| “The Wild Land” — Recruitment leaflet for Man-Mō Kaitaku Seishōnen Giyūgun (“Manchurian Pioneer Youth Volunteer Corps,”) issued by the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure Management. “Open up the fertile land of Manchuria: Young Volunteer Army for Cultivating Manchuria and Mongolia.” The poster encourages Japanese youth to move to the “land of great wildness, brave young pioneers, become an army of development.” By the end of the war in August 1945, approximately 270,000 settlers had been sent to Manchukuo from all over the country, including 101,514 1,000 youths ages 16 to 22 in the Manchurian Pioneer Youth Volunteer Corps. They were stationed all over Manchuria to farm, manufacture and mine, stripping Manchuria of food and natural resources to send to Japan. This was the idea of nationalist educator Katō Kanji (1884 – 1965). He hoped to put his religious nationalist theories into practice by having the boys of the Youth Corps demonstrate through their daily life the sacred characteristics of the Japanese people. A 2nd founder of the Youth Corps, Imperial Japanese Army Lieutenant Colonel Tomiya Kaneo (1892 – 1937) of the Guandong Army, held an overt, though still idealistic, view of the Corps’ purpose. He felt the boys would help to protect Manchukuo from the Soviet Union by building their camps near the borders, where they could act as sentinels to observe and report Russian activity across the border while going about their daily work in the fields. He saw the Youth Corps as basically a paramilitary group trained and armed to protect itself while at the same time growing its own food and becoming as self-sufficient as possible. When the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on August 9, 1945, the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army unilaterally withdrew, leaving the settlers, and the Manchurian Pioneer Youth Volunteer Corps, left behind in dire circumstances. The men were drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in what was called the “uprooting conscription” and the only people left in the settlements were women, children, and the elderly, who suffered many casualties from attacks, mass suicide, disease, and malnutrition. Approximately 80,000 people, about 30 percent of the pioneer group, died, and more than 20 percent of the Youth Volunteer Army, some of whom were subsequently interned by the Soviet Union, died. 6 1/2 1,000,000 Japanese lived and worked overseas before World War II, and all were forcibly returned to Japan after the war, increasing Japan’s population by 8 percent. 60,000, including many in Manchurian Pioneer Youth Volunteer Corps, were held by the Soviet Union until 1958, when another 30,000 were allowed to migrate. More were allowed to migrate from Manchuria, then part of China, in 1981. Some are still waiting for permission to return to Japan, 80 years after the war. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1663.jpg |
| Image Size | 600.11 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2862 x 1500 |
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| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | March 1, 1938 |
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| Country | Japan |
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| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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