Japanese People's Anti-war Alliance

The Japanese People's Anti-war Alliance ( Nihonjin Hansen Domei) or the Japanese People's Anti-war League, The Japanese Soldiers' Antiwar League, the Antiwar League, or the Anti-war alliance of Japanese People, was a Japanese resistance organization based in the Chinese wartime capital of Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was made up of Japanese political exiles, and defectors from the Japanese Imperial Army

Origins
Wataru Kaji, and Yuki Ikeda, both political exiles from the Empire of Japan, lived in Shanghai, and were involved with Chinese literary circles. They fled China when the Japanese invaded the city. When they arrived in Chongqing, they became involved with anti-Japanese psychological warfare on behalf of the Kuomintang.

In the spring of 1939, the Japanese North China Area Army headquarters had obtained intelligence that Wataru Kaji and Yuki Ikeda were central figures in the anti-Japanese propaganda effort in China.

In January 1939, the KMT Military Command in Guilin established a Japanese language training school, and guerrilla warfare training school. Wataru Kaji taught Japanese to Chinese troops at the Japanese language training school. In fact Guo Moruo, a Chinese resistance fighter, and family friend of Kaji, first requested Kaji to be a Japanese language instructor for the Kuomintang, which explains how Kaji found himself in the KMT offices in the first place.

Founding and early membership
The organization was established on December 1939, with its leader being Wataru Kaji. Other members included Yuki Ikeda, and Kazuo Aoyama, who was on good terms with the Dai Li secret service despite saying he was a communist. Teru Hasegawa, a Japanese feminist, and anti-fascist who broadcast propaganda to Japanese soldiers on behalf of the Kuomintang. Katsuo Aoyama (not to be confused with Kazuo Aoyama), who, prior to coming to China, had been a labor leader in Japan. In China, he first worked in Nanking with the Chinese army propaganda section, and then in Hankow he helped organize a group of Korean volunteers. There were also re-educated Japanese POWs who defected before the formation of the organization.

Purpose of the organization
The organization engaged in the re-education of Japanese POWs, and psychological warfare against the Empire of Japan for the Kuomintang. It also cooperated with the United States Office of War Information.

It used "Megaphone Propaganda". They would go into the front lines to spread doubt amongst the Japanese Imperial Troops, and the "holiness" of there mission in China. They used politics as their sharp cutting edge, and appealed to Japanese prisoners as peasants and workers who had been forced to fight the peasants and workers of China, risking their lives for the profits of war financiers, and military rulers. Kaji and his colleagues used a public address system, leaflets and comfort kits with propaganda messages enclosed for Japanese troops. The peasants in Chongqing distributed the leaflets and kits.

The Japanese defectors
The re-educated POWs were trusted by the Chinese and were not compelled to remain in prisoner camps. They published their own magazine, and numbers of them traveled from one prisoner-of-war camp to another, lecturing to the unconverted. About twenty of them even formed a dramatic group, wrote their own propaganda plays and put them on for the Chinese population and for the Japanese war prisoners.

In the afternoon, the re-educated Japanese soldiers would teach Chinese soldiers Japanese before going back to the front line in the evenings with there megaphones, spreading doubt into the Imperial Japanese's minds.

The organization was also able to convert a Japanese spy. His name was Seisaku Shiomi. Fluent in three foreign languages Chinese, English, and French, up to December 1938 he had been secretary in the Japanese Consulate in Hanoi, Indo-China, and at the same time in the pay of the Japanese Secret Service. He had been captured by Chinese troops while on a spying tour of the frontier. At first loyal to the Japanese Empire's goals of "liberating" Asia from white Imperialism, once he realized the Empire of Japan merely wished to take the place of the white imperialists, he defected from the Empire he once pledged allegiance to. He began broadcasting propaganda to Japanese troops on behalf of the Chinese resistance. He was interviewed by Comintern agent Agnes Smedley.

Important events
During the war, the organization also lost a member. Katsuo Aoyama was captured and killed by Japanese troops during a propaganda mission.

Disbandment and later years
In August 1940, concerned that Kaji was indoctrinating re-educated POWs in Communist ideology, Chiang Kai-Shek disbanded the program. Despite the success of the re-education of Japanese POWs, and psychological warfare against the Japanese Empire. Several months later, Kaji helped to organize study groups focusing on analyzing conditions in Japan, and studying the Japanese military. With the re-education program dissolved, Kaji kept a small research office. He occupied his time writing and collecting documents pertaining to the war. Over time, he became well known with the American Office of Strategic Services, and the Office of War Information, being interviewed by Nisei soldiers Koji Ariyoshi, of the Dixie Mission and Karl Yoneda, of the MIS.

Kaji told Ariyoshi that when his work with the Japanese POWs was stopped. He returned from the war front with his converted Japanese soldiers and at the docks at Chongqing many hundreds of Chinese turned out to welcome their Japanese allies and pay them tribute.