"the sinking of the lisbon maru": what do those lives without tombstones mean?
2024-09-24
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wang zhong'er, a palace maid in the northern wei dynasty, was lucky, because 1,700 years after her death, a caring person started from a tombstone and dug out her personal history from the changing waves of the northern wei court, allowing this unknown person in the grand history to emerge from the surface of history.
throughout history, compared to wang, there are countless people who are "weak and marginalized in every sense", just like the more than 800 british prisoners of war who were buried in the sea due to the sinking of the "lisbon maru" during world war ii - they are the nameless ones in the great history, the weak among the losers and even the missing; for a long time no one knew where the ship sank or where the bodies of the dead were (under the tombstone of artilleryman montag there are "no ashes, no remains, nothing"), and those lives seemed to have a beginning but an unknown end (the tombstone of private kenneth says "probably drowned").
the documentary film "the sinking of the lisbon maru" which was recently released nationwide attempts to reveal the unknown historical truth of this incident that occurred in the waters of china's dongji island 82 years ago. in the two weeks since the film was released, the box office has exceeded 19 million and received a lot of praise.
official poster of the documentary film "the sinking of the lisbon maru".
"when a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea, when a person becomes a mystery, you don't know why they left, just like you don't know this is the end." (this line from han han's "no return" refers to this incident.) like luo xin, fang li, the director of "the sinking of the lisbon maru," also believes that it is his duty to uncover this historical mystery, "if you don't do it, you will be a historical sinner."
changing the scale of the narrative
he did it right away, but the first thing fang li would encounter was probably the "scale" problem that any historical narrator would inevitably encounter.
in terms of macro-scale structural thinking or public cognition, the sinking of a ship seems to be insignificant to all parties involved in the incident. this involves the epistemological limits of war views and post-war reflections, as well as the scale of expression of the current international relations situation. under the unintentional "conspiracy" of multiple forces and multiple factors, "this incident seems to have been hidden under the carpet, no one mentioned it and it is not known to the public." tony banham (author of "the sinking of the lisbon maru"), the first person to study the sinking of the "lisbon maru", said in an interview that even "most british and hong kong people don't know what happened to the lisbon maru." fang li's street follow-up also confirmed people's widespread ignorance and forgetfulness of the matter.
book cover for the english edition of tony banham's the sinking of the lisbon marble.
in the sense of meso-scale war history events, although the tragedy of the "lisbon maru" has received limited attention in a very small scope, it is often described by scholars and historians as one of the many war tragedies during world war ii. the 1,816 prisoners of war on board have become a huge, silent singular number. their lives and deaths seem insignificant and few people know about them. the basic ethical dilemma of the so-called "anti-war" and humanitarianism lies here - when all complex game relationships are reduced to a number of singular games with countries as units, or some abstract political structure issues, are people the players or the chess pieces themselves? who wants to provide what kind of historical lessons for whom? is the anti-war and humanitarian stance first of all a human stance or a national stance? scholar tang hongsen's research reminds us that after rescuing the prisoners of war to shore, "because of the language barrier, they did not know each other's details, and the fishermen did not know where these foreigners came from, how could they be so embarrassed." - it not only tortures the choices of the people in the game, but also stares at the narrative motivations and stances of those who come later.
when it comes to personal history at the micro level, where they are, who they are, and what happened to them are by no means unimportant.
stills from the film "the sinking of the lisbon maru". fang li (left) and military advisor fei enqi (right) reviewing information on the sinking of the lisbon maru.
they did what they said, but where the ship sank was always a technical problem that had to be overcome. fortunately, the director is not only an artistic man, but also a technology geek. fang li introduced in his speech at "yi xi" that according to the coordinates of the "lisbon maru" shipwreck left by the japanese military, the hong kong underwater archaeological team did not find any trace of the ship, but this earth exploration and ocean mapping expert led his team to scan and image the seabed through underwater sonar, and for the first time determined its true location: 30°13′44.42″n, 122°45′31.14″e, which is the common coordinates of the end of life of more than 800 people who died in the seabed.
the martyrs should not be "unknown martyrs", the perpetrators should not escape the historical judgment, and the fishermen from dongji island who participated in the rescue deserve to have their names in this period of history. trying our best to find out their names, describe their voices and faces, clarify their personnel relationships, and tell their stories not only means the responsibility of modern people to history, but also respects the life dignity and dedication of every deceased, survivor, and rescuer.
in this documentary, the director's entire job is nothing more than finding a coordinate, solving a mystery, proving the love and life without tombstones, composing a requiem for them, and turning "never see you again" into "never see you again". it can be said that from tony banham to nelson mar, from tang hongsen and shen jian to fang li, from academic topics to popular films, for more than 20 years, several scholars and artists have been lonely and stubbornly carrying out a relay to save history and fight against oblivion with their own efforts. they are racing against time - the director of this film realized that the only two survivors, dennis morley and william bannifield, and lin agen, the only surviving fisherman who participated in the rescue, are already in their twilight years, and "there is not much time left for me".
stills from the sinking of the lisbon maru. fang li (right) and lin agen (center), a fisherman who rescued allied prisoners of war.
silence is a double wall
at the beginning of the film, it was stated that "this film is completely based on historical facts (everything in this film is true)", and the documentary format always gives people an objective and true psychological expectation. but in fact, to be precise, this is an understanding and presentation of history established by the producers through reading a large amount of archival materials, listening to the memories of relevant survivors and more than 380 descendants of prisoners of war (even using media advertisements, commissioning private detectives, etc.). it is complex and multi-vocal. behind it, the director's hidden and revealed and edited the materials because of his personal historical logic, artistic effect expectations, or consideration of the possible controversy caused by the objective and truthful presentation. in an interview with the paper, fang li admitted: "i did not edit some of the questions and answers on the spot into a film." what are those questions and answers that have not been presented like? i am afraid that the answers cannot be rushed.
once the matter involves historical issues, the later generations cannot avoid the complex entanglement between "historical facts" and "historical memory", "factual truth" and "emotional truth". the journey of seeking the truth will inevitably reveal some scars and speak out the pain, embarrassment and bitterness that the parties involved and their descendants are unwilling to face. therefore, it is not difficult to imagine resistance, escape, evasion and defense, which all imply thorny academic/artistic ethical issues.
in fang li's film, the roles played by war survivors and their children in the inheritance of war memory are cases worthy of attention and reflection. dennis morley said in an interview, "i don't want to recall anything now. for me, it's all in the past. although sometimes, when i sit and think, the faces of my comrades will appear in front of me. when i came back after the war, my home was gone, everything was gone, my mother died, and my father was missing and could not be contacted. neither my daughter nor my great-granddaughter know what i went through in the war. it was too far away, on the other side of the world."
stills from the sinking of the lisbon maru. fang li (right) and dennis morley (left), a survivor of the sinking of the lisbon maru.
this gap in the intergenerational transmission of war memories also appeared on the perpetrators. in the film, the children of shigeru kiyomaru, the captain of the "lisbon maru" who abandoned his ship after being hit by a torpedo and ignored the lives of allied prisoners of war, said in an interview that they "had never heard of the lisbon maru. (shigeru kiyomaru) never mentioned the name of the ship, so we had no idea. this is the first time we heard of it."
in her book the long defeat: cultural trauma, memory, and identity in japan, japanese-american scholar akiko hashimoto cited previous research and pointed out: "this (silence) proves that dealing with difficult experiences requires a lot of time, energy, distance, and self-awareness, and then these experiences can be passed on." she also cited israeli psychologist dan baron's "double wall of silence" theory and pointed out: "it takes two people to maintain silence - one does not speak, and the other does not ask. silence requires the cooperation of children, who also participate in this legacy of silence."
"the long defeat: japan's cultural trauma, memory, and identity", author: (us) hashimoto akiko, translator: li pengcheng, ideal country | shanghai sanlian bookstore, december 2021.
akiko hashimoto found that "the postwar generation in japan did not develop their own 'new memory data', but generally regarded the memories inherited from the previous generation as their own family history", "they were not immune to hearing that their parents' war was a shameful event, but these children still claimed that they did not know much about their parents' crimes", "they were quite defensive when talking about the sufferings of their parents". "from the testimonies of adults who grew up listening to war stories, we can find some important trends: (1) children usually fill in the blanks and ambiguities in family history with positive images of their parents; (2) they usually tend to describe their parents during the war as helpless and therefore generally innocent; (3) the profound emotional impact of war experiences such as abandonment, betrayal, fear, guilt and shame cannot be erased." this insight has universal explanatory power and penetration.
in the film, many descendants of prisoners of war gave positive and negative imaginations and descriptions of their fathers' kindness and bravery before and after the sinking of the ship, as well as the cruelty and ruthlessness of the enemy; the daughter of robert mcglade, the captain of the us submarine "perch" that fired a torpedo at the "lisbon maru", and the son of garfield, the mechanic of the submarine, both made their own "rationalized" judgments on the "radical" choices of their fathers on the battlefield at that time. what is more noteworthy is that after reading their father's self-defense statement in court in front of the camera, shigeru mitsuda's children still used the general statement that "japan is a country where it is difficult to express different opinions from others" and that there was no resistance under the wartime system, only compromise and obedience to excuse their father's guilt. in this sense, the conflict between the personal family logic and political logic surrounding the memory of the war, and between personal daily life and the great cause of the nation-state are issues that cannot be ignored when watching this film.
stills from the sinking of the lisbon maru. descendants of allied pows and mr. lin agen.
the gradual fading of war memory and war responsibility in postwar japan may not be the result of unilateral regulation and control by some political force. it first quietly occurred within a family and between parents and children. these are the basic social soil for "forgetting". in the film, the daughter of william barrow, a sergeant-major of the royal artillery, confided painfully: "i had to grow up without a father. i don't know what else to say. i can't do it." the granddaughter of artilleryman montag told the visitor: "my father was only seven years old when my grandfather died. for my father, losing my grandfather will always be a hole in his heart." from the perspective of "factual truth", these testimonies may not be impressive in the empirical sense, but there is an "emotional truth" in the words that cannot be ignored, and it conveys a profound historical lesson. their imagination and narration of their fathers will bring the war that seems to be separated by "1945" and is gradually fading back to the level of life that we, as the postwar generation, can know and feel, and introduce the story from "them" to "us", with the same heart and soul, which is touching. i dare not speak for others, but frankly speaking, most of my tears in the cinema were shed for this, rather than for the static pictures of the shipwreck in the movie that lacked any sense of life.
cover-up or redemption, punishment or tolerance, memory or forgetting, these are still the difficult problems that the wartime and post-war generations must face together. they are also the profound propositions raised by professor tetsuya takahashi in "postwar responsibility".
how to resist forgetting
as a documentary film that aims to reproduce the truth of history, it is natural to arouse the audience's emotional resonance, but obviously, "resisting forgetting" is the purpose of fang li's documentary. but in fact, one dimension related to memory and forgetting is that as the main source of information, the mass media reports after the incident may shape what kind of historical memory and understanding, which may be a slightly missing perspective in this film.
lieutenant howell's testimony, read aloud by his daughter, showed that 23 hours after the sinking of the lisbon maru, the prisoners gradually realized that "the japanese army locked us in the bottom of the cabin not only because they were afraid that we would escape, but it had become a deliberate massacre to drown us unwelcome prisoners." in the film, fang li went to the japanese ministry of foreign affairs to conduct a corresponding archival investigation on the reactions of both japan and britain at the time. the results showed that in early 1943, the british foreign office sent a protest telegram to the japanese ministry of foreign affairs through the swiss embassy, accusing: "japan's behavior after the torpedo hit was inhumane and a shame for the navy and military tradition of a modern civilized country." the japanese side immediately responded that the accusation was pure fabrication and slander.
this was the official response, but in fact, shortly after the incident, the japanese media reported on the inhumane massacre of prisoners of war that took place on october 2, 1942. the asahi shimbun report on october 8 emphasized the rescue of british prisoners by the imperial japanese navy and the latter's condemnation of the inhumane attack by the us submarine. on october 11, the day after the british prisoners who were recaptured on tokyo island landed in japan by boat from moji, the yomiuri shimbun reported the words of a "major commander howell" (it is not known whether he is the same lieutenant howell mentioned above) under the title "indignant at the us military's betrayal, weeping for our bushido" and said: "the us submarine launched an inhumane attack on the allies, but japan took care of us with affection and righteousness. we can only thank them. can our own country, britain, give us the same treatment as we received in japan when treating enemy prisoners? thinking of this, i deeply admire japan's bushido. to be honest, i never thought that we, who were prisoners, would be treated so well."
report on the sinking of the lisbon maru by the yomiuri shimbun (then called yomiuri hochi) on october 8, 1942. image provided by the author.
it can be seen that in the few days after the incident, the few reports in the two major newspapers, asahi and yomiuri, repeated nothing more than the same militarist rhetoric under the official caliber - the attack by the us submarine was inhumane, the japanese navy did its best to rescue the prisoners of war, and the british prisoners were grateful for the preferential treatment of the japanese army; as for the rescue deeds of the fishermen on dongji island, they were completely ignored and turned a deaf ear.
as witnesses of the japanese navy's massacre of prisoners of war, the media controlled by the japanese military would not allow the deeds of chinese fishermen to be reported in the newspapers, otherwise their own massacre would be difficult to cover up. what is strange is that although the political power of militarism collapsed after the war, the tragedy of the "lisbon maru" was hidden in the japanese public opinion space. it is not difficult to confirm this bleak fact by searching the databases of the three major japanese newspapers, asahi shimbun, yomiuri shimbun and mainichi shimbun. even if the search scope is expanded to film and television media, the situation is almost the same.
searching the "national newspaper index" in my country, as far as the eye can see, apart from the english newspaper "the north-china daily news" founded by the british in china for westerners, which briefly mentioned the incident, the chinese media during and after the war rarely mentioned the sinking of the "lisbon maru". fortunately, the situation has changed in the past 20 years. both wang xin's film "dongji rescue" (2008) and the documentary "japanese army "conspiracy" "lisbon maru sinking, chinese fishermen in zhoushan rescued british prisoners of war" (2015) produced by beijing tv began to focus on this war history theme, but the narrative focus of both fell on the rescue operation of the fishermen on dongji island, and did not attract widespread public attention. on the contrary, newspapers and media in the uk and hong kong have published no less than 2,000 articles since the incident in 1940 until today, many of which are individual missing persons notices, obituaries and other information, as well as full reports of the incident, exposing and condemning the atrocities of the japanese army, and expressing gratitude for the chinese fishermen's rescue. even so, it is not difficult to see from the content of this film that, to this day, very few people in the uk know about this incident.
the scotsman reported on the sinking of the lisbon maru on december 23, 1942. image provided by the author.
a report on the sinking of the lisbon maru by the british newspaper western mail on december 23, 1942. image provided by the author.
whether it is long-term silence, indifference or gradual decay, the so-called "forgetting" in the countries involved is not homogeneous, and it seems that each has its own narrative stance and focus. in this way, it is difficult to talk about "resisting forgetting" in a general way. the significance of fang li's film lies in trying to transcend the unilateral narrative stance based on the nation, incorporating the archives, characters and memories of all parties involved in the incident into a holistic narrative, and pulling audiences from all countries back to the same cognitive starting point, seeking a delicate balance between "sympathetic understanding" and "facing the results". this, to a certain extent, liberates people from the information cocoon and information shielding woven by political and ideological factors. it allows people to be shocked by the "people" on the line of life and death in the extreme context of wartime, resonate with the "people" who are repeatedly torn and squeezed by personal family logic and national political logic during and after the war, and also identify "people" who are ignorant and blind to historical tragedies, including ourselves.
yes, this is a story about "people". as fang li himself emphasized: "it is not about history, but about people's stories. telling history is only a small part of the film, accounting for less than 20%. it is more about people's fate, people's experience, and a big war about family, kinship, love, friendship, and the glory of human nature. it is the history of people, not just the history of war." "the sinking of the lisbon maru" broke the rigidity and silence of a certain history, but i would rather it be the beginning of a more diverse and deeper presentation than the end of the story. after all, the past is not like smoke.
stills from "the sinking of the lisbon maru". descendants of allied pows pay tribute to their loved ones at the site of the wreck.
written by wang shengyuan
editor/li yongbo and zhu tianyuan
proofreading/wang xin
