オーストラリア戦争記念館の豪日研究プロジェクト
カウラと日本の対話
由良滋氏 (AWM S03336)
聞き手： テリー・コフーン
インタビュー場所： ニューサウスウェールズ州カウラ
インタビュー時期： 2004年8月5日

由良氏は1967年に書いた随想を読み上げた。由良氏は戦後最初にカウラを訪れた日本人であると思っており、この時多くのカウラ市民が同氏に様々な質問をし、これに触発されてこの随想を書いたという。

私が日本人戦没者墓地設計の仕事でカウラを訪れた時、夕方パブでビールを飲んでいると、地元の人々がたくさん寄ってきて質問を浴びせかけました。どうして日本人捕虜はよい食事と生活環境を与えられながら脱走しようとしたのか？どうして彼らは走ってくる汽車に飛び込んだり、木の枝に首を括ったりして自殺しなければならなかったのか？自分たちの庭に入って自殺した日本人捕虜の下には白い紙切れが置かれていたが、あれは何なのか？みんな熱心に私の説明を聞こうとしていました。

戦没者の墓に記された名前には偽名もあります。敵に捕らえられたことを恥に思ったからで、これらの人々の本当の名前は今もわかりません。『戦陣訓』に「生きて虜囚の辱めを受けず、死して罪過の汚名を残す勿れ」いう一節があり、もし兵士が不名誉にも死なずに捕虜となれば、日本に帰れても軍事裁判にかけられました。私はこれほど強く軍の規律の厳しさを感じたことはありません。しかし、白い紙切れの意味はわかりませんでした。

白は率直さや諦めを象徴し、また白という語は法律の世界で無実の意味に使われます。白い紙切れは、収容所に閉じ込められた人々の無言の叫びと読み取ることもできるでしょう。後に私は昔の文献に書かれた一人の老人の話を知りました。昔、武士が切腹する時、広げた白い扇を傍らに置いたそうです。武士は名誉の死を遂げる神聖な場所を清めるために白い扇を使ったのです。自殺した捕虜の下に置かれた白い紙切れもこの目的のためだったのかもしれません。戦後２２年目のこの夏、私は白い紙切れの悲しい物語を思い出しました。

インタビュー原文（英語）

YURA SHIGERU: I would like to read an essay I wrote in 1967. I think I was the first Japanese to visit Cowra after the war and on that occasion many Cowra people asked me many questions and that motivated me to write this piece.

I never imagined I would have a chance to meet the ex-prisoners of war and so I was very moved to see them in Cowra today. I will treasure the occasion to present this essay to them and I would like to ask them a few questions if they will attend this occasion.

When I visited Cowra to work on the Japanese cemetery, many Cowra people approached me on one of those evenings when I enjoyed a glass or two of beer after the day's work, in the pub. I was surrounded by the local people who bombarded me with their eager questions. Why did the Japanese prisoners of war escape from the prison despite the good food provided and satisfactory living environment? Why did they have to kill themselves by running into oncoming trains, or by hanging from trees? One man told me that on the ground under a dead Japanese soldier in his garden there was a piece of white paper. He was followed by two other men who told me similar stories. They also found a piece of white paper laid under the dead Japanese hanging in their garden. They had been waiting to hear from a Japanese person to explain and clarify the meaning of this white paper for them.

The name of the soldiers on some of the graves are pseudonyms, presumably because of the shame those men felt from being held captive by their enemy. Their true identity is still unknown. A passage in the battlefield instructions [Field Services Code] given to soldiers during the war in Japan reads as follows: “You shall not render yourself to the shameful status of being a captive, but shall take your own life so as not to give to posterity your dishonourable name as a sinful man.” The Field Services Code also stipulates that if such an act of the soldier goes beyond personal dishonour and damages the prestige of being killed in battle, then he has to face a court martial once he returns to Japan. I never felt very strongly about the severity of those military codes and, as if from behind those pseudonyms, I could not, however, tell them what the white paper meant. I did not know, but I felt it might have meant that those prisoners of war did not have anything to say before they killed themselves.

Whiteness symbolises such normal attitudes as frankness and not making a fuss to abandon something dear to ourselves. It also stands for innocence. The word whiteness is commonly used in the real sense of innocence in the eyes of the law. One could see those white papers as silent cries from people locked in the prisoner-of-war camps. Later on I learned a story from an old man contained in some ancient writing. In those days, a warrior performing his seppuku, the ceremonial suicide commonly known outside Japan as hara kiri, displayed an open white fan near him. The piece of white paper placed under the dead soldiers' body might well have been intended for that purpose. The ancient warriors used the white fan to purify the spiritual place of an honourable death. It represented the dying man’s prayer not to sully the ground with his blood. This summer, 22 years from the end of the war, brought back to me that sad story of a piece of white paper.