Manchurian Legacy: Memoirs of a Japanese Colonist

Born and raised in Dairen, Manchuria, Kazuko Kuramoto (1927-2017) tells the story of her family's life in this Japanese colony, their survival as a forgotten people during the battle to reclaim Manchuria waged by Russia, China, and Korea in the context of the Second World War, and their subsequent repatriation to a devastated Japan. During the war she served as a Red Cross nurse. As a commentator, the author explores her culture--one that she describes as being based on the unthinking oppression of the colonized by the colonizer--both from the inside, subjectively, and from the outside, objectively. Her memoirs describe her coming of age in a colonial society, her family's experiences in war-torn Manchuria, and her "homecoming" to Japan―where she had never been―just as Japan is engaged in its own cultural upheaval.