Digital museum showcasing the collection of worldwide legends over the years! 千古不朽博物館展示多年來收藏的世界傳奇故事!
Manchukuo
Development Labour Service Corps
handbook
Item number: C122-M123
Year: AD 1941
Material: Paper
Provenance: Quan Jian Zhai 2022
This is the personal handbook of Ryo Sasaki during his service in the “Manchukuo Development Labour Service Corps”. In April AD 1940, after coordination between the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Development, and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the “The Revitalization of Asia Student Labor Volunteer Corps” and the “The Revitalization of Asia Youth Labor Volunteer Corps” were merged to form the “Manchukuo Development Labour Service Corps”. The plan was to send ten thousand people to Manchuria each year.
Between the Mukden Incident in AD 1931 and the end of World War II fourteen years later, Japan saw the migration of 1.66 million people.Many of these migrants originated from the impoverished population of Japan’s Northeast region and were arranged by the Japanese government to settle in Manchuria, primarily as agricultural workers. The Northeast region of Japan was heavily reliant on agriculture in the 1920s and suffered greatly from the Kanto Earthquake and the global financial crisis. By AD 1931, the region faced severe crop failures due to harsh weather conditions, leading to reports of families selling their young daughters or resorting to suicide. The dire situation in the Northeast region stirred social unrest in Japan. Seeing Manchuria as an expansion opportunity, the Japanese government decided to systematically relocate farmers to Manchuria, organizing them at the village level. This was aimed at addressing domestic overpopulation while also training the migrants as armed agricultural settlers to strengthen control over Manchukuo.
Masashi Sasaki from Akita Prefecture in Japan was one of these migrants. According to his personal information in the notebook, he arrived in Manchukuo in April AD 1941 at the young age of 19. Sasaki was assigned to a squadron composed of fellow villagers and underwent training at a location called “Genghis Khan Special Class Paddy Farm” in Butaha Banner of the Xing’an East Province of Manchukuo, which is currently part of Zhalantun City in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Sasaki’s personal records not only shed light on the government’s expectations for the service corps but also provide insight into the exploration journey of Japanese rural youth in this new land. At that time, the Japanese government, to embellish its expansion policies, used “sexualization” propaganda tactics to portray China, Manchuria, Taiwan, Korea, and other Asian regions as places filled with temptation and awaiting Japan’s “civilizing liberation,” particularly depicting women in this light. The “Manchurian Beauties Postcards” and “Manchurian and Chinese Beauties” memorabilia mentioned in Sasaki’s notes are examples of Japan’s militaristic era using imagery as a medium to showcase its imagination and gaze towards Manchuria.