Taken Captive: A Japanese POW's Story

by Shōhei Ōoka, Wayne P. Lammers (Translator)

"I do not know whether I dozed off or passed out, but the next thing I remember is gradually becoming aware of a blunt object striking my body over and over. Just as I realized it was a boot kicking me in the side, I felt my arm being grabbed roughly, and I returned to full consciousness.

"One GI had hold of my right arm, and another had his rifle pointed at me, nearly touching me.

"'Don't move. We're taking you prisoner,' the one with the rifle said."

On January 25, 1945, Private Ooka Shohei of the Japanese Imperial Army was captured by American forces in the Philippines. Near death from starvation and acute malaria, he was nursed back to health by his captors and shipped off to a POW camp. Taken Captive is his powerful and poignant account of life as a prisoner of war. Long regarded as a literary classic in Japan, this extraordinary memoir is appearing in English for the first time.

There are no epic battles or grand scale heroics. This is an intimate, gripping, and ultimately enlightening true story of a sophisticated, middle-aged scholar thrown into a primitive struggle for survival. It is filled with moments of sublime ordinariness--prisoners passing time by playing "20 Questions"--and heartstopping encounters--a lone soldier decides whether or not to shoot an unsuspecting enemy soldier.

The harsh conditions, the daily routines that occupy a prisoner's time, and above all, the psychological struggles and behavioral quirks of captives forced to live in close confinement are conveyed with devastating simplicity and candor. Throughout, the author constantly probes his own conscience, questioning motivations and decisions. What emerges is a multileveled portrait of an individual determined to retain his humanity in an uncivilized environment.

In Taken Captive, Ooka Shohei provides much more than an unprecedented look at the POW experience from a Japanese point of view. His stirring account offers a penetrating exploration of Japanese society, and its values, as embodied by the microcosm of his fellow POWs. Recalling his wartime experiences, Ooka Shohei has created a brilliant work of rare honesty, insight, and emotional subtlety.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 3, 1996

About the author

Shōhei Ōoka (Ōoka Shōhei / 大岡 昇平) was a Japanese novelist, literary critic, and translator of French literature active in Shōwa period Japan. He graduated from Kyoto University in 1932 and majored in French literature, publishing a series of essays on Stendhal and translating some of the French writer's novels. Called to arms in 1944 he was sent to the Philippines where he was taken prisoner by the Americans. During that time he set out to write a series of fiction and nonfiction works focusing on the condition of captivity. Indeed, Ōoka belongs to the group of postwar writers whose World War II experiences at home and abroad figure prominently in their works. Over his lifetime, he contributed short stories and critical essays to almost every literary magazine in Japan. His most important texts are: Ikite Iru Horyo ("Prisoners Alive"), 1949, Tsuma ("Wife"), 1950, Nobi ("Soldier Tamura's War"), 1950. The latter was awarded the Yokomitsu Prize, Japan's most important literary attestation, and the Yomiuri Prize. He resided extensively in Europe and the United States and taught at Japan's Meiji University.

Reviews

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I debated about a 4 or a 5 for this story. I really shouldn't have BECAUSE it is an honest to goodness a 5. The author was a Japanese POW during the latter part of WW 11. He gives us a real insight into what the POW went through from the time he was captured and until he was sent home at the end of the war. He pretty much detailed the little things that you usually don't read from a POW.
I bought this book at the Half-Price book story and glad I did. At $4 it was a steal and worth much more to me.

[Andrew]

So I guess these were, to a much less extreme degree, the experiences that informed Fires on the Plain. And it’s good a series of war stories as any, which all have that consistent trudging theme – of being tired as hell, just wanting to go home, even as they are supposed to be performing a poorly conceived of patriotic duty to the Japanese Empire, with American captors that seem just kind of ill-mannered and not terribly bright. Which is quite the antidote to the typical accounts of the honor-mad warrior ready to commit seppuku at a moment’s notice popular during the time period, from both official imperial and American pop culture accounts. Better even than Ooka’s fiction, I think.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is about a Japanese soldier who was taken captive in World War II. The book is quite an interesting one, especially the insights it gives into how Japanese soldiers thought.

Some of the noteworthy things:

He was captured on January 25, 1945. He was suffering from malaria and had dropped out of a group retreat, and was captured by American soldiers. I say that because the book shows how important the Philippine guerrillas were, and how many Japanese soldiers they either captured or outright killed.

He had given up on a Japanese victory, and held contempt for the General Staff of the military.

He had a chance to kill an American soldier, but didn't take it.

He might have killed himself, as did so many other Japanese soldiers, with their own hand grenade, but, in his case, his grenade was a dud.

He talks about how the soldiers kept diaries, and how these were found by the U.S. troops.

He doesn't think that the war could have been avoided.

Apparently at least some soldiers could bribe their way to advancement in rank.

In relation to the cruelty of the Japanese soldiers, he doesn't apologize. He says "...they [the abuses] are to be denounced because it is in those very abuses that we can find the cause of the army's defeat.""

He talks about how some Japanese officers were literally cannibals.

Even in the POW camps, certain Japanese "leaders" skimmed articles, stole things, and that includes food.

He refers to a soldier who had taken part in the Rape of Nanking, and says the guy "...had absolutely no awareness of having done anything reprehensible."

He also notes: "Our prevailing standards of monogamy seem to have inculcated in us an acceptance of rape and other sexual acts perpetrated against women."" He says that “too much†was made of the rapes in China, and that rape had been a tool of war for ages.

A lot of what he writes shows that the Americans took extremely good care of the POWs, at least in the camp he was in and others he knew about. The POWs were actually eating better and were treated better than those who in Japan, suffering under the U.S. firebombing raids.

He writes about how Japanese nurses in the military also served as comfort women for the soldiers, and they were required to "service" one soldier each day.

He is also anti-homosexuality.

All things taken into consideration, the book seems to show that, even though the writer was well educated and basically an intellectual, he wasn't really that upset at the atrocities that the Japanese soldiers had done. He even has some rather negative things to say about the subject of love in general.

Although this is an interesting book, I would not care to meet the author and I don't think he is "friend" material.

[Nona · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is almost the same as "Fires on the plain", only a little more rough and exhausted trip in the tropical jungle in the WWII.