Imperial Japan's World War Two, 1931-1945 By Werner Gruhl Transaction Publishers, 2007 - History - 254 pages Gruhl's narrative makes clear why Japan's World War II aggression still touches deep emotions with East Asians and Western ex-prisoners of war, and why there is justifiable sensitivity to the way modern Japan has dealt with this legacy. Knowledge of the enormity of Japan's total war is also necessary to assess the United States and her allies policies toward Japan, and their reactions to its actions, extending from Manchuria in 1931 to Hiroshima in 1945. Gruhl takes the view that World War II started in 1931 when Japan, crowded and poor in raw materials but with a sense of military invincibility, saw empire as her salvation and invaded China. Japan's imperial regime had volatile ambitions but limited resources, thus encouraging them to unleash a particularly brutal offensive against the peoples of Asia and surrounding ocean islands. Their 1931 to 1945 invasions and policies further added to Asia's pre-war woes, particularly in China, by badly disrupting marginal economies, leading to famines and epidemics. Altogether, the victims of Japan's World War Two aggression took many forms and were massive in number. Gruhl offers a survey and synthesis of the historical literature and documentation, statistical data, as well as personal interviews and first-hand accounts to provide a comprehensive overview analysis. The sequence of diplomatic and military events leading to Pearl Harbor, as well as those leading to the U.S. decision to drop the atom bomb, are explored here as well as Japan's war crimes and post war revisionist/apologist views regarding them. This book will be of intense interest to Asian specialists, and those concerned with human rights issues in a historical context.
I do think that this "new" look at the collateral deaths caused by the Japanese expansion through the 30's and up until 1945 is quite interesting. These millions of "extra" deaths show, IMO, the real catastrophe that these countries endured under Japanese rule.
"Why did Japan go to war?" has always been the interesting question to me. I'll snag this book and see what Gruhl has to say. Marion & Susie Harries' SOLDIERS OF THE SUN spends about two-thirds of its pages in pre-1941 writing, with a large part in the hundred years before WWII. Their work makes me think the Imperial Army knew they were facing social extinction, crushed by the uber-rich zaibatzu class and the lowly merchant class. "Military career" in a country of merchants was worse-than-death to them. Then, throw in the glories that the Navy received in 1905's Tsushima victory (and all the lost battles that the Army suffered in that same war), and the Army was in serious 'self-doubt'. I think there was an unwritten, perhaps unstated but somehow mass-attitude of "I am a soldier - I must die gloriously or my life has no meaning! Now - where can I find a war?!!" mentality. I'd spent years reading - in almost horrified fascination - with the Japanese Army's insubordinate young-turk mentality labeled "gekokujo", which means "to rule from below." But this is actually a common behavior for industrialized societies that knew the oldest and wisest workers were the best. New technologies forced such greater literacy and education that Elders simply couldn't keep up - the young pups had to step up and learn 'newfangled devices'. Which led to disrespectful perceptions (or truths) towards Elders. And suddenly, it was the younger employees who had to help run things. So the insubordinate gekokujo attitudes were somewhat hand-in-hand with Japan's recent industrialization as the 20th Century picked up speed. Then the Japanese Army HQ started shipping out their problem-children offers to Manchuria & Korea in the 1920s, after receiving German concessions after WWI. I think the Tokyo HQ was thinking, "We don't want them starting more rebellions here in Tokyo! (ie, the 1926 and 1936 coup attempts)." So those Manchurian bases were full of chomping-at-the-bit hellions, probably seeing they had little opportunities for glory back home - they had to win it on trumped up battlefields on the mainland. "Say - what's that bridge and railroad over there doing? Let's blow it up and blame it on the Chinese!"
My apologies for being somewhat off-topic but the ironies of history are interesting. Japan was, in outward sentiment, an ally of the Entente Powers in WW1. It provided invaluable convoy protection. But with an eye to economic and military expansion Japan provided these services at a price. The German leased territories in Shantung province and at Tsingtow in China, its island possessions in the north Pacific, the Carolines, Marshalls and Marianas were occupied in an an almost bloodless transition of power by 7th Nov 1914. This heady success was followed by the infamous twenty-one demands made of China in 1915. These were modified in light of international outrage at China being transformed into a Japanese protectorate. The Russian Revolution of 1917 provided Japan with an unrivalled opportunity for territorial expansion. The Entente Powers, fighting a desperate war on the western front, had little or no arms to spare to support the opponents of Bolshevism. The Japanese were asked to intervene in the east with a force of 7,000 to provide assistance to the White Armies and guard the great storages of arms, ammunition and other supplies maintained along the Trans Siberian Railway. The IJA sent a modest 70,000 troops and finally occupied a great corridor of territory as far as Lake Baikal. For Russia, this was twisting the dagger in the wound after the awful victory in the Straits of Tsushima where the IJN sank almost every ship in the Imperial Russian Fleet in their war of 1904-05. The irony arose years later when the Japanese court and government chose to use Russia as a mediary to negotiate a settlement of Japanese war claims with the Allies during WW2. The Russian whose job it was to treat with them was that arch-survivor of political intrigue Vyascheslav Molotov whose appreciation of history was apparently considerably more acute than those importuning him. Quite naturally, he was diplomatically obfuscatory, tardy, neglectful and might be said to treat with them in a manner the Japanese might call "mokusatsu". I have wondered if this word may have appeared in the diplomatic reports of these negotiations sent to Tokyo. Molotov provided plenty of reasons for using it. As I said, sorry for the diversion. I'm allowed to claim a "senior moment".
