In this second volume, the author concentrated on the early part of 1940 and all the way to 1945 when Japan surrendered after the dropping of the atomic bombs. The style of the author has been discussed in my earlier entry reviewing the first first volume of the work and has remained largely similar. In this volume, whether he meant to do it or not, the central theme is the behaviours of the policy makers and the military personnel in Japan in those years.Starting from the late 1930s Japan has rearmed, having withdrawn from the League of Nations. They were then caught in something of a quagmire in China and while events in Europe have been increasingly dangerous, the Sino-Japanese War have been left largely as a side-event in the minds of the West. However, one can't help feeling that events in Asia have taken a life of its own. Japan increasingly felt isolated and was under pressure from the US whom exported most of the oil that Japan needed. Japan wanted to avoid conflict with the US and at the same time wanted to find a way to end the war in China for it was already beginning to take its toil domestically. Finding no support from the US, the UK and their other allies, Japan gravitated towards the Axis and finally entered into the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Japan's reason for entering the Pact (suggested by Germany) was not clear nor compelling, indeed there were those in Japan that had not supported Japan's entry into the Pact. But it appeared that those who supported it all did it for their own selfish reasons. Take this entry from Kazushige Ugaki's diary (pg 25) whom the author accused of supporting the Tripartite Pact in order to get more resources for the army. But whatever their personal motivations, one does not get the impression that something this important was seriously considered before the final decision was made.
Another example was how they were ready to enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union. One can argue that Japan's involvement in Manchuria was partly due to the need to check the Soviet Union. This got them into a stalemate in China which soured their relationships with much of the rest of the world, and yet later in having to continue the war in China they wanted an alliance with the Soviet Union (after Nomomhan to boot). It is a little hard to square the logic in all these.
Worse was their decision to bomb Pearl Harbor. There was almost a consensus that Japan could not have a prolonged war with the US, including the Admiral Yamamoto who planned the operation. Yet it was almost as if everyone allow one event to lead to another and just went along with it without voicing objections until it was a done deal. The worst of this behaviour would come when Japan wanted to end the war. The way they went about talking about how to go about it and never quite getting down to it was tragically comical. But the author did us a favour by discussing one relatively small event, quoting from two commanders' diaries he showed us why a coming to a decision was hard, even between (or especially between) Japanese.
Referring to the Battle of Kohima when Japan suffered a huge defeat, it appeared that the two commanders Renya Mutaguchi and Masakazu Kawabe knew they stood no chance to winning and their forces were about to be annihilated. Yet both of them would not order a retreat. Post war, this was what they wrote in their respective diaries:
- Renya Mutaguchi: Although I wanted to say that it's already time to quit the fight in Imphal, when these words reached my mouth, I just couldn't get them out. I could only hope that someone would be able to tell from my expression.
- Masakazu Kawabe: I got the impression from Mutaguchi's expression that there was something he wanted to say but just could not bring himself to. I didn't probe, and the meeting ended that way.
Personally I found this to be what was so valuable about the book. It is hard sometimes for us to understand how a nation tactically so superior to many of its adversaries could be so strategically blundering. However when it comes from a Japanese, who incidentally was a young lad during the war and could even remember his job in one of the torpedo factories, one gained this special insight and know, especially for an Asian, that it could very well be us.
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