Konosuke Masuda

Born on March 9, 1916, in Kagami, Kumamoto Prefecture, Konosuke Masuda was the only child of Kaji and Toyo Masuda. In 1929, the year the devastating stock market crash in the United States triggered the global Great Depression, Kaji Masuda, Konosuke’s father, was transferred to the Minamata plant of the Nippon Chisso Hiryo Company in Kōnan, Korea, which was under Japanese rule at the time. Years later, while working at the Chosen Savings Bank in Korea, Masuda, then 29 years old, was conscripted into the Japanese Imperial Army just three months before the end of World War II in August 1945. After Japan’s surrender, he spent four months displaced, effectively a fugitive amidst the post-war chaos, before finally reuniting with his family in Chōjin. In the autumn of 1946, he was finally able to return to Japan. At 75, he privately published “Thirty-Eight Parallel Story: A Narrow Escape from Death,” a personal journal documenting his experiences, which has been translated by his granddaughter, Keiko Honda.