Society + Culture,

What Happens to People?
By James L. Secor 

In the aftermath of war, people are often forgotten. Perhaps to protect us from the general, if not our own, atrocities we talk about Nations and The People, never simply people. That is too personal. The closest we get to people is The Enemy and they are all the same and all bad.

With the last world war, we have a plethora of holocaust pictures and shots of bombed out cities, not all from ground level. We have aerial shots of the destruction of our bombing campaign, including Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So pervasive and powerful was the wartime propaganda in painting the enemy as barbarians that until recently the history of Japan, the civilians we decimated, has remained faceless. One hundred million hearts beating as one. Do all Japanese look alike? They think alike. An obedient herd? Nothing could be farther from the truth.

To further hide our atrocities we only see the rapid, magnificent rise to international economic prominence of the country and take the credit for its economic resurgence. We, in fact, substituted one form of slavery for another. It lasted for six years and eight months, the war for three years and eight months. We forever proclaimed we didn't wage war on civilians only on workers and then downplayed incidents of mass murder or found scapegoats for orders passed down from above while horrifying the generals who made the decisions that we declared in the wake of war to be crimes against humanity--by others.

Not until 1999 was the post-war history of the people told in John Dower's staggering book Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II. Dower does two things in this book: he destroys stereotypes and he makes war human. He personalized brutality and inhumanity. Unlike virtually all histories, particularly of the victors', what Dower gives us is a history of people as opposed to Nation-states and Governments. In Japan, there was no people's history until the 17th century. Here, 55 years after the last war, Dower writes the first history of the Japanese people in the 20th century.

The first thing we learn is that many, many Japanese were relieved that the hell of war was over. Despite military propaganda and exhortations, most knew the war was a lost cause long before 1945. Some never wanted it to begin with. However, to state such an opinion, even to one's friends, was certain death. The writers and intellectuals who had done so had long since been imprisoned or executed. The one mind of Japan was maintained by the military regime and its efficient and effective secret police. Indeed, the Emperor's message had to be composed in private and kept secret from the military leaders and cabinet until the time of delivery. (It is important here to realize that since the ninth century only one emperor has ever really wielded power and he was eventually compromised.)

After the initial shock of both hearing the Emperor's voice, which many could not understand because of his stilted formal language, and that the war was over, after the tears and fainting, after the celebrations--people actually cheered outside the Imperial residence--there was reality. And the reality was devastating. Most of the people had nowhere to live. There were nine million homeless, about 125,000 being "war orphans." There was no sewage system and no running water. There was no electricity. Most had no more than one set of clothes. Most found their late war bowl of barley gruel disappearing. Especially the war widows who also saw their government checks end. Their fighting men had become something less than heroes and their families embarrassments.

Neither the government nor the Occupation helped matters much. Indeed, for the most part Occupation policies encouraged the deterioration of society by supporting the very elements of that society that propagated the war and enriched themselves at their own people's expense. The crooked went unpunished; scapegoats took the role of justice.

People lived in homes made of tents, lean-tos and tin. They lived under the rubble. They lived in the subways, the railroad stations, under bridges and trestles. And they lived out in the streets without any protection from the elements. All the material that might have been available had been stockpiled by the rich, the businesses, the absconded politicians who perpetrated the misguided, fanatical war in the first place. Any effort toward rebuilding was for these businesses. Occasionally, the police--an impotent, sympathetic lot--were mobilized and the subways raided, the homeless, starving men, women and children arrested and thrown in jail. The kids were counted like animals. Instead of hitori (one person), futari (two people), sannin (three people), it was ippiki, nihiki, sanbiki. The counter "hiki" is only used for animals.

Food was so scarce by the end of the war that the average male was four inches shorter than his pre-war counterpart was. Post-war, the government not only continued exhorting its citizens to frugality, a now-perverted Confucian value, but issued pamphlets on how to prepare unusual goods and the immensely popular Fujin kurabu (Housewives Club) had recipes for grasshoppers. "Malnutrition and dystrophy" became watchwords with 733 people dying by mid-November 1945 in the five biggest cities--probably a low count. Rice once more was an unheard of quantity and the wartime staple of barley gruel deteriorated to potato broth (without the potato, it could be used again), acorns, orange peels, root of the arrowroot, wheat-bran bread and water. Schools were let out before noon so they would not have to serve lunch.

One schoolteacher went without his lunches, giving the food to his students, went without dinner so his family could eat and eventually starved to death. An isolated instance? Not by a long shot. So, after killing them and destroying their livelihood, the Japanese government along with the U.S. Occupation force starved the remaining populace, basically doing nothing more than issuing proclamations. Candy bars chewing gum, sugar, nylons and directives for the Occupation forces to have nothing to do with the vile yellow horde helped considerably in furthering the inhumanity of the war.

People were dying everywhere. In the Okinawan Repatriation Camps--they could not go home for the damage and lack of food--15-20 people/day died. Out in the streets, so many died that the bodies could not be disposed of and were left to rot. There are no reports of cannibalism; but suicide was rampant, due to what was called the kyodatsu condition. This was an intense depression and despair and a belief that there was no hope for the future. The Depression besetting post-war Japan made The Great Depression suffered by the U.S. in the 1930's seem like a coming out party.

The kyodatsu condition also ushered in an era of despair, dissipation and nihilism. The disease moved down into the masses from the intellectuals and brought about a severe drinking problem sometimes resulting in death because there was not any use really doing anything else. This was the kasutori culture, named after the cheap liquor available on the streets for a pittance. A nice way to end the day when two yen was a good day's wages (27 cents).

Another adjustment made, and hailed at first by Macarthur and the Occupation hierarchy, was for women to become prostitutes to satisfy the invasion forces. The government even solicited "volunteers" for Emperor and Country. Later, after it had become successful, Macarthur damned the practice. The GIs' appetites were voracious, some whores servicing 60 men a day. Some families even reverted to Tokugawa practices by selling their girls into whoredom for a spot to eat. Some quit. Some committed suicide. Some became famous.

One in particular became an icon, Rakucho no Otoki, Otoki of the Yurakucho district, a well-known haven for streetwalkers, after a now famous letter by an anonymous prostitute to the editor of the Mainichi newspaper:

I slept there [in Ueno Station] and looked for work, but could not find anything, and there were three consecutive days when I went without eating. Then on the night of the third day, a man I did not know gave me two rice balls. I devoured them. The following night he again brought me two rice balls. He then asked me to come to the park because he wanted to talk with me. I followed him. That is when I sank into the despised profession of being a "woman of the dark." [ Mainichi Shimbun, Sept. 29, 1946]

Otoki's words were on point:

Of course, it is bad to be a hooker. But without relatives or jobs due to the war disaster, how are we supposed to live? . . .There aren't many of us who do this because we like it. . .but even so, when we try to go straight and find a job, people point their fingers at us and say we were hookers      . . . .I've turned many of these girls straight and sent them back into society, but then. . .they all get picked on and chased out and end up back here under the tracks. . . .You cannot trust society. They despise us.

A very popular song of the times, "In the Flow of the Stars," provoked by the Mainichi letter, led to one particular phrase being adopted as a prickly social question: konna onna ni dare ga shita, "Who made me such a woman?"

The next thing that happened was that virtually everyone became a thief. People stole anything and everything, selling it to black market dealers--the only people who got rich in post-war Japan--if they could not immediately eat or use it for protection. Most everyone became a frequenter of the black market, too. Prices were outrageous but it was the only place to get goods of any kind. Government crackdowns picked up the thieves and the people who bought at the black market and let the dealers continue their lucrative, ludicrous activities. The families of these petty thieves usually succumbed as the lawbreakers were sent to jail.

The Occupation lasted longer than the war and the situation was not so very much better in 1952 when the Americans pulled out. How the people managed to live through and overcome the severe depredations of the war is truly amazing. But the plight of people, any people, in the aftermath of war needs to be remembered and made vivid.

Will we witness the same in Iraq when once again, America is through?

======================

Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4