Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze - 2008- 829 Pages

Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze - 2008- 829 Pages

One of my core interests is the Holocaust. Of course this needs to be understood in terms of the places and the era in which it occurred, Germany and the territories it conquered during WW Two.

The Holocaust (1933–1945) was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the years of the Holocaust as 1933–1945. The Holocaust era began in January 1933 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. It ended in May 1945, when the Allied Powers defeated Nazi Germany in World War II. The Holocaust is also sometimes referred to as “the Shoah,” the Hebrew word for “catastrophe.” From The Website of The US Holocaust Museum 

Tooze's book goes into copious detail about how the economy in Nazi Germany was shaped by the goals and beliefs of Adolph Hitler and his supporters.

One of the platform ideas that helped make the Nazi party popular was their harsh criticism of the post WW One Versiles Treaty. The Treaty, among other things,prohibited Germany from rebuilding its military, imposed reparations and confiscated territory. The Nazis blamed the extreme decline in the German economy on the Treaty. They saw it as engineered by an international Jewish conspiracy. 

Tooze shows us how, with the full cooperation of wealthy German industrial concerns like I.G. Farben, BMW, Siemens, Damiler-Benz and others began a massive built up of the German Army and the airforce.

"The cultural crises of early twentieth-century Europe, the vacuum left by the secularizing tendencies of the late nineteenth century, the radicalizing horror of World War I, all demand attention from anyone seriously interested in plumbing the deeper motives of National Socialism. How else can we understand a regime that took as its central objective the destruction of European Jewry, an objective apparently devoid of all economic rationale, a project that, if it can be understood at all, seems to be intelligible only in terms of a violent theology of redemptive purifica tion?" From the book

Hitler wanted to expand Germany territory way into the east, basically killing the Jews and starving millions. The plan was to use this space to produce food for Germans.  

Tooze details the internal political developments within Germany. A top priority was to insure adequate food supply at home. Nazi leaders realised unless Germans had good diets they would not support the party.

In Hitler's mind the complete extermination of the Jews of Europe was always a top priority. At first he did not talk a lot about it but as Tooze illustrstes it was by early 1940 a dominant factor.

Tooze shows how concentration camps figured into the German economy as a cheap source of labor. The Holocaust was also explicitly viewed as eliminating people viewed as nonproductive, the old, ill, young children.

Russian prisoners of war up to 600,000 died from over work and starvation, as did millions in the Ukraine and Russia.

At first Jews were allowed to emigrate if they could pay huge fees. Jewish owned businesses were turned over to Germans.

Ultimately the German leadership knew they would probably be Defeated once America with its huge economic capability entered the war.

"This book is the first in sixty years to offer a truly critical account of the performance of the German war economy both under Speer and his predecessors and it casts stark new light on his role in sustaining the Third Reich to its bloody end. For it is only by re-examining the economic underpinnings of the Third Reich, by focusing on questions of land, food and labour that we can fully get to grips with the breathtaking process of cumulative radicalization that found its most extraordinary manifestation in the Holocaust. The first aim of this book, therefore, is to reposition economics at the centre of our understanding of Hitler’s regime, by providing an economic narrative that helps to make sense of and underpin the political histories produced over the last generation." From the book

 Tooze has produced a brilliant highly illuminating history.

Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade.

Mel Ulm

 

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine by Erin Litteken- 2023- 410 Pages

 The Lost Daughters of Ukraine by Erin Litteken- 2023- 410 Pages

This is the second marvelously done work of historical fictuon, set in Ukraine, by Erin Litteken I have had the pleasure of reading.

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine takes us into the World War Two and after years in the Ukraine. It tells a story of the barbaric treatment of people who just wanted to live in peace. The Ukraine was a battle ground for the Germans and the Russians.

The Germans begin to select Ukrainians, ultimately any healthy person over ten, for shipping to work camps. We see their anguish knowing the weapons they make will be used to kill other Ukrainians.

A person's ethnic background was of prime importance.

As the two sisters are driven from their home they are separated from their loved ones, trying to keep hope alive.

There are many exciting events. (The depiction of the bombing of Dresden, where they were living, reminded me of Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut)

This is the best treatment of life in a displaced person's camp I have ever read.

The ending is very gratifying. The characters are perfectly done.  

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine is included in The Kindle Unlimited Program.

note from the author

"It’s been one year since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In that time, countless war crimes have been committed. Throughout it all, the world has witnessed the strength and tenacity of Ukrainians battling for their right to exist. But Ukraine’s earth is soaked in the blood of generations of its brave defenders.

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine — combines history, fiction, and my own family’s experiences in Ukraine and as refugees to create the story of a family ripped apart by World War II. I’m honored to share this deeply personal novel with you, but I am, sadly, once again releasing a book about a past attack on Ukraine during the current invasion.

Keep Ukraine in your hearts. Listen to and elevate the voices of people living through this horror. Learn about their culture and the tragic and beautiful parts of their history to understand why they fight so valiantly for their country. And please continue to support Ukraine in every way you can.

Slava Ukrayini!

Erin"

The Lost Daughters of Ukraine is a great edition to World War Two literature. Litteken provides a list of non-fiction works on the war in Ukraine for which I am grateful.

Mel Ulm

A Cat at Dachau - A Short Story by Elyse Hoffman - 2022- 47 Pages

 A Cat at Dachau - A Short Story by Elyse Hoffman - 2022- 47 Pages

Dachau, located in Upper Bavaria in Southern Germany was one of the first concentration camps established by the Nazis (March 22, 1933). Initially it housed political opponents but later it housed Jews and Roma. Prisoners were subjected to brutal treatment for minor violations of camp rules. Many of the guards were teenage boys. An estimated 40,000 died in Dachau. The camp was liberated on April 22, 1945 by forces from the American Army.

"Of course, SS training was effectively about making the cadets into loyal dogs that would bite and maul without hesitation or question. The aloof cat, ever watchful, ever independent, was anathema to the spirit of the Nazi movement. An SS man who acted like a cat, who carefully observed and escaped if things weren’t good, was a failure of an SS man."

Max, a teenage guard at Dachau,has no qualms about beating Jews, participating in mass tortures, he worships Hitler. He likes drinking after work with his buddies, misses his family and he loves cats.

One day a small, dirty starving cat wanders into Dacau. He is wearing a collar, he was once a pet. Max takes him to a veterinarian, paying for his care. 

He sees the cat has no fear or hatred of Jews. Max begins to think, what if the cat was loved by a Jew, cared for and pampered. Max wonders how could a Jew be kind and unselfish, this is against everything he has been taught.

In the story we get a feeling of what it was like to be a teenage guard. The cat wanders all over the camp, searching for someone.

This is a very moving story. I don't want to give away too much of the plot but I loved the ending.

"A Cat in Dachau" is a delightful story. Cat lovers will be enthralled by this story.

Elyse Hoffman is an award-winning author who strives to tell historical tales with new twists. She loves to meld WWII and Jewish history with fantasy, folklore, and the paranormal. She has written six works of Holocaust historical fiction: The Barracks of the Holocaust five-book series and The Book of Uriel. Elyse’s books are the way to go if you love history and want to read some unique stories." From ElyseHoffman.com

Mel Ulm

:Vilna, The End of the Road

Vilna, The End of the Road by Sarah Shimonovitz -2021- 158 Pages

The original manuscript of the book was written by the author in Yiddish and portions were published in newspaper in 1963. The Hebrew edition of the book was published in 1989. Edited and translated by Nathan Livneh from the Yiddish manuscript. This book is a translation of the Hebrew edition.

'Vilna, the End of the Road" is the story of the survival of a mother and daughter from a large Jewish family firmly established in Vilna, who, with the rest of the family, were also destined to be murdered and thrown into the pits at Ponar. The path of suffering began with the deportation of the Jews from their homes to the ghetto, and from there to the killing forest and the death camps. In the dead of the night, the writer boldly and with determination, jumps from the death train into the unknown, into the surrounding horror." From the Website of Jews from Vilna in Israel

From there, she started her long and tedious journey, often surrounded by deadly enemies. But she was determined to survive and reunite with her son and daughter. Time after time, she risked her life searching the forests for her beloved son, the lost partisan; thus, until the eve of the victory over Hitler, when she returns to Vilna, her city, in hope of finding her children. On her way back, alongside many armed Red Army convoys, she passed by Ponar, and remembers her loved ones, and the beloved martyrs of Vilna, sinking into melancholic reflections on the past.

This is not just the end of her personal journey. It is also the end of Jewish Vilna, the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," whose reputation had spread among the Jews the world over."

Vilna was in the years before Germany invaded called the Jerusalem of Lithuania, renowned for its high scholarship. (The military occupation of Lithuania by Nazi Germany lasted from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 to the end of the Battle of Memel on January 28, 1945.)
One of the lessons quickly learned by even casual students of the Holocaust is that the Christian citizens of countries conquered by the Germans joined in the killing of Jews with great joy and enthusiasm. In this memoir Christian Lithuanians saw getting Jews out of Vilna would give them an opportunity to steal their property and was also a way of sucking up to the Germans, who they greatly feared. There a few good Christian Lithuanians portrayed in Vilna, the End of the Road but very few. Many just liked killing Jews to whom they felt, rightly, inferior.

"For the Jews of Vilnius, the Germans brought with them the inferno itself, in all kinds of strange and different forms. And they deluged us every day, and in increasing quantities. All at once, we became completely defenseless people, or more precisely: mice in a trap. And if the Germans weren’t enough, auxiliary forces,gangs of murderers rose up, who thoroughly enjoyed serving as the “weapon bearers” of their German masters in the murdering of Jews. First in line, in the light of day, were the Lithuanian shooters. They called themselves the Ypatingas (Ypatingasis būrys; the special squad). They wanted to be more Nazi than the Nazis, and started catching Jews and shooting them on the street. Then they began to remove the Jews from their homes. They surrounded entire neighborhoods and quarters, and removed all of the men, supposedly to work, except that they were led to Ponary. “And none ever returned"
We see the level of fear rising rapidly. The Jews of Vilna knew the ultimate goal of the Germans was to kill all the Jews in the country.  The memoir does a marvellous job of letting us feel the horror.
Soon the author, a wife and mother from a well off family, is separated from her family and put on a train on the way to the camp. We know from so many memoirs the horror of the train. The author makes a daring and dangerous leap from the train. The portrayal of her efforts to survive we very exciting. She explains that she was able to pass as Christian. She pretended to be Russian. Some of the people who helped her talked about how glad they were the Germans were getting rid of the Jews.
She was elated when the Russians began to invade Lithuania.
The memoir closes with her return to Vilna where ultimately she is reunited with her daughter and she learns her son, who fought with the Partisans against the
Germans and her husband are both dead.
Christians who she had given her property before she left lie to her in a venal fashion when she asks for her property.

"We arrived in Israel in 1949 and the moment we had pretty much settled in, my mother began writing her memories. To this day, I can still remember her sitting day and night, writing and erasing and typing again, steadfastly and devotedly. What she wrote did not get published for decades. One copy went to Yad Vashem and portions were published in a Yiddish newspaper abroad. After her death, I decided to publish my mother’s memories. In honor of her extraordinary and regal personality. Her tragedy and the tragedy of the Jewish people from a personal standpoint – as they occurred. She wrote them down for her and for her family and for the next generations. It is also in memory of the Jewish Vilna that was destroyed and will never be the same again. Zuta Averbach-Shimonovitz Written by the author’s daughter in the Hebrew edition which she published in 1989."

Vilna, The End of the Road is included in The Kindle Unlimited Program

Mel Ulm

The Libraian Spy by Madeline Martin - 2022- 401 pages

 The Libraian Spy by Madeline Martin - 2022- 401 pages

In December of 2021 I read The Last Bookstore in London by Madeline Martin, set in London during the Blitz years of World War Two. I loved this deeply moving vivid account of the impact of Germany's bombing of London on a small Bookstore.

I was delighted when her just recently published novel, The Libraian Spy, was offered in a flash sale of the Kindle Edition for $1.95.

The Libraian Spy is set during World War Two in Paris as well as Lyon and Lisbon. Paris is occupied by the Germans. Portugal is neutral but in danger of being invaded. People come from all over Europe to Lisbon hoping to get a visa to go to America. 

Ava loved working as a librarian at The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C, she loved her job:

"There was nothing Ava Harper loved more than the smell of old books. The musty scent of aging paper and stale ink took one on a journey through candlelit rooms of manors set amid verdant hills or ancient castles with turrets that stretched up to the vast, unknown heavens. These were tomes once cradled in the spread palms of forefathers, pored over by scholars, devoured by students with a rapacious appetite for learning. In those fragrant, yellowed pages were stories of the past and eternal knowledge. It was a fortunate thing indeed she was offered a job in the Rare Book Room at the Library of Congress where the archaic aroma of history was forever present."

 Then one day Ava is asked to go to Lisbon to work attached to the American Embassy gathering information from publications that might help the Allied War effort. America had not yet entered the war but was helping. Ava was recruited for her expertise microfilming documents.

Meanwhile, in occupied France, Elaine has begun an apprenticeship at a printing press run by members of the Resistance. It’s a job usually reserved for men, but in the war, those rules have been forgotten. Yet she knows that the Nazis are searching for the press and its printer in order to silence them.

As the battle in Europe rages, Ava and Elaine find themselves connecting through coded messages and discovering hope in the process.

There are lots of exciting developments, I became very involved with Ava and Elaine. Elaine's husband was very against her getting involved with the resistance. Ava's brother is fighting in the American Army. Lisbon is full of desperate refugees from all over Europe. In Lyon Elaine gives her ID card to a Jewish woman to save her from the camps. The Gestapo takes Elaine into custody in a very frightening segment.

Food is very much a central issue. Foodies will be ready for a trip to Lisbon. Rationing is very strict in Lyon. If one German is killed by the resistance, they kill 100 French persons in retaliation.  

Both cities are very brilliantly depicted.  

The Libraian Spy is obviously very well researched. It kept me enthralled from the start.

"Madeline Martin is a New York Times and International Bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance.

"She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), one incredibly spoiled cat and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves to travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany." From Madelinemartin.com

Mel Ulm

 

Japanese WWII Literature- A Guide to Getting Started

Getting Started in Japanese Literature

Five Great WWII Literary Works

by Japanese Writers

The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

Japanese Literature Five Reading Challenge

The Japanese Literature 3 challenge opened up a whole new reading world for me.  I think a lot of people would like to read more or even their first Japanese Literary work but they do not know where to start.   If you wander the big chain book stores you will not see much besides the work of Haruki Murakami.    Since I read my first work of Japanese literature back in July 2009 I have read about 100 works.     I am not an academic and make no claims of expertise at all but I want to share my experience a bit.   I  will do, I think, three or four Reading Life Guides to Japanese Literature to help participants in the challenge decide what to read.     The first one will be The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in Japanese WWII literature.  I have read about 20 novels and shorter works written by Japanese authors about the Japanese experience in WWII.   Some are by Japanese  soldiers, some by victims of the Atom bomb attacks, and some were by Japanese opposed to the war.  I will post briefly on my "Top Five Japanese WWII Works.

1. The Crazy Iris and other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath selected and introduced by Kenzaburo Oe.     Eight stories about the days right after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some by survivors.    These are some of the very wisest and saddest stories I have ever read.     Some of the writers went on to become big literary stars, some never wrote another story.

2.    One Man's Justice by Akira Yoshimura.    This is an account of the post WWII 

       life of a Japanese soldier who cut the head off an American POW after he and

       his unit knew they  had surrendered.   I think this is a totally brilliant novel that 

       makes us understand what it was like for the Japanese after WWII.   We follow

       the central character as he runs from the Americans, as he spends his time in

       prison and in his years of freedom.   In his mind, he did nothing wrong (as far 

       he was ever told by his leaders the Americans and their allies had attacked

       Japan and killed millions of civilians out of race hatred.) This is a great novel.

3.    Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka centers on the experience of a Japanese 

       soldier in the southern Philippines right after the return of the Americans.

       He is too ill to fight so he is turned out of his unit and told to go to the 

       coast and look for a boat home.    In other words he is thrown out as useless

       with the expectation by his superiors that he will be killed.    We see in this

       novel the conman humanity in this soldier as he slowly begins to

       understand his superiors care nothing about him.   Ooka was himself a 

       combat soldier in the Philippines until he was captured by the Americans.

      He carried a copy of The Red and the Black in his rucksack.

4.   The Burmese Harp by Michio Takeyama is a world class treasure.   UNESCO

      sponsored its translation into English.     It is about a soldier in a Japanese

      Army unit stationed in Burma.   The casualty rate among Japanese soldiers 

      was very high and when a soldier was killed his body had to be left 

      where it fell, contrary to all religious tradition.    This powerful book

      is about one man's attempt to live within the strictures of his Buddhist faith

      while serving in the Japanese army in Burma.    This is a great work of art.

5.    The Black Rain by  Masuji Ibuse  takes place in Hiroshima from August 4 to

       August 15, 1945.   The atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 6,

       1945.     We are there when the residents read the warning leaflets the

       Americans dropped on the city and we are there right after the bomb hits

       and the survivors try to figure out what has happened.   At first a black rain 

       seems to come down on them and they think the Americans are dosing them

       in Kerosene so they can then set them all on fire.   We go through the terrible

       days right after the bomb hits.

       This is a beautiful book about a horrible subject.   As two side notes, as I read
       this I wondered who will be left to write the great novels about it if there is a
       WW III and I was somehow pleased to know Ibuse was also an admirer of
       Stendhal.    Ibuse was drafted into the Japanese army and served as a professor
       of Japanese culture in a Singapore university during the war.
   
     

Please let us know what your favorite Japanese WWII  works are.  I know there are lots of other great Japanese works about WWII but these are some ones I endorse without reservation.

I think I will next write a guide to Japanese Noir literature-The Darker Side of Tokyo

Then Japanese Historical novels-I am aware of some wonderful ones

       Mel u

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower

Embracing Defeat:  Japan in the Wake of World War II by John Dower  (2000, 680 pages, 5237 KB)

In order to understand the post WWII Japanese novel, one of my core interests, you have to understand the totally devastating effect defeat in WWII had on the psyche of the Japanese people.   Seconding to having been there and lived through it I can think of no better way to acquire this knowledge than by reading Embracing Defeat:  Japan in the Wake of World War II  by John Dower.   To try to convey the enormity of this consider that the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, was not considered as God's representative on earth as some might view the Pope, he was seen in the belief structure of Japan as actually being define, being God.  Dower does a wonderful job of describing the reaction of the ordinary person to hearing the Emperor announce on the radio, in a high voice speaking Japanese as it was spoken hundreds of years ago (as if one spoke in Shakespearean English) that the war was over and Japan was surrendering.  Many people threw themselves on the ground in shock, some for shame and other for joy.

I really strongly urge anyone with more than a passing interest in Japanese literature to read this book.   One of the biggest sources of shame to the Japanese men was how the women of Japan prostituted themselves to Americans and how Japanese children quickly came to worship chocolate bearing GIs.    The millions of Japanese soldiers who came home after the war, often to find their families and homes gone, were treated with scorn and often hatred.  The average Japanese very quickly came to see the country as having been lead into a war they could never win by military leaders. The Japanese totally repudiated any sense of guilt for the war.  Dower talks about how MacArthur (who was in fact ruler of Japan from the end of the war up until 1952) wanted to keep Hirohito in power (lots of people, including America's allies, wanted him to be hung as a war criminal-it is clear he either knew of the atrocities or he was an idiot) so he could tell the Japanese people to follow the directives of the Americans.  Because of language barriers, Americans had to rely on Japanese to actually give the orders to the Japanese.

Dower talks about how the need to survive through illegal commerce in the black market greatly corrupted Japanese society, how the pervasive years of hunger left a heavy mark.   He talks about how the Americans did succeed in building a democratic society in Japan.   He lets us see how the Americans ran the country.  Needless to say, with a million plus mostly young service men just out of years of bloody war  now stationed in and ruling Japan, a huge sex industry sprang up to service their needs.   Japan also had to find a way to deal with the millions of returning soldiers.  There were also many foreign workers such as Koreans and Filipinos that the Japanese brought into work as slave laborers.

Dower does talk about whether it was actually necessary to drop the two atom bombs as many felt the Japanese were ready to surrender, partially in fear of a Russian invasion of millions, seeking revenge for the Russian-Japanese war.  Others think, and this was the idea put forth by the propaganda machinery, that each Japanese was ready, 100 Million of them, to die in defense of their country so dropping the bombs saved many more lives than it cost.  Personally I think dropping the bombs was the right thing to do.  The Japanese and Germans were also working on Nuclear weapons and would have carpet bombed their enemies with them if they could have.

Once the war was over, ordinary Japanese actually began to make jokes about the Emperor and some wanted the dynasty ended.  

As a personal note, of this 688 pages books, 300 pages are footnotes and references to texts that substantiate the author's points.  I am starting to see this as a wasteful practice for non-academic books.  I think money could be saved and paper also if instead of  including 300 pages of footnotes, authors put the notes online with a link in the book to the notes so those few people who desire to read 1000 footnotes can do so.

"The Rifle" by Nobuo Kojima 小島 信夫

"The Rifle" by Nobuo Kojima (1952, 12 pages, translated by Lawrence Rogers)

A Unique Japanese WWII Story

"The gun had become my woman"-said by a Japanese soldier in Manchuria, 1941

Nobuo Kojima (1915 to 2006-Japan) work is said to deal mostly with the effect of the defeat in WWII on the minds of the Japanese.   For many years he was a university professor in English literature translating into Japanese writers like Dorothy Parker and Barnard Malamud.   

"The Rifle"  is a wonderful anti- war short story.   Our narrator was a soldier in the Japanese army in Manchuria during WWII.   He has no great love for the emperor, he has no real political awareness as to why the war is going on, he has no fanatical hatred for Americans or Australians, and he does not come from a samurai family.   He loves one thing about the war and that is his rifle.  He caresses it, he strokes it, he obsessively cleans "her".     He thinks of a woman he had an affair with when he touches his rifle.   He likes target practice and is a champion, as long as he can use his special rifle.    

In one really powerful scene a number of captives are brought in the area where he is stationed.   One of the captives is a woman.    His sergeant, whom he admires, ties the woman to a stake in the ground.   He tells our narrator to walk 100 meters and then shoot her.   After he shoots her he is to run at her full speed and stab her with his bayonet.    He wants to please and he figures the woman must deserve this for why else would his sergeant give him this order.   He is so proud when he gets to her body and sees he shot her right in the heart.   The sergeant  tells him (the young man has not experienced combat yet) "now you are a man" and he bloats up with pride.

This story is included in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, along with 34 other short stories by the very best writers.    I am reading all these stories and posting on a number of them.   

Mel u

"Blind Chinese Soldiers" by Hirabayashi Taiko

"Blind Chinese Soldiers" by Hirabayashi Taiko 平林 たい子   (1946, 5 pages)

One of the First Post War Japanese Works

Critical of the Military

Japanese Literature on The Reading Life

The Reading Life Guide to Japanese WWII Literature

Hirabayashi Taiko (1905 to 1972, Japan) decided she wanted to be a writer at age 12.   In 1946 she won the first post WWII award for best literary achievement by a woman.   The in English biographical data on her is not real informative.   She won several high prestige literary awards and was interested in Japan yakuza.   Based on checking Amazon and Goodreads, it appears this story maybe the only one of her works that has been translated into English-the translator is Noriko Lippit.   If true this is a terrible shame as "Blind Chinese Soldiers" presents a very  powerful indictment of the horror and absurdities of war.  

I read seven Japanese short stories today from the great collection The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories edited by Thomas Goossen.   I was debating whether to post on them in groups or one by one.   In the case of "Blind Chinese Soldiers"  I decided to post on it individually because it presents a such  stunning image and because there is very little on this  author to be found in English on Google.   (I am sorry to say it cannot, as far as I can tell, be read online)

The story is set in a Tokyo railroad station.   The day is March 9, 1945, the day after a giant bombing raid on Tokyo.    The narrator describes himself as an intellectual turned farmer.   He (could be a woman also) notices that as a train pulls up to the station there are about 100 police on the train dock all carrying police batons.  Men in a orderly line in uniforms of the kind that Chinese soldiers drafted into the Japanese Army in Manchuria wore.   There are about 500 of the soldiers and all are blind.   Most are crying.   The Japanese military escorts treat them cruelly, hitting them with their sticks and telling them to hurry up.   People in Tokyo by 1945 were hardened to the horrors of war and nobody spoke up against the war but this shocks the people in the train station.   They ask the commander of the Japanese what happened to these men.  He says "Who knows" maybe they were hurt in an explosion or maybe in a gas war experiment.    Nobody wants to say to much but everyone is horrified and feels  the humanity of these men their government has used in the worse way.   After the war is over in a few months when the narrator is back in the station, he asks the station master what happened to the blind Chinese soldiers.    Nobody, of course, knows.

I guess this maybe my only experience with Hirabayashi Taiko.    I am very glad I was at least able to read this great short story.   

Mel u

Totto-Chan The Little Girl in the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyangai

Totto-Chan The Little Girl in the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyangai (1981, 78 pages, translated by Dorothy Britton, 1984)

Memoir of a Tokyo WWII Childhood

by a Mass Media Super Star

Totto-Chan The Little Girl in the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyangai (1933-Tokyo) is the memoir of the elementary school years of Japan's first talk show host.    Tetso Kuroyangai is a media superstar in Japan.    The obvious comparison would be to refer to her as the Oprah Winfrey of Japan.    She has interviewed over 2000 people for her talk show which is the most popular and longest running such show on Japanese Television.    She  has achieved great success as an actress and an author.    What ever she says commands respect in the Japanese media.   This book is about her experiences as a student at a very special for its day elementary school in Tokyo with WWII as our background.

Totto-Chan The Little Girl in the Window  Totto-Chan The Little Girl in the Window was first published as a series of magazine articles.    When it was first published as a book it broke all records for book sales in Japan,  selling nearly Five Million copies.   It is written in a very simple fashion and might be best seen as young adult or almost a child's book.    Most Japanese schools in WWII were places of great discipline and memorization.    No "bad" behavior such as speaking out was tolerated at all.    Kuroyangai had just gotten expelled from her elementary school for talking to much in class.    Luckily for her she was not blamed by her parents.    They placed her in a school that went way out of its way to develop the personality of its students.    The book could be called "super heart warming",  and that maybe why it was such a best seller.    The chapters are all short and each one covers a different episode at the school.    The headmaster does seems like a wonderful educator and I would be happy to send a child to  his school.

I really found the few mentions of  how WWII intruded on the lives of the school and its students and faculty very interesting.    The students were taught that Americans were devils and told to prepare for American bombs.     It was very moving to see the young boys 12 and under in the school acting out the role of soldiers.    You could feel the heart break when the school was destroyed in a bombing raid.     The author attributes her success in life to her years at this school.

I was given a copy of this book by a very generous reader of my blog in New Delhi.   I would tell others to seek out a library copy if it sounds interesting to you.    I do not see it as a book I would suggest someone pay full prize for on Amazon.   It is fun but basically an insubstantial read probably achieving its status as a best seller from the high prestige of its author.    To most  readers, I would say if you cannot find away to read this nice book for free, then read something else.    I am glad I read it as I was curious to see why it would sell so many books.

Mel u

"Sakurajima" by Haruo Umezaki-A Look at Life on a Japanese Navy Suicide Base

"Sakurajima" by Haruo Umezaki (1946, 57 pages, translated by D. E. Mills)


The Reading Life Japanese Literature Project

Japanese Literature Five Challenge

"Sakurajima" by Haruo Umezaki is a very interesting short story set on a Japanese Naval Base that was the launching base for naval suicide attacks by boat, mini -submarine and even human torpedoes.   The story begins around June 1945 and ends shortly after Japan surrenders.

Umezaiki (1915 to 1965-Fukuoka,Japan) served in the Japanese Navy during WWII as a signal man and as a code breaker.    He was drafted into the Navy.    After the war his life was entirely devoted to his writing.    As far as I can tell, this story is the only one of his works currently available in translation.

"Sakurajima"  is a very interesting look into the mind set of a Japanese Navy man, drafted into a war he did not want and does not quite understand the point off assigned to a suicide base.    The base was a launching place for attacks on US Navy vessels by suicide attacks.   It was very interesting to see the tension between the men who were being trained for naval kamikaze attacks and the men on the base whose goal was to survive to the end of the war not to die in the service of their Emperor.     The central character in the story and others on the base see that the kamikaze trainees as basically very young fools, in many cases they are very "country".    When ever a "normal" navy man walks past the kamikaze sailors they are given a hateful look.

We can see the growing doubts in the mind of the lead character.   The petty officers who directly control the men do the best they can to enforce the ideals of the war.   When the lead character asks what they will do when the Americans invade, he is told they will all launch suicide attacks on them.   He is no longer able to see the point of this in a war in which it looks like they will lose.   I felt his shock when for the first time he hears an officer say not "when we win this war" but "if we win".   Umezaki does a great job of showing us the extreme state of bewilderment on the base when they get word of the Atom bombs and the surrender of the Japanese.

"Sakurajima" is included in an anthology of Japanese war stories, The Catch and Other War Stories edited and introduced by Shoichi Sacki.   It is out of print but can be bought on Amazon.   I previously posted on a story from the collection, "Bones" by Fumiko Hayashi.


I enjoyed this story and I think anyone with a special interest in Japanese  literature about WWII in the Pacific would appreciate it.

Mel u