Pacific War, 1931-1945 [Paperback]

Saburo Ienaga (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0394734963 | ISBN-13: 978-0394734965 | Publication Date: July 12, 1979

A portrayal of how and why Japan waged war from 1931-1945 and what life was like for the Japanese people in a society engaged in total war.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

A portrayal of how and why Japan waged war from 1931-1945 and what life was like for the Japanese people in a society engaged in total war.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (July 12, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394734963
• ISBN-13: 978-0394734965
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars every American should read this book, December 11, 2000

By 

Daniel Ford (at danford dot net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pacific War, 1931-1945 (Paperback)

Americans may be startled to pick up a 256-page book about the Pacific War and discover that Pearl Harbor isn't mentioned until page 135. That's a consequence of Ienaga's belief that the war actually began with the Japanese army's 1931 coup in Manchuria, which led inevitably to war with China, which in turn led to the wider war agaisnt the western Allies. Despite Japan's claims about liberating Asians from colonialism, its purpose in going to war was to obtain the raw materials with which to defeat China. That was one reason the Japanese treated the "liberated" peoples so badly--as badly as they treated their white PWs.

Part of the blame goes to the Japanese military tradition, in which the officers were an elite and the troops were conscripted from the younger sons of tenant farmers. Brutality was the norm, and the enlisted men who stayed in the army and became sergeants were precisely those who would most brutalize the next batch of recruits. Draftees were called issen gorin--roughly, "penny postcards," because that was the cost and the method of obtaining one. Why husband the life of a soldier when he could be replaced for a penny? Ienaga explains that the enlisted soldiers were the bottom of the food chain, that they had no on upon whom to vent their brutality in return.

During WWII, it was fashionable in the U.S. to show General Tojo as the Japanese dictator, making a trio with Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini. But of course that was very far from true, as even American propaganda recognized, since sometimes the emperor Hirohito filled the same role. Ienaga is especially good at explaining this mystery, in which a dictator was imposed by a group of elder statesmen--then deposed when his usefulness was over. Tojo ruled the government and the army, but he never managed to rule the navy--he didn't even learn about the defeat at Midway until a month after four aircraft carriers and a major portion of the navy's fighter planes had gone to the bottom.

This is a valuable book, one of only a half-dozen serious studies by Japanese scholars of World War II available in English. We didn't know our enemy in 1941; we hardly know him any better today.

116 of 148 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Historical curiosity, July 10, 2005

By 

Aulus Gellius (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pacific War, 1931-1945 (Paperback)

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...

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Critical book on Japanese war by Japanese scholar, September 15, 2005

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pacific War, 1931-1945 (Paperback)

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.