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Tales By Japanese Soldiers
"...consists of recollections by Japanese survivors of this terrible campaign, who describe instances of poignant sacrifice, heroism, and occasional compassion shown toward the enemy on both sides....full of imagery and information on the Burma Theater and is recommended, especially for the military historian."-- Library Journal .
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2000
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October 15, 2022
Although it was considered a secondary theater by the British and Americans, the fighting in Burma was protracted and intense. Britain was trying to hold onto its increasingly fraying empire, and having lost Burma, failure to stop the Japanese would have led to losing India as well. The Americans were not keen to prop up the empire, but since Burma was essential to resupplying the Nationalist Chinese armies, whose presence tied down hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops, they provided essential logistics support to keep the British effort going.
Burma was at the end of a long and perilous supply chain for the Japanese, which became even more difficult as the Allies gained air supremacy and their submarines patrolled the sea routes in ever increasing numbers. As such, it would have been very helpful if the retreating British and Indian forces conveniently left behind vast quantities of weapons, ammunition, food, and fuel, which is exactly what they did. The initial defensive efforts were chaotic and poorly coordinated as the British forces stumbled back into India.
This book contains 62 recollections by Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma. Most of them were infantrymen, but there are some support troops represented, two accounts of nurses, and one from a fighter pilot. The selections are short, many only a page or so, and relate specific incidents or memories. Oral histories are popular these days, but the reader must be judicious in deciding what the believe; these are the tales of old men recorded decades after the events they describe, so there had been plenty of time to forget or burnish their memories.
Nevertheless, the book provides a perspective that Western readers do not often get. These soldiers were not the mindless, suicidal, emperor-worshiping automatons as often depicted. Instead, they paint a picture of loyalty, comradeship, and perseverance equal to anything on the Allied side. They paid a heavy price: “Due to the acute and worsening shortage of materiel, and poor planning by stubborn generals, 61 per cent of the 305,501 Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma were killed or died of wounds, disease, malnutrition and starvation, so that only 118,352 returned home by 1947.” (p. 10)
The selections are in chronological order, so the first one show the relatively easy victories at the beginning of 1942. One thing that comes through time and again is how fluid the lines were; commanders did not even know where their own troops were, much less the location of the enemy. As such, a number of the accounts speak of British or Indian tanks, armored cars, or troops moving unconcernedly up to, and even into Japanese lines, where they were quickly dispatched. As the Allied troops retreated in haste and confusion they often left warehouses full of food and ammunition that the Japanese were happy to take, and when roads were blocked by damaged or disabled vehicles, tanks and trucks were often abandoned intact to the pursuers. Had the British high command managed a more coherent retreat, the material shortages that plagued the Japanese in the last years of the war would have become apparent early on.
There is also no mention of harsh treatment toward the native peoples in these recollections. In fact, they are shown happily welcoming Japanese troops to their towns and homes, and giving them whatever food they had. As I read these accounts, I kept thinking back to Max Hastings’s Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, where he writes, “The British, French and Dutch had much to be ashamed of in their behaviour towards their own Asian subject peoples. Nothing they had done, however, remotely matched the extremes, or the murderous cruelty, of Japan’s imperialists.” The Japanese are known to have frequently behaved with astounding barbarity, convinced that their racial superiority meant that no other peoples were of any concern to them.
The closest the book comes to anything like this is a sideways comment that might not even have been intentional. When Allied prisoners were captured who had show exceptional consideration for Japanese killed in the fighting, such as taking the time to carefully wrap enemy bodies, there might be a comment where the commander says that these prisoners are not to be harmed, with the unspoken implication that harm was very much the norm.
I first heard of this book when it was cited in Michael Lowry’s Fighting Through to Kohima, about the Japanese Imphal/Kohima offensive from April-June 1944. Lowry's book is a first-person account by the young British officer, describing the fierce fighting as British and Indian forces attempted to dislodge the Japanese from hills around the town, where they were dug in with overlapping fields of fire and the front lines were often only feet apart. Reading it made me curious about the battle from the perspective of the other side, which is why I sought out this book.
Indeed, the most riveting chapters of this book describe the Kohima offensive. Just to get there the Japanese forces had to cross the Arakan mountains, which were steep and up to 3000 meters high, so the soldiers suffered greatly from the cold. Even at the beginning there were not enough supplies to sustain them, so one division was tasked with taking a herd of cows with them as food, but the cows could not navigate the steep hills, and were lost before the battle began.
The initial assault overcame determined but scattered resistance and the Japanese were able to capture most of the high ground around the town, including, critically, the main source of fresh water. Even as they held on tenaciously, shortages of food and ammunition began to weaken the Japanese hold on the area, leading to improvised tactics for resupply: “We ran out of ammunition and food, so sometimes we went out to attack an enemy position at night, and when the enemy ran away after firing several rounds, we collected rations, bullets and grenades, and used them the next day.” (p. 170)
Eventually, the British build-up of troops and material recaptured the town and the Japanese were forced to retreat. Descriptions of the withdrawal back over the Arakan mountains brought to mind the unfathomable suffering of Napoleon’s troops during the retreat from Moscow. Already weakened by disease and malnutrition, and exhausted by endless marches in difficult terrain, the monsoon season broke on them as they were attempting to cross back over the mountains, turning the roads into seas of cold, slippery mud. Unit cohesion broke down, and men trudged onward, heedless of the suffering around them. Many, unable to go further, committed suicide or simply crawled off to the side of the road to die. “We called the road the ‘Human Remains Highway’. What happened here was beyond the bounds of acceptable human behaviour. It was a vision of hell.” (p. 197)
By the time the remnants reached safety, the divisions had been ruined as fighting forces. “After the attack our rifle companies which originally had 180 men each were reduced to four in the 5th, four in the 6th, sixteen in the 7th and none in the 8th.” (p. 169)
By the beginning of 1945 the tide of battle had turned, and the Allies were able to use their great superiority in tanks to penetrate the Japanese lines over and over. The fighting continued to be bitter and protracted, but the end was no longer in doubt, and by the time the emperor ordered his troops to lay down their arms in August 1945, the Japanese had been pushed entirely out of Burma and back into Thailand.
This was a worthwhile book to read, giving a new perspective on the war. Another book I highly recommend is James MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, one of the great memoirs of World War II, recounting his experiences as a teenage infantryman in Burma in the last year of the war. Fraser would later be known for his Flashman series of comic novels, and as a Hollywood screenwriter for movies such as Force 10 from Navarone and the James Bond film Octopussy.
Burma was at the end of a long and perilous supply chain for the Japanese, which became even more difficult as the Allies gained air supremacy and their submarines patrolled the sea routes in ever increasing numbers. As such, it would have been very helpful if the retreating British and Indian forces conveniently left behind vast quantities of weapons, ammunition, food, and fuel, which is exactly what they did. The initial defensive efforts were chaotic and poorly coordinated as the British forces stumbled back into India.
This book contains 62 recollections by Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma. Most of them were infantrymen, but there are some support troops represented, two accounts of nurses, and one from a fighter pilot. The selections are short, many only a page or so, and relate specific incidents or memories. Oral histories are popular these days, but the reader must be judicious in deciding what the believe; these are the tales of old men recorded decades after the events they describe, so there had been plenty of time to forget or burnish their memories.
Nevertheless, the book provides a perspective that Western readers do not often get. These soldiers were not the mindless, suicidal, emperor-worshiping automatons as often depicted. Instead, they paint a picture of loyalty, comradeship, and perseverance equal to anything on the Allied side. They paid a heavy price: “Due to the acute and worsening shortage of materiel, and poor planning by stubborn generals, 61 per cent of the 305,501 Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma were killed or died of wounds, disease, malnutrition and starvation, so that only 118,352 returned home by 1947.” (p. 10)
The selections are in chronological order, so the first one show the relatively easy victories at the beginning of 1942. One thing that comes through time and again is how fluid the lines were; commanders did not even know where their own troops were, much less the location of the enemy. As such, a number of the accounts speak of British or Indian tanks, armored cars, or troops moving unconcernedly up to, and even into Japanese lines, where they were quickly dispatched. As the Allied troops retreated in haste and confusion they often left warehouses full of food and ammunition that the Japanese were happy to take, and when roads were blocked by damaged or disabled vehicles, tanks and trucks were often abandoned intact to the pursuers. Had the British high command managed a more coherent retreat, the material shortages that plagued the Japanese in the last years of the war would have become apparent early on.
There is also no mention of harsh treatment toward the native peoples in these recollections. In fact, they are shown happily welcoming Japanese troops to their towns and homes, and giving them whatever food they had. As I read these accounts, I kept thinking back to Max Hastings’s Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45, where he writes, “The British, French and Dutch had much to be ashamed of in their behaviour towards their own Asian subject peoples. Nothing they had done, however, remotely matched the extremes, or the murderous cruelty, of Japan’s imperialists.” The Japanese are known to have frequently behaved with astounding barbarity, convinced that their racial superiority meant that no other peoples were of any concern to them.
The closest the book comes to anything like this is a sideways comment that might not even have been intentional. When Allied prisoners were captured who had show exceptional consideration for Japanese killed in the fighting, such as taking the time to carefully wrap enemy bodies, there might be a comment where the commander says that these prisoners are not to be harmed, with the unspoken implication that harm was very much the norm.
I first heard of this book when it was cited in Michael Lowry’s Fighting Through to Kohima, about the Japanese Imphal/Kohima offensive from April-June 1944. Lowry's book is a first-person account by the young British officer, describing the fierce fighting as British and Indian forces attempted to dislodge the Japanese from hills around the town, where they were dug in with overlapping fields of fire and the front lines were often only feet apart. Reading it made me curious about the battle from the perspective of the other side, which is why I sought out this book.
Indeed, the most riveting chapters of this book describe the Kohima offensive. Just to get there the Japanese forces had to cross the Arakan mountains, which were steep and up to 3000 meters high, so the soldiers suffered greatly from the cold. Even at the beginning there were not enough supplies to sustain them, so one division was tasked with taking a herd of cows with them as food, but the cows could not navigate the steep hills, and were lost before the battle began.
The initial assault overcame determined but scattered resistance and the Japanese were able to capture most of the high ground around the town, including, critically, the main source of fresh water. Even as they held on tenaciously, shortages of food and ammunition began to weaken the Japanese hold on the area, leading to improvised tactics for resupply: “We ran out of ammunition and food, so sometimes we went out to attack an enemy position at night, and when the enemy ran away after firing several rounds, we collected rations, bullets and grenades, and used them the next day.” (p. 170)
Eventually, the British build-up of troops and material recaptured the town and the Japanese were forced to retreat. Descriptions of the withdrawal back over the Arakan mountains brought to mind the unfathomable suffering of Napoleon’s troops during the retreat from Moscow. Already weakened by disease and malnutrition, and exhausted by endless marches in difficult terrain, the monsoon season broke on them as they were attempting to cross back over the mountains, turning the roads into seas of cold, slippery mud. Unit cohesion broke down, and men trudged onward, heedless of the suffering around them. Many, unable to go further, committed suicide or simply crawled off to the side of the road to die. “We called the road the ‘Human Remains Highway’. What happened here was beyond the bounds of acceptable human behaviour. It was a vision of hell.” (p. 197)
By the time the remnants reached safety, the divisions had been ruined as fighting forces. “After the attack our rifle companies which originally had 180 men each were reduced to four in the 5th, four in the 6th, sixteen in the 7th and none in the 8th.” (p. 169)
By the beginning of 1945 the tide of battle had turned, and the Allies were able to use their great superiority in tanks to penetrate the Japanese lines over and over. The fighting continued to be bitter and protracted, but the end was no longer in doubt, and by the time the emperor ordered his troops to lay down their arms in August 1945, the Japanese had been pushed entirely out of Burma and back into Thailand.
This was a worthwhile book to read, giving a new perspective on the war. Another book I highly recommend is James MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, one of the great memoirs of World War II, recounting his experiences as a teenage infantryman in Burma in the last year of the war. Fraser would later be known for his Flashman series of comic novels, and as a Hollywood screenwriter for movies such as Force 10 from Navarone and the James Bond film Octopussy.
June 6, 2017
Fascinating insight into one of the forgotten parts of the Second World War from the losing side. The British thought the Japanese soldiers were some sort of supermen at home in and living off the jungle. Turns out they were ill equipped and starving to death. There are it seems two sides to every story.
September 13, 2021
The four stars is for this as a historical resource. As prose its surprisingly and consistently fairly dry stuff.
March 17, 2014
I've been interested in the history of the second world war for a long time now but never before have I had the oppurtunity to read a book from the Japanese point of view. Needless to say I was looking forward to it.
Japanese soldiers and officers who fought during that conflict were labelled at the time by political propaganda as merciless, savage killers with a complete disregard for human life. The Japanese troops were made out to be monsters and that point of view is still held by many people today, largely because of the terrible way the Japanese treated Prisoners of War. No book has ever really tried to paint the Japanese during the war as ordinary soldiers and human beings with the same fear and vulnerabilities as everyone else.
The book is very informative of Japanese tactics, movements and use of aircraft and mountain guns as support during combat and of the high regard the Japanese had of bayonet charges (a morbidly facinating fighting technique). The book also covers the fear and shame some soldiers felt at being wounded or pinned down by enemy fire and therefore unable to continue fighting. Also there genuinely seemed to be very little fear of dying, whether this was bravado or genuine courage is sometimes hard to tell but I think on the whole the soliders seemed to feel that if it was necessary for them to die for the betterment of Japan then they were ok with it. I was surprised to read that alot of Burmese people were pro-Japanese and supported the Japanese forces in Burma. It amused me in some strange way to read that the Japanese soldiers seemed more frightened of cholera than British soldiers!
I was however disappointed with a seeming lack of human feeling or expression from the Japanese. Occasionally a Japanese soldier would write that he felt sad about something but that was it, the whole thing seems so clinical, so devoid of emotion. Perhaps alot was lost in translation but most of the writing is surprisingly functional and non-emotional. The book is full of sentances like "Today we crossed a bridge, it was very hot, we saw some British tanks. They fired at us, we hid behind some trees. Later on we had soup" thats not an actual extract but its similar to the style of alot of it. I just wish they put a bit more emotion into what they were writing, many diary entries seemed very detached, almost as if the soldier writing it was in some way sedated.
Thats my opinion. Perhaps the Japanese soldiers just didn't like to put alot of emotion into what they wrote or perhaps any emotion was censored out. I'm not sure but what I will say is that although I got a very good, clear idea of what the fighting conditions during that conflict were like as well as how battles and skirmishes were fought. What I didn't get was any real idea as to how the Japanese soldiers actually FELT about the war and being shot at and having to kill a man with a bayonet or blow up a tank with four men still inside or how it felt to be shot at themselves. How it felt for them to be involved in this terrible war. Why did they treat prisoners so badly?
These questions are still unanswered and I feel that many people are still looking for these answers. I suspect, judging by the very fact that the Japanese government still refuses to apologise to all the victims of their brutal treatment in prison camps that even the Japanese themselves don't know why their ancestors did it.
Japanese soldiers and officers who fought during that conflict were labelled at the time by political propaganda as merciless, savage killers with a complete disregard for human life. The Japanese troops were made out to be monsters and that point of view is still held by many people today, largely because of the terrible way the Japanese treated Prisoners of War. No book has ever really tried to paint the Japanese during the war as ordinary soldiers and human beings with the same fear and vulnerabilities as everyone else.
The book is very informative of Japanese tactics, movements and use of aircraft and mountain guns as support during combat and of the high regard the Japanese had of bayonet charges (a morbidly facinating fighting technique). The book also covers the fear and shame some soldiers felt at being wounded or pinned down by enemy fire and therefore unable to continue fighting. Also there genuinely seemed to be very little fear of dying, whether this was bravado or genuine courage is sometimes hard to tell but I think on the whole the soliders seemed to feel that if it was necessary for them to die for the betterment of Japan then they were ok with it. I was surprised to read that alot of Burmese people were pro-Japanese and supported the Japanese forces in Burma. It amused me in some strange way to read that the Japanese soldiers seemed more frightened of cholera than British soldiers!
I was however disappointed with a seeming lack of human feeling or expression from the Japanese. Occasionally a Japanese soldier would write that he felt sad about something but that was it, the whole thing seems so clinical, so devoid of emotion. Perhaps alot was lost in translation but most of the writing is surprisingly functional and non-emotional. The book is full of sentances like "Today we crossed a bridge, it was very hot, we saw some British tanks. They fired at us, we hid behind some trees. Later on we had soup" thats not an actual extract but its similar to the style of alot of it. I just wish they put a bit more emotion into what they were writing, many diary entries seemed very detached, almost as if the soldier writing it was in some way sedated.
Thats my opinion. Perhaps the Japanese soldiers just didn't like to put alot of emotion into what they wrote or perhaps any emotion was censored out. I'm not sure but what I will say is that although I got a very good, clear idea of what the fighting conditions during that conflict were like as well as how battles and skirmishes were fought. What I didn't get was any real idea as to how the Japanese soldiers actually FELT about the war and being shot at and having to kill a man with a bayonet or blow up a tank with four men still inside or how it felt to be shot at themselves. How it felt for them to be involved in this terrible war. Why did they treat prisoners so badly?
These questions are still unanswered and I feel that many people are still looking for these answers. I suspect, judging by the very fact that the Japanese government still refuses to apologise to all the victims of their brutal treatment in prison camps that even the Japanese themselves don't know why their ancestors did it.
February 21, 2022
The stories get better as it goes on...I think the book could have used some narrative in between the stories to frame up what was happening big picture to give the stories context....I understand they tried to paint a story purely from the view of the soldiers on the ground....still a good book.
January 24, 2021
Needless to say that this book is basically the only translated source of Japanese accounts of the Burma Campaign that I’ve come across over the last 2 years of studying the topic. Sadly, however, it was too damn short. What accounts there were, were brilliant. You can’t help but feel for these men, many of them young and inexperienced conscripts (much like the British soldiers they were fighting) who were sent to fight in the dense jungles of Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Kohima, and Imphal. In my opinion, this episode and theatre of the Second World War is shamefully overlooked in the history textbooks of today. Nevertheless, the diary entries and letters provided me with a rare opportunity as a Brit to understand and empathise with the enemy that my grandpa taught me weren’t even human. The typical letter sent to a mother could easily be mistaken for a Tommy in the trenches of Flanders, or a Yank in the hills of Bavaria. The only criticism I have of this book isn’t the content, but the simple lack of more. At barely 200 pages in actual text, it misses huge chunks of the campaign that are so vital in the story of the war. I hope one day that more diaries and letters are translated, and more books written, so that future generations can hopefully understand the Japanese from their own perspective. A captivating read which I wholeheartedly recommend.
March 17, 2017
A series of remembrances by Japanese Soldiers and Nurses of the Burma campaign, this is not an easy read, mostly because of the continual hardship that all of the survivors seem to mention. Even in the early, successful stages of the campaign, the Japanese suffered from shortages of food and ammunition. By the time of their retreat and defeat, they were barely surviving.
May 9, 2020
Collection of total 62 firsthand accounts of soldiers, low ranking officers, and 3 Red Cross nurses who were at the Burmese front line in WWII. So miserable, despite brave splits, due to lack of ration and ammunitions, and medicines. Many heart warming stories between Japanese, and Burmese civilians, Indian and British soldiers, are good learning by reading this book.
November 12, 2022
A necessary compilation of accounts from Japanese soldiers as they fought the British in Burma in WWII.
Some of the accounts are surprisingly monochromatic and dull, but three of the stories stick out as harrowing accounts of a total collapse in logistics, intense fighting and a horrifying, excruciating retreat.
Recommend for scholars of WWII but not an easy read.
Some of the accounts are surprisingly monochromatic and dull, but three of the stories stick out as harrowing accounts of a total collapse in logistics, intense fighting and a horrifying, excruciating retreat.
Recommend for scholars of WWII but not an easy read.
May 24, 2018
Eh. Mostly boring.
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August 29, 2012What a waste is war. It's tragic, farcical and even insane. These eye-witness accounts left me shaking my head in anger, sadness and disbelief. Few animals have aspired to, let alone reached, the heights of human culture and knowledge. Even fewer will aspire to or match our ability to inflict needless pain and suffering on our fellow brothers and sisters because they look slightly different from us (not to forget the needless pain we inflict on our cousins: creatures such as horses, dogs and cattle during war).
And yet, between the stench of nationalism, superstition, superiority/inferiority complexes; despite irrationality, mayhem and death, a flower of human friendship and kindness blossoms here and there, reminding us of what we can be when we are sane and kind.
"Those who don't know their history are condemned...," someone once said. This book should be required reading for everyone. Despite the tragedy it re-tells, it reminds us also that there is hope for the human species,yet.
And yet, between the stench of nationalism, superstition, superiority/inferiority complexes; despite irrationality, mayhem and death, a flower of human friendship and kindness blossoms here and there, reminding us of what we can be when we are sane and kind.
"Those who don't know their history are condemned...," someone once said. This book should be required reading for everyone. Despite the tragedy it re-tells, it reminds us also that there is hope for the human species,yet.
October 3, 2014
Fascinating, particularly the latter half, once the vague recollections of Japan's advance are replaced by vivid, grotesque accounts of the retreat. It suffers from an over-insistence on direct translation leaving much of the language unnecessarily stilted, and sometimes just plain grammatically incorrect. Had a more artful rendering been permitted, it would have been a better read. That's all that keeps it being 4 stars for me.
April 10, 2008
I picked this book from the shelf expecting a poignant interpretation of the japanese occupation. But the author has just collected the stories, collected the papers, and makes the reader do the intepretation. Or should I say, lets the reader make his own interpretation.
April 21, 2008
Especially during a time of war, it is instructive to read the first-hand accounts of soldiers. In this case, they are Japanese soldiers who served in Burma during WWII and the book is a collection of their letters and recollections. Very interesting reading.
June 18, 2015
The book had a lot of good historical stories from the lesser seen Japanese perspective. However, it would benefit well from a better re-translation as it was often plagued with errors. Overall the book was good and definitely gave a different perspective from the majority of WWII books.
August 12, 2010
This is a primary source document. Historical material. Revealing if not entertaining.
August 6, 2011
Not great, I suspect much got lost in the translation.
July 15, 2013
Just a bit itty-bitty for me to get into at first, but I enjoyed it all the same...
April 14, 2016
Really enjoyed this book.
Accounts of the war in Burma in the Second World War, from the Japanese viewpoint.
I got my copy for one euro in a kringloopwinkel in Leiden in the Netherlands!
Accounts of the war in Burma in the Second World War, from the Japanese viewpoint.
I got my copy for one euro in a kringloopwinkel in Leiden in the Netherlands!
August 5, 2012
Sad. Gave their lives for what?
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews