Memoir of Takao Fusayama: A Japanese Soldier in Malaya and Sumatera

Memoir of Takao Fusayama: A Japanese Soldier in Malaya and Sumatera is a personal diary written by Takao Fusayama during his time at war in Southeast Asia. According to the author, they spent their springtime being tossed by the unprecedented waves of great world history. Nobody could escape this fate. In 1938, he was called for army service which was compulsory for all healthy Japanese youths. He entered the Imperial Guard Division, which was mobilized abroad after two years. In 1941, when they were in French Indochina, the Pacific (Great East Asia) War broke out. Their division immediately advanced to Thailand in peace and then joined the Malaya Operation of the 25th Army. They advanced fighting through Malaya and Singapore and then occupied Sumatera. However, Japan lost the war in 1945 and Indonesia started the independence war.

The author advanced through these countries as a Radio Platoon Leader of the Divisional Signal Unit and was the Signal Company Commander of the 4th Imperial Guard Infantry Regiment when Japan surrendered. After spending a year as a liaison officer managing Japanese-Indonesian relation in Sumatera, where Indonesians were fighting for independence, they were repatriated to Japan. Recently, when he cleared his book storage, he found a field diary that he wrote with unusual fidelity during the war. As the author read it, he was filled with deep emotion recalling figures of the Japanese youths who marched faithfully accepting their fate and burning the young passion for Asian Liberation.

Since he was positioned in the Divisional Signal Unit or the Regimental Signal Company, he was able to know the detailed process of operation and had chances to personally observe the vivid human attitudes of senior officers at various headquarters. He was also able to get various information or rumours of the subcommand troops, because he had Radio Squads attached to those troops. In addition, he always loved to communicate with local inhabitants to know their thoughts and lives, because author could speak English, German and a little bit of Chinese and later mastered the Indonesian language. Memoir of Takao Fusayama is therefore a frank record with no embellishment of the Pacific War, which was a great event of world history regardless of its consequences.