What Happens to People?

A post-war Japanese perspective

By James L. Secor, Ph.D.

In the aftermath of war, people are often forgotten. Perhaps to protect us from the general, if not our own, atrocities we talk about Nations and The People, never simply people. That's too personal. The closest we get to "people" is The Enemy and they're all the same and all bad.

With the last world war, we have a plethora of holocaust pictures and shots of bombed out cities, all from ground level…all from Europe. What we have of Japan are aerial shots of the destruction of our bombing campaign, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So pervasive and powerful was the war time propaganda in painting the enemy as barbarians that until recently the history of Japan, the civilians we decimated, has remained faceless. One hundred million hearts beating as one? All Japanese look alike? They all think alike? An obedient herd? Nothing could be farther from the truth.

To further hide our atrocities-- we forever proclaimed we didn't wage war on civilians only on workers. Then downplayed incidents of mass murder, or found scapegoats for orders passed down from above, while heroifying the generals who made the decisions that we declared, in the wake of WWII, to be crimes against humanity. We only see the rapid, magnificent rise to international economic prominence of the country and take the credit for its economic resurgence. We, in fact, substituted one form of slavery for another. This lasted six years and eight months, the war for just over three years. Not until 1999 was the post-war history of the people told in John Dower's staggering book Embracing Defeat, Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Dower does two things in this book: he destroys stereotypes and he makes war human. He personalizes brutality and inhumanity. Unlike virtually all histories, particularly of the victors', what Dower gives us is a history of people as opposed to Nation-states and Governments. In Japan itself there was no people's history until the 17th century. Here, 55 years after the last war, Dower writes the first history of the Japanese people in the 20th century.

The first thing we learn is that many, many Japanese were relieved the hell of war was over. Despite military propaganda and exhortations, most knew the war was a lost cause long before 1945. Some never wanted it to begin with. But to state such an opinion, even to one's friends, was certain death. The writers and intellectuals who had spoken out had long since been imprisoned or executed. The military regime and its efficient and effective secret police maintained the one mind of Japan. Indeed, the Emperor's message had to be composed in private by him and his closest advisors and kept secret from the military leaders and cabinet until the time of delivery. (It is important here to realize remember that since the Eighth century only one emperor has ever really wielded power and he was eventually compromised.)

After the initial shock of both hearing the Emperor's voice, which many could not understand because of his stilted, formal language, and that the war was over, after the tears and fainting, after the celebrations--people actually cheered outside the Imperial residence, none fell to their knees in tears as was later reported--there was reality. And the reality was devastating.

Most of the people had nowhere to live. There were nine million homeless, about 125,000 "war orphans," children. There was no sewage system and no running water. There was no electricity. Most had no more than one set of clothes. Most found their late war bowl of barley gruel disappearing. The war widows saw their government checks end. Suddenly the soldiers became unacceptable members of society, especially the returning veterans; even worse was the status of the disabled war veteran. In Japan, if you don't fit into a socially acceptable group, it's a virtual death sentence.

Neither the government nor the Occupation helped matters much. Indeed, for the most part, Occupation policies encouraged the deterioration of society by supporting the very elements of society that propagated the war and enriched themselves at their own people's expense. The crooked went unpunished; scapegoats took the role of justice. The Japanese government, however, was particularly cruel and heartless in the treatment of its own citizens, preferring to line its own pockets at their expense.

People lived tents, lean-tos and tin shacks. They lived under the rubble. They lived in the subways, the railroad stations, under bridges and trestles. And they lived out in the streets without any protection from the elements. All the material that might have been available had been stockpiled by the rich, the businesses, the absconded politicians who perpetrated the misguided, fanatical war in the first place. Any effort toward rebuilding was for these businesses. Occasionally, the police--an impotent, sympathetic lot--were mobilized and the subways raided, the homeless, starving men, women and children arrested and thrown in jail. The children were counted like animals. Instead of using the counter for people, which would have been hitori, futari, sannin, yonin (1, 2, 3, 4 people), it was the counter "hiki" that was used: ippiki (one animal), nihiki (two animals), sanbiki, yonhiki.

Food was so scarce by the end of the war that the average young male was 4" shorter than his pre-war counterpart. Post-war, the government not only continued exhorting its citizens to frugality, a now-perverted Confucian value, but issued pamphlets on how to prepare unusual foods and the immensely popular Fujin Kurabu (Housewives Club) magazine had recipes for grasshoppers.

"Malnutrition and dystrophy became watchwords with 733 people reportedly dying of malnutrition just in November 1945 in the five largest cities (probably a low count). Rice once more was an unheard of quantity and the war time staple of barley gruel deteriorated to potato broth (without the potato, it could be used again), acorns, orange peels, root of the arrowroot plant, wheat-bran bread and water. Schools were let out before noon so they wouldn't have to serve lunch, which was their responsibility.

One schoolteacher went without his lunches, giving the food to his students, went without dinner so his family could eat and eventually starved to death. An isolated instance? Not by a long shot. So, after killing them and destroying their livelihood the Japanese government along with the U.S. Occupation force starved the remaining populace, basically doing nothing more than issuing proclamations. Candy bars, chewing gum, sugar, nylons and directives for the Occupation forces to have nothing to do with the vile yellow enemy helped considerably.

People were dying everywhere. In the Okinawan Repatriation Camps-- they could not go home for the damage and lack of food--15-20 people/day died. Out in the streets, so many died that the bodies could not be disposed of and were left to rot in the streets. There are no reports of cannibalism. But suicide was rampant, due to what was called the kyodatsu condition. This was an intense depression and despair and a belief that there was no hope for the future. The Depression besetting post-war Japan made that suffered by the U.S. in the 30's seem like a coming out party.

The kyodatsu condition also ushered in an era of despair, dissipation and nihilism. The disease moved down into the masses from the intellectuals and brought about a severe drinking problem sometimes resulting in death, because there was not any use really doing anything. This was the kasutori culture, named after the cheap liquor available on the streets for a pittance. A nice way to end the day when two yen was a good day's wages.

Another adjustment made, and hailed at first by MacArthur and the Occupation hierarchy, was for women to become prostitutes. The government even solicited "volunteers" for Emperor and Country. Later, after it had become successful, MacArthur damned the practice. The GIs' appetites were voracious, some whores servicing 60 men a day. Some families even reverted to Tokugawa practices by selling their girls into whoredom, basically for a spot to eat. Some quit. Some committed suicide. Some became famous.

One in particular became an icon, Rakucho no Otoki, Otoki of the Yurakucho district, a well-known haven for streetwalkers, after a now famous letter by an anonymous prostitute to the editor of the Mainichi newspaper:

"I slept there [in Ueno Station] and looked for work, but could not find anything, and there were three consecutive days when I went without eating. Then on the night of the third day a man I did not know gave me two rice balls. I devoured them. The following night he again brought me two rice balls. He then asked me to come to the park because he wanted to talk with me. I followed him. That is when I sank into the despised profession of being a "woman of the dark." [Mainichi Shimbun, Sept. 29, 1946]"

Otoki's words were more to the point:

"Of course it's bad to be a hooker. But without relatives or jobs due to the war disaster, how are we supposed to live?. . .There aren't many of us who do this because we like it. . .but even so, when we try to go straight and find a job, people point their fingers at us and say we were hookers. . . . I've turned many of these girls straight and sent them back into society, but then. . .they all get picked on and chased out and end up back here under the tracks. . . . You can't trust society. They despise us. (Dower, Embracing Defeat, p. 124)"

A very popular song of the times, "In the Flow of the Stars," provoked by the Mainichi letter, led to one particular phrase being adopted as a prickly social question: konna onna ni dare ga shita, "Who made me such a woman?"

The next thing that happened was that virtually everyone became a thief. People stole anything and everything, selling it to black market dealers--the only people who got rich in post war Japan--if they couldn't immediately eat or use it for protection. Most everyone became a frequenter of the black market, too. Prices were outrageous but it was the only place to get goods of any kind. Government crackdowns picked up the thieves and the people who bought at the black market and let the dealers continue their lucrative, ludicrous activities. The families of these petty thieves usually succumbed as the lawbreakers were sent to jail.

The Occupation lasted longer than the war and the situation wasn't so very much better in 1952 when the Americans left. How the people managed to live through and overcome the severe depredations of the war is truly amazing. But the plight of people, any people, in the aftermath of war needs to be remembered and made vivid if we are to have any chance of avoiding future conflicts.

Jim Secor is a freelance writer who has traveled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. Jim received a Master's from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas before studying at the National Puppet Theatre of Japan (Bunraku), the first foreigner ever to do so. He has published in all genres and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature in three countries. Jim is now teaching at Sun Yat-sen (Zhongshan) University in China. He is a columnist for MWC News.