Book Review: Eyewitnesses to Massacre, edited by Zhang Kaiyuan, from M.E. Sharpe, 2001.

Eyewitnesses to Massacre is a difficult, disturbing, rewarding book. It is vitally important to understanding the Japanese aggression which predated Pearl Harbor by years. Its calm and personal records of incremental savagery and capricious butchery foreshadow the Bataan Death March and the Hell Ships, and demonstrate that the Japanese militarists did not confine their cruelty to Caucasian prisoners of war. They were equal opportunity robbers and rapists and treated everyone this way regardless of race.

Eyewitnesses to Massacre builds on diaries, letters, news bulletins, war criminal trial testimony, and interviews with American missionaries active in Nanking in the late 1930s. They describe on a day-to-day basis the confused withdrawal of the Chinese army, the arrival of the Japanese victors, and a growing storm of atrocities.

To understand the enormity of this horror, think of The Killing Fields in slow motion. First every ex-soldier and anyone looking like one was rounded up and machine-gunned or grenaded or burned or used for bayonet practice. Then Japanese soldiers started entering houses, buildings, and compounds, ostensibly looking for soldiers, but in reality casing out locations and seeking women. Wives and daughters are raped and/or abducted. Individuals and groups of Japanese start looting, using their bayonets and rifles in the face of any perceived opposition. Opium starts appearing on the streets (to fund puppet governments). Businesses are pillaged and burned. Infrastructure specialists (such as power plant staff) are driven off or killed. Embassies are entered and looted. Japanese proclamations of sanctuary are torn down by Japanese soldiers. A German resident flaunts his Nazi armband to assist threatened American missionaries. Japanese consular officials are powerless to influence the mad-dog behavior of their compatriots. Throughout all this there is a cast of thousands, a Longest-Day-sized cast of victims of robbery, rape, looting, and bombing. Of course (how could it be otherwise?) the saving efforts by missionaries contrast sharply with complete ineffectuality of their own countries’ diplomats.

Japan's legacy of barbarism is refracted through the experience of ten missionaries, in their diary entries, letters, and ever war-crime testimony.

Reading about similar events through the eyes of so many different participants is fascinating since each has a unique perspective and insight into the accelerating pace of destruction. And while the missionaries are isolated in an urban battlefield for months at a time, with no help from the outside, their faith remains unperturbed. Indeed, it empowers them to support and safeguard thousands of lives; amazingly their worldview is only strengthened by the surrounding savagery. However, there is nothing pollyannaish about them, some of the most moving portions of this book record their inner struggles to come to terms with massacre, their responsibilities, their commitments, and their struggle to hate evil but not evildoers. Few ever had their faith so aggressively and severely tested.

To this day Japanese schoolbooks find it hard to confront this heritage of casual cruelty and it is certainly easy to see why. Eyewitnesses to Massacre is not easy or pleasant reading. But it illuminates the Japanese role in Asia in the same way that the diary of Anne Frank helps us see the Nazi evil in action. And it shows us the relentless power and ingenuity of good in fighting evil.

Next time someone at the Smithsonian starts babbling about how the Japanese went to war to protect their unique way of life, share a few stories from this riveting book of personal experiences.

Book Review: Horyo, by Richard M. Gordon, Paragon House, 2001

Many experience war, few observe it, and even fewer understand what they observe. Richard Gordon’s desire to set the record straight about Japanese captivity and what it did to its captives is the foundation for this valuable, remarkable book. For too many people, images of POW camp life are based on one part The Great Escape and one part Hogan’s Heroes. Gordon describes the real life of captivity as few others have dared. Its rare, disturbing insight into the POW existence and the struggle to survive make it required reading for all servicemen.

Many factors doomed the American forces in the Philippines in 1941: lack of training, inadequate supplies, the dismal state of the officer corps, MacArthur’s inexplicable failure to protect his air assets in the hours immediately after the Pearl Harbor strike, and ultimately the Europe First strategy directed from Washington. Gordon touches on all these while focusing on the jagged edge of his own experience of capture and imprisonment. When the Philippines fell in 1942 he started out in Bataan, hiked to Camp O'Donnell, and shipped thence to Japan’s Mitsushima camp, scene of some of Japan's worst POW abuses. Gordon’s account of initial capture and the walk Camp O'Donnell is dramatic and detailed. Later, his description of liberation, transport, repatriation, and resettling are wonderful recreations of the joyful chaos of war’s end.

POWs in the Philippines suffered further due to the breakdown of command structures. The infamous death march disintegrated units, and reduced the inadequately-trained units to undifferentiated masses of men, most only looking out for themselves. These have all been told before. Gordon excels not only by the strong account of these experiences, but by his description of how POWs repeatedly victimized each other: withholding medicines used for barter, sexual predation, betrayal to the Japanese, and callous mutual disregard. The American units were atomized by the Japanese, and the physical trauma of the relocation of prisoners destroyed all unit cohesion. Gordon describes how the British prisoners, in contrast, maintained discipline and leadership in the most trying circumstances.

The book has one baffling omission. Its photographs include shots of Gordon visiting with former captors or their widows in the early 1990s. The emotional depth and complexity of this book would have been even richer had Gordon described his journey back to Japan 45 years after the war’s end and his confrontations with past tormentors.

Nonetheless, Horyo is a darkly illuminating account of a world where allies became enemies, where enemies displayed improbable kindness, and where individuality destroyed individuals. Gordon’s account is not reassuring, and through his restraint there simmers a lifetime of resentment, anger, and injustice. Yet these give his account an exceptional authenticity and emotional depth, far exceeding other accounts which merely catalog beatings and schemings. Implicit on every page is the challenge of how the reader would have acted any differently in such soul-crushing circumstances. No one will ever think of the Philippine campaign or POW experience the same way after reading this unique, powerful book.

Book Review: Last Voyage of the Henry Bacon

Over the years, every naval engagement of the Second World War has found its books and scholars. In contrast, the merchant convoys across the Atlantic have found favor with few historians. Yet every convoy took the same risks of sudden death and destruction, even compounded by their slow speed, lack of armament, and thin hulls. Almost every convoy was a protracted battle between hidden predators and slow targets. But few writers have measured the cost and told the tales.

This scarcity makes The Last Voyage of the SS Henry Bacon all the more a delight to read. Authors Foxvog and Alotta tell many stories: Norwegians fleeing Nazi scorched earth tactics, first-time sailors experiencing the gloom of Murmansk, desperate Soviet stowaways summarily returned to Stalinist captors, and indefatigable British officers searching for survivors amid submarine and airborne German menace. The authors score a major success with their skillful integration of so many narrative threads.

The basic story is straightforward. Early in 1945, the Liberty ship SS Henry Bacon traveled in convoy to Murmansk with supplies for the Soviet war effort. At the same time, British warships rescued Norwegian civilians left to die by the retreating Nazis. At Murmansk the supplies were unloaded, civilians transferred to the empty cargo ships, and the convoy returned. En route home, severe weather, hardware problems, and poor ballast separated Henry Bacon from the rest of the convoy. With navigational equipment carried away by the storm, the ship strayed north as the convoy steamed south. In this isolated condition it fell prey to a German air attack force.

Alone the crew of merchantmen and Navy gunners fought more than two dozen German attack aircraft, downing at least five before succumbing to a torpedo. Here the story-telling skill of the authors is especially strong. Norwegian civilians were given first place in the few undamaged lifeboats, and the crew survived as best they could in small rafts, and improvised floats. By the time rescuing British vessels arrived two hours later, many of the crew, including senior officers, had died from exposure or gone down with their ship.

Nearly sixty years later, there are still lessons from the events of this book: the tight cohesion of the Navy and merchant marine crew in the face of threats and war, the British commitment to allies in need, the casual callousness of the retreating Germans, and the complex relations between allies as different as Soviets and Americans. The moral of these stories, magnified by wartime drama amid nature’s fury, is how ordinary men become extraordinary in the face of crisis.

This by itself would be a great story. Yet much more than these adventures make this book so rewarding. The authors’ exhaustive research recounts incidents among crewmembers before and after their last trip, and brings terse ship records to vivid life. You feel the world of Depression-era men looking for adventure and a better life; some ended it in glory, others in the bars of distant lands. But the self-sacrifice, ingenuity, and persistence of these men was their defining quality

The Last Voyage of the SS Henry Bacon is absolutely compelling reading for anyone interested in WWII or sea adventure. It is rich in detail, deeply researched, well-told, and crammed with personal stories and riveting action. I can only hope that it comes to the attention of a film producer.