A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  Our daily social highlight was lunch at the local fish restaurant managed by a woman we came to call our Mama-san. The refugees literally took over the place. The fried fish we had was a most welcome meal while the atmosphere, especially for single people, proved particularly sustaining. For my part, I turned out to be unusually lucky. Among the folk in Kobe at the time were the Surawitch family that hailed from Bialystok. Mr Surawitch had been a partner in a large manufacturing firm back home that sold its wares as far away as Harbin. Shortly before the war, a consignment of goods had been sent there by their firm and Mr Surawitch managed to collect payment. As a consequence, the Surawicz family – husband, wife and son – found themselves in time in Kobe as members of a new plutocracy there. Theirs was a respectable rented home and they led a comfortable life. I had not known their son, Liova, before the war, and as he was about my age, the Surawiczes encouraged the development of friendship between us. Accordingly, their door remained always open to me, Mrs Surawitch treated me with maternal care, while their dinners to which they frequently invited me were, under the circumstances, sumptuous. Their solicitude proved to be an important support and a counter-balance to the otherwise total homelessness and solitude in which I had been cast.

  The weekly subvention of 1.10 yen was actually insufficient to feed ourselves. Accordingly, the more enterprising among the refugees devised ways of earning extra money. My activity involved travelling between Kobe, Tokyo and Yokohama as a messenger. Holding only transit status in Japan, we were not permitted to leave Kobe at will but were obliged to obtain police passes, these being endorsed and our return guaranteed by the Jewish community. I managed to obtain such passes whenever necessary.

  The journey from Kobe to Tokyo took 12 hours. I would take the night train, travelling third-class, the carriages being open with seats abutting a central passage-way. Sitting in their midst, I permitted myself to observe my fellow passengers, all Japanese, and study their personal habits. I regretted that we could not communicate; the absence of common language between us represented a missed opportunity. Among the details that early on drew my attention was the fact that at no time did any of them throw rubbish out of the window. Instead they placed all food waste on the floor to be swept clear later by cleaners at the other end of the journey. I was also fascinated in the early morning by the sight of folk of all ages walking about brushing their teeth, even old toothless women who observed the ritual as though it were a national imperative.

  One thing I could not countenance for myself was breakfast. This consisted of a traditional Japanese dish which included some small living creatures swallowed alive.

  On my first stay in Tokyo, I booked into a huge modern hotel alongside the railway station. It had been built in anticipation of the 1940 Olympic Games which did not, however, materialise on account of the war. Its enormity coupled with its Spartan modernity contrasted starkly with the different lodgings I had known on my travels in the backwaters of Eastern Poland. One detail that especially struck me as novel was watching the preparation of food on an open grill in full display of the public. I was particularly captivated by the dexterity of the cooks, and it occurred to me that what I was watching had most likely been adopted from America and to that extent this represented for me an encounter, albeit indirect, with the American way of life. It was certainly not European.

  One constant attraction in Tokyo was the Ginza. This was a bustling thoroughfare with a multitude of neon signs and big stores. While it was unequivocally and authentically Japanese, it lacked the intimacy and exotic character of the Kobe mall. Beyond the business district, Tokyo was a vast sprawl of single-storey traditional Japanese houses.

  Later travels took me to Yokohama, a short train ride from Tokyo. Yokohama was quite different in character from Tokyo. Its main attraction was its beautiful waterfront, with wide lawns, paths and seats along its edge and some lovely buildings on the other side of a broad road. I loved Yokohama and always looked forward to further visits there. On one occasion I stayed at its renowned Grand Hotel which was opulent in its 19th Century decor and table silver. Its beds were net-covered and each room had cold water contained in a thermos flask. This notwithstanding, it had very few guests at the time. How I came to be there, I no longer recall. I only know that it matched neither my refugee status nor my means. The Grand was to become General Macarthur’s headquarters after the American occupation of Japan.

  We had arrived in Japan in 1941 and remained there six months, both through the cherry-blossom season and the ensuing summer. The weather was balmy. The blossoms surrounding us at the top of the steep hills where we lived had a calming effect upon our nerves.

  In that summer of 1941, the Germans invaded Russia, thereby fanning to fullness the European conflagration. As refugees, we came to be perplexed by a seemingly unaccountable mystery. Japan was at the time a major partner in the three-cornered Axis alliance and therefore influenced by Germany. Yet when we, as refugees in Vilna, had applied for visas to escape Europe, the Japanese, who in truth owed us nothing, had most generously issued them. Further, the Japanese authorities were unaccountably lenient with us. The ten days for which our transit visas were valid came and went and no-one came to tell us that we had outstayed our welcome. We were provided with a serviceable daily ration of bread even when the Japanese may have had to limit their own, and whenever a travel permit was sought by one of us, the local police obliged.

  It was only after the war that a coherent picture emerged to explain this leniency. Unbeknown to us, we were pawns in a chess game of international magnitude. Japan had at the time been seeking a last-minute accommodation with the United States and believed that, by playing the Jewish card, it might have had potential bargaining power. Like many chancelleries in the First World War, the Japanese believed that the Jewish influence on American policy was considerable. The fact that Morgenthau was Secretary of the Treasury and that his signature appeared on every greenback reinforced the myth. The British Government’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 issued at the height of World War I was another, earlier, example of the same assumption. For the Declaration had not been issued, as is commonly supposed, for the simplistic reason often given that the British wanted to repay Chaim Weizmann for his chemical inventions which contributed towards turning the course of the war in favour of the allies. Rather, it had been the attempt by Britain to ingratiate itself with American public opinion, also in the belief that Jews held a special position in the United States, that brought about the Balfour Declaration. At the same time, too, though less well known, while the British conducted negotiations over the establishment of a national Jewish home in Palestine, the Kaiser in Germany had been negotiating with representatives of German Jewry with a similar end in view, but also with an eye turned to America to gain sympathy there. That myth of Jewish influence had become so entrenched that the Japanese government, too, felt that when the time was ripe it may be able to use Jewish leverage. From the Japanese viewpoint, the strategy was not without logic. Japan had by then occupied vast stretches of Manchuria and needed skilled people to develop its resources. It therefore turned to the leaders of American Jewry with the proposal to accept and resettle one million European Jews in Manchuria in exchange for a political accommodation with America. To prove their bona fides, the Japanese government pointed to the 2,000 Polish Jews who were then in Japan and treated well. Known among the higher echelons of the Japanese government at the time as the Fugu Plan, it seemed to the Japanese a most tangible proposition. In the event, the plan did not materialise. One can now only speculate as to what might have happened if it had succeeded. Would a million Jews indeed have been saved from Europe’s furnaces? How different would the course of my own life have been?

  Our sojourn to Kobe as refugees had been no accident. In that port city there existed a tiny Jewish community of 25 families, all of whom had come from Russia and were occupied there in the export trade. The leader of the community, Anatole Ponivejski, who hailed originally f
rom Irkutsk and later from Harbin, represented his family’s textile business in Japan. According to Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz, authors of the book “The Fugu Plan”, it was he who had obtained open credit from the Joint Distribution Committee in America to pay for the upkeep of the refugees and received explicit instructions from the Committee “to save the Jews”. It was also through Ponivejski’s Jewish committee in Kobe that the transit visas were extended from ten days beyond the legally stipulated maximum of twenty-one days to an indefinite stay. Tokayer and Swartz’ description merits retelling.

  A certain Japanese, Hebrew-speaking Christian minister named Dr Setsuzo Kotsuji served as an adviser to the South Manchurian Railways. He had interested himself in the Jewish question and appeared at conferences of Far Eastern Jews in Harbin in 1937-38 and 1939 which he addressed in Hebrew. Dr Kotsuji’s superior was a Yosuke Matsuoka who, at the time of our arrival in Kobe in 1941, was Japan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs. Dr Kotsuji had recently returned to Japan from Manchuria and lived in the city of Kamakura, at short remove from Tokyo. Although he had no official standing with the Japanese government, the Kobe Jewish committee of rescue considered that he may be in a position to help. Accordingly, Anatole Ponivejski travelled to Kamakura to enlist his aid. Dr Kotsuji promised to do what he could. His representations on behalf of Kobe’s Jews to the lower echelons of the bureaucracy were unsuccessful. He therefore went to Tokyo to see Foreign Minister Matsuoka who was at the time engaged in negotiations to set the Fugu Plan in motion. Matsuoka, having regard for the political situation and Japan’s liaison with Germany, was reluctant to discuss such a controversial subject as the saving of Jews in his office and suggested a walk. On that walk, Matsuoka asserted his belief to Kotsuji that “Japan might benefit greatly at some time in the future if we could in some way manage to help the Jews now”. They discussed the matter at length and over lunch Matsuoka offered a suggestion: “Kobe is not Tokyo. If the local authorities were to extend the visas, acting on their own, without informing the Tokyo authorities of what they were doing, we would probably never even know about it. Can you direct them to understand that?” Making it doubly clear that the matter should never be formally referred to Tokyo, Matsuoka further suggested that the visas be handled by the Jewish committee with himself, Dr Kotsuji, as overseer. Kotsuji accepted the charge, went about his task in the accepted Japanese social manner and managed to persuade the local authorities to continue extending the transit visas.

  As the last of Japan’s international political ploys failed and the decision to bomb Pearl Harbour was taken, the Japanese saw no further need to keep the Jewish element, potential enemy aliens all, on its soil and saw in these Jews an added burden. The clear imperative of the hour was to get rid of them.

  Before any action was taken, however, a number of more fortunate Jews had left Japan. The Pacific Ocean was as good as its name. It was still an ocean of peace and anyone who possessed valid visas, permits or Palestine certificates managed to find some ship to take them away. These were very few and far between, but some made passage straight from Japan to Australia; others found their way to London. The overwhelming majority of us, however, were caught, we were hostages awaiting some form of release. We had known that our extended interlude of tranquillity could not last; we simply did not know when it would come to an end, why that end had not come sooner, and what form it would take when it came.

  As the weeks dragged on, we came increasingly to doubt whether the Zionist Organisation of America would mount the rescue operation we had talked ourselves into. For myself, wishful thinking had had its day. I saw that, even though my name was on the list of Zionist askanim, I would not get to America, and I reactivated instead my contacts with my Chile relatives. In anticipation of my eventual departure for the western hemisphere in the wake of this resurrected correspondence, I travelled the short journey to Osaka to try to establish such business connections there as might prove useful in the future. Osaka was by then the industrial heart of Japan. As one approached the city by train, the sight of factory chimneys everywhere gave evidence of its creative pulse and economic strength. It was not a place for tourists, but it did make good sense to go there and look around. In my attempts to establish a link, I came across a large plastic concern. The plastics industry was at the time still in its infant years. I was well received and the Japanese owner offered me the agency for his products for the entire South American market. I was to contact them as soon as I arrived in South America to formalise plans for a future working relationship. How, given my youth and my most meagre knowledge of English, I managed to impress them sufficiently to take me seriously, I still do not know.

  As I had been in the habit of travelling from Kobe to Tokyo by night, I had never had the opportunity of seeing either the stations or the country-side along the way. I had travelled to Osaka by day and passed through Takarazuka, a town which lay midway between Kobe and Osaka and existed exclusively for the entertainment of these two major centres. I noticed that the majority of passengers embarked at that station which almost had a carnival atmosphere. They were mostly women and children. The mothers wore colourful kimono dresses and carried their picnic goods in strikingly bright cloths while the children in their exotic dress made of the place a scene of such magnetic charm that I decided to return there one day – which I did. Takarazuka was in every way a playground, particularly for children. The customary attractions of any amusement park were there, as well as a zoo, while I also treated myself to a Japanese live show which was a combination of opera, drama and samurai chivalry, all accompanied by the strains of traditional Japanese music. Taking into consideration the industrially-polluted air and noise and bustle of Osaka and the dearth of green open spaces in the busy port city of Kobe, the idea of setting up an amusement town in semi-rural surrounds seemed to me a particularly progressive one.

  In all, the time I spent in Japan, amidst people and a culture so different from any I had known, was valuable, broadening and enriching. I delighted in its manners, habits, dress and social courtesies. It could not but have an effect on my values, my thinking and understanding.

  Then, one day in September 1941, the unknown but expected was proclaimed. We were to be shipped from Japan to Shanghai. The reason for the choice was simple. Shanghai was an open city; no visas were needed to enter it; it lay relatively close to Japan.

  The illusion of security I had nurtured while in Japan had been proportional to the distance I found myself from Europe. Taking into account my vulnerability from the very first day of war, it had been no mean achievement to out-manoeuvre both Hitler and Stalin and find myself at the opposite end of Asia. On learning of my impending but inevitable departure, however, I felt the welling up in me both of a nostalgia for a place to which I had no rights but whose way of life nonetheless attracted me and a sense of trepidation in the face of further unknowns. New questions arose: what next? What does the future hold for me? Will I be able to manage in another strange land, and if so, for how long? I was troubled by forebodings, I was beset by the sense of constant unpredictability, I brooded over what had happened to my family. The knowledge that Bialystok was once again in Nazi hands further depressed me, while the thought of boarding another ship after my earlier experience at sea filled me with horror.

  On the appointed day, Mietek Elbaum and I, among others, boarded ship. Unlike the previous vessel we had sailed in, this proved a very large modern passenger liner, while the voyage on the calm waters of the Pacific, while it lasted, turned out to be a holiday at sea.

  We arrived in Shanghai in October.

  7

  Shanghai

  Autumn is the loveliest time of the year in Shanghai. In September, the searing heat of summer moderates to a more pleasant and bearable warmth, while the oppressive humidity of the preceding months lifts and one can enjoy wearing a shirt. The first tinges of yellow begin to touch the leaves of the tree-branches and a general calm pervades the morning. October is still pleasant,
even if less inviting than September.

  For us, refugees who arrived in the Shanghai autumn, the weather was accommodating enough. The voyage from Japan had truly been a holiday at sea and we had enjoyed it. But, having arrived, we did not know what to anticipate. What we did know was that while the Chinese were also Asians, as were the Japanese, their life and culture too were different from anything in our own experience. How different, however, we did not know. No-one had considered Shanghai as a likely destination after Japan; hence, it occurred to no-one to learn something about the Chinese. As before, we would have to learn about our surroundings through direct experience.

  Shanghai in 1941 was a cosmopolitan place. Its political status as an open city was reflected in the composition of its population and in its distinct territorial divisions. It was not a uniform city; it lacked the homogeneity of Japanese cities. It was rather an amalgam of nationalities and cultures, notwithstanding the fact that the majority of its inhabitants were Chinese. The business district with its famous Bund along the waterfront was in the International Concession, a virtual English enclave. The major banks were there, the customs house, the major commercial offices, the enclosed Sassoon court and the money exchanges. In that part, the pulsating rhythm of big city activity was constant. Yet even in the midst of this vibrant activity, the Chinese way continued unaffected. From the windows of the solid buildings on the Bund, one could look out upon the waterfront with its junks and small craft on the water and watch the Chinese coolies carry their diverse merchandise ashore on bamboo sticks to the accompaniment of a rhythmic sing-song of a crew engaged in unloading operations. The wealth of the Bund on one bank of the waterway co-existed with the poverty and squalor lining the other. They seemed to exist in natural harmony, as if they needed one another to enhance the contradiction. The famous Nanking Road set off at a 90 degree angle from the middle of the Bund was, in those days, the hub of shopping activity for the more affluent sections of the many millions of Chinese in the city.