Pacific War, 1931-1945

The author, Mr. Ienaga, fought through Japanese courts for ten years to get this book published. The Japanese establishment, which continues to deny any responsbility for the atrocities committed in the Emperor's name -- and, Ienaga argues, by the the Emperor's orders -- fought very hard to prevent its publication. Ienaga won his case in the Japanese courts, which is almost as amazing as this book itself. Fascinating, enlightening, and shocking, this is one of the best short histories of World War II.

The historical curiousity review is quite sound and interesting. However, this little book does have some redeeming qualities, especially when it limits itself to the militarization of Japanese society. The sections on the education system are good. The communists bunk is there. Reading Chang's biography of MAO gives a more realistic historical assessment of the shared interests and, at times, complicity between Chinese communists and the Japanese invaders - a legacy left out of China's government mandated "protests" against Japan's atrocious war record (one the communists in China shared and continued for decades after Japan's defeat)

In Japan this was an important book, one of the first radical reviews of the Pacific War, written from a point of view repudiating the aggression of Japanese imperialism, but not totally excusing the conduct of the United States and Britain. Alas, the writer is apparently an adherent of the Maoist brand of Stalinism and gives much more weight to the role of the Chinese Communist Party than they deserve.

Nevertheless, this book gives a good picture from the inside of the growth of conflict in East Asia between Japan and Britain and the United States, as well as a picture of the shifts inside Japan that led to first the expansion of their penetration in China to full scale war, and then how Japan's needs in that war and Western economic and diplomatic hostility to Japan led to Pearl Harbor. It gives a brief but useful description of the collapse of Japanese society as Japan was defeated.

This book might be a big difficult for someone not familiar with the ins and outs of Japanese life as it was written in Japanese for Japanese readers. However, it will has a strength for giving which points were important from the Japanese point of view, particularly to those within Japan who are critical of Japan's course during and since WWII.

When I grew up in Communist Eastern Europe in the 1980s, I learned the official Party line about World War II as dictated by Soviet Marxists in Moscow. Imagine my surprise when I found the very same Soviet propaganda parroted almost verbatim in this 1960s booklet by a Japanese history professor.

In the Soviet version of the story, "reactionary" Japanese "imperialists" did not really want to attack the US at Pearl Harbor. Their sights were always set on invading the Soviet Union. The war did not end because of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it ended because heroic Red Army invaded Manchuria. Never mind the breathtaking gaps in the logic, this was the party line and that was it. Every year on the anniversary of the end of the war, a radio broadcast by the Ministry for Telling You What You Should Think repeated the message to make sure we got it.

Saburo Ienaga regurgitates the very same party line with the gusto of a committed Communist hack that he is. Just to give you a taste, here is his take on the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 that triggered the joint German-Russian invasion of Poland (as well as Russian occupation of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and invasion of Finland): "The Moscow Pact with Germany was a desperate bid by the USSR to protect itself at a time when England and France were appeasing Hitler" (p. 82). The mind boggles.

Ienaga expends major effort on minimizing the role of Britain and United States in the war, and praising the Soviet Union wherever he can. Thus, the Soviet Union "had been fighting almost singlehandedly against Germany" (p. 145). It also defeated Japan, really. "The Red Army was smashing through Manchuria before the United States could reach Japan, a situation not to the liking of the American military. The sensational atomic attacks diverted attention from the Russian successes" (p. 201). And anyway, Americans are Nazis: "the decision to use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki closely resembled the orders issued by German leaders brought to trial as war criminals at Nuremberg" (p. 201). Later, Ienaga complains about "American aggression in Korea" (p.244). The context suggests that he is referring to Korean War... "In its post-1945 reincarnation Japan has virtually the same relationship with the United States that Manchukuo or the Wang Ching-wei regime used to have with Tokyo. Now Washington pulls the strings and Japan dances" (p. 244).

Ienaga's shrillness presents us with some funny moments, such as his contortions while describing the Chinese Communist Eighth Route Army: "Never in the earlier wars against the Manchus, tsarist Russia, Imperial Germany, Chinese warlords, or Chiang Kai-shek had the Imperial Army come up against troops like those of the Eighth Route Army" (p. 91). Really? Never? Why didn't the Communists win, then? "[The Eighth Route Army], of course, made no stupid frontal attacks on superior Japanese forces" (p. 92). Aha! How clever! You see, "the Eighth Route Army was one of the most democratic armies in the history of military organizations. ... Democratic methods were used right on the battlefield" (p. 93). Yeah, right. To Ienaga's bewilderment, "[Japanese] veterans of the China campaign wrote only about the fighting against the Nationalists" (p. 95). To a fair minded person, that would suggest that the Nationalists bore the brunt of the war, but not to Ienaga. "The Japanese public do not seem to have a correct understanding of the role of the Communist military forces" (p. 95). Well, comrades, grab your pens and scribble away to reeducate the Japanese public!

A throwaway remark in one of the middle chapters can serve as a fitting summary of the book's attitude. Only "the Communist analysis of [the Japanese war in China] deserves the highest marks for understanding it as an imperialist war" (p. 118).

Now that Soviet Union is no more and the only remaining Communist regimes are butts of jokes rather than threats to human liberty, Ienaga's book preserves for future generations the hatefully distorted mindset of Communist historiography. I have to admit, though, that I am amazed that there is enough interest in obscure 1960s Communist propaganda to keep the book in print. The alternative, that people read this book to get answers about World War II history, is too horrible to contemplate...

Ienaga Saburo has an argument to make and he does so with great intensity. As a liberal, he lambasts the extreme nationalist government and addresses in detail the indoctrination that took place in the Japanese school system. Ienaga was a child during this time and he even reports a few of his own personal experiences from the classroom. His enthusiasm is such, however, that the reader will run into colorful phrases such as "the chilling frost of state indoctrination."

This book was originally published in Japan and is very much from a Japanese viewpoint. This is immediately made clear by the fact that Ienaga begins in 1931 with the beginning of hostilities in China rather than the usual 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. This book sheds a new light on World War II for an American public used to our interpretation of the war. It is a good history by a highly opinionated author.