Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In June of that year one of the most notorious Japanese military commanders arrived
in Bangkok. Colonel Tsuji Masanobu had played a significant role in the massacre of
Chinese in Singapore and in the Bataan Death March in the Philippines. In Burma he had
been complicit in the execution of an Allied airman, whose liver was removed and cut
up, and then roasted on skewers during a mess dinner. Although the other Japanese of-
ficers were unable to eat their portions, Tsuji finished his with great enthusiasm, declar-
ing that it helped him to hate the enemy even more, and thus adding cannibalism to the
list of war crimes that he faced upon the Japanese surrender by Emperor Hirohito on 15
th
August 1945. Tsuji had been in Bangkok to quell a likely uprising by the 150,000-strong
Siamese army and police force, which was being kept in check by a garrison of only 10,000
Japanese. Now he was a fugitive. On August 17
th
he removed his uniform and went to the
bombed-out ruins of Wat Liab, where at the ossuary he found the monks Chino and Sa-
saki. Disguising himself as a Buddhist monk and acquiring an identity card in the name
of Aoki Norinbu, Tsuji took shelter in the vault. He wasn't to stay there for long. In the
middle of September the British entered Siam. They heard rumours that Tsuji was dis-
guised as a monk, and began searching for him. In the early hours of the morning on 29
th
October, Tsuji left the ossuary and made his way to a rendezvous with members of Chiang
Kai Shek's Blue Shirt Society, who were operating out of an office on Surawong Road. Two
days later, now disguised as a Chinese merchant in a white jacket, black trousers, white
pith helmet and tinted glasses, he boarded a train at Hua Lampong and accompanied by
two escorts made his way to Ubon. From there he crossed the Mekong in a canoe and
went to Vientiane. He then made his way to Hanoi and on over the Chinese border to
Chungking, the temporary capital and seat of Chiang Kai Shek's government. Tsuji arrived
back in Japan in 1948, and managing to evade war crimes charges he became a prominent
politician. He disappeared while on a trip to Laos in 1961, and was officially declared dead
seven years later.
Wat Liab was rebuilt from local donations and in 1960 restored to its former prom-
inence, the
ubosot
featuring very fine stucco mouldings undertaken by Sanga Mayura,
who was one of the artists who painted the murals in the ordination hall of the Temple
of the Emerald Buddha during the reign of Rama
VII
. The Japanese ossuary remains to
this day, and since the war has always had a resident monk from the Mount Koya Shin-
gon centre, usually sent on a three-year mission, and given a second ordination according
to Thai Theravada Buddhist law in order to undertake religious ceremonies with the Thai
monks. Sasaki Kyogo went on to become a respected scholar and university professor in
Kyoto. His son Koden and grandson Kojun have both spent three-year residences at the
