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: Fascinating, informative, nightmarish, essential reading
Summary: 5 Stars
This book should be read by anyone with an interest in Japan, military history, or the extremes of human behavior.
The book is structured chronologically, with each section introduced by an overview of the military and political situation. The interviewees are introduced and described with tact and skill, and great effort is made to present the people objectively, allowing them to tell their own stories. The interpretive comments are brief but very helpful. The summaries of the military and political situations are skillfully done.
The credibility of the content of the narratives varies. The Cooks provide enough background material to judge where many of the weaknesses in each narrative lie, but some of the more contentious episodes may never be objectively verified. There is no reason to think they COULDN'T have happened, but that isn't the same as saying that they DID happen. Much objective information has been lost or destroyed in the "fog of war" and post-war collective amnesia.
I suspect the Cooks just barely scratch the surface of the Japanese war experience with this book. The Japanese historically have viewed defeat as shameful, and therefore not to be spoken of. While Japan has changed greatly since 1945, I doubt that such basic Japanese attitudes have changed all that much. The Cooks raise, but do not begin to answer, questions about the complicity of the Japanese military in atrocities, the concept of war "crimes", "victors' justice", etc. No doubt the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the building of the Siam-Burma Railroad with prisoner labor were war crimes, as defined by the Geneva Conventions. Were the firebombing of Tokyo or the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki therefore justifiable war tactics? Would the path to victory envisioned by the American Naval Plan Orange, blockade and starvation of the Home Islands, for years, if necessary, have been a more acceptable alternative? Of course these issues are beyond the scope of the book, but they lurk in the background for anyone reading it.
The Cooks do not directly address the issue of the culpability of Emperor Hirohito in the war and the manner in which the Japanese military prosecuted it. Several of the interviewees comment on it in passing, but there doesn't seem to be a consistent view.
"The Pacific War", as the Japanese call it when referring to the conflict with America and England, was a complete disaster for Japan, a total defeat of an intensely proud and patriotic nation. The responsibility for the military defeat rests squarely with the Japanese High Command, their strategic blindness, arrogance and incompetence, their lack of insight into their own military weaknesses, and their complete underestimation of the military capacity and determination of the Americans. The responsibility of other sections of Japanese society, the businessmen and financiers, the politicians, the average soldier, the Emperor himself, the fanatically indocrinated civilian population, is more difficult to parcel out. All played a greater or lesser part, but the guilt and shame attached to any one participant's actions are for the most part difficult to judge. The Japanese collective decision to keep silent and hope everyone forgets about it, while unrealistic, may be the best they can do under the circumstances.
The confusion of the average Japanese participant comes through very clearly in these stories. The Cooks put it very well: "Japanese narratives of the Pacific War often descend precipitously from brief tales of victory and joy (or relief, or even anxiety) into a shapeless nightmare of plotless slaughter."
Japan is now democratic and free, and has the fourth largest military establishment in the world. No doubt Japanese forces will someday once again go to war. The memory of The Pacific War, "The 15 Year War", if the war in China is included, how it was fought, the suffering inflicted on all civilian populations save the Americans, the devastating and complete defeat of Japanese forces and the destruction of the Japanese homeland, will no doubt influence how those forces are used in the future. The Cooks, particularly Haruko, deserve great credit for addressing this difficult subject, and for having the skill and resourcefulness to conduct these interviews, to save these memories for future generations to learn from.
Summary of Japan at War: An Oral History
A timely fifteenth Anniversary reissue of a "deeply moving book" (Studs Terkel) that portrays the Japanese experience during World War II in all its complexity.Following the release of Clint Eastwood's epic film Letters from Iwo Jima, which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture, there has been a renewed fascination and interest in the Japanese perspective on World War II. This pathbreaking work of oral history is the first book ever to capture?in either Japanese or English?the experience of ordinary Japanese people during the war.
In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses of how the twentieth century's most deadly conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. The book "seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between the official views of the war and living testimony" (Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan).
Japan at War is a book to which Americans and Japanese will continue to turn for decades to come. With more than 30,000 copies sold to date, this new paperback edition features an updated cover designed to appeal to a new generation of readers.
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