| Description |
xiii, 479 pages : maps ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction to a lost war -- pt. 1. An undeclared war: Battle lines in China: A village boy goes to war / Nohara Teishin. Pictures of an expedition / Tanida Isamu [1]. Qualifying as a leader / Tominaga Shōzō [1]. Gas soldier / Tanisuga Shizuo ; Toward a new order: "War means jobs for machinists" / Kumagaya Tokuichi. "I wanted to build a greater East Asia" / Nogi Harumichi [1]. Manchurian days / Fukushima Yoshie [1]. Dancing into the night / Hara Kiyoshi. Bringing the liberals to heel / Hatanaka Shigeo [1] -- pt. 2. Have "faith in victory": December 8, 1941: "My blood boiled at the news" / Itabashi Kōshū. "I heard it on the radio" / Yoshia Toshio. On Admiral Yamamoto's flagship / Noda Mitsuharu. In a fighter cockpit on the Soviet border / Mogami Sadao [1]. Sailing south / Masuda Reiji [1]. A failure of diplomacy / Kase Toshikazu ; Greater East Asia: Cartoons for the war / Yokoyama Ryūichi [1]. Building the Burma-Siam Railroad / Abe Hiroshi [1]. Keeping order in the Indies / Nogi Harumichi [2]. "Korean guard" / Kasayama Yoshikichi ; The Emperor's warriors: Maker of soldiers / Debun Shigenobu. "As long as I don't fight, I'll make it home" / Suzuki Murio. Zero ace / Sakai Saburō ; "Demons from the East": Army doctor / Yuasa Ken. Spies and bandits / Uno Shintarō. Unit 731 / Tamura Yoshio -- pt. 3. Homeland: Life goes on: The end of a bake shop / Arakawa Hiroyo. Burdens of a village bride / Tanaka Toki. Dressmaker / Koshino Ayako ; War work: Making balloon bombs / Tanaka Tetsuko. Forced labor / Ahn Juretsu. Poison-gas island / Nakajima Yoshimi ; Wielding pen and camera: Filming the news / Asai Tatsuzō. War correspondent / Hata Shōryū. Reporting from Imperial General Headquarters / Kawachi Uichirō ; Against the tide: Thought criminal / Hatanaka Shigeo [2]. "Isn't my brother one of the 'war dead'?" / Kiga Sumi ; Childhood: Playing at war / Satō Hideo ; Art and entertainment: "I loved American movies" / Hirosawa Ei. Star at the Moulin Rouge / Sugai Toshiko. "We wouldn't paint war art" / Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi -- pt. 4. Lost battles: The slaughter of an army: The "green desert" of New Guinea / Ogawa Masatsugu. Soldiers' deaths / Ogawa Tamotsu. "Honorable death" on Saipan / Yamauchi Takeo ; Sunken fleet / Lifeboat / Matsunaga Ichirō. Transport war / Masuda Reiji ; "Special attack": Volunteer / Yokota Yutaka. Human torpedo / Kōzu Naoji. Bride of a kamikaze / Araki Shigeko. Requiem / Nishihara Wakana -- pt. 5. "One hundred million die together": The burning skies / "Hiroko died because of me" / Funato Kazuyo. At the telephone exchange / Tomizawa Kimi and Kobayashi Hiroyasu ; The war comes home to Okinawa: Student nurses of the "Lily Corps" / Miyagi Kikuko. "Now they call it "group suicide" / Kinjō Shigeaki. Straggler / Ōta Masahide [1] ; In the enemy's hands: White flag / Kojima Kiyofumi ; "A new terrible weapon": Eight hundred meters from the hypocenter / Yamaoka Michiko. A Korean in Hiroshima / Shin Bok Su. Five photographs of August 6 / Matsushige Yoshito. "Forgetting is a blessing" / Kimura Yasuko -- pt. 6. The unresolved war: Reversals of fortune: Flight / Fukushima Yoshi [2]. From Bandung to Starvation Island / Iitoyo Shōgo. "The army's been a good life" / Tanida Isamu [2] ; Crimes and punishments: death row at Changi Prison / Abe Hiroshi [2]. "The didn't tell me" / Fujii Shizue ; The long shadow of death: The Emperor's retreat / Yamane Masako. "My boy never came home" / Imai Shike ; Reflections: Teaching war / Ienaga Saburō. Meeting at Yasukuni Shrine / Kiyama Terumichi. Lessons / Mogami Sadao [2]. A quest for meaning / Ōta Masahide [2] ; Endings: Homecoming / Tominaga Shōzo. The face of the enemy / Sasaki Naokata. Imperial gifts for the war dead / Kawashima Eiko. Royalties / Yokoyama Ryūichi [2]. "I learned about the war from Grandma" / Miyagi Harumi. The occupiers / Kawachi Uichirō [2]. Back to the beginning / Hayashi Shigeo |
| Summary |
This pathbreaking work of oral history captures for the first time ever - in either Japanese or English - the remarkable story of ordinary Japanese people during World War II. In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese homefront during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses of how this century's most violent conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. Japan at War documents a huge range of experiences, from long-ago memories of being taught to play at soldiering in school to personal accounts of carrying out horrendous medical experiments and ruthless massacres. Here are the soldiers and sailors caught in the jungles of New Guinea and on the seas around the Philippines. Here, too, are proud builders of the Burma railway, and unrepentant generals, as well as conscripts whose political or intellectual training made them unwilling participants in the horrors wrought by their country. Japanese newspapermen, filmmakers, artists, cabaret dancers, and diplomats speak candidly about their wartime experiences, adding a whole new dimension to the now-famous symbols of kamikaze pilots and human torpedoes. As they crisscrossed Japan seeking out survivors of a war that cost that country over 3 million lives, the authors encountered every form of human response: those who held to their principles and those who gave in to opportunism, those who controlled events as well as the many - including women and children - who were caught up in the horrific whirlpool. No book to date has captured the complex range of Japanese experiences and emotions as does Japan at War. This is a monumental work of history - one to which Americans and Japanese will turn for decades to come |
| Analysis |
Japan History 1926-1945 |
|
Oral history |
|
World War, 1939-1945 Japan |
|
World War, 1939-1945 Personal narratives, Japanese |
| Notes |
Maps on lining paper |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references |
| Subject |
Oral history.
|
|
World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Japanese.
|
|
World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan.
|
| SUBJECT |
Japan -- History -- 1926-1945. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85069503
|
| Genre/Form |
Biographies.
|
| Author |
Cook, Theodore Failor.
|
| LC no. |
92053731 |
| ISBN |
1565840143 |
|
1565840399 (paperback) |
|
