There are a number of reasons for keeping diaries -- to preserve time, to account for it, to validate it -- and there are a number of ways to read the resultant record. The editor of this interesting collection of Japanese wartime journals mentions several.
They can be read as history, or as the subjective expression of the writer, or as a means through which they shaped their lives as they lived them. Wartime diaries are, in part, an ordered answer to the chaos that engulfed the diarist.
All of the eight people from whose diaries excerpts are here translated went through catastrophic experiences. By the end of the conflict (Aug. 15, 1945) well over 2 million Japanese, both combatants and civilians, had perished. Among Japan's colonial subjects and those living in areas controlled by Japan, it is more like 20 million.
Samuel Yamashita, sifting through these painful experiences, found a number of repeated assumptions, which he sees as themes. Foremost is that all the diarists initially supported the war. Of course in 1942 -- when the earliest of the entries begins -- no one knew how the war would end.
Two years later, however, criticism surfaces. One Kyoto man writes: "Tojo Hideki . . . . What a spineless general!" Later he says "words like these are prohibited as 'dangerous thoughts,' but they're a sign of exasperation."
There was much to be exasperated about. As the war progressed, rationing became more stringent, and with it ill will. In early 1945, a Tokyo housewife mentions a number of malicious rumors. An officer's wife is said to have ordered up a whole truck of tofu for herself. Noting that most of this talk involves soldiers, the diarist writes: "These rumors reveal the weakening of the people's trust in the military."
Bellicose enthusiasm also disappeared. Another Tokyo woman notices that the popular processions that used to accompany the recently drafted on their departure have fallen off. "As I look at them, I have the wrenching thought that today once again, a funeral of living people is passing . . . ."
Then there is the awful reality of war brought home to a civilian population. The famous B-29 Tokyo raid of March 9, 1945, left nearly 83,000 people killed and rendered over 1 million homeless. And the devastations continued.
One diarist notes that the bombs (long, thin, M-60 incendiary bombs) "look like falling wind chimes." Another preserves the irony that "up to now, we've been ordered not to wear white garments . . . because they were easy for enemy planes to see. Now we're warned not to wear black garments because they burn easily."
During the later entries, a major theme becomes anger against a government that began a war it could not win, and then refused to stop when it had lost. One Tokyo woman compares how she feels now with what she felt then. "I am furious with myself! Why can't I see the big picture?" Then she realizes that "it is because Japanese have had no training in losing battles."
On Aug. 17, 1945, several days after Japan's surrender, one diarist writes: "What is there to say? We did our best and were defeated." Then she reasons that "in the long history of the state, this defeat probably will not amount to very much," and then with that wonderful optimism that characterizes true survivors, she concludes with the idea that "the reconstruction that is about to begin could end up as a great achievement."
All of the entries in this interesting collection are translated for the first time, but all have been published in various Japanese collections. It gives a civilian voice to those English-translated and mainly military collections already published: "Diary of Darkness" (1999), "Soldiers Alive" (1999) and "Listen to the Voices from the Sea" (2000). They offer an insight not often offered in military history. In this collection we find preserved human vignettes that would otherwise be lost. We find the reasons people found for living, the lies and the truths that they told themselves. We can read the thoughts of over 60 years ago and see how they informed and vindicated ruined lives.
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