"War means jobs for machinists." KUMAGAYA TOKUICHI
He has lived for fifty years in the same small wooden house in the indus­trial city of Kawasaki, a manufacturing center since long before the war. Seventy-two, he spent almost his whole life on the factory floor before retiring from Isuzu Motors.
    You know, the Japanese had a close, warm kind of feeling toward soldiers. Sympathy, you might say. They were sacrificing themselves for the country and I felt a sense of gratitude for their hard work. People knew that military duty was as hard as a prison sentence. They knew, because ordinary people shared the soldiers' hardships. Every autumn, after the harvest, large divisional maneuvers took place in the local rice fields. The soldiers were billeted at ordinary houses. When I was a boy, all of us in the neighborhood played soldier, using sticks for rifles and swords. Very often, the grown-ups encouraged us to do it. And if you ever saw an actual soldier, you automatically addressed him as Heitai-san— Mister Soldier.
    Many of us common people really cheered the soldiers during the February 26 Incident of 1936. I thought, "They've done it! Fantastic!" People were looking for a breakthrough because times were hard and no one thought of war in a realistic way. Even after the rebels backed down, I imagined that a single shot from our army would just blow the Chinks away. We went to war with light hearts in '37 and '38.
    My father had worked at the army's arsenal in Tokyo making rifles and bayonets. He was a laborer of the lowest class. No education. He couldn't read at all. Although he found work at the armory for a while, he could never have become a machinist, because he couldn't understand blueprints. Even the old guys who'd been around the plant for years started to study English so they could read the names of the machine parts on the plans. No matter what my father did, he never knew anything but hard work. Arsenal workers were always laid off as soon as the possi­bility of war receded, so my father did all kinds of odd jobs. He even tried peddling. Our family lived in one of the many row houses in Tokvo The house had two small rooms: one was four-and-a-half mats in area the other just three. It was really crowded—my parents, three elder sisters, one elder brother, a younger brother, and me all packed in.
Most of our kind of people served as apprentices in shops and factories. After sixth grade, my sisters got jobs in a government printing office. At that time, there weren't many people like us going on to higher schooling. Maybe five or six out of a class of fifty pupils I was one of them. I finished higher elementary school at fourteen, and entered a medium-size machine factory called Hokushin Denki that made thermometers for the high-temperature processing of iron. We also turned out rangefinders for coastal artillery.
    I walked to and from that factory every day, about an hour each way. Train fares seemed wasteful to me. My sisters used to wear wooden clogs and walk along the unpaved roads just to save five sen of bus fare. Ordi­nary factory workers worked seven to five, but my factory was on an eight-hour day, first and third Sundays of the month off, because of its semimilitary status. We had four holidays a year: New Year's Day, the Emperor's Birthday, the Anniversary of the Birth of the Meiji Emperor, and the Anniversary of Emperor Jimmu's Accession to the Throne— National Foundation Day. I worked more than two hours overtime every day and was paid for it. At ordinary factories, the workers usually didn't get overtime pay. Instead, they got a suit or a crested kimono when they went on active duty in the army.
    We respected the white people who'd produced the advanced machinery we used and had an advanced culture as well, but we looked down on Chinese, calling them Chankoro, and Koreans—they were just Senjin or Choko. People didn't lease houses to Koreans in decent places. Instead, they built their own shacks with sheets of corrugated iron. Neighborhood children gathered to watch them eating rice from big bowls with red pepper all over it. They smelled funny at the public bath. They made the place reek of garlic.
    I started reading Red Flag, the paper of the Communist Party, because of Yoshida, a turner at my factory, who was a year ahead of me in school. I drank cocoa for the first time in my life at his house. He handed over Red Flag with the cocoa. I wasn't particularly interested in ideology, but I was attracted to the Communist Party because I was very poor. To tell you the truth, though, I didn't understand it at all. "Down with the Emperor!" sounded all right to me, because poverty had made me distrust authority generally, and I didn't think their rules were doing me any good. I never thought, even as a young boy, that the Emperor was a god.
    I was hauled off by the military police—the Kempeitai—because I did "repo" work—that's the job of receiving and passing out the papers on the street at an assigned time. I'd been reading the party papers for years by then. The Kempeitai asked me what the Communist Party did. I told them I didn't know, that I was just doing it for the cocoa. The interrogation wasn't hard at all, maybe because I was only a youth of about twenty. They kept me for two weeks and then released me. But I did end up losing my job at that factory, and Yoshida was indicted.
    I took the conscription examination in 1936.1 was graded Class B-2 _backup reserves. When the war with China broke out the next year, the first-line reservists had to go, but I wasn't even trained until 1939, when I took a course as a tank mechanic and then qualified in armored cars.
    Machinists welcomed the munitions boom. We'd been waiting anx­iously for a breakthrough. From that time on, we got really busy. China news was everywhere. Even my father subscribed to Asahi Graph, since every issue carried lots of pictures of soldiers in China. By the end of 1937, everybody in the country was working. For the first time, I was able to take care of my father. War's not bad at all, I thought. As a skilled worker, I was eagerly sought after and earned my highest wages in 1938, '39 and '40. There were so many hours of overtime! I changed jobs often, each new job better than the one before. In 1940, a draft system for skilled workers was introduced to keep us from moving around.
New factories were being built so rapidly. One where I worked only had about twelve or so workers when it moved from Kameido to Kawasaki in 1938. Soon, there were two or three hundred employees. Because of the war, I made as much as a section chief in a first-class company— about 120 yen a month. In March 1940, I got married. At the age of twenty-three, with a substantial income, I was independent enough to set up house. The happiest thing was that I didn't need to worry about finding a job.
    I remember the day the navy attacked Pearl Harbor. I was just off the night shift and out with my wife buying a wooden horse for my eldest son. She had him on her back when the news of the attack came over the radio. It was around 9:00 a.m. "We did it! We did it! The war's really begun!" That's what we shouted.
    My elder sister asked me, "Toku, do you think Japan can actually beat America?" "I've no idea" was my answer. To tell you the truth, somehow I knew what was going to happen. Those who dealt with machinery realized what a gap there was between us and the Americans. At that time, most of our advanced machinery came from America, England, or France, Japan was unable to manufacture precision tools like polishing, grinding, and milling machines. I don't know for sure, but I suspect Japanese airplane-engine manufacturing plants used American machinery, and it wasn't just oil America had embargoed. They'd stopped exporting machinery to us, too.
    I guess we had a kind of inferiority complex toward the Westerners. We called them "hairy ones," but we felt a kind of admiration turned to prejudice. We didn't want to lose to the whites. Like a lot of people I didn't hate Americans. That's why the government had to make up slogans to promote hatred. They said the Americans and the British were the Anglo-American Demons. We fought a war against America without any genuine hostility. Maybe the professional soldiers felt a strong rivalry but not us workers.
    Looking back at the war years, many people claim they supported the war only because there was no other choice. I think that's a lie. Intellectuals, journalists, educated people, all supported the war actively. The only exceptions were the Communists, and they were in prison. Nobody truly thought Japan would lose. It was taken for granted that we'd stop the war at some reasonable point. Shouts of "Banzai!" sent off everything from soldiers and military horses to trains and airplanes. We held so many lantern parades to celebrate our victories! Why have we forgotten that in defeat?

"I wanted to build Greater East Asia."
NOGI HARUMICHI [1]
    Yatsuo is a quiet town, one hour by train from Osaka. His study smells of the fresh-brewed coffee he has just brought back from a trip to Indonesia. Very tall and handsome, he is a retired real estate agent.
The idea of creating an economic zone wherein all the nations of Asia could develop in concert was widespread in Japanese academic and polit­ical circles in the late 1930s. Of course, Japan was seen as the natural leader of such a regional realignment. Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yosuke made the first official use of the term "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," in August 1940. The resources of the Dutch East Indies, partic­ularly its petroleum, became increasingly vital to Japanese industrial and military planners as Japan's war in China led to deteriorating economic and political relations with the United States. A student in 1904, Nogi Harumichi joined the Patriotic Students Alliance at his university and was gradually drawn into the shadow world of semiclandestine rightist groups, preparing themselves to play a role in "liberating the Indies from their Dutch masters."

    The man who really got me all stirred up about colonialism was professor Imamura Chusuke. He was the founder and head of the Department of Colonial Economics at Nihon University, the private college we called Nichidai. He'd say in class, "I've been to Shanghai where signs say 'Dogs and Yellow People—No Entry!' I've been to the South Seas, an area controlled entirely by the white man." He'd ask us, "What are you going to do to knock down this structure?" He had studied in America and was a professor of current events, but he devoted himself to rousing speeches like this. My feelings resonated with him. I burned with a desire to act. "Given an opportunity, I want to go to the front. I want to go to China. I want to do something myself." That's what we all said.
    America and Britain had been colonizing China for many years. Japan came to this late. China was such a backward nation. At the time of the Manchurian Incident in 1931, we felt Japan should go out there and use Japanese technology and leadership to make China a better country. What was actually happening on the battlefield was all secret then, but I felt sure that the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere would be of crucial importance to the backward races. Japan and Germany would only have to combine forces to break the Anglo-Saxon hold on Asia, and redistribute the colonies. That's how we felt then.
    Beginning in 1939, Hitler's newsreels were shown every day. When I played hooky, I always went to see them. I'd watch those stirring movies about Hitler and wonder, "What's the matter with the Japanese army in Manchuria? Why can't they just annihilate the British or the Americans? Hitler took all of Poland and united it with Germany!" Then I bought Hitler's heroic autobiography Mem Kampf. Japanese youth at that time adored Hitler and Mussolini and yearned for the emergence of a Japanese politician with the same qualities. We wanted decisive action.
    Hashimoto Kingoro, a former army officer, and Nakano Seigo, a politician who advocated the "Southern Advance," were two who took after Hitler and copied his style. I went to their speeches, all of them. Sometimes I'd be thrown out. Their supporters would demand to see my student ID and then say I wasn't old enough. Somehow, they didn't like students. So I'd take off my school uniform and sneak in. The meetings were held at the Hibiya Public Hall. Whenever extreme right-wing talks were given, on subjects like "Attack Britain and America," enormous crowds came. People brought box lunches and formed long lines from six in the morning to get in and hear Nakano Seigo endorsing the liberation of Asia. Even then, sometimes you couldn't get in. This was in 1940 and early '41, before the war. When you heard these talks, you felt as if your burdens had been lifted. You were satisfied. The audience would be carried away with enthusiasm for the ideals and theories of the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Nagai Ryutaro was another brilliant orator and people loved his tone He, too, advocated Asia for Asians. I loved the atmosphere of his talks. When Britain lodged a protest with Japan because a British gunboat was sunk by Japan in China, they denounced the British, saying, "While they're engaged in aggressive acts, how dare they complain about the Japanese army there?" They called on us to protest against the British Empire. I myself once went to a demonstration at the British embassy where I joined in shouting, "Britain get out of China! Stop your aggres­sion! What are you doing in the Orient?" We couldn't accept their presence in what they called the Far East.
    You would be shocked by what we were taught. "Democracy" meant you could do whatever you pleased. If we found ourselves where we had to fight America, we were assured we would not have to worry. America was a democratic nation and so would disintegrate and collapse. That was common talk. In America, they can't unite for a common purpose. One blow against them, and they'll fall to pieces.
    I was studying law and accounting. It bored me, just adding up and recording taxes or looking up interpretations of existing laws. I felt I couldn't stand doing that my whole life. It was at just such a moment that the branch chief of the Patriotic Students' Alliance at Nihon University pulled me aside and said he had a request to make of me. "We have work to do, but it must be carried out clandestinely. That's why I've selected you. If you don't wish to participate, don't say a word to anyone. If you wish to join us, contact me within a week." Then he told me he would introduce me to a "boss." At most of the universities and higher technical schools there was a branch of the Patriotic Students' Alliance. It was founded by right-wing groups and was part of the so-called International Anti-Communist Alliance. I now realize they played the role of skirmish­ers in agitating for war, but then I was concerned that they might be a gangster group. What if the assignment were to assassinate somebody? I confronted the branch chief and asked him for assurances that it wouldn t be anything like that. He assured me that the work would involve the independence movement in Indonesia. Indonesian independence? That sounded exciting. Even thrilling. I decided to join in early 1940.
    They had a private academy located at the home of a businessman, near Meguro in Tokyo. He had a big hall for kendo fencing behind his house. The head of the private academy, Kaneko, was a disciple of one of the right-wing leaders, Iwata Ainosuke. He'd gone to Indonesia in early Showa, soon after 1926, and had spent years there, wandering around. He was like one of the "China ronin," masterless Japanese samurai who had worked mostly on their own initiative with the Chinese nationalists to overthrow the corrupt Ching dynasty before China's revolution in 1911. I guess I should call him a "Southern ronin."
    When I arrived at Meguro, this man came out wearing a formal man's kimono. He looked like Takasugi Shinsaku, the hero of the Meiji Restoration. He was only about thirty-six. Twenty of his students had returned from Indonesia. They were my age, just youths who, on gradu­ation from elementary school, with no real prospects for jobs or work in Japan, had been sent to Indonesia. There they worked in large depart­ment stores in cities like Surabaja, and all were able to speak Indonesian fluently. My Indonesian was only what I could pick up at Nichidai while studying colonial economics, but now I burned to go somewhere overseas.
    I believed in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere myself, but I couldn't really discuss that with these other students. Perhaps it was because they didn't have the educational level required, but we did talk about what was best for the Indonesian independence movement and focused on how to develop better relations with Indonesia. We saw Indonesia as a nation with great natural abundance, but a nation lagging behind in development. Japan should go there to help them use their wealth. It was a very utilitarian view. Gradually, I sensed that we were being groomed as reserves for the military. Despite that, I thought that it would be wonderful if we were to take part in the independence move­ment and liberate Indonesia from the Dutch. Even if our army didn't do it, we would, I thought. But gradually we came to believe that perhaps the military was going to do it.        
    That Twenty-six-hundredth Anniversary of National Foundation! A great moment in Japanese history. We were mobilized for that in the summer of 1940. We students were assigned tasks like guiding people around and preparing their schedules for ceremonies and events. There was a grand meeting of overseas Japanese all under one roof—represen­tatives from Latin America and even from the U.S.A. We took them to military ports and accompanied them to the Imperial Palace for an audi­ence with His Imperial Majesty. Just a year before the outbreak of the war, efforts were made for the total mobilization of overseas Japanese. They were told Japan would not lose if it came to war. These affairs connected with the anniversary, and conducted by the government, were intended to raise the Imperial Army and the Navy high on a pedestal and to demonstrate Japan's dignity and prestige to overseas Japanese, as much as to the nations of the world as a whole.
    I participated in what was called the Sumera Study Group. It was a play on words. Sumera in Japanese means both the Japanese Emperor and the Sumerians, the Middle Eastern people who were the founders of human civilization. Several scholars founded the group at the beginning of 1940. The organizers gathered student leaders from all the colleges and schools, including the imperial universities, not just the private ones like Nichidai. We met on the second floor of the Shirakiya Department Store. We were even given money when we attended the lectures. We were taught that Japan had to be more aggressive and told how we might expand the nation for the sake of the Emperor. From experiences like this, I'd say almost all the students of that time were caught up in militarism in some way.
    I sometimes ran errands to the navy's Military Affairs Section for our academy, bringing them lists of people who resided in the South and things like that, without really knowing much about what I was doing. One day, the head of the group told me, "You're going into the navy. Get your application in order." I was a little surprised since I hadn't even taken an exam. I didn't realize that by then I was already deep inside, that our group was closely tied to the navy's "Advance to the South" faction.
I did have doubts at times, but on such occasions I believed that these thoughts surfaced in my mind because I was lacking in patriotic fervor and spirit. I felt I had to drive myself forward. If a nation decides to take action, everyone must move along with the decision! And, of course, I can't deny that I thought about what advantages might come to me. One can protect oneself best in the company of others.
In November 1941, one of the members of the academy, Yoshizumi Tomegoro, suddenly disappeared. The head of the academy didn't men­tion it. We'd sensed that preparations for war were on-going and we were just waiting for it to start. Whenever we asked when, they only told us to wait. Wait. They refused to give us any date. Our school year was short­ened. We would now graduate in December. I got permission to leave the academy temporarily in order to study for my university graduation examinations and was allowed to board outside the academy if I agreed to join the navy. When I returned to the academy grounds at the begin­ning of December to take my preliminary physical and the navy written exams, I found it virtually deserted. All the young men had left. They'd mainly been assigned as interpreters for our landing forces. I later learned Yoshizumi had actually landed in Indonesia as a spy for the military.