Japan health ministry to start 1st survey of war trauma among ex-servicemen, families

TOKYO — The Japanese health ministry is preparing to launch its first full-scale survey of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among former Japanese military servicemen and their families during World War II.

The Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare will ask the National Hospital Organization, the successor of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy hospitals, whether it holds medical records of servicemen who received treatment, and request their cooperation. The ministry will collect and analyze the relevant materials, and then make them public in fiscal 2025, the 80th anniversary of the war’s end.

It had been noted since World War I (1914-1918) that war triggered mental illness among some servicemen, caused by such factors as the harsh realities of the battlefield and acts of aggression. In Japan this was called war neurosis. The symptoms are considered similar to what is now called war trauma. However, the Japanese military, which emphasized mental toughness, denied the existence of such patients. For a long time after the Pacific War, the patients and their families did not talk much about the problem because of their strong sense of shame.

Some medical records from the Kohnodai Army hospital (now the Kohnodai Hospital, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, in Chiba Prefecture), where some 10,000 servicemen who had developed mental illnesses were hospitalized, are preserved in the prefecture. Based on these materials, research has emerged in recent years to reexamine the reality of the situation.

In addition to PTSD, war trauma also manifests itself in the form of alcoholism and domestic violence. A group of families of demobilized servicemen became active around 2018. Members discussed their experiences of domestic violence and the inability to build good parent-child relationships, and demanded that the government look into the realities of such families.

The health ministry plans to investigate the experiences of former servicemen and their families and research conducted by experts. If inquiries are made to the National Hospital Organization and other organizations, there is a possibility that new data will be found. The survey will be conducted with experts, and the results will be exhibited at the Shokei-kan museum in Tokyo, which holds archives of sick and wounded servicemen.

However, the ministry is restricting the survey to former servicemen who were certified as being sick or wounded during World War II, meaning cases in which family members recently suspected that the former servicemen may have suffered war trauma will not be covered.

(Japanese original by Naohiro Koenuma, Lifestyle, Science & Environment News Department)