was a Japanese soldier who openly admitted his participation in Japanese war crimes against the Chinese during World War II. He was one of the few former soldiers of the Empire of Japan to admit to his participation in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. After his confession, he visited China seven times to apologize and help Chinese scholars find more evidence of the Japanese soldiers' brutality. He prepared an eighth trip to Nanjing but died of cancer on January 3, 2006 in Kyoto.
<!-- Unsourced image removed: thumb|right|Shiro Azuma (right) spent four years with Japanese forces in China -->
Journal
In 1987, Azuma published his diary, My Nanking Platoon, written during his time in China about the Nanjing Massacre. His full diary was published in Japanese in 2001 as Azuma Shiro no Nikki. It has also been published in Chinese, and in English in 2006 as The Diary of Azuma Shiro (translated by Kimberly Hughes and published by the Phoenix Publishing Media Group).
In an interview in 1998, Azuma stated the following:
In addition, he described how one of his superior officers, Mitsuharu Hashimoto, allegedly killed a Chinese civilian. Hashimoto was said to have put a Chinese civilian into a mailbag, soaked it with kerosene, and burned the bag to entertain his comrades. Afterwards, he placed a hand grenade inside the bag and threw it into a river in an effort to create a "stimulating high".
Libel lawsuit
In the diary, Azuma recorded that a group superior put a Chinese citizen into a big mail bag and then by tying the bag to a grenade, cold-bloodedly exploded the bag with its live victim on its way into a pond. After the diary was made public, the group leader, with the support of Kaikosha, a right wing group, charged Azuma with libel. He completely denied that he had committed any war crimes. He argued that a mail bag would not hold a person; the crime spot that is near Nanjing's Supreme Court does not have any pond; and there were no eyewitnesses.
On March 12, 1998, the 86-year-old appeared before the Japanese Supreme Court to defend his journal as a valid account of the Nanjing Massacre. However, in the year 2000, his appeal was denied by the Japanese Supreme Court. The judge found that despite the testimonies about unrelated acts, the act in question was not physically possible and to attribute it to someone was libelous.
The lawsuits discredited his accounts in Japan, but they became well known in China.
Banned from entering the U.S.
In 1998, U.S. Department of Justice refused to allow Shiro Azuma to enter the United States because he was put on a watch list of suspected war criminals created in 1996 which included 60,000 people. The majority listed in it are German Nazis. Shiro Azuma was intending to join an American lecture during which he was going to apologize, explain and expose what he had done during World War II.
See also
- Nanjing Massacre
- Japanese war crimes