Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, Japan is beginning to acknowledge a group of victims long overlooked — the children of traumatised veterans whose post-war lives were marked by violence, alcoholism, and emotional withdrawal.
As reported by The Times UK, these so-called “second-generation victims” grew up in households where fathers, scarred by wartime experiences, projected their trauma onto their families. For decades, such behaviour was regarded as a private shame rather than a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, survivor groups and new research are shedding light on the scale of the problem.
One of those speaking out is 66-year-old Michiyo Fujioka. Her father, Ishimatsu, served in the Japanese Imperial Navy during the war, enduring relentless bombardment on the remote island of Matua before spending three years as a Soviet prisoner of war in Siberia. Before the war, relatives remember him as a gentle young man. But after returning home, he became a violent, abusive alcoholic who terrorised his wife and children.
“I came to understand that all of it is rooted in the war,” Fujioka said. She later joined the Association of Families of Japanese Servicemen with PTSD, a group where elderly children of traumatised veterans share their stories. The association’s founder, Akio Kuroi, says official recognition of psychological wounds has come late. Until recently, museums and public accounts focused only on visible injuries such as amputations, ignoring what he calls “the invisible damage caused by the war to the soldiers.”
Kuroi’s own father returned from fighting in China withdrawn and silent, unable to reconcile the violence he had committed with post-war society’s moral shift. Others, like Fujioka’s father, exhibited explosive rage, forcing children to stand at attention, brandishing weapons, or reacting to loud noises as if still under attack.
The trauma often spilled into the next generation’s lives. Fujioka admits she married an abusive man, struggled with alcoholism, and lashed out at her own children before breaking the cycle through counselling and becoming a therapist herself. “Knowing the facts helped me to stop the cycle of repetition,” she said.
The Japanese government has recently begun reviewing wartime medical records of soldiers hospitalised for mental health conditions, and a small exhibition on their plight is now open at the Shokeikan museum in Tokyo. Campaigners hope this marks the start of wider recognition — not just for the veterans who suffered unseen wounds, but also for the families who lived in their shadow.
