It was late morning of June 6, 1945 when José Roberto de Macedo Soares, interim minister of Foreign Affairs, summoned an urgent news conference at the Itamaraty Palace, in the center of. Brazil had just declared war on the Japanese Empire.
Already in war against AEA, the other countries of the Axis, since 1942, Brazil had not been formally positioned against the. “Mr. Oswaldo Aranha [ministro das Relações Exteriores à época] This opposed this, and rightly, on the grounds that the tradition of our country was only to make the defensive war, “he said.
“The events have developed, however, that today, Brazil, defending America, defends itself. We are not, therefore, changing our attitude. The position we now assume, coming from the state of diplomatic relations interrupted to the state of war, is the unfolding of the same attitude,” he added.
The declaration of war against European countries was motivated by the successive sinking of civil boats of the Brazilian merchant navy by German and Italian submarines. Only on August 15, 1942, the German submarine U-507 sank three Brazilian merchant ships in 24 hours: Baependi, Araraquara and Aníbal Benévol. There were 551 killed. Since Japan was not linked to the attacks, it was not included in the statement of war.
Nevertheless, hostilities and persecution of the Japanese community of Brazil began at the same time, when diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken. Japanese language schools were closed, Japanese books and newspapers, prohibited from circulating, and people were expelled from their homes on suspicion of providing information to sinking ships.
In Santos, a coastal city 85 km from São Paulo, the hostilities of the Brazilian government generated a humanitarian crisis. Port of arrival of immigrants, the city gave rise to a large Japanese colony, where they opened fishing companies, importers and exporters, emporiums, greengrocers and developed over the years.
On July 8, 1943, the Brazilian government decreed the expulsion of all the Japanese and Germans of the city within 24 hours, on the grounds that infiltrated spies passed on information about the position of Brazilian ships on the coast.
Most Germans came out on their own, paying their tickets. The Japanese were expelled by the police and the army under strong military apparatus. The measure did not reach the Italians, according to news from the newspaper “The Tribune”, of Santos, because they were “admittedly ordered and identified with the customs.”
Now 80, engineer Hidemitsu Miyamura had not yet been born when his parents and older sister were expelled from Santos, but knows the story so often told by them. “My father, my sister, just a year and eight months, and my mother had to leave everything they won behind and board a train to Sao Paulo, under the sights of rifles,” he told the Sheet.
In the old Valongo station, the Japanese were boarded in locked wagons, such as prisoners. They were only able to land on the platform by the Immigrants stay in the Brás neighborhood. There, those who had relatives or a place to stay could leave.
The others, such as Miyamura’s family, continued on site. “They stayed for three days in the hostel, passing cold and hungry,” he said. “Then, again under weapons, they were taken by truck to the Luz station and from there they left to Paraguaçu Paulista, in the interior, where my maternal grandfather lived.”
What would come later was even worse. Officially triggered the war against Japan, the persecution gained a new ingredient: arbitrary arrests. It was already close to the end and had moved to the Pacific Ocean in search of the surrender of the Japanese troops – which happened in September of that year. In this context, the Brazilian Japanese community was alone under the spotlight.
Businessman Akira Yamauchi, 75, reported that his father, owner of a mechanical workshop in the city of Tupã, about 450 km from the state capital, was sent to the Anchieta Island prison in Ubatuba, just to refuse to step on the flag of Japan. One of the prisons most feared by the prisoners, the site was isolated on an island away from the continent (about 225 km from the continent capital), facilitating torture and lack of inspection.
The case happened when the Japanese community of Brazil was divided between “victorists” and “defeatists”. The former were regarded as devotees of Emperor Hirohito and refused to believe in surrender. The others were descendants of Japanese already born in Brazil who admitted defeat.
In a climate of bellicity between the two groups, a secret radical entity was created ,. She would have been responsible for the death of at least 24 “defeatists.” Given this scenario, the Brazilian government intensified hunting for the Japanese and arrested 172 immigrants on Anchieta Island, most innocent.
“The way the police found to find out whether or not the person was from Shindo Remmei was having tread on the flag of Japan,” said Yamauchi. “If I did not step, they said it was because I loved the emperor, I did not believe in defeat and participated in the secret sect. My father spent 30 months in prison, but was lucky not to be so mistreated because he used his mechanic craft to fix the prison’s boats and energy generator.
Cases of torture and maltreatment in prison have fallen into oblivion and remained unknown to most Brazilians for decades. The explanation, according to the doctoral student in Sociology from (São Paulo) Bruno Hayashi, is in the reserved temperament of the Japanese.
“Although there are further studies in recent years, many of these cases of rights violations do not seem to be so well known even among Japanese and their descendants in Brazil,” he said. According to him, this may be related to the choice of many victims of this period of not addressing the theme, preferring to leave in the past.
In July 2024, this reality began to change. The Ministry of Human Rights and Citizenship recognized the political persecution suffered by Japanese immigrants and made a formal apology on behalf of the Brazilian State.
“My parents are no longer here, but I have a great desire that people who have suffered and sacrifice themselves at that time can hear, where they are, this apology,” said Miyamura.
