Legacies of Occupation

An uncanny architecture of cultural heritage: Representations of the Japanese occupation in Harbin, China

“…85 The city of Harbin illustrates the lifecycle of event, legacy and heritage suggested by Carr. 86 City centre buildings and their stories have been doubled, with selected elements erased, neglected or transformed. Other sites were turned into places of patriotic education in the 1980s and reconfigured as complexes for the 'exhibition of the evil' (NEMM) during the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo.…”

“…A legacy only becomes heritage through intervention, 19 such as the inauguration of museums in 1985 concerned with the Nanjing Massacre and the Museum of Evidence of War Crimes by Japanese Army Unit 731 in Pingfang, Harbin. These museums represented repositories of war exhibited as patriotic education bases for school children, workers' groups and a few tourists.…”

“…Thinking of Manchukuo and Harbin as relational assemblages might commemorate the 'memory of the nameless' -not only of Chinese, but also of Russians, Koreans and prisoners of war who were killed at Unit 731, or Japanese farmers and workers, or Chinese suspected of 'collaboration' , who died at the hands of locals or Russian 'liberators' in Harbin and other areas after the end of the war. With regard to the latter, Gilly Carr reminds us that 'drawing attention to dark histories is never a comfortable thing' , 81 but a deeper, more nuanced, understanding of circumstances and signifiers could be useful, not least to surviving relatives of the deceased: a new milieu -a new 'new remembering' . 82 A new 'new remembering' of the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo might remind us of the capacity for human violence against others which lurks behind the veneer of civilization.…”

“Have you been offended?” Holocaust memory in the Channel Islands at HMD 70

“…As we have seen, Jersey had already started on a new and more inclusive trajectory before Bunting's book was published, so Bunting cannot claim to have single-handedly changed occupation heritage in the Channel Islands. 52 In 1998, the first edition of historian Paul Sanders' book The Ultimate Sacrifice was published. This book detailed the stories of the "Jersey 22" (now known as the "Jersey 21" after one man, Walter Dauny, was recently found to have survived Villeneuve St George prison in Paris).…”