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Witness History: Japanese Murders in Brazil

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Japanese Murders in Brazil

15/11/2018 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, Japanese Murders in Brazil

Fanatics killed Japanese immigrants who accepted that Japan had surrendered in WW2.

By the end of WW2, Brazil had more than 160,000 Japanese immigrants. Some of them refused to believe that Japan had lost the war, and took extreme measures to punish 'believers'.

When WW2 was over, a fanatical group of Japanese immigrants living in Brazil refused to believe that Japan had lost the war. They decided to punish their more prominent compatriots who accepted that Japan had lost. The extremists killed 23 people. Aiko Higuchi remembers the tragic day in February 1946 when her father became their first victim.

Photo: Some members of Shindo Renmei (Tokuichi Hidaka is the first from the right) in picture taken by Masashigue Onishi in Tupã, state of São Paulo, Brazil, in the beginning of 1946, before the killings. Credit: Masashigue Onishi/Historical Museum of Japanese Immigration in Brazil

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