Book Review: Five eyewitness accounts from the Pacific War
Greetings PHG fans, this week I'm pulling five books from the reading list to present to you. All of the works cited below are first-hand accounts from Japanese men who lives through the Second World War. Two are accounts from ship captains in the Imperial Japanese Navy, one from a Junior Officer who survived the destruction of Super Battleship Yamato, and two from leading scholars of the time.
What follows here is less a book review than an annotated bibliography; in my studies of the Imperial Japanese Navy I found that there are hundreds of secondary sources (many of them excellent), but the primary source data, particularly in English, can be harder to find. At the same time, Western sources can lose sight of the primary subject matter and cloud the historiography with implicit (and sometimes explicit) bias. I'm not saying that these books that follow are free from bias or imperfection, but they do help to flesh out a more rounded view of the Pacific War.
Studying the Imperial Japanese Navy through clear eyes is no easy feat. The fighting arm of the service was almost completely destroyed by the summer of 1945, and many of her Admirals such as Yamamoto or Nagumo had gone down fighting, leaving little or no written memoirs. While several important commanders did survive, such as Ozawa or Kurita, it was the more junior Officers who provided some of the most valuable contributions to Second World War historiography. I hope they help broaden your understanding.
Japanese Destroyer Captain - Captain Hara Temeichi
Published in Japan in 1961, this firsthand account of surface engagements during the Second World War was penned by a true student of the art of naval warfare, the former Imperial Japanese Navy Captain Hara Temeichi. Before he commanded his first ship, Hara had written torpedo attack doctrine for the Imperial Japanese Navy, and instructed at the IJN's surface warfare school. He served in almost every major battle you could name, including Midway, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz, and Vella Gulf. Under his command, the destroyer Amatsukaze torpedoed USS Perch (SS 176), USS Barton (DD-599) and helped damage the Light Cruiser USS Juneau (CL 52), known for having the five Sullivan Brothers aboard. He ended the war commanding the light cruiser Yahagi, which escorted Battleship Yamato on her final sortie.
Hara's account marked a watershed moment in post-war Japanese history. Hara was one of the most senior destroyer captains to survive the war; some sources say he was the most senior. Immensely critical of the Admiralty and its strategy, his memoirs pull no punches and when they were published, became a bestseller in Japan. English and French translations appeared within the decade. Although the tone of the book is somewhat arrogant (Hara credits the destruction of Perch to his ability to spot a Sailor lighting a cigarette at 4,000 yards), when you consider that the memoir was written either during or shortly after close surface action, mostly at night, one can forgive him a little bravado. This book is a treasured addition to my bookshelf.
I-Boat Captain - Captain Orita Zenji
This detailed account of Imperial Japan's submarine force was written by a sub captain with several notable exploits in the Second World War. Kaidai-type submarines, or I-boats, were larger, more robust submarines built for long-range strikes. These ships delivered supplies, launched smaller submarines, and even launched aircraft. A I-boat launched the only Japanese airstrike on the U.S. mainland, and sunk the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay as well as USS Indianapolis. From his ship, the crew launched 'Kaiten' human torpedoes, where he became close with the young men who decided to lay down their lives in front of the advancing enemy, in order to slow down Japan's defeat.
In the introduction to the book, Orita describes being disgusted with the history presented to the Japanese public, both in print and film, of the Kaiten pilots and their mission. He was approached by Joseph Harrington, a U.S. Navy veteran writing a book about the Kaiten, who was also discouraged by the extreme views taken on these men, the Second World War, and Japan in general. The two worked together to write this book, a pioneering joint US-Japanese effort that remains one of the finest English-language primary source documents in the historiography of the Pacific War. The balance of humility and pride is second to none. There is no bravado, no showmanship, only honest, down to earth writing and two men who want nothing more than to show you the real humans behind the terrible facts.
Requiem for Battleship Yamato - Yoshida Mitsuru
The destruction of the Super Battleship Yamato stands alongside climactic moments in Japanese history; the Mongol Invasions of the 13th century, the battles of Sekigahara and Hakodate, and the promulgation of the Charter Oath. The sinking of this ship on 7 April 1945 has come define the era in which it existed, and become allegory for the Second World War as a whole. Yamato rarely fired a shot in anger, and was effectively useless as a fighting ship for most of the conflict, limited by her own thirst for fuel. There have been films, books, TV documentaries, and even a futuristic anime in which she becomes a space-battleship. Her museum in Kure, where the ship was built in secret, is one of the finest maritime museums I've visited. The death of any battleship, the defining symbol of national power in the 20th century, demands our attention. Yamato, a super-battleship who died needlessly and ineffectually in a war that had already been lost, cries for a requiem.
Yoshida Mitsuru was a Junior Officer who served aboard Yamato as assistant radar officer. Born in 1923, he was called up to the Imperial Japanese Navy at the age of 20 and survived the sinking, improbably as you will come to find out, eventually demobilizing and working in the Bank of Japan. It is noteworthy that Yoshida did not attend the Naval Academy; he was recrutited after college for OCS. There's a tone present in this work, more focused on the human than the machine, that is not present in the books written by IJN graduates. Yoshida the person, Japan the defeated and listless country, and thousands of young men's lives wasted can all be felt throughout the book, which Yoshida wrote in a day, not quite a year after the sinking.
He found in November 1946 that the occupation would not allow it to be published, and he tried constantly to get it in print until 1949, when he was able to sneak it past the censors in a pulp magazine. Admonished alongside his publisher, Yoshida never saw the original work published, which finally occurred in 1985, two years after his death. It would be unfair of me to attempt to sumarrize the book here. If, like me you are a student of historical fact but retain a soft spot for the human behind the words and deeds, this book is for you. No clinical dissection of the action here. Just one man, and a sunken ship. If you feel nothing having finished the last page, read it again.
The Pacific War 1931-1945 - Ienaga Saburo
Ienaga Saburo is a polarizing figure in the historiography of Imperial Japan. The only professional historian in this list, Ienaga is best known for publishing a school textbook called 'New Japanese History' which was rejected by the Ministry of Education in 1952. Lawsuits brought by Ienaga against the Government and subsequent appeals from the Ministry came to define how Japanese came to think about the war, and what the government deemed acceptable. The Pacific War 1931-1945 was written in 1968 and translated to English ten years later. Intensely critical of the Imperial government, the military, and even the Japanese people themselves.
In Ienaga's view, the Pacific War started in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Students of the Second World War know that the exact starting point of the conflict is debated; some measure from the German invasion of Poland in 1939, others from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. What is clear from the history of Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries is that subjugation of China was a clear military and political strategy across the West, and it was only Japan's ability to rapidly modernize that prevented her from falling into the same trap. Part of this modernization was a drastic expansion of the military; victories over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905 were seminal moments in Imperial Japanese history. Ienaga believed that the Japanese people were brainwashed into thinking that military victory was the only way to join the international order, and had been controlled by the Army and Navy to support any conflict, no matter how costly.
It was this view that led to his textbook, and its many revisions, being rejected. Ienaga did not agree with the government's line that the entirety of the Japanese people went along to war; in his mind, the country was dragged there by the military. He cited the High Treason Incident and other subversive acts wuch as the 1918 rice riots and several high-level assassinations, which led to the Peace Preservation Acts of 1925, which expanded the secret police inside Japan and gave them agency to suppress those deemed guilty of dissent. Enacted with the aim of preventing communists and other extremist groups from organizing, by 1927 it had given the Special Higher Police and their new 'Thought Section' carte blanche to surveil and arrest whomever they felt was subversive.
I recommend reading Ienaga's book after you read Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert Bix, and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower. These books, written by men with exhaustive knowledge and exclusive access to primary sources within Japanese archives, tell a more balanced story of Japan during the Pacific War and its aftermath. Ienaga's book is not fairly balanced, and is not meant to be. He clearly meant to take off any shine from Imperial Japan's armed forces, and make his fellow men and women feel a sense of betrayal instead of guilt. This is an important distinction; you will find having read the aforementioned books how Ienega himself fit into the study of the conflict in the late Showa era, and how Japanese people still think about the war today.
The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy - Ito Masanori
1956 (translated 1962)
Of all the books on this list, I have saved my favorite for last. This book was not a compilation of memoirs written during or after the fog of battle, a requiem, or a post-war condemnation, but a cold, calculating look at Japan's failures at sea. Ito Masanori, a journalist, knew personally many naval commanders and used their insider knowledge as well as his own extensive contacts to write this hard-hitting book, which was published in 1956 and translated into English in 1962.
Ito did not waste a single line. For 211 pages, there are 18 illustrations, 8 pages of photographs, and dozens of lists, numbers, and figures. Two appendices detail ships built, added, sunk, or destroyed in the war. I'm a sucker for a good map in a history book; I like a balanced approach to the subject even more. While it's clear that Ito had some contempt for the Navy as a system, he had respect for his friends and the warriors who prosecuted the Emperor's will at sea. If you get any primary-source work on the Pacific War, let it be this one. It's the finest I've read in print.
I hope you enjoy reading these five eyewitness accounts from the Pacific War; if you've got something to add or want to suggest further reading, please let us know! Our inbox is always open, and PHG is here to get more people reading history.
All my best,
Tony
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