Pacific War, 1931-1945

Rating:
Summary: all the more convincing because written by a Japanese
Review: "[General Akamatsu] ordered local inhabitants to turn over all food supplies to the army and commit suicide before U.S. troops landed. The obedient islanders, 329 all together, killed each other at the Onna River with razors, hatchets, and sickles. U.S. forces occupied nearby Iejima and used some of the local people to take surrender appeals to [the garrison].... Akamatsu's men killed the emissaries."

It's bad enough when you read this stuff written by an American, but when it comes from a Japanese writer it's really unsettling. Saburo Ienaga was a high-school teacher during the war and a university professor afterward; he got into trouble with the authorities for trying to bring some balance to the high-school history texts in the 1950 and 1960s, when the Cold War and the end of the U.S. occupation allowed the schools to gloss Japan's role in World War II. I read this book when I was researching the Flying Tigers, but to sit down and read it on its own merits was a revelation.

Americans may be startled to pick up a 256-page book about the Pacific War and discover that Pearl Harbor isn't mentioned until page 135, more than halfway through. That's a consequence of Ienaga's belief that the war began with the Japanese army's 1931 coup in Manchuria, which led inevitably to war with China, which in turn led to the wider war that began in December 1941. Despite Japan's claims about liberating Asians from white colonialism, its purpose in going to war with the Americans, British, and Dutch was to obtain the raw materials with which to prosecute the war in China. That was one reason the Japanese treated the "liberated" people so badly--as badly as their treated their prisoners of war, which was as bad as anything east of the German death camps.

Part of the blame goes to the Japanese military tradition, in which the officers were an elite and the troops were conscripted from the younger sons of tenant farmers. Brutality was the norm, and the enlisted men who stayed in the army and became sergeants were precisely those who would most brutalize the next batch of recruits. Draftees were called <i>issen gorin</i>--roughly, "penny postcards," because that was the cost and the method of obtaining one. Why husband the life of a soldier when he could be replaced for a penny? Ienaga explains that the enlisted soldiers were the bottom of the food chain, that they had no on upon whom to vent their brutality in return. (He was wrong, of course: the Korean labor guards were lower, and the prisoners and captive peoples were lower still, and it was they who suffered the lash for every indignity visited upon the common soldiers.)

Yet the same army was notably humane during the Russo-Japanese War. Why the difference? The Imperial Japanese Army lost its humanity in China, where national pride became the ugliest kind of racism. "Chinka, Chinka, Chinka," as the translator renders a poem that appeared in Japanese schools in the 1930s: "they're ugly and they stinka." A grade-school boys would be told that his duty and his privilege when he grew up would be to kill "hundreds of Chinese." (Military training began in elementary school, and each middle school had a military cadre to lead the boys in drill.)

During World War II, it was fashionable in the U.S. to show General Tojo as the Japanese dictator, making a trio with Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini. But of course that was very far from true, as even American propaganda recognized, since sometimes the emperor Hirohito filled the same role. Ienaga is especially good at explaining this mystery, in which a dictator could be imposed by a group of elder statesmen--and then deposed when his usefulness was over. Tojo ruled the government and the army, but he never managed to rule the navy--he didn't even learn about the defeat at Midway until a month after four aircraft carriers and a major portion of the navy's fighter planes had gone to the bottom.

In fact, the army and navy controlled the government (including Tojo), with occasional input from the emperor and the elder statesmen (basically, everyone who had ever served as prime minister). It was an intricate web, and often enough the real power was exercised not by the generals but by colonels and majors in the field.

Ienaga wasn't disloyal, nor was he one of those who curried favor with the Occupation by writing what the Americans wanted to hear. He savages the United States for using the atomic bomb on Japanese cities--an atrocity that he ranks with Germany's death camps and Japan's Rape of Nanjing. More sobering, in a book written in 1968, he accuses the U.S. of acting as the new Imperial Japanese Army. We were the brutal overlords in Vietnam, as Japan had been in China--while Japan itself played the ignominious role of the Manchukou puppet state of the 1930s and 1940s, dutifully supporting the aggressor. It is an uncomfortable comparison.

This is a valuable book, and one of only a half-dozen serious studies by Japanese scholars of World War II that are available in English. We didn't know our enemy in 1941; we hardly know him any better today.

Rating:
Summary: every American should read this book
Review: Americans may be startled to pick up a 256-page book about the Pacific War and discover that Pearl Harbor isn't mentioned until page 135. That's a consequence of Ienaga's belief that the war actually began with the Japanese army's 1931 coup in Manchuria, which led inevitably to war with China, which in turn led to the wider war agaisnt the western Allies. Despite Japan's claims about liberating Asians from colonialism, its purpose in going to war was to obtain the raw materials with which to defeat China. That was one reason the Japanese treated the "liberated" peoples so badly--as badly as they treated their white PWs.

Part of the blame goes to the Japanese military tradition, in which the officers were an elite and the troops were conscripted from the younger sons of tenant farmers. Brutality was the norm, and the enlisted men who stayed in the army and became sergeants were precisely those who would most brutalize the next batch of recruits. Draftees were called issen gorin--roughly, "penny postcards," because that was the cost and the method of obtaining one. Why husband the life of a soldier when he could be replaced for a penny? Ienaga explains that the enlisted soldiers were the bottom of the food chain, that they had no on upon whom to vent their brutality in return.

During WWII, it was fashionable in the U.S. to show General Tojo as the Japanese dictator, making a trio with Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini. But of course that was very far from true, as even American propaganda recognized, since sometimes the emperor Hirohito filled the same role. Ienaga is especially good at explaining this mystery, in which a dictator was imposed by a group of elder statesmen--then deposed when his usefulness was over. Tojo ruled the government and the army, but he never managed to rule the navy--he didn't even learn about the defeat at Midway until a month after four aircraft carriers and a major portion of the navy's fighter planes had gone to the bottom.

This is a valuable book, one of only a half-dozen serious studies by Japanese scholars of World War II available in English. We didn't know our enemy in 1941; we hardly know him any better today.

Rating:
Summary: a history or a polemic?
Review: For those who are ready to read a book from the Japanese viewpoint owning up to their atrocities during World War II, this is NOT the book. Nanking is addressed in less than 2 pages with the only citation of Chinese dead at 20,000. Not one word is written about the Bataan death march and the horrendous treatment of Allied POWs by the Japanese in Japan and areas throughout Asia and the Pacific.
I found Ienaga's explanation of Pearl Harbor lacking. He explains, "Yet the American government gained an even greater psychological advantage. By allowing Japan to strike the first blow, even the isolationists were swept up in the patriot clamor for war and victory." (pg. 137) By allowing?? Is he referring to the U.S. option of mounting its own secret first strike?
Ienaga states, "The Auschwitz gas chambers of our `ally' and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by our enemy America are classic examples of rational atrocities." (pg. 187) I'm am sorry, but to relate the holocaust to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is beyond belief. Make no mistake about his accusation as he later states, "Nevertheless, Pal was correct in stating that the decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki closely resembled the orders issued by German leaders brought to trial as war criminals at Nuremberg." (pg. 201) He then continues with, "The harsh treatment of civilians in Manchuria had its counterpart in Japan under U.S. occupation forces." He continues, "The violence came later, however, in the assaults, robberies and general mayhem committed by American troops against civilians." (both pg. 236) Now U.S. troops in Japan are equivalent to Japanese troops in Manchuria!! Does he ever stop?
There may be some redeeming sections to this book, but it is not worth the insult to anyone's intelligence to wade through the waste. My suggestion is to bypass this book and spend your money on another book for a look at the Japanese in World War II.

Rating:
Summary: A Solid, Even Entertaining History
Review: Ienaga Saburo has an argument to make and he does so with great intensity. As a liberal, he lambasts the extreme nationalist government and addresses in detail the indoctrination that took place in the Japanese school system. Ienaga was a child during this time and he even reports a few of his own personal experiences from the classroom. His enthusiasm is such, however, that the reader will run into colorful phrases such as "the chilling frost of state indoctrination."

This book was originally published in Japan and is very much from a Japanese viewpoint. This is immediately made clear by the fact that Ienaga begins in 1931 with the beginning of hostilities in China rather than the usual 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. This book sheds a new light on World War II for an American public used to our interpretation of the war. It is a good history by a highly opinionated author.

Rating:
Summary: A Solid, Even Entertaining History
Review: Ienaga Saburo has an argument to make and he does so with great intensity. As a liberal, he lambasts the extreme nationalist government and addresses in detail the indoctrination that took place in the Japanese school system. Ienaga was a child during this time and he even reports a few of his own personal experiences from the classroom. His enthusiasm is such, however, that the reader will run into colorful phrases such as "the chilling frost of state indoctrination."

This book was originally published in Japan and is very much from a Japanese viewpoint. This is immediately made clear by the fact that Ienaga begins in 1931 with the beginning of hostilities in China rather than the usual 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. This book sheds a new light on World War II for an American public used to our interpretation of the war. It is a good history by a highly opinionated author.

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read!
Review: If you want to try to understand Japanese interpretations of thier involvement in World War II, then this is a book you must read!

This book is from a Japanese perspective (there are many different interpretations among Japanese scholars as he mentions in this book, and which he is railing against). He uses the term 15-year-war because of his belief that Japan was in a continuous state of aggression from 1931 onward. He agrues that this aggression was a mind set of most people at the time, and lists in great numbers the atrocities commited during the war (from the oppression in the conquered territories to oppression in the army and the home).

Ienaga was a high school teacher during the war and was dismayed at the way in which his governemnt and many people embraced militarism and violent aggression overseas. His frustration with his own people is evident throughout the entire book as he complains about the lack of freedoms that people should have had to oppose the war (and those that protested it anyway were severely punished by the government).

Some of the other reviewers complained of his bias, but to be fair this book is an analysis of events. This is NOT intended to be a text book. It is intended to present a method to understand the facts and events which a textbook would give you. He presents it very carefully and thoughtfully, and after reading the book you can judge the whether the conclusion was justified or not.

I am encouraging you to read this book because I believe that his arguments are well thought out, and you can get a feeling for how deeply World War II effected this man's thought process.

-ATR

P.S. In regards to the Nanking massacre, the numbers on that incident have varied from time to time because of the cover up of it. I don't know for certain, but I would suspect that since Ienaga wrote this book in the 60's, the information on real numbers of dead might not have been available. Iris Chang's book, The Rape of Nanking, was printed relatively recently and really helped bring to light the level of horror committed there.

Rating:
Summary: a mostly conservative recount of events
Review: This book attempts to contextualize the period of time encompassing the war in East Asia form the early 1930s until the 1945 and beyond. Contrary to some of the other reviews thie book comes farily close in some respects and also gives the reader some (very) underused American and Japanese references to back up his narrative.
Presented in a narrative form, this book is one of the most de-politicized accounts of the conflicts in recent years. As polemical as some people believe this work to be, the only polemics that clearly come across are those against violence, on both sides. Many American readers will find some of the statements to contradict the information that they learned through their often biased history books. For example, the author devotes over 80% of the book trying to expose Japanese brutality in China, but unmentioned is the way the Japanese government developed areas under their control, and those areas are the only developed parts of the third world to this day (Taiwan, Korea, parts of China. Contrast this to the areas colonized by the Americans, which remain economic diasters, such as the Phillipines , which were just plundered for their resources. Contrary to some views expressed, the brutality of the American treatment of civilians and POWs in Japan, USA and elsewhere are vastly understated with acts of sadism equaling or surpassing what is recenly taking place in Iraq during another American aggression. As far as Pearl Harbor, this was a (not-so-distant) colonized American colony doubling as a forward military base.
The author did not extend his analysis for the main reasons for American aggression against the Japanese mainland and wanton destruction of their cities with blatantly illegal weapons, including what is viewed by the majority of the world as completely unneccesary targeted destruction of civilians in firebombing reaids of civilian targets, including two nuclear strikes. Also Ienaga did not expound enough on the fact that Japan has been pressing for surrender for at least a year before the genocidal atomic (and convential) attacks against Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka, Hisoshima, Nagoya, Nagasaki, Yokohama and most other large Japanese cities. Most of Japanese armament factories were not affected in the scale that American media purports them to have been, while what was obviously targeted were the civilian areas, wihch were systematically eradicated to break down the will of the Japanese to resist the aggression.
The American brutality during and after the war and its designs for recolonization east and southeast Asia are well-known all over the world. Some of the plans that were unmentioned in this work included plans to detonate explosives in Mount Fuji to cause an eruption to maximize civilian suffering, the US bases that remain in Japan to this day, which continue to abuse and terrorize the Japanese. The US in this respect is virtually indistinguisable from aggressions of the German High Command in Europe. People who uphold the right of the American administrations to continue these atrocities to this day have no right to speak of morals, never mind act as apologists for American war crimes. Many people fail to realize that the effort of the Japanese, as brutal as it was was to rid east Asia from American influence and not having their future dictated to them by American authorities. This independence can not be tolerated by the US. I recommend this book, but urge readers to delve further for more context and background of this conflict, and to take steps to ensure that it will never happen again.