Product Description

Approximately three million Japanese died in a conflict that raged for years over much of the globe, from Hawaii to India, Alaska to Australia, causing death and suffering to untold millions in China, southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, as well as pain and anguish to families of soldiers and civilians around the world. Yet how much do we know of Japan's war? In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese home front during the devastating raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses of how this violent conflict affected the lives of ordinary Japanese people. 'Oral History of a compellingly high order.' Kirkus Reviews 'This book seeks out the true feelings of the wartime generation [and] illuminates the contradictions between official views of the war and living testimony.' Yomiuri Shimbun

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #216717 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
Haunting voices from a dark, disgraceful past, which afford a stunning and revelatory panorama of Japan's WW II experience. Counting its aggressions in Manchuria and China, Japan (whose death toll exceeded three million) was in constant battle from 1931 through V-J Day. Cook and her husband (History/William Paterson College) spent nearly four years gathering reminiscences from dozens of ostensibly ordinary people who survived the lengthy conflict variously called the Pacific, Greater East Asia, or 15-Year War. Adding just enough background and big-picture perspectives to give coherence to first-person narratives, the authors largely allow their sources to speak for themselves. Among those willing to tell their typically grim stories are combat veterans of campaigns from Nanking to Okinawa; builders of the infamous Burma railway;, unrepentant officers; technicians who participated in barbarous medical experiments on POWs; journalists whose dispatches extolling "victories of the spirit" owed more to the military regime's police powers than to reality; cabaret dancers; diplomats; and home-front victims of America's incendiary as well as atom-bomb assaults. Also represented are troops who served with brutal occupation forces; the widow of a kamikaze pilot; conscripts trained as human torpedoes; Koreans dragooned into rear-area labor battalions; and those convicted of war crimes. About the only significant groups not included in the wide-ranging canvas are the industrialists who supplied an overmatched imperial war machine and members of resistance groups. Like its Axis partner, Japan tolerated no dissent and was able to command consensus support from an unquestioningly obedient populace that, notwithstanding the disclosures at hand, still appears capable of collective denial when it comes to assuming even regional responsibility for the horrors of a global conflagration. Oral history of a compellingly high order. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Haruko Taya Cook is an author and teacher. Theodore F. Cook is Professor of Japanese History at William Paterson College in New Jersey, USA.

Customer Reviews

FASCINATING PERSPECTIVE FROM THE OTHER SIDE
A remarkable tour through the Japanese war in China in the 1930s, the salvage man to man combats in the Pacific islands, the horrific bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aftermath of a totally devastating war on the psyche of the Japanese people.
Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook have done a remarkable reconstruction of this story, through the testimonies of the "other" protagonists.
One cannot came out of this tour, but with another perspective about the motivations and commitment of the people who fought or endured the destruction of this war, from the Japanese side. Common people and soldiers, willing to pay the ultimate price in order to defend their patriotic and religious believes, give a different, individual, impression from the one we derive from the analysis of the motivations of the War Lords and the militaristic complex in Tokyo.
Some fascinating facts are confirmed in this book . We have the story of private Tanisuga Shizuo, gas soldier in China from 1937, candidly telling some truths about the use of poison gas in that front. Now he is seeking compensation from the Japanese Government for the injuries he suffered while making poison gas during the war........ Tominaga Shozo gives a truthful account of the training of soldiers in China. That training included the practice of the proper technique to use the sword to decapitate live prisoners. Also, the last stage of conscript training required him to bayonet a living human, in order to condition soldiers to kill without remorse or hesitation during combat. The book contains some foggy accounts about certain events, like the story told by Tanida Isamu, staff officer in the 10th Army, during the period of the rape of Nanking (self denyal?) about the appalling number of civilians killed in the incident.
But the balance is surely positive, if you consider the moving stories of sacrifice told by the people in the Homeland, and the individual mystical motivations of the soldiers engaged in Special Attacks.
A revealing book, which I consider required reading for those interested in the War in Asia.

Readable collection of Japanese Wartime memoirs.
This book contains a diverse selection of eyewitness accounts on the rise and fall of the Japanese Empire in the 1930/40s. Both military and civilian accounts are submitted, (from pre-war Japanese settlers in Manchuria to Wartime Kamikaze pilots), giving the book a well balanced perspective on the period.

Shocking hidden stories of the people of Japan
As an American Nisei (2nd generation) Japanese american, my parents experienced the terror of the civilian firebombing at the end of World War II. Since they, as many, are reluctant to talk about it, this book helped me to capture some of their experiences and come to a greater understanding of an extremely difficult time. The irrefutability of oral history as the direct retelling of recollection and experience creates a context for telling these heretofore untold stories. It provides a sense of the greater story in a way that documentary and narrative historiographic contexts told from the perspective of the "winner" are unable to capture.