Imperial Japan university unites graduates decades after war

TOKYO (AP) — Growing up, Fumina Oka knew little about the mysterious university her Taiwanese grandfather attended in northern China's Manchuria during Japan’s occupation in the early 20th century.

But as the 28-year-old journalist studied the little-known Kenkoku University, she became fascinated about a place that started out as a grand piece of imperial propaganda meant to celebrate Japan's prewar colonization of large swaths of Asia.

In recent years, the dwindling number of surviving students, their families and those who have researched its history have come to share a sense of cross-national unity. It is built on sometimes surprising friendships forged at the Japan-run university, which glorified official notions of pan-Asian harmony even as imperial troops brutalized much of the region.

The university is a unique footnote in the rocky relationship between Japan and China, which are celebrating their 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations this week.

Kenkoku University operated from 1938 to 1945. It selected elite male students from Japan, China, Korea, the then-Soviet Union and Mongolia, according to a book by Hideyuki Miura, a reporter for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. The students lived and studied together in Manchuria under the banner of “the harmony of five ethnicities.”

Among the university's 1,400 or so graduates were some who played major roles in Asia's rise over the last 80 years, including former South Korean Prime Minister Kang Young-hoon.

Eager to learn more about her late grandfather, Qiu Laizhuan, Oka began a documentary project aimed at finding alumni now in their 90s and 100s in Japan.

Through a graduate-list book and a pile of letters Qiu exchanged with his classmates, she managed to find and meet seven alumni living in Japan.

Her work has...