Chapter 16 color

After the outbreak of the Korean War, the American soldiers stationed in Kokura were frequently transferred.There are no military personnel to be seen on the streets because of orders not to go out. Since this place became the camp of the occupying army, brothels soliciting customers were quickly added to the south of the city, and rented tricycles gathered around the brothels.The mobilization of the American soldiers must have taken the night train, and the citizens were not allowed to see it. It was just some rumors, what seemed to be a change of defense last night, what follow-up troops arrived, and so on.Most of these rumors came from the mouths of Japanese laborers working in the camp.

The U.S. military supply depot in Heiyuan used the same building as the former Army supply depot, with a size of about 20,000.American-style barbed wire was drawn around, and searchlights illuminated the four corners and the center from a high platform. My house is next to the Heiyuan barracks, as I wrote earlier, it is the residence of the staff of the armory, next to the supply factory.There are baths, as well as vegetable shops, dried vegetable shops, fish shops, etc. I went to the "Asahi Shimbun" agency and took another road, so I seldom went to the camp, but sometimes I passed by.There is a road inside the supply plant that connects to the highway.The scene seen through the barbed wire has not changed in any way from when the US troops first moved in.A group of dark green jeeps and trucks, a hill of empty Coca-Cola bottles.Inside, there were U.S. soldiers in military uniforms wandering around... At that time, I didn't see many black soldiers.

By June of the 25th year of Showa (that is, 1950), the situation of the US military in North Korea turned unfavorable.Newspapers reported that the U.S. military had abandoned Daejeon Airfield and sent two divisions of infantry to the front.Due to the advance of North Korea, the U.S. military retreated to the front lines of Daejeon and Busan. In my opinion, the U.S. military is actually too weak, and the North Korean army is not very strong.As soon as they arrived at the newspaper office, they competed with each other to read the proofs.The trend of the editing system is very unstable. It was also at that time that the news that Major General Dyne, the division commander of the US military, was missing was published in newspapers.Yaskawa, who lives in Daejeon, used to be the mansion of a coal upstart.

Reporter Fukuliu, graduated from Aoyama College, speaks good English, and is in charge of reporting on the occupying forces.Once, he went downstairs and said that Dyne was probably killed as a prisoner and so on. The elder brother of the owner of the small printing shop I used to work for changed many jobs after the printing shop closed down, and at that time became a tricycle driver.I seem to have saved a lot of money in this line of work. Later, perhaps seeing that soliciting customers can make money, I repaired the house and brought in three young girls.He used to work as a joiner in the countryside of Oita prefecture, and he is very ingenious.

His wife died of illness about three years after she arrived in Kokura.Later, he married a woman who was a solicitor of customers as his second wife.It was just right for his new business.That is to say, the wife runs a brothel for soliciting customers, and the husband pulls carts outside to bring men. I used to hang out with him sometimes, and his wife was called "Mama" by the fancy-dressed girls.She was also called "Mom" in her past career, which is an American genre.She seemed content to be called that, as soldiers almost always came when they became acquainted with women.However, after the war started, the "customers" changed frequently.The mobilization of American troops was very fast.

At the beginning, the soldiers said that they went to war for money, and when they came back for vacation, they were elated, but after the U.S. military lost the battle, as long as North Korea was mentioned, they shrugged their shoulders and showed melancholy expressions.The soldiers were never seen again.In the small world of brothels, the defeat of the US military in North Korea can also be felt in reality. I don't know when, the number of black soldiers in the barracks has increased.Sometimes I saw a series of large trucks driving away with soldiers, all of whom were black soldiers in combat uniforms.

Accidents involving friction with citizens caused by the U.S. military have also increased. These will never be published in newspapers. There was an incident where a black soldier killed a Japanese family next to a barracks on the outskirts of the city.At dawn, the black soldier came back near the barracks, drunk, flirting with the women who were fanning the charcoal stove outside.It was summer, and the housewife wore only a petticoat.Hearing the shouting, the woman's husband and the children ran out of the house, and the black soldier, dazed, killed the woman, her husband, and two boys with the jackknife he was wearing.Only one child, whether it was the elder brother or the younger brother who escaped, survived.

Similar things are spread by word of mouth, and the citizens are dubious.Therefore, they are not so particularly wary of American soldiers.These things were never heard before the Korean War.Black soldiers were the main force on the front lines.If an army departed from a camp on the outskirts of the city, a replacement would arrive from nowhere.After they stayed for a few days, they hurried off again, followed by replacement troops.At that time, the front line of the US military had been pushed to the southernmost part of North Korea, and most of the replacement troops were sent there.The black soldiers knew full well that they were being cornered and had almost given up on themselves.

Under such circumstances, one does not know when and what will happen, but the commander of the US military, the captain of the gendarmerie, the mayor of Ogura, and the chief of the police all put on a carefree look.At least that's how the citizens of Kokura see it. One step further than this stable state is the Gion Club that started on June 12th. Gion would be Ogura's forte.As the festival approaches, the streets are filled with the sound of drums.People with big drums pull floats to march, which is a commemorative event in Ogura Gion, and there was a name called the big drum festival.In order to beat the big drum, young people on the street volunteered to stand out and show off.Five days before the festival, the teenagers beat the big drums that were placed on the street in half practice.Every year, the citizens of Xiaokura think so, when the big drum beats, the Gion Festival will come!

Heiyuan is far away from the city center, so the sound of those drums can only be heard in the distance. On the evening of June 11th, I left the newspaper office at about eight o'clock.I don't remember clearly, maybe it was because I went back late after playing chess. From the newspaper office to my house, there is a straight line along the railway line, so I always go to and from that railway line.It was dangerous to go there at night, so I took the tram back.There is a station called Sanlang Maru where I got off the bus. It is 1.5 kilometers from the station to my home. The side of this road is next to the back of the U.S. military supply plant. There are few houses. When it comes to nine o’clock at night, even in summer people The door was also closed early, and there were no lights to be seen outside.On the opposite side of the field, scattered farmers.

I think it was after nine o'clock when I passed there, and there was no sign of being different from the past.There is a small slope on the road, and the place downhill is the school for the deaf.Further in is the factory boundary of the supply factory. I didn't meet a soldier there at that time.So I went home that night and fell asleep quickly.The next morning, I always felt that there was a lot of noise outside.Everyone in the neighborhood showed uneasy expressions, discussing something quietly, and the police were still patrolling around. I have no idea what happened.Last night, in the barracks very close to here, black soldiers fled en masse, broke into houses and nearby civilian houses, and committed atrocities.According to neighbors, four or five armed black soldiers broke into the store, drank the wine for nothing, and smuggled the whiskey from the shelves.They also said that some husbands were beaten with a mop, and some housewives were raped. To the east of the residential area is Mount Adachi, and at the foot of the mountain are scattered farmhouses, shops, and residential areas.The black soldiers probably thought that they would be caught next to the camp, so they broke into houses far away. I heard that last night, pistols fired and sometimes flared, just like street fighting.I heard from commuters who happened to pass by there that the military police guarded the road and said that they were not allowed to pass there.Several jeeps with machine guns mounted on their sides sped by. I later found out that these black soldiers were a group transferred from Hamamatsu. They stayed in the Heiyuan camp for two nights and were about to leave for North Korea the next day.The night before their departure they had escaped by crawling out of a large vat in the gutter that led from the barracks yard to the road outside.The cylinder tube is under the barbed wire. I've also seen these cylinder tubes every time I pass by.Not only black soldiers, but other soldiers often ran out in the middle of the night, went to the women's house to spend the night, and returned to the camp through the cylinder pipe before dawn the next day.When I walk on the road at night, I often meet such soldiers.Black soldiers used cylinder pipes when they fled.For some unknown reason, the guards didn't pay attention to the warning cylinders. Probably the guards were in collusion with the fleeing soldiers and watched them go! I don't know the number of black soldiers who escaped, but I heard there were about two hundred.They were armed with carbines and grenades.They are all good companions, running amok in various places. Hearing of this emergency, the gendarme came from the city, because the other party had weapons and the gendarmes alone could not deal with them.As a result, the suppression force was dispatched, and the "battle" ended immediately.Those deserters were helpless under the attack of machine guns and machine guns.The troops who came to suppress them fired flares and drove jeeps, chasing down the black soldiers who were within machine gun range and driving them into the camp. However, another hundred soldiers fled into Mount Adachi.The numbers may not have been that many, but they terrified the inhabitants of the foothills.The search team began to search the mountain. They occupied an important place at the foot of the mountain in an attempt to arrest the deserters who came down the mountain.The fleeing black soldiers did not bring food, so it was impossible for them to wander in the mountains for a few days. The Japanese police learned of the incident at nine o'clock on the second day after the incident.The chief of police summoned all the officers of the department and interrupted the traffic of the whole city from the city to the outside.Newspapers used radio vans to report dangers to citizens, warning them to close their doors.This was the greatest measure the police on the Japanese side could take, and they were not allowed to participate in the repressive activities of the occupying forces. Of course, the police radio van could not broadcast that the occupying forces had escaped en masse, as their attitude was ambiguous.This ambiguous attitude has further increased the urgency and anxiety of the citizens.The radio van just asks people to close their doors and not go out. After this incident was over, information on the victims of the citizens was collected to the Kokura Police Station. In this case alone, there were about 80 cases, all of which were acts of violence, robbery, and intimidation.The number of unreported rapes of women is unknown. That happened during the suppression. I heard that Brigadier General M of the 25th Division where the deserters belonged said that the responsibility was on him and that he wanted to persuade the defecting soldiers himself, so he went out in a jeep.There were about two squadrons of troops who came to suppress. In addition to jeeps equipped with machine guns, there were also armored vehicles equipped with 20-centimeter machine guns. But, despite the commotion, the citizens got nothing in the newspapers.The commander of the barracks said: "This time, some soldiers of the occupying army caused trouble to the citizens. I am very sorry. I hope that everyone will not feel bad about the US military because of this incident. We will continue to maintain friendly relations in the future." The newspaper only published the Commander, which is neither an apology nor a statement, and it was only published in newspapers in the Kitakyushu area. Other than that, it was not allowed to be published in newspapers. That's something for later. When I went to Tokyo in the 29th year of the Showa era (that is, 1954), I asked people in Tokyo.They didn't know anything about it.Reporting was limited to parts of Kitakyushu due to orders from the occupying forces.Because the place where the accident happened can't pretend to be ignorant at the time, so I can only release the news indifferently as mentioned above.Using this riot as a motive, I became interested in aspects of the Japanese occupation era that were unknown to them. Although this kind of change sometimes occurs in the land where I live, it has nothing to do with me at that time, just like the scenery I watched in the past.It neither affected my life nor was I involved in it. The boring days still go on.I still have some side jobs in the printing press, and I sometimes draw posters for bounties. I still wear my military boots, commuting to and from the railway line.Walking on this gravel road, it is impossible not to wear military boots.I used to have a normal pair of shoes, and because I couldn't afford a replacement, the heel was so worn out that it was out of shape.I bought those shoes to match my own feet, but they were cheap. The more they traveled, the bigger they got, and finally when I walked, they couldn't keep up with my feet.It can be seen clearly from behind, and a friend commented that it looks like clogs worn by priests. On the grassy road next to the railway line, there are coal mines, iron bridges, simple houses, and pigsties. That was the road I walked at that time.

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