"My Manchuria": Memoir, Manga, and the Legacies of Japanese Wartime Childhoods

Abstract:This study explores the life stories of Japanese settler children repatriated from Northeast China after 1945 to show that Japanese children might be critical witnesses to Japan's defeat and its consequences, as well as simply loyal supporters or innocent victims of the war. Through analyzing autobiographical works by manga artist Morita Kenji along with reader responses to these, I demonstrate that their stories were marked by loss and trauma inflicted within the Japanese community as well as by others and that later stories of war and repatriation were embedded in fraught family conversation as well as in public discourse.