Entwined Atrocities

Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author
• About the book
• This eBook can be cited
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Author’s Note
• List of Illustrations
• Prologue: The U.S. and Japan’s Complicity of Denial of War Responsibilities
• 1 Japan’s “War Apologies” vis-à-vis the “Acceptance of Apologies” by the U.S.
• 2 Japan’s War Crimes and the Treatment of War Criminal Suspects by the U.S.
• 3 The Aim of this Book
• 4 Conclusion
• PART I Fire Bombing and Atomic Bombing
• 1 Indiscriminate Firebombing by the U.S. Forces and the Air Defense System of Japan’s Emperor-Fascism State
• 1 Japan’s Air Defense Law and the Air Defense System
• 2 Air Defense and Air Raid Shelters During the Pacific War
• 3 Protecting the Royal Portrait and Building His Majesty’s Library
• 4 The Great Tokyo Air Raid and Reinforcement of the Fukiage Bunker
• 5 Indiscriminate Firebombing of Japan’s Main Islands by the U.S.
• 6 Atomic Bombing as a Continuation of Conventional Bombing
• 7 Entangled Responsibilities of Perpetrators and Victims
• 2 Mystification of the Atomic Bombing—Tacit Complicity Between the U.S. and Japan
• 1 The Hidden Political Aim of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Potsdam Conference
• 2 The Atomic Bombing and the U.S.–Japan Negotiation Over the Retention of the Emperor System
• 3 How Closely Were the Retention of Kokutai and the Effects of Atomic Bombing Interrelated?
• 4 Political Exploitation of the Atomic Bombing: the U.S. Justification of the Genocidal Attack and Japan’s Excuse for Ending the War
• 5 Concealment of the Responsibility of the Atomic Bombing and Japan’s Deformed Postwar Democracy
• The Atomic Bombing, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and the Shimoda Case
• 1 Okamoto’s Struggle for Justice for the Victims of the Atomic Bombings
• 2 Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombings
• 3 The Argument of the Plaintiffs
• 4 The Argument of the Government
• 5 The Final Judgment
• 6 Nuclear Weapons, Crimes Against Humanity and Crimes Against Peace
• PART II The Peace Constitution and the Emperor System
• 4 The Insoluble Contradiction Embedded in the Peace Constitution—The Preamble and Article 9 versus Chapter 1
• 1 Establishment of Chapters 1 and 2 of the Constitution for the Purpose of Acquitting Hirohito of War Crimes and War Responsibility
• 2 A Loophole in Article 9 “Renunciation of War and Demilitarization of Japan”
• 3 The Interrelationship Between the Preamble and Article 9 of the Constitution
• 4 The Sovereign State System Versus the Universality of Article 9
• 5 Toward Utilization of Article 9 As the Civil Right of Resistance and the Establishment of Democratic Spirit
• 5 Veiled Political Power of the Emperor as the Symbol of Japan
• 1 Article 1 of the New Constitution as the Succession of Kokutai: Emperor’s Religious Authority and Inhumane “Symbol”
• 2 The Political Role of Symbolic Authority: Historical Background
• 3 The Post-war Exploitation of the Power of Symbolic Authority: Creation of the Collective National Sense of War Victims
• 4 The Contemporary Exploitation of the Power of Symbolic Authority: Its Role of Concealing Socio-Political Problems and War Responsibility
• 6 Challenging the Emperor’s Power of Symbolic Authority—Struggles to Humanize the Emperor
• 1 The “Food May Day” Placard Incident
• 2 An Open Letter to Hirohito from the Students of Kyoto University
• 3 “Yamazaki, Shoot Emperor Hirohito!” Okuzaki Kenzō’s Legal Action to Abolish Chapter 1 of Japan’s Constitution
• Okuzaki’s Personal Background Prior to the New Guinea Campaign
• Historical Background of the New Guinea Campaign
• Okuzaki’s Desperate Struggle for Survival in New Guinea
• The Postwar Life of Okuzaki
• Development of Okuzaki’s Ideas on Japanese Society and the Emperor System While in Prison
• Okuzaki’s Solitary Battle Against Hirohito and the Emperor System
• Okuzaki’s Court Battle Against Hirohito
• Okuzaki’s Denunciation of Article 1 of the Constitution of Japan Defining the Position of the Emperor
• Who is Responsible for Creating an Eccentric Person like Okuzaki?
• Part III Memories and Symbolism of War
• 7 The U.S.–Japan Collaboration in Remembering War Atrocities—in Comparison with the German Case
• 1 Memories of Indiscriminate Killing: How to Make Them a Universal Message for Humanity
• 2 U.S. President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima: a Critical Analysis Through the Eyes of Hannah Arendt
• 3 A Critical Examination of Memorializing the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima by the Japanese
• 4 German History of “Mastering the Past” (Vergangenheitsbewältigung): 1945–1985
• 5 German History from Communicative Memory to Cultural Memory
• 8 Photographer Fukushima Kikujirō—Confronting Images of Atomic Bomb Survivors
• 1 Kikujirō’s Lucky Escape from the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima
• 2 Kikujirō’s Life During the Asia-Pacific War
• 3 Photographing War Orphans and Widows
• 4 Encountering Atomic Bomb Survivors
• 5 Recording Sugimatsu’s Agony and the Travails of the Nakamura Family
• 6 Kikujirō as a Professional Photographer
• 7 Conclusion
• 9 Memories and Symbolism: For Establishing Japan’s Culture of Remembrance
• 1 Sharing Pain Generates Hope for the Future: The Life of Numata Suzuko
• History of Korean Atomic Bomb Survivors and Their Struggle for Justice
• Toyonaga Keizaburō and His Contribution to the Movement to Support Korean Atomic Bomb Survivors
• Numata Suzuko’s Background and Ordeal as an Atomic Bomb Survivor
• Numata Suzuko’s “Reformulation of Life by Reconstituting Her Existence”
• Extending Her Moral Imagination to Universal Humanity
• 2 Establishing the Japanese Forms of Cultural Memories of War
• Utilization of Visual Artwork
• Performing Art: The Traditional Japanese Noh Theatre
• Modern Noh Performance
• Epilogue: The Nature of Japan’s Postwar Democracy and Its Future
• 1 The Emperor Ideology and the Feeble Democratic Idea of Postwar Japan
• 2 Historical Background to Japan’s Lack of the Concept of Human Rights
• 3 Three Contradictory Principles of Regulating Postwar Japan
• 4 The Balance of the Three Different Principles is Collapsing
• Index

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Foreword

In both English and Japanese, Yuki Tanaka has established himself as one of our most original and incisive analysts of war crimes in the Asia-Pacific theater during World War II. His searing1996 monograph Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (reissued in an expanded edition in 2018) is a classic study of Japanese atrocities that reached a wide audience in the United States after being adopted by the Military Book Club. In 2002 he published Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation. The telling subtitle of this important study reveals an emerging concern with placing war crimes in a comparative perspective, in this case by carrying the analysis of wartime sexual exploitation into the U.S. occupation of defeated Japan. Affiliation with the Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University between 2002 and 2015 marked a period during which Professor Tanaka became increasingly engaged in analyzing the policy and practice of strategic and nuclear bombing. And these intellectual engagements have been complemented by writings in both languages that bring sharp comparative perspective to provocative issues including the war crimes trials in defeated Japan and the historical roots of pathologies that undermine Japanese democracy today. These are all daunting and controversial subjects, and no historian has given them more serious and sustained attention than Yuki Tanaka.

←xiii | xiv→Professor Tanaka’s current book is genuinely original in positing an intimate conjunction of several of the grand issues that have dominated his scholarship to date. First is Japanese atrocities and war crimes. Second is the criminal nature of U.S. strategic and nuclear targeting of civilians. Third is the immediate postwar U.S. and Japanese coverup of the emperor’s war responsibility (and how this dovetailed with the coverup of the atrocious nature of America’s air war). Fourth is how this double coverup created inherent contradictions in Japan’s so-called peace constitution of 1947, which remains unrevised to the present day. The final overarching focus is on how understanding this dynamic concatenation can help us better understand the flaws and failings of present-day democracy in Japan. There is no precedent for such a complex and intimately comparative analysis in contemporary scholarship on Japan and the United States. This most certainly deserves a serious hearing.

John W. Dower
Emeritus Professor, School of Humanities,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Acknowledgments

Soon after beginning work as a research professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute of Hiroshima City University in April 2002, I became involved with local civil movements campaigning against war, nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Through these activities, I quicky learned that the strong anti-nuclear sentiment among the people of Hiroshima has a distinctive feature. Although these people naturally emphasize the terrible destruction of the city and indescribable human cost of the atomic bombing, they scarcely ever discuss the crime and responsibility of the perpetrator—the U.S. government. In other words, they talk about the atomic bombing as if it were some kind of natural disaster. At the same time, I have noticed that these people do not like to discuss the numerous atrocities that the Japanese imperial forces committed during the Asia-Pacific War, much less Japan’s responsibility for such war crimes. The image they hold of themselves as war victims, without clearly identifying the perpetrator, is widespread throughout Japan. But it is particularly conspicuous in Hiroshima.

This distinctive Hiroshima trait remained in the back of my mind, and continued to trouble me for the following thirteen years until my retirement in 2015. Indeed, it has preoccupied me ever since, despite returning to Melbourne in Australia. This book is the result of my efforts to understand this phenomenon.

←xv | xvi→Completion of the book was in part made possible by the intellectual stimulation and support I received from many friends and colleagues in Japan, the U.S., Australia and other parts of the world. I am deeply grateful to Laura Hein for her detailed comments on my manuscript and her invaluable advice for revisions. Her support has been crucial. I am also greatly beholden to John Dower for his superb endorsement of this book when I was seeking a publisher, and for his creative suggestion for the title. It was indeed a great honor to receive such generous moral support and encouragement from this eminent Japanologist. John’s scrupulously thorough research and work practices have long been a source of admiration that never ceases to inspire me.

My thoughts on Japanese and U.S. war responsibilities, as well as other related issues have been greatly influenced by and developed through my long friendship with many Japanese writers, in particular the late Oda Makoto. Discussions with him on the U.S. fire and atomic bombings, and repeatedly hearing stories of his own experience as a survivor of the firebombing of Osaka on 14 August 1945, the day before Japan’s official surrender, sustained my strong desire to conduct research on this topic. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Mutō Ichiyō, a veteran academic–activist, for his thought-provoking books and articles that repeatedly helped me clarify my own ideas on many important issues. Occasional exchanges of ideas with Mutō face to face in Tokyo were always joyful and invigorating. The late Kanō Mikiyo and Amano Yoshikazu were also helpful in cultivating my ideas on issues related to Japan’s emperor system and ideology.

I also offer my thanks for interesting dialogue and valuable comments to the late Howard Zinn, the late Marilyn Young, the late Martin Sherwin, the late John Morris, Robert Liftin, Richard Falk, Peter Kuznick, Joseph Gerson, Gavan McCormack, Ben Kiernan, Mark Selden, Ronald Schaffer, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Michael Sherry, Robert Moeller, Tim McCormack, Helen Durham, Allan Marett, Gary Mathews, Eika Tai and Yasuko Claremont.

Discussions and debates with many activist friends and academics in Hiroshima and other parts of Japan were a crucial stimulus for my thoughts on many issues concerning war crimes, responsibility and emperor ideology. I cannot list all those who contributed, but among them are Kuno Naruaki, Yokohara Yukio, Hinata Seishi, Toyonaga Keizaburō, Tsuchiya Tokiko, Ikeda Masahiko, Uehaba Takahiro, Okahara Michiko, Doi Keiko, Fujii Sumiko, Furuyashiki Ichiyō, Nishioka Yukio, Takahashi Hiroko, Kiriya Taeko, Maeda Akira, Matsumura Takao, Yamane Kazuyo, Mizusawa Toshio, Fujioka Atsushi, Norimatsu Satoko, Uchida Masatoshi, Matsumoto Yasuaki, Masuda Miyako, Kido Ei’ichi, Urata Kenji, and Morishima Yutaka.

←xvi | xvii→Kajimura Taichirō and his wife Michiko, who have been residing in Berlin for many decades, as well as the late Eugen Eichhorn were extremely helpful in enabling me to gain an understanding of how the Germans cultivated a strong sense of collective responsibility for the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

My special appreciation goes to Shikoku Hikaru and his sister, Matsu’ura Mie, for granting me permission to use one of many brilliant paintings by their father, the late Shikoku Gorō, for the book’s cover. This untitled painting was used in the picture book entitled Okori Jizō published by Kin-no-Hoshi Sha in Tokyo in 1979. Kin-no-Hoshi Sha also kindly agreed to permit the use of this evocative artwork. I greatly appreciate their generosity. This imaginary picture of a small cluster of white wildflowers growing in the debris of the totally destroyed Hiroshima city exquisitely symbolizes the hope of the A-bomb victims for revival of their life and restoration of the city. I am also grateful to Nasu Keiko for allowing me to use two photographs of Fukushima Kikikujirō that she took.

For help with refining my English writing, I sincerely thank Ruth Coetzee. I truly admire her patience and tolerance in working with a difficult writer like me, and I am eternally grateful.

Finally, and most of all, I express my deep gratitude to my wife Jo and our daughters, Mika and Alisa, for their unfailing moral support. As with all my previous books, without their support, I could not have completed this project.

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Author’s Note

All Japanese names, including authors of Japanese texts, have been cited in traditional Japanese order, with the surname first. All dates and times are cited according to the date and time west of the International Date Line, unless otherwise indicated. For instance, although in the United States the attack on Pearl Harbor is referred to as having taken place on 7 December 1941, in this book I use the date 8 December. I use the term Asia-Pacific War to mean the fifteen-year-long war that began with the Manchurian incident on 18 September 1931 and ended on 15 August 1945. Pacific War is used to denote the war that began with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 8 December 1945 and ended on 15 August 1945.

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List of Illustrations

Cover: Untitled painting by Shikoku Gorō (Source: Shikoku Hikaru and Matsu’ura Mie)

Figure 0.1 President George W. Bush exchanges handshakes with Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, following the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Sydney, Australia, on Sept. 8, 2007 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 1.1 Emperor Hirohito inspecting the ruins of Tokyo caused by the U.S. firebombing on 10 March 1941 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 1.2 One of the crew members of the “Doolittle raid” arrested by the Japanese forces (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 1.3 The charred remains of Japanese civilians after the firebombing of Tokyo on 10 March (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 2.1 The ruins of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing (Public Photo, Source: US National Archives)

Figure 2.2 Secretary of State, Henry Stimson with President Harry Truman (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 2.3 Marquis Kido Kōichi (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 2.4 An aerial scene of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)←xxi | xxii→

Figure 3.1 Major Ben Blakeney, a member of the defense counsel, at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal (Public Photo, Source: US National Archives)

Figure 4.1 General Douglas MacArthur and Major General Courtney Whitney with President Harry Truman during the Wake Island Conference in October 1951 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 4.2 Emperor Hirohito and Empress Kōjun at the ceremony of the promulgation of Japan’s new constitution on 3 November 1946 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 5.1 On 7 December 1947, about 50,000 people gathered in the city square of Hiroshima to welcome Emperor Hirohito (Public photo)

Figure 5.2 Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko bowing in front of the “banzai cliff” on Saipan in June 2005 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 6.1 Okuzaki Kenzō appears happy to be arrested, after firing pachinko pinballs aimed at Emperor Hirohito and his family at the Imperial Palace, New Year 1969 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 6.2 Map of New Guinea (public) in Chapter 6

Figure 7.1 President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Abe Shinzō in the Hiroshima Peace Park on 27 May 2016 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

Figure 7.2 Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture, Mother with Her Dead Son (Source: Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Köln)

Figure 7.3 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (Photo taken by the author, Yuki Tanaka)

Figure 7.4 Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves) in the Memory Void of the Jewish Museum in Berlin (Photo taken by the author, Yuki Tanaka)

Figure 8.1 Portrait of Fukushima Kikujirō (Source Nasu Keiko)

Figure 8.2 A hibakusha with her three children at dinner photographed by Kikujirō (Source: Kyōdo News Images)

Figure 8.3 As Sugimatsu suffers a violent fit, one of his daughters runs from the house photographed by Kikujirō (Source: Kyōdo News Images)

Figure 8.4 Sugimatsu in pain tearing his body with his fingers photographed by Kikujirō (Source: Kyōdo News Images)←xxii | xxiii→

Figure 8.5 Kikujirō walking through the rubble of the Fukushima earthquake disaster (Source: Nasu Keiko)

Figure 8.6 Kikujirō’s photo of Sugimatsu (Source: Kyōdo News Images)

Figure 8.7 Käthe Kollwitz’s print “Woman in the Lap of Death” (Source: Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Köln)

Figure 9.1 The Noh Play “The Holy Mother of Nagasaki” (Source: Shimizu Kanji)

Figure 9.2 Numata Suzuko in the film of Ningen o Kaese (Public Photo, Source: US National Archives)

Figure 9.3 The Hiroshima Panel V by Maruki Iri and Toshi (Source: Maruki Gallery for Hiroshima Panels)

Figure 9.4 The Rape of Nanking by Maruki Iri and Toshi (Source: Maruki Gallery for Hiroshima Panels)

Figure 9.5 Kuroi Ame (Black Rain) by Shikoku Gorō (Source: Shikoku Hikaru and Matsu’ura Mie)

Figure 9.6 Vietnamese mother embracing her dead child by Shikoku Gorō(Source: Shikoku Hikaru and Matsu’ura Mie)

Figure 9.7 The Noh Play “Oppenheimer” (Source: Allan Marett)

Figure E.1 Anti U.S.–Japan Security Treaty demonstration in front of the Diet Building in June 1960 (Source: Aflo Co.Ltd)

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Prologue:
The U.S. and Japan’s Complicity of Denial of War Responsibilities

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

Plato

On 31 January 2018 in Germany, four days after the International Holocaust Memorial Day, ninety-two-years-old Anita Lasker-Wallfisch addressed the German lawmakers gathered in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. The occasion was the Ceremony of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism.¹ Anita is a Holocaust survivor. In 1943 she was sent to Auschwitz, and was fortuitously selected as a member of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra because she played the cello. This position as musician saved her life. Every day, the orchestra played marches at the camp gate as the prisoners left the camp to work and when they returned. The orchestra also gave concerts for the SS (Schutzstaffel, the Nazi elite corps who controlled the German police force and the concentration camp system). Her sister, Renate, was also sent to Auschwitz and remarkably survived, although she was not an orchestra member. Toward the end of 1944, as Auschwitz began being evacuated, together with 3,000 prisoners, Anita and her sister were transferred to the camp at Bergen-Belsen and survived there for six more months with almost nothing to eat. Anita was nineteen years old when she and her sister were finally liberated in April 1945 by the British army.²

←xxv | xxvi→After the War, Anita migrated to England and, in 1951, married Peter Wallfish (1924–1993), a concert pianist and coincidentally Holocaust survivor at Bergen-Belsen. Anita co-founded the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) and performed as a member of this orchestra as well as a solo artist. Peter was professor of piano at the Royal College of Music from 1973 until 1991.³ Their son, Raphael Wallfisch, is also a well-known celloist. At the Ceremony of Remembrance in the Bundestag, with John York’s piano accompaniment, Raphael played a piece of music entitled the “Prayer” from “Jewish Life” composed by Ernest Bloch. This performance was presented between the two main speeches—one by the then President of Bundestag, Dr Wolfgang Schäuble, and the other by Anita.

In his speech, President Schäuble clearly acknowledged the German responsibility for the war crimes that the National Socialist regime committed, stating that “we are not remembering because we bear personal guilt. But the guilt that Germans incurred in the twelve years of National Socialist dictatorship has imposed a particular responsibility on us, as succeeding generations.”⁴ At the same time, he also emphasized the significance of interrelationship between the national responsibility and the ideas of democracy in the following manner.

This free, democratic, constitutional and peaceful Germany in which we have the good fortune to live today has been built on historical experiences of immeasurable violence. The authors of our Constitution drew conclusions from that history. …

The Basic Law guarantees rights, but it cannot guarantee values such as consideration, decency and respect; respect for the fact that all people are entitled to live their lives as they wish, to express their opinion, to live out their faith, to be free – as long as they do not thereby impinge on the freedom of others, and as long as they do not infringe the law or endanger public order. …