Haruko & Theodore Cook's Japan at War: An Oral History
by Anders Skovly
Introduction
Japan at War tells the history of the second world war in form of the war experiences of sixty-six different men and women – mostly Japanese, as the title suggests, but also including a few Koreans who lived in Japan at the time or served overseas in the Japanese military. Each of the sixty-six people tells their story in their own chapter (or sometimes two chapters). The book is therefore not one long story, but rather a collection of shorter stories.
The authors state that they interviewed hundreds of people in the period between 1988 and 1992, then selected for presentation a subset of all the obtained stories. In their opinion, this subset yielded “the widest possible spectrum of experience” without making the book excessively long. The original stories were naturally in Japanese, so the texts in this book are translations.
The book's introduction contains a paragraph about one of the men whom the authors had interviewed early on, a man who had joined a coastal defense unit. Once while on duty he saw an American pilot parachuting down into the Tokyo Bay, and he started contemplating whether to kill the pilot or to capture him. All of a sudden an American submarine broke the water surface, picked up the pilot, and dived again. The interviewed man then says to the authors: “You see, that’s the only kind of thing you will hear. Pointless stories.” He tells them that the people whose decisions moved the events of the war, they’re all dead.
This does indeed describe the contents of this book: the stories do not reveal anything regarding why events played out the way they did. However, learning what it was like to live through WWII from different points of view can be interesting in its own right. To convey what the stories are like I have written short retellings of three of them, selected among those I found more memorable.
Takeo Yamauchi’s story: “Honorable death on Saipan”
In the middle of May 1944 Takeo Yamauchi is shipped from Tokyo to Saipan, an island in the Mariana island group located roughly halfway between Japan and New Guinea, where he is made leader of a squad of thirteen other men. A few weeks later, Saipan and the neighboring island of Tinian become the latest targets in the US Navy’s Pacific advance. American air attacks start on June 11th, followed by naval attacks two days later:
The third day, June 13th, I was eating a large rice ball when I heard a voice call out: “The American battle fleet is here!” I looked up and saw the sea completely black with them. What looked like a large city had suddenly appeared offshore. When I saw that, I didn’t even have the strength to stand up.
Following two days of intense naval bombardment the US ground forces land on the island on June 15th. The first Japanese defense line is quickly broken and American soldiers are closing on Takeo's position. Takeo is then approached by an officer who orders his squad to leave their trenches to perform an attack:
This adjutant stood right behind me, demanding “Why don’t you charge?” I told him I had not received orders from my platoon commander. “Everyone else has charged! I order you to charge!” I didn’t sense any of the other squads going forward, but he drew his sword, took a violent pose, and again shrieked his order: “Charge!” I was in terrible trouble. Finally, I announced: “We will now attack the enemy position!” It was so obvious that we’d be mowed down. I burst forth from my hole and slid in amongst the small rocks in front of me.
Only two of the men actually follows him towards the rocks, the others just stay behind in their trenches. The three of them are coming under a hail of bullets, and after exchanging some fire they retreat back to their previous positions. The officer is gone.
Later that day, Takeo is told that a night attack will be made on the American line, but that his squad won't partake and will simply remain at its position. During the night, this attack is repulsed, and the retreating Japanese flee through Takeo’s area. His squad members ask if they should retreat too, but he gives them no response. They choose to act on their own, retreating without him. His plan is to let American soldiers capture him at that location:
My intention was to stay where I was. When the American forces came into our trenches I was going to pretend I was dead and wait for an opportunity. I had heard that the Americans would fire bullets into even the corpses, but I had to chance it. If I missed this opportunity I wouldn’t get another. I lay face down. Morning came. I was dozing when someone poked me. “Are you wounded?” In Japanese! I looked up. Bloodshot eyes looked right into mine. “What are you doing?” a Japanese soldier asked me. Then he shouted: “Get out of the way!” I was blocking their flight through the trench.
Takeo has no choice but to go along with them. For many days he’s moving around the island together with various other guys he encounters, trying to stay alive. On the night to July 7th he and two others are taking cover in a hole at a beach.
I soon learned that Saito Yoshitsugu, commander of the fourty-third division, issued the order for all survivors to make a “general attack” on the morning of the 7th. That included civilians. Then he killed himself. In those days, Japanese soldiers really accepted the idea that they must eventually die. If you were taken alive as a prisoner you could never face your own family. Those unable to move were told to die by a hand grenade or by taking cyanide. The women and children had cyanide. Those who didn’t jumped off cliffs. The attack went off early in the morning. I didn’t take part.
Takeo says that of the four thousand participants in the attack, three thousand of them were killed when the US soldiers held their ground. Later, he moves off the beach and finds refuge in a cave. Americans now begin to issue calls for the Japanese to surrender, but Takeo worries that he will get shot in the back by another Japanese if anyone sees him surrendering. When night has fallen he sneaks out of the cave and conceals himself behind a tree near a cliff, planning to seek out the American soldiers early next morning. Hiding in the same place are a few civilians, including a middle-aged couple, as well as a man whom Takeo thinks may be a soldier.
The middle-aged woman offered me some porridge in an old tin can. I hadn’t eaten rice for days. I began to wolf it down eagerly, but that man glared at me. I offered him some, and he started gulping it down. This, I thought, was a good chance. “I’m going now,” I announced, “Come with me if you want to.” I didn’t say where I was going, I just stood up. The American army was only a little way off.
He's able to surrender without being shot at. After becoming a prisoner he's moved to Hawaii, then to Los Angeles, and finally to a town in Wisconsin. There the prisoners of war are performing labor in the forest, cutting down trees to create firebreaks. Takeo ends his story by telling that while working in America he actually began to consider becoming an American, and he describes the stay in Wisconsin as the best time of his life (without elaborating much as to why – perhaps he just enjoyed the job).
Kazuyo Funato’s story: “Hiroko died because of me”
[While not the first bombing attack on Japan, the American firebombing of Tokyo during the night to the 10th of March 1945 was the first large-scale incendiary bombing of a Japanese residential area. Most of the bombers were operating from Saipan, the island where the previous story took place.]
It is early in the night when Kazuyo Funato's family awakes from the sound of bombs. Kazuyo's father leaves the family for medical duty in a “vigilance corps” while three of her brothers attempts to put out fires near the house. She goes to a shelter under the house along with her mother and two younger siblings. After some time, one of her brothers comes rushing into the shelter and instructs that they must head for the school before their route is cut off by the spreading fire. Adjacent to the school is a number of trench-shelters where families are supposed to assemble in case of an emergency. When they arrive at the school they don’t stay there for long:
Incendiaries began hitting near the school and the line of fire was coming closer. People paniced. Running, screaming. The sound of bombs falling, "Whizzz”, the deafening reverberations of the planes, and the great roar of fire and wind overwhelmed us. Many who stayed there survived, but almost as if we were compelled to heed those voices calling “Women and children, follow us”, we jumped out.
They start moving towards Sunamachi, an area that has been destroyed by bombs a few weeks previously. On the way they encounter her father and three brothers who've given up on trying to control the fire. Her father thinks the park will be a safe location, and together they move in its direction. Upon reaching the park they find it's already packed full of refugees and no more can enter, so a second time they head for Sunamachi. The fire has now grown so intense that it separates four of the family from Kazuyo and the rest:
We reached Shinkai bridge. Sunamachi lay beyond, but that’s where we were all scattered. The wind and flames became terrific. All the houses were burning, debris raining down on us. Sparks flew everywhere. Electric wires sparked and toppled. Mother, with my little brother on her back, had her feet swept out from under her by the wind and she rolled away. Father jumped after her. Yoshiaki shouted: “Dad!” I don’t know if it was his intention to rescue father or to stay with him, but they all disappeared instantly into the flames and black smoke.
Kazuyo, two of her brothers and her young sister are now on their own. From where they stand they can just make out a roadside trench-shelter some distance away, and they make a run for it. Kazuyo’s sister Hiroko is wearing a kind of cotton helmet supposed to be worn during bomb attacks. To reach the shelter they must dash through the inferno, and as they do so her helmet catch fire. Once in the shelter they manage to get it off, but Hiroko's hands are severely burned, having tried to remove it herself.
We lay flat on our stomachs, thinking that we would be all right if the fire was gone by morning, but the fire kept peltering down on us. Minoru suddenly let out a horrible scream and lept out of the shelter, flames shooting out of his back. Koichi stood up, calling “Minoru!”, and instantly he too was blown away. Only Hiroko and I remained.
Hiroko cries about the pain in her burned hands, and Kazuyo digs a hole in the earth in which she can cool her hands. The pair of them spend the rest of the night hiding in that shelter.
By morning the fire has died down and they return home where they meet their parents and two of their brothers. Their mother is badly burned and can hardly walk, and the child she had carried on her back is dead. Minoru, the brother who had run out of the roadside shelter, is never found.
Hiroko develops tetanus and is hospitalized. A few days later the disease claims her life. Kazuyo now learns about the tetanus-causing bacteria, which lives in the soil and had probably entered Hiroko through her wounded hands.
When I heard this I couldn’t sit still. I’d done my best scratching the soil to make a hole to cool her hands. I’d done it with all my childish heart. Our relatives had praised me then. Now, nine days later, my sister Hiroko was dead and they wispered quietly about the reason. Father assured me it wasn’t my fault. In disasters, tetanus and typhoid occur. But he also said poor Hiroko’s life had been needlessly lost.
Wakana Nishihara’s story: “Requiem”
[A Kaiten was a large human-piloted torpedo.]
Wakana Nishihara’s oldest brother Minoru is conscripted into the Navy in the early 1940s. In May 1945 he makes what will be his last visit to the family, although eleven years old Wakana is too young to understand it. Together, he and Wakana take a walk down to the sea and later onwards to the park.
Elder sister was only a year younger than him. The next morning they went out on a walk, but could say nothing to each other and turned back halfway through their course. I bitterly regret that I didn’t notice anything. But, at the same time, I pray that my childish innocence, my inability to fantom his feelings, was a comfort to him.
I composed that poem more than thirty years later.
After Minoru returns to the Navy, a submarine carries him and his Kaiten out to sea in search of enemy ships. At one point a US ship is spotted and he enters the Kaiten in preparation for a launch, but the ship outspeeds the submarine and no attack can be made. They later return to dock.
My brother stopped writing at that point. I’ve always been very impressed with how much he did write until that moment. Such a diligent writer, he put down his pen completely when he returned alive from that mission. In his diary, until that point, he writes, “This is the last birthday of my life”, and elsewhere, “This is my last Imperial Rescript Day”. In this abstract way, he was ready for death, but after coming back alive, he confided to his war comrades that he didn’t want to die. He told one of them that while he was playing the piano.
While Minoru is piloting a Kaiten during an exercise in July the rest of his group lose contact with him. His comrades believe he must be stuck on the ocean floor and attempt a search, but the search is called off when a large US air force is closing in on their area. When Japan surrenders to America on August 15th, Wakana and the rest of the family has still not received news that he has gone missing and must be dead.
That night, my father said for the first time, “Minoru will come home!” Who cares if the country’s lost? Minoru-chan will be back! A smile returned to mother’s face. I played piano that night as if possessed. I was so happy. “Minoru-chan will come home!” That was all I could think about. For ten days we waited like that.
On August 26th they receive his death notice. This is the first and last time Wakana sees her father crying. In September Minoru’s Kaiten is found on a beach on the island of Nagashima, presumably carried there by a typhoon. Wakana tells how it was described to her:
He was sitting cross-legged, with a small trunk in front of him. He’d died from suffocation due to the lack of oxygen. I was told he might have lived twenty hours trapped inside.
Final words
The stories I chose to summarize are ones arousing sympathy, but not all the book's stories are of this nature. Some of them have little drama, such as the one about a woman managing a bakery in Tokyo. In others, the narrator is himself a perpetrator of merciless acts. An example is a guy talking about doctors (including himself) who train for field surgery, including amputation of limbs and sewing of the intestines, by performing said surgery on live and healthy prisoners, killing them in the process.
Most of the stories are well told, but there are exceptions. For example, Shigeaki Kinjo’s story titled “Now they call it group suicide” is very incohesive, and it appears as if his memory is only present in vague fragments that he tries to string together. This is understandable given what he experienced, namely killing his own family in the propaganda-induced belief that he was saving them from the brutality of the American soldiers.
The texts in the book are arranged in a somewhat chronological manner, with tales from the China-Japan war presented first, then descriptions of life in Japan in the time before breakout of war with America, then some stuff relating to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and so on. It ends with recollections of the atomic bombings and the war crime trials following Japan’s surrender. Also interspersed throughout the book are a few sections written by the authors, Haruko and Ted Cook, which provide a bigger picture of what was going on in Japan at the time and give historical context to the stories.
While it is a reasonably thick book with almost five hundred pages, it is very easy to pick up and read because none of the chapters cover much more than a dozen pages. Many of them are in fact just a few pages long, and some are even shorter. This means that you never has to set off much time to read one more chapter.
As a final line I will say that “Japan at War: An Oral History” is one of the most memorable books I’ve read and would highly recommend it, at least to people with an interest in WWII that extend beyond the european part of the conflict.