. The Imperial government also allowed the military to accept volunteer soldiers from students coming from Korea and Taiwan which were under Japanese rule.

In response to this measure, universities strongly pressed students from Japan’s colonies to volunteer to join the military. Those who refused military service were required to voluntarily take leave or were expelled from the universities under the orders of the wartime government.

At that time, Ritsumeikan University engaged in efforts to send its students coming from Japanese colonies to the front. Alumni held a rally to push these students to enlist in the army and the then university president attended the rally to deliver a speech to persuade the students to join the army. Recalling those days, one of these students said that he was urged to join the army by telegrams he received every day. As a result, 51 students enlisted in the army and some of them did so apparently against their will. In December 1943, 32 students who kept refusing to become soldiers were expelled from the university.

Around five decades after the war’s end, the university board decided to rescind the expulsions and offer a special diploma to the expelled students in order to apologize for past actions. In March 1996, the university handed the diplomas to ten of the 32 former students the university managed to locate. The diploma reads that the university expresses its apologies for its misconduct in the past and its determination to work for peace.

The university on July 21, 2006 issued the Ritsumeikan Charter, declaring that “reflecting upon its wartime experience, it committed itself to a core educational philosophy of ‘peace and democracy’ after World War II”.