Japan at War: An Oral History
by Haruko Taya Cook, Theodore F. Cook
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Book Summary Information
Author: Haruko Taya Cook, Theodore F. CookEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-10-01
ISBN: 1565840399
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: New Press, The
Book Reviews of Japan at War: An Oral History
Book Review: A "must read" for anyone who want to understand the Japanese psyche during the war.
Summary: 5 Stars
Being an ethnic Chinese, though born after the war, I just couldn't understand the Japanese inability to accept that they have been behaving in a most atrocious manner during the war, given the massive amount of evidence that has been accumulated to prove that point. Despite there being so much evidence pointing to the fact it was the Japanese who started the war, and yet, they seemed to think of themselves as the victims rather than the victimizers. That was something I couldn't understand.
But now, having read this book, though I don't agree with them, I could, in an intuitive sense, understand them.
At the beginning of Part Four, on page 259, it's printed these words:
"Umi yukaba, misuku kabane...Across the sea, corpses soaking in the water, Across the mountains, corpses heaped upon the grass, We shall die by the side of our lord. We shall never look back."
"Umi yukaba.." is from a collection of poetry known as Manyoushu, which dated from around 700 AD, around the Nara, Heien period. This specific poem, "Umi yukaba..." was set to music in 1937, and after 1943, it preceded radio announcements of battles in which Japanese soldiers "met honorable death rather than the dishonor of surrender." In a flash,I understood the mentality of the time. They were really still set in the medieval feudal samurai mentality. The veneer of modernity was just that, a veneer of modernity. They might be able to build and master complex machinery of the modern twentieth century, the mentality was still of feudal Heien period. Their treatment of the conquered people was justified. That's how the Heien period warriors behaved. Their perception of themselves as the victims were justified. That's what samurai warrior would feel. They were all prepared, or at least indoctrinated to be prepared to die in the service of the emperor.
I cannot imagine any other country which would announce their battles lost with such a song.
The army doctor, Yuasa Ken, described his wartime experience, that of experimental surgery on perfectly healthy, well except for the fact that they have been starved, perfectly healthy Chinese. To them, there was nothing wrong. The Chinese were the conquered people. The Imperial Army needed doctors to treat the wounded soldiers, so many doctors were recruited into the army, including pediatricians, dermatologists, ophthalmologists and so on. These doctors have no experience in treating trauma injuries. How to train them? What better way than to use the Chinse as experimental animals for their training. Only in the light of the concept of "human rights", a concept developed in the West, was that kind of experimenation considered wrong. In the feudal samurai ethics, that was not considered wrong.
Now look at the situation this way. From the samurai ethics point of view, they had not behaved wrongly. But after the defeat, and the acceptance of the world view of "human rights", what they have done was definitely wrong. However, in their minds, they haven't done anything wrong. How to reconcile the one with the other? How to reconcile their internal moral judgment, "we have not done anything wrong", with the now newly developed and accepted concept of "human rights"? The only way out of this psychological dilemma is to deny that those atrocities have happened. The only way out is to deny that the Nanjin massacre had happened, that the human experimentations in Unit 731 had ever happened.
This is a most fascinating book, and is a MUST READ for anyone interested in how the Japanese felt and thought of the events of the time.
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