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Midori Yamanouchi and Joseph L. Quinn, (eds.), (trans.), Listen to the Voices from the Sea (Kike Wadatsumi no Koe), Scranton: University of Scranton, 2000, pp.xiii + 344, ill., chron., glos., maps., ind. ISBN 0-940866-85-4 (pbk.)., US$27.95

Reviewed by Paul. R. Weaver

In 1949, when Japan was still struggling to come to terms with the trauma and defeat of the Second World War, there appeared a collection of writings by young men who had perished in the service of the military. Collectively known as Kike Wadatsumi no Koe, the various letters and diaries, mostly written from the China and the Pacific war theatres, are said to have had a profound impact on the Japanese peace movement, and inspired a film of the same name.

Amongst those who were influenced was a young woman, Midori Yamanouchi. Disappointed with the enduring stereotyping by Americans of Japanese men who participated in the war she later resolved to translate the letters into English as Listen to the Voices from The Sea, a task recently completed in her senior years in collaboration with colleague Joseph Quinn and other linguistic scholars at Scranton University.

Perhaps the mention that a proportion of the original contributors were Kamikaze or Shinpu pilots might be sufficient to stimulate the interest of some war historians, because those infamous one-way flights took a heavy toll on allied warships in the Pacific, but most writers do not fall into that category. Infantrymen, accountants, medics, surveyors, horse-grooms, hospital patients and prisoners of war provide a cross-representation of views about their often unhappy existence within the Japanese military.

Of course Kamikaze airmen probably experienced a greater certainty that their death in war was not far off. But it is also apparent in the letters of many of the other young soldiers and sailors that an awareness of the ferocity of future enemy engagement would in all probability also mean their ends. Indeed, it is this premonition of certain death which predominates in the majority of the collection. The words appear to be born of frustration at the powerlessness of the individual to change anything, and one is left with no doubt about the depressing effect that such melancholy must have imposed on those whom they were originally directed. Certainly none would offer much inspiration for the grotesque propaganda caricatures dispersed in Allied literature during, and after the war.

Even so, there is a sense of indoctrinated pride evident in some of those about to make the ultimate sacrifice, as for example from twenty six years old Toshimasa Hayashi on August 9, 1945: 'Today, I shall fly one of the very latest in war planes... and will slam it into an enemy carrier... Thank you all my comrades.'

All the writers had some form of tertiary education, for most, incomplete because of intervention of the 'Great East Asian War.' As the Japanese manpower resources became more stretched so was the age of exemption from conscription reduced, then after September 1943 the temporary exemption for tertiary students in fields deemed non-strategic was removed. As a result those who had been studying, particularly in the arts, suddenly found themselves as military inductees.

Amongst their pensive words is the revelation that many of those young men yearned for continuing intellectual stimuli, but were trapped in a situation which inevitably obliged them to carry out their task on behalf of their country irrespective of their personal misgivings. Often too, these last thoughts were accompanied by remembered poetry, occasionally of European origin, but more often composed by the individual in the strict syllabic arrangements of the Japanese tanka tradition, as for example from Navy Lieutenant Tsuneo Fukazawa in 1942:

On a dazzling and glaring sea, far away
a coconut floated and distanced itself
I am glad indeed to be still alive, when I read
The overflowing loving heart of a person
in a beautifully written letter
Now that I cannot sleep with many thoughts in my heart
only my tongue feels a cigarette

Evident, too, with some writers is an expressed admiration for Germanic literature and culture gained from a pre-war exposure. Schweitzer, Hesse and Goethe, to name but three authors, had all found a place in the hearts and minds of some of these young men.

The letters generally address parents and relatives in respectful terms, and one naturally does not find revelations of atrocities or abuse of human rights of the type which became the basis of stereotypes of Japanese men. Even so, there are utterances and revelations in these letters which provide insights into the effects of immersion in military life.

The imposition of the warrior class ethos upon the young men was often accompanied by harshness and brutality when the slightest deviation from the military code was detected. In the face of this Bushido tradition the individual persisted with more gentle philosophies at his peril, and indeed one writer felt he could have been the only person on his ship to have dared to express any critical observations in his letters, with the grim warning that he could be killed by his peers if so discovered.

Amongst the sombreness there is some delight, for example one writer humorously likening Prime Minister Tojo's face to a short-necked clam with a moustache.

Many of the writers describe brutal bashings doled out by NCOs for seemingly trivial offences. These accounts echo the descriptions of merciless beatings similarly inflicted upon many allied prisoners of war. The revelation for this reviewer was that the brutality experienced and so bitterly remembered by those who fell into Japanese hands can be seen to have had many precedents, and was an accepted part of Japanese military discipline well before any of the perpetrators reached a theatre of war. The victims, whether Japanese or the enemy, appear to have been of no consequence. What mattered was obedience to military discipline, and the inviolable sacred dignity of the supreme command.

Improvement of the individual might be expected from such physical attacks, but there is the suspicion they more served to show that the system was largely inflexible, and intolerant of the perceived weakness of any individual. Systematic brutality had a doctrinal basis, but yet reflected a profound weakness of thought then as it does now.

The last letter in the anthology is one written by Hisao Kimura, who went to Singapore's Changi Prison gallows as a convicted war criminal in 1946. He acknowledged 'evil deeds' done by others, but maintained that his part in unspecified acts involving a captured 'enemy spy' had been born of duty. He maintained his innocence to the end.

There is no evidence that any of the young Shinpu pilots or Kaiten human torpedoes in this book were involved in attacks upon Australian warships, and no discussion of the possibility in this book. America is generally regarded by the Japanese writers as the primary enemy. Nevertheless, there may be some value in correlating certain dates with events in places like New Guinea, and in Southeast Asia. Australia does get a brief mention from one man in relation to the burgeoning success of Allied submarines based there, but no more than that.

There is an absence of material which might have been construed as inflammatory in the immediate post-war context. The editors of the early editions acknowledged that institutional pressure, and the efforts of Allied censors, ensured nothing appeared which might valorise the old regime. As such it should be born in mind that the collection remains an incomplete example of student perceptions of the times.

The translators of Listen to the Voices from The Sea deserve congratulations for this first English version. Aside from their care of the text they have taken great effort to explain the sometimes subtle meanings of what may be unfamiliar Japanese words for the reader. Indeed there is probably much to be extracted from this book by students of Japanese culture.

Paul R. Weaver, Palmyra, Western Australia.

Published: 11-04-2000 http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/reviews/weaver .htm