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Historical Background
Commemorative Visit to Japan
2 – 10 August 2008
Contents
1. Japan and the Second World War
1.1 Background
1.2 The Road To War: Manchuria And The ‘China Incident’ 1931-1941
1.3 Pearl Harbor And The Beginning Of The ‘Greater East Asia War’, 1941-1942
1.4 The Japanese Home Front
2. Japan 1945 To Date
3. A Note on the Shinto Religion
4. Japan and the Collective Memory of the Second World War
5. Japanese School Textbook Debate
6. Historic Sites We Will Be Visiting
6.1 Kyoto
6.1.1Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion)
6.1.2 Ryoanji
6.1.3 Nijo Castle
6.1.4 Kiyomizu Temple
6.1.5 Heian Shrine
6.1.6 Kyoto Museum For World Peace
6.2 Hiroshima
6.2.1 Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine
6.2.2 A Note on the Bombing of Hiroshima
6.2.3 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
6.3 Tokyo
6.3.1 Edo Museum
6.3.2 Yasukuni Shrine And Yushukan Museum
6.3.3 Hitachi Aircraft Factory Electricity Substation
6.4 Yokohama
6.4.1 Yokahama Commonwealth War Cemetery
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1. JAPAN AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
1.1 Background
By the time Japan entered the Second World War in December 1941, with its surprise
attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, it had become one of the world’s most
industrialised nations.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, after centuries of self-imposed isolation from the
rest of the world, Japan had made great strides in catching up with the great powers. In
1902, it concluded an alliance with Britain, and during the First World War British and
Japanese troops fought alongside each other against the German colony of Tsingtao in
China.
After the war, Japan was beset by economic and political crises. The worsening
economic situation reached breaking point after the Wall Street Crash of October 1929,
and the ‘Great Depression’ which followed. The military seized control of the government
in Japan and set about suppressing democratic movements and institutions. Japan
withdrew from the League of Nations, and politicians opposed to the military regime were
assassinated by fanatical young army officers. But, even within the armed forces there
were violent divisions, with senior army and navy officers constantly jockeying with each
other for political supremacy.
1.2 The Road To War: Manchuria And The ‘China Incident’ 1931-1941
In 1931, using a fake sabotage attempt as a pretext, Japan invaded the Chinese province
of Manchuria. There, the following year, it established the puppet state of Manchukuo.
In theory it was the Emperor, worshipped as a god by his people, who held absolute
power in Japan. In practice, however, Emperor Hirohito, who had been on the throne
since 1926, was just a pawn of the admirals and generals. The military held the real power
in Japan and were becoming increasingly uncontrollable. Anybody who spoke out
against them risked physical violence or death. In 1932 both the prime minister and the
finance minister were assassinated by the military.
Condemned by the western powers for its invasion of Manchuria, Japan withdrew from
the League of Nations in 1933, and in 1936 it signed a pact with Nazi Germany. In July
1937, following clashes with Chinese troops near Peking, Japan launched a full-scale
invasion of China. The Sino–Japanese War or the ‘China Incident’, as it was (and often still
is) called in Japan, was to last for another eight years.
The conflict was bitter and brutal. The Japanese viewed the Chinese as less than human
and followed a ‘three-all’ policy -‘Burn All, Seize All, Kill All’ -murdering and raping
indiscriminately. Becoming a prisoner was seen by Japanese troops as the ultimate act of
cowardice and degradation, and Chinese soldiers who surrendered could expect little
mercy from them. During the ‘Rape of Nanking’, which followed the city’s fall in
December 1937, an estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were subjected to
appalling brutalities and then massacred. Over 80,000 Chinese women were raped in the
city before they were slaughtered.
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Estimates of the Chinese death toll for the eight years of war vary hugely, and often
include victims of the fighting between Mao’s Communist and Chiang Kai Shek’s
nationalist forces. A conservative estimate puts the number of Chinese who died as a
result of war at 20,000,000, including those who died as a result of Japanese chemical
warfare attacks and experiments. The ‘China Incident’ was also costly for the Japanese
and the relative lack of success there became a source of public discontent. Between
1937 and 1945, 400,000 Japanese troops died in China, the majority in the first four years of
the conflict.
In the late 1930s, Japan became increasingly industrialised. Many firms which are now
household names, such as Fuji, Toyota and Mitsubishi, were established. But the demands
of the war in China were such that Japan had to look for raw material to sustain its war
effort, oil in particular. In the Far East, most of these resources were controlled or guarded
by Britain and the United States, and to a lesser extent France and the Netherlands. In
1940, Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy, then fighting Britain and its allies. With
the success of German forces against Britain and in Europe in 1940 and 1941, Japan saw
its chance to seize the European-governed assets, moving into French Indochina and
threatening British and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The United States (Still not officially
entered into the war) blocked shipments of raw materials to Japan and, in September
1941, insisted that Japan give up its New Order in Asia. This meant withdrawing troops from
China and Indochina. The American demand effectively ended the possibility of any
diplomatic solution to Japan’s plans to dominate Asia. The Japanese military decided that
the only way forward was to attack the United States and then to capture American,
British and Dutch possessions in the Far East, including the Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia).
1.3 Pearl Harbor And The Beginning Of The ‘Greater East Asia War’, 1941-1942
On 7 December 1941, the ‘Greater East Asia War’ began. Japanese aircraft, launched
from aircraft carriers, made a surprise attack on the base of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii. By knocking the Fleet out, they hoped to ensure a short war. At the same
time, Japanese troops invaded Malaya and Thailand. In less than three months, Japan
conquered Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, most of Burma, and threatened India. All
were British possessions and considered by many to be strongholds and impenetrable to
attack. They also conquered the Philippines, where US forces had been based, and the
Dutch East Indies.
Allied servicemen, who had been fed stories of the racial inferiority of the Japanese and
their supposedly poor equipment, were shocked and demoralized to find that, although
often numerically inferior, Japanese troops proved tough and determined fighters. The
quality of their equipment also tended to be superior to that of the Allies.
At first, the Japanese were looked upon as liberators by many of the peoples in the
countries they overran. On account of their race, many Asians had often been
disadvantaged under European or American rule. Now, fed on false Japanese promises,
they looked forward to independence within the ‘Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’,
supposedly an economic and racial union of all Asians. Although puppet national
governments were set up, real power remained with the Japanese, who imposed a harsh,
racist regime throughout the countries they occupied. Many Asians now suffered terribly
as much needed foodstuffs and raw materials were diverted to the Japanese war effort.
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The Japanese military hoped that by destroying the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the
Americans would accept the inevitable, make peace and allow Japan to establish
supremacy in Asia. But they seriously miscalculated the sense of outrage and thirst for
vengeance that now existed in America. They miscalculated too the effects of the Pearl
Harbor attack. Most US vessels sunk or damaged in the attack were quickly made battle
worthy again. More importantly, the main American
carrier force remained undamaged. Japan was now
condemned to fighting a protracted war in the
Pacific for which she was militarily and economically
unprepared. Halted in her southward advance by the
US Navy at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japan was
decisively beaten by the Americans during the Battle
of Midway in June 1942. After Midway, Japan’s
eventual defeat was inevitable, but three years of
hard fighting lay ahead.
Japan’s strategy had been to protect the
THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, 4 - 7 JUNE 1942
homeland by keeping the enemy as far from
USS YORKTOWN is hit on her portside during the Japanese
bombardment in the Battle of Midway in the Pacific on 4 June
its shores as possible and to win a short war.
1942. NYF 42432
The Pacific War saw the Japanese being
gradually pushed back over thousands of kilometres of ocean and land. The fighting was
characterised by large-scale naval engagements, where the opposing fleets could rarely
see each other, and bitter land battles as the Americans ‘hopped’ from island to island.
More warships were lost in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945 than in all other twentieth
century wars combined.
The war between America and Japan had strong racist overtones. US servicemen in the
South Pacific were told, ‘Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs’ and there was scant regard on
both sides for the rules of war. Japanese resistance was fanatical. Adhering to the code of
Bushido, Japanese soldiers would commit suicide rather than surrender. For example, out
of a Japanese garrison of nearly 3,000, only 17 were taken alive when US Marines stormed
Tarawa in November 1943.
By August 1944, with the American capture of the
Marianas islands, the Japanese high command
recognized that the war was effectively lost. The loss of
the Marianas led to a government crisis and the fall of the
Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, the militarist who had
led Japan into war. US bombers were now within striking
range of the Japanese home islands, and Japan was
soon subjected to a series of devastating air raids. In one
THE CENTRAL PACIFIC FRONT 19431945
The Invasion of the Marianas Islands,
June - August 1944: An American Marine
uses a flame-thrower to clear a Japanese
held pillbox on Saipan. NYF 30343
raid alone, on Tokyo in March 1945, over 70,000 people
were killed. Against such attacks the Japanese had little
in the way of defence.
As the Americans now approached the home islands,
Japanese resistance became even more desperate. In
April 1945, US forces numbering over 1,200 ships landed 180,000 troops on Okinawa, just
500 kilometres from the Japanese mainland. There for the first time in strength, Kamikazes
attacked American warships. These were aircraft packed with explosives and manned by
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suicide pilots who would try crash the planes onto American ships. So great was the initial
damage done by the Kamikazes that US commanders seriously considered abandoning
operations on Okinawa altogether.
By the time the fighting on Okinawa finally ended on 20 June 1945, over 100,000 Japanese
soldiers and civilians, including 2,000 Kamikaze pilots, had been killed, while American
losses in killed and wounded totaled nearly 50,000. The Americans, now looking at the
invasion of Japan itself, were faced with the daunting prospect of equally fanatical
resistance, huge casualty figures and the possibility of the war lasting for years. It was clear
that conventional bombing raids did not hold the answer. Many German cities had been
pounded into rubble without a German surrender. The
atomic bomb, then under development, seemed to be
the only way of ending the war quickly with the
minimum loss of Allied lives.
In July 1945, during the meeting of Allied leaders at
Potsdam, a declaration was made calling on the
Japanese to surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt
and utter destruction’. This was rejected by Tokyo, and
President Truman sanctioned the use of the atomic
bomb.
Rocket Weapons and the Atomic Bomb: The scene of devastation at Hiroshima
which resulted from the explosion of the Atomic Bomb on 6 August 1945. The
destructive power of the device was equal to the bomb-load of nearly 2000 B-29s
carrying conventional high explosives. SC 278262
On 6 August 1945, the first
atomic bomb was dropped
over Hiroshima, to be
followed three days later by another on Nagasaki. On 15 August 1945, Japan finally
surrendered, with Emperor Hirohito telling his people, ‘the war situation has developed not
necessarily to Japan’s advantage…’
Since the ‘China Incident’ began in July 1937 over
2,000,000 Japanese servicemen had been killed and
nearly a million civilians.
1.4 The Japanese Home Front
The news of the attack on Pearl Harbor and war with
Britain and America came as a great shock to the
ordinary people of Japan. But their initial
apprehension gave way to jubilation as Japanese
forces went from victory to victory.
JAPANESE SURRENDER AT TOKYO BAY, 2
SEPTEMBER 1945
General Umezu Yoshijiro signs the surrender on
behalf of the Imperial Japanese Army. A 30427A
Military successes in the Far East and Pacific were cause for celebration, especially as
Japanese forces had appeared to have got bogged down in China. Feature films and
newsreels gloated over the humbling of the arrogant, morally inferior whites. But, the
Japanese people were told, in order to secure and retain their newly-won possessions,
they would have to make sacrifices and to be as dedicated as their soldiers. This they did
until the surrender in 1945, and there was little or no meaningful opposition to the war on
the Japan’s home front.
Japan had been on a war footing since 1937, but with Pearl Harbor, measures that further
militarized Japanese life were introduced. Air raid drills, at first unnecessary at a practical
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level as no enemy bomber could reach Japan, were intensified to promote a martial spirit.
These were compulsory and organized by the neighbourhood associations that governed
everyday life in wartime Japan. Attempts were made to stamp out all Western influences.
This even included clothing, with a unisex national uniform being introduced.
Stringent rationing of food and other essentials was introduced. Officially the ration was
set at 1,500 calories a day, enough for subsistence only, but in practice it fell far short of
this for many Japanese.
To foster patriotism and imbue the military spirit among Japan’s children, compulsory
schools were introduced. At them children were taught that the highest virtue of all was to
serve, and if necessary die for, the Emperor. At school, military training was given, and
children also worked in war factories. With manpower shortages, Japanese women,
whose role in society was to bear these warrior sons, were now conscripted to work on the
land, in factories and in the mines.
Buddhism had been a feature of Japanese religious life for centuries, but starting in the
1920s, nationalists and militarists had begun to insist that Shinto be practised as the sole
state religion. The Emperor was revered as a warrior god who would lead an invincible
Japan in conquest. The Bushido (‘way of the warrior’) values of loyalty, strength and selfdenial were promoted. Japanese boys were taught to emulate the martial code of the
Samurai, where a glorious death in battle was a moment of perfection. On reaching
military age, Japanese conscripts were sent off to war with a ‘belt of a thousand stitches’.
These were embroidered with the names of family and friends and sometimes complete
strangers and were supposed to ward off enemy bullets.
Japan experienced its first ever air raid on 18 April 1942.
16 bombers under the command of Colonel James
Doolittle, launched from an aircraft carrier, attacked
Tokyo. They caused very little damage, but the raid
came as a huge shock, especially as Japanese
propaganda had proclaimed Japanese airspace
impenetrable. A new American bomber, the B-29
Superfortress had just enough range to hit Japanese
cities from bases in India and China from June 1944. But
one month later, with the occupation of the Marianas
Islands (Guam, Tinian and Saipan) in the Pacific, these
new heavy bombers, were able to attack all of the
Japanese home islands in large numbers. In March
1945 alone, the US Air Force attacked 66 Japanese
cities and, as part of Operation Starvation, sowed mines that made access by sea to key
ports extremely hazardous.
THE DOOLITTLE RAID, 18 APRIL 1942
A B 25 bomber of the US Army Air Force,
piloted by Lieutenant Colonel James H
Doolittle, takes off from USS HORNET, bound
for a raid on Tokyo and other Japanese
military centres on 18 April 1942. NY 7343
From attacking selected industrial targets, in particular Japan’s aircraft plants, the tactics
of the bombers changed. There were several reasons for this. High-precision raids had not
had caused the predicted damage to key targets, which were often obscured by heavy,
unbroken cloud. Indeed accurate bombing over some cities, including Tokyo, was all but
impossible due to heavy winds, jet streams which constantly changed direction, breaking
up the formations and pushed the aircraft during their bombing runs.
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From March 1945, whole cities were destroyed by heavy bombers flying low under the
cloud, with firebombs the weapon of choice. The intention was to destroy Japanese
industry by area bombing. General Curtis Le May, who devised the plan, realised that
Japanese civilian casualties would be heavy. But he reasoned that the alternative, an
invasion of Japan would be even more costly and asked his doubters ‘Would you rather
have Americans killed?’. The mainly wooden buildings of Japanese cities burned easily
and firebreaks – areas cleared of housing to halt the spread of fire – proved almost
useless. Tokyo was the first city to be targeted by Le May. In a single raid on 9 March 1945
over 100,000 people were killed.
Japanese citizens were caught up in the land war for the first time in June 1944 when US
troops landed on Saipan. Almost all of the Japanese troops on the island died, many of
them by killing themselves. Many of the civilian population chose to join them or were
forced to do so. On Okinawa, 75,000 civilians died during the fighting for the island.
Fearing heavy casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainland and a war which
might be drawn out for another two years, the United States dropped the first atomic
bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Three days later, a second atomic bomb destroyed
Nagasaki.
Finally, despite the desire of some hardliners to continue the war, the Emperor and his
cabinet decided that they had to accept the Allies’ demand for Japan’s unconditional
surrender. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese population heard Emperor Hirohito’s
surrender broadcast. In it, he said that ‘the war has not necessarily developed to Japan’s
advantage’. It was the first time they had heard his voice. He made no reference to
‘surrender’ or ‘defeat’. Nearly 3 million Japanese were dead, the country was devastated
and millions were homeless and starving.
2. JAPAN 1945 TO DATE
The surrender was signed formally on 2 September 1945 and Japan was occupied for the
first time in its history. General Douglas MacArthur was made Supreme Commander of
Allied Forces in Japan and he immediately set about political and social reform. His aim
was to educate the Japanese, whom he viewed as children, and to make them assume
the American model of democracy.
Japan was demilitarised, with the army and navy disbanded. 948
political and military leaders were executed as war criminals,
including the prime minister from 1941 to 1944, General Hideki Tojo.
Emperor Hirohito, seen by the United States as vital to support for the
occupation, was spared in return for renouncing his divinity and
declaring himself a human being, not a god. From now on, he was to
be a ‘symbol of national unity’. He would now only participate at
ceremonies and would have no political power.
A new constitution was drafted by the Americans in just a week. One
JAPANESE ROYALTY
Portrait of HM The Emperor Hirohito of
Japan on his favourite horse "Shirayuki" on
6 November 1935. HU 36523
clause prevented – and still prevents - Japan from ‘the
threat or use of force as a means of settling international
disputes’.
Unlike the Allied occupation of Germany, the Japanese
people were to be their own administrators, albeit with the American occupying
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authorities looking over their shoulders as if they were unruly children. The first general
election took place in 1946. Education was reformed. Militaristic images and references to
Samurai and Japanese weaponry were blotted out of books. In a population starved of
colour and fed for years with military propaganda, American culture became popular –
films, music, fashions and sport (baseball is still very popular today). Everything went
through the censor first, so that negative images of the US did not slip through.
In 1951, the peace treaty was finally signed in San Francisco. By then, Japan’s economy
was strengthening. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the country became the
largest supplier of food and arms to US forces. The occupation officially ended in April
1952, but the Americans retained the right to keep bases on Japanese soil. (Okinawa was
only returned to Japan in 1972, although there are still US bases there by agreement within
the Japanese government). From 1955, the US-backed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)
governed Japan for 38 years. Like its defeated former ally, West Germany, Japan
experienced its own economic miracle from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s.
Japanese products, particularly electrical goods, once considered of inferior quality, sold
in vast numbers. The 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games secured Japan’s place back in the
family of nations. Massive construction projects, which continued through the 1980s,
reflected the country’s new found confidence.
Nerves remained, however, both in Japan and internationally, over Japan’s role in world
affairs. The constitution forbade participation of its armed forces – the Self-Defence Force in the 1991 Gulf War. At first, Japan allocated a huge financial package towards the war,
but huge public demonstrations forced the Diet (parliament) to see through a bill allowing
Japanese troops to join UN peacekeeping forces overseas.
By 1993, Japan’s boom was over. The economy slid into recession and the LDP lost a
general election to a coalition. Political corruption, natural disasters like the 1995 Kobe
earthquake, the sarin gas attack by cult members on the Tokyo underground,and
bankruptcies of major businesses, have all caused Japan to reassess itself.
3. A NOTE ON THE SHINTO RELIGION
Japan has its own religion, Shinto or the way of the Gods, a faith more than 2,000 years
old. All Japanese belong to this religion, but some three quarters are also Buddhists. Shinto
does not have scriptures, but all followers understand that they must live in harmony and
cooperation, as do the Gods or kami. That being so, followers are also allowed to observe
other religions.
According to Shinto, kami are present in nature - in rocks, trees, flowers and waterfalls.
People who die, including soldiers killed in battle, become kami. People are believed to
be children of both their parents and the kami. Shinto was ushered in as the state religion
in the 1920s as a way of reasserting the cult of the emperor. Japanese scholars in the
1820s had believed that the West was stronger than Japan because Christianity unified
the nation and made people obedient to their rulers. Shinto was accordingly revived as
the dominant religion in Japan from the late 19th century, largely to reassert the cult of the
emperor, who became its high priest while the sun goddess became like the Christian
God. State Shinto also ushered in a period of extreme nationalism.
Because all Japanese people were supposed to be descended from the imperial line, the
1930’s military regime used this to foster a sense of superiority. After the war, the link
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between Shinto and government was severed by the US occupiers. Shinto shrines, such as
the Yasukuni in Tokyo (one of the sites we will be visiting) have since been looked after by
private organisations.
4. JAPAN AND THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Japan's failure to acknowledge its war guilt and war crimes stands in stark contrast to the
willingness of Germany to confront its own recent past. The Second World War, and
Japan’s conduct of that war, is, for most Japanese, not something that their country was
actively involved in, but something that happened to it. This can be seen in the annual
commemoration of the war dead, with its stress on Japanese suffering, and in the content
of history books, in particular school textbooks.
On 15 August each year, there is a government-sponsored ‘Day Commemorating the End
of War’ (this was the date when the Japanese emperor announced to his people that the
war was over). The ceremony is largely superficial. Thousands of guests, including the
prime minister and families of war dead, are invited to the Budokan, a venue normally
used for concerts or sumo wrestling. The hall is bedecked with chrysanthemums. There is
no debate or reflection on the deeper issues concerning Japan and the Second World
War. The day is not even a national holiday and, for those born after the war, it is largely
meaningless.
Almost 3 million Japanese citizens were killed between 1937 and 1945 and for those who
experienced the war, as a soldier or as a civilian, the larger issues are often buried under
private pain. Rather than the Japanese people being held collectively accountable for
the crimes of their government and armed forces during the war, blame fell on the
handful of war criminals tried after the Second World War. However, the wartime head of
state, Emperor Hirohito, never stood trial. From the late 1940s, the United States also saw
Japan as a bulwark against communism, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union heated
up. The Americans felt that Japanese were more likely to be anti-American, and therefore
pro-Soviet, if Japanese war crimes trials continued. Accordingly, war crimes trials were
stopped from 1949 and many suspected war criminals released from prison.
5. JAPANESE SCHOOL TEXTBOOK DEBATE
Of critical importance in Japanese attitudes to the war is the school textbook debate.
Japanese history text books, which are approved by the Japanese education ministry,
tend to omit or gloss over Japanese atrocities and to concentrate on Japan’s own
suffering. Their content is not only a matter for internal discussion, but also a diplomatic
issue. Events have sometimes taken a more positive turn. Some gestures of apology have
been made. In1993, the Prime Minister, Hosokawa Morihiro, declared at a press
conference that the war was ‘aggressive’ and ‘wrong’. In 1998, at a meeting with Tony
Blair, Prime Minister Ryaturo Hashimoto offered ‘an expression of deep remorse and
heartfelt apology to the people who suffered in the Second World War’. These statements
did not go far enough for former British and Commonwealth PoWs seeking compensation,
and equally outraged Japanese nationalists.
Japan has been Asia’s leading nation for over 100 years. Now China seems about to take
over that role. In response, a new nationalism has begun to take hold in Japan, a country
which, since the war, has been publicly devoted to peace and economic prosperity. One
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of the most visible signs of that nationalism is the Japanese authorities' approval of new
school history textbooks written by known right-wing academics.
Both China and South Korea first protested in 1982 at the content of Japanese history
books. One Japanese writer, Ienaga Saburo, took the education ministry to court several
times on the issue. He won the case for violation of his freedom of speech, but the
Supreme Court overturned the decision. In another case, Saburo claimed that the ministry
was exceeding its authority by asking him to play down accounts of Japanese brutality. In
the early 1990s, Japanese history textbooks were more open about Japan’s wartime
conduct, including military sex slavery, slave labour, and the massacres of Chinese, even
the killing of civilians on Okinawa by Japanese forces.
But, since the mid-1990s, the school textbook issue has been bitterly contested. In 2001,
under intense pressure from extreme nationalists, Japan's education ministry approved a
history textbook produced by the extremist Society for History Text Book Reform. The latest
books have provoked the greatest controversy of all, sparking violent demonstrations in
China and Korea. They have removed even small references to Japanese atrocities. One
Japanese newspaper called on its readers to celebrate because the latest textbooks
have cut out details of the use of large numbers of women in conquered Asian countries
as sex slaves for the Japanese army on the basis that the accusations were ‘untrue’.
The ministry still retains the veto on the content of books.
6. HISTORIC SITES WE WILL BE VISITING
6.1 KYOTO
Kyoto is a city located in in the eastern part of the mountainous region known as the Tamba
highlands. It is a World Heritage Site and home to 2000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as
well as palaces, gardens and architecture. During the 8th century, the Emperor chose to
relocate the capital to a region far from the Buddhist influence. The new city, became the
seat of Japan's imperial court in 794 until the transfer of the government to Edo (later
renamed Tokyo) in 1868.
There was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic
bomb, but in the end it was decided to remove the city from the list of targets due to the
insistence of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in the Roosevelt and Truman
administrations. It is believed that this decision was made as it would be unfair to destroy a
city with such history and heritage.
The city's skyline includes the modern and the traditional. As a result, Kyoto is one
of the few Japanese cities that still has an abundance of prewar buildings, such as
the traditional townhouses known as machiya. However, modernization is
continually breaking down the traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture,
such as the Kyoto Station complex.
6.1.1Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion)
Kinkakuji is a famous structure dating from the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) and is listed
on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The upper stories are covered in gold leaf and the roof is
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topped by a bronze phoenix. The reflection of the temple shimmers majestically in the
waters of a rock-studded pond.
6.1.2 Ryoanji
Ryoanji is a Zen temple in northwestern Kyoto. The temple's main attraction is its rock
garden, the most famous of its kind in Japan. The simple Zen garden consists of nothing
but rocks, moss and neatly raked gravel. The meaning of the garden's arrangement is
unknown and up to each visitor's interpretation.
6.1.3 Nijo Castle
Built by Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, in 1603, Nijo Castle is a World
Heritage Site and its Ninomaru Palace is designated a National Treasure on account of its
splendid architecture and magnificent interior decoration. ieyasu built the castle as his
Kyoto residence, but its greater significance was as a symbol of Tokugawa power in the
Kansai region.
6.1.4 Kiyomizu Temple
Noted for its cliff top Main Hall with a broad wooden veranda affording a panoramic view
of Kyoto and environs. The veranda is supported on a towering scaffold of wood. Situated
on a wooded hillside, the veranda seems to hang in midair. The depth of the valley below
is such that the Japanese expression "To jump from the veranda of Kiyomizu Temple"
means to do something daring. The veranda was built on the temple's south side so that it
would face the sacred Otowa Falls. The present temple structures were built in 1633 at the
behest of iemitsu, the third of the Tokugawa shoguns. The Main Hall has been designated
a National Treasure.
6.1.5 Heian Shrine
Built in 1895 for the 1,100th anniversary of the Heian Capital. The Heian Shrine is dedicated
to the first and last emperors that reigned from Kyoto. The shrine buildings are partial
replicas of the Imperial Palace of the Heian Period.
6.1.6 Kyoto Museum For World Peace
None of the TPYF team has been to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, so it will be an
interesting experience for us all, not least because this relatively new museum promises to
be unusually frank about Japan’s war record.
The Kyoto Museum has a very explicit mission to make its visitors ‘see, feel, think, then,
take, your, first, step, towards, peace’. It was set up in 1992 by Ritsumeikan University as a
way of ackowledging its own role in supporting Japanese aggression during the Second
World War. According to its website, it ‘is just one of many such institutions in
Japan a nation that serves as home to more than half of the world's 100 -plus
peace museums’. Yet the Museum is unusual among Japanese museums in
explicitly recognising Japanese wartime aggression and atrocities. Notably, it
was set up after Emperor Hirohito died in 1989. Prior to that, such an exhibition,
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which would by implication criticise policies carried out in the name of the
emperor, would have been unthinkable.
The Museum’s website states that the museum emphasises ‘the importance of peace
primarily by covering the problems of war and the arms race and accurately portraying
the suffering they bring about…the Museum is also striving to … contribute to the
development of true peace.’ Broadly speaking, the Museum looks at conflict from the First
World War to the present. However, the main focus is on Japanese involvement in the
‘Fifteen Year War’, from the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 until the end of
the Second World War in 1945. It includes gallery areas on both Kyoto and the Ritsumeikan
University during the war. Other exhibitions take in the Cold War, weapons development,
and conflict today.
The Museum also contains a Gallery for Peace. This gallery shows contemporary art as well
as supporting a wide agenda; ‘human rights through nonviolence, the Victory over
Violence campaign, a healthy global environment, the abolition of war, global citizenship,
other organizations dedicated to Peace, health care and education for all people’.
6.2 HIROSHIMA
6.2.1 Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine
Itsukushima is an island in the Inland Sea of Japan. It is popularly known as Miyajima,’the
Shrine Island’. It is most famous for Itsukushima Shrine a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which,
together with its large wooden torii (gate), stands in the ocean during high tide.
The island of Itsukushima, including the waters around it (part of Seto Inland Sea), and are
within Setonaikai National Park.
6.2.2 A Note On The Bombing Of Hiroshima
Before looking at the sites we will be visiting in Hiroshima, it is worth
explaining in a little more detail what happened there sixty-three
years ago.
In Japanese minds, the dropping of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima remains the defining event of the war. On 6 August
1945, a B-29 Superfortress, ‘Enola Gay’, took off from an airfield on
Tinian, in the Marianas Islands, carrying the atomic bomb which
would be dropped on Hiroshima. This devastating new
THE STRATEGIC AIR OFFENSIVE 1939weapon was dropped by parachute and detonated
1945
Rocket Weapons and the Atomic Bomb:
at 8.15 am, 580 metres (1,885 ft.) above the ground.
The B-29 'Enola Gay' which dropped the
The detonation created a fireball which emitted heat,
Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and her pilot,
Colonel Paul Tibbets. HU 44878
radiation and shockwaves, destroying all wooden
structures within a two kilometre radius. Altogether, an
area of 13 square kilometres was flattened and of the 76,000 buildings in the city, over 60%
were destroyed. 70,000 people died, killed outright or within days. The final death toll was
around double that, due to the longer-term radiation sickness. Those who survived often
suffered terrible illness from radiation. Even unborn children have suffered, with many
being born with mental or physical disabilities because of exposure to radiation.
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The Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki,
to convince Japan to surrender. The alternative was to invade the Japanese mainland
and, after experiencing fanatical resistance during the battle for Okinawa, US military
planners feared heavy casualties among their troops. Some historians have suggested
that Japan was at the point of collapse anyway and that dropping the bomb was
unnecessary and really a way of showing the Soviet Union that the bomb had been
successfully developed as a pre-cursor to increasing tensions within the Cold War.
The development of the atomic bomb was made possible by huge advances in physics in
the 1930s. American scientists, fearing that Germany was developing its own nuclear
weapon, began work to create the bomb in mid-1941. The ‘Manhattan Project’, which
involved 120,000 people in the US and in Canada, was conducted in the highest secrecy.
The first bomb was successfully tested in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945. From late
1944, a special US bomber unit began practising on the Marianas to drop the atomic
bomb in anger.
Hiroshima was chosen as a target because it had not yet been subjected to air attack
and the full force of the atomic bomb would be evident. Kyoto, the old imperial capital
had been on the list of targets but it was removed at the insistence of US President Truman
and the war secretary, Henry Stimson. This may well have been because the old capital
city was home to numerous important cultural treasures. More cynical commentators
have, however, pointed out that the destruction of the cultural, historic and religious
centre of Japan might have driven the devastated nation into the arms of the Russians.
The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan is still hugely controversial and we will be
exploring these and other controversies while we are in Hiroshima, where it was first used.
Many claim that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway and that the bombs were
a way of showing American power to the Russians. Others have argued that the atomic
bombs saved Japanese lives in the long run, as the poorly armed 28 million strong civilian
militia which had been assembled to oppose any landings would have been slaughtered
by Allied airpower, artillery, tanks, machine guns and flamethrowers.
Of his decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, US President Harold S Truman publicly
expressed that he had ‘never had any doubt’. But in a letter to his sister, he wrote: ‘It was
a terrible decision.’ In a private journal he wrote that: ‘even if the Japs are savages,
ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the worlds for the common welfare
cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Tokyo was then the
probable target].’
6.2.3 Hiroshima Peace Park And Peace Museum
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was established in August 1955. It is a
campaigning museum – one reason it was set up was to seek the abolition of nuclear
weapons and to promote peace. The Museum comprises an exhibition on the story of
Hiroshima both before and after the bomb. It shows the belongings of bomb victims,
photographs, and other artefacts. There is also a virtual museum to convey the museum’s
work via the Internet to people around the world.
The museum is set in the district of Nakajima, directly underneath where the A-bomb
detonated. In 1949, it was decided to make the whole of Nakjima a memorial park. The
park now features numerous memorials to those who died as a result of the detonation of
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the atomic bomb. Among these are memorials to schools and the Aioi Bridge, which was
the aiming point for the bomber crew. The most iconic is the A-Bomb Dome, originally the
Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall. The blast from the atomic bomb killed all
those working in the hall, but because the blast struck downwards onto and into the
building, the walls and the dome remained standing.
Hiroshima is now on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. A Peace Clock Tower chimes ‘No More
Hiroshimas’ each day at 8.15 am. Each year, before an assembled crowd of senior
politicians and other dignitaries, the mayor of Hiroshima, delivers an address to
commemorate those who died and to call for peace. It is this ceremony which we will be
attending.
6.3 TOKYO
6.3.1 Edo Museum
Again, this is not somewhere the TPYF team has been before, but judging from its website,
the Edo Museum (Edo was what the city was called until 1868) while being a museum
about Japan’s capital city is also a museum about Japan itself.
What will be of particular interest to us will be the Edo Museum’s representation of the
Japanese presence in China, the Second World War and post-war reconstruction. The
way the museum presents another episode in its history - in many ways as calamitous as
Hiroshima - will also be interesting to see. On 9 March 1945, 334 American B29 Superfortress
heavy bombers, many armed with napalm bombs, attacked the city at low level in an
attack lasting three hours. The raid caused a firestorm in which temperatures reached
1,800F. Approximately 41 km² of the city was destroyed. 100,000 people are estimated to
have been killed, more than the immediate deaths of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Over
a million people lost their homes. Firebomb raids such as this had a huge effect upon
Japanese morale. The population of Tokyo fell from 5 million in January 1945 to less than
half that in August, as panic-stricken citizens left the city for their own safety. Only fourteen
American bombers were lost. Interestingly, American bomber crews were ordered to
avoid hitting the Imperial palace. Part of that order read: ‘The Emperor of Japan is not at
present a liability and may well become an asset’. The palace was damaged however in
the last major raid on the city, on 25 May 1945. With 86 per cent of the city destroyed,
Tokyo was removed from the list of important targets.
6.3.2 Yasukuni Shrine And Yushukan Museum
The Yasukuni Shrine, the holiest shrine of the militarized emperor cult, is one of the most
controversial war memorials in the world. Although a private concern, its museum, the
Yukushan, is the nearest thing Japan has to a national war museum.
The Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine, has been privately run since the war. Yasukuni means
‘peaceful country’. The shrine was completed in 1868 to commemorate and allow
Japanese citizens to worship those who have died in war for their country from 1853, from
the conflicts of the Meiji Restoration onwards. It commemorates some 2.5 million dead,
women included. They are remembered in the form of written records giving the name
and origin of the individual, as well as the place and date of death.
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The shrine is controversial for several reasons. In 1976 it was discovered that convicted war
criminals, among them the Japanese wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo were on the list of
those honoured as ‘noble souls’. Appeals to the private owners of the shrine to remove
such names have been rejected. From 1975, visits by Japanese prime misters have caused
outrage among liberal Japanese, citizens of countries who suffered under Japanese rule
and former prisoners of the Japanese. The Yasukuni has also become a place of
pilgrimage for Japanese far-right nationalists.
One feature of the site is the Yushukan, a war museum originally built in 1882 which looks
at the history of conflicts involving Japan. Closed down by the US occupation authorities
in 1945, it reopened in 1985 and has since twice been renovated. The Yushukan contains
18 galleries giving a very partial, nationalistic (and often factually incorrect) view of
Japan’s history. Japan is shown as an innocent victim of a Western conspiracy to thwart its
ambition to lead East Asia and force Japan into war. Japan’s annexation of Korea and
invasion of China is presented as self-defence. As regards the 1937-1938 Rape of Nanking,
in which some 300,000 Chinese were brutalized and slaughtered by Japanese forces, The
Yushukan states that Japan created a safe haven in the city, allowing Chinese civilians to
live in peace. The safe haven was, in fact, created by a handful of civilians from Germany
and the USA who were shocked at the widespread rape and murder. From the Yasukuni
website: ‘Japan’s dream of building a Greater East Asia was necessitated by history’ and,
in response to inclusion of information about comfort women (Korean women forced into
sexual slavery) in school text books: ’We cannot overlook the intent of those who wish to
tarnish the name of the noble souls of Yasukuni.’
A debate is currently taking place as to whether a second, less charged memorial to
Japan’s war dead might be created.
6.3.3 Hitachi Aircraft Factory Electricity Substation
Very little evidence remains of the devastating air raids carried out by US bombers on
Tokyo in the final year of the war. This building, an electricity substation for the Hitachi
Aircraft Company, which manufactured aero engines, is an exception. On the outside
wall you can see the damage caused by strafing and bombings. It was hit in three raids
between February and April 1945, killing over 110 workers.
Many of those damaged structures that did survive were torn down by developers after
the war and so this building is highly unusual. The substation continued to operate until
December of 1993 . It was scheduled for demolition, but former employees and others
wanted to preserve a valuable war-damaged building for future generations and theior
protests saved the substation from destruction. It was officially declared an historic site in
1995, and the building repaired in order to preserve it and open it to public in the future.
The local borad of education says that they hope the scarred building will bring home to
people the misery of war and the pricelessness of peace.
6.4 YOKOHAMA
The great port city just southwest of Tokyo was not chosen as a target until May 1945,
though it did suffer heavily from bombs intended for Kawasaki and Tokyo. A massive raid
on 29 May wiped out nine square miles of the city centre.
6.4.1 Yokahama Commonwealth War Cemetery
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Our main interest in visiting this beautiful cemetery is to see the final resting place of British
and Commonwealth prisoners of war who died during their captivity in Japan. The story of
the prisoners sent to labour in Japan is less well known than that of the men who slaved on
the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (made famous by the 1957 film Bridge on the River
Kwai) and by going to Yokohama, we can look at a very difficult area of history from a
different angle.
Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners was appalling. 50,000 British troops alone were
captured in the Far East and by the end of the war one in four of them would have died.
The figure was one in twenty for those captured by German or Italian forces. In Japanese
camps, disease and malnutrition were rife and some prisoners were beaten to death or
executed by their guards, usually for the most minor of ‘offences’. Red Cross parcels and
medicines which might have saved lives were deliberately withheld.
While most prisoners were held in Singapore, Thailand or Burma, during the course of the
war more than 70,000 troops were transported to other destinations in unmarked prison
ships, most of then to Japan. Conditions on these ‘hellships’ were terrible and 19 were
sunk, killing 22,000. Prisoners of war in Japan were usually made to labour on construction
projects, factories, down mines or in dockyards. Conditions were usually not as harsh in
Japan as those on, say, the Death Railway, but this is all relative, as the number of British
and Commonwealth graves in this cemetery shows.
The Yokohama war cemetery, at Hodogaya, near Yokohama, close to Tokyo, is the only
Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Japan. The cemetery
commemorates 1,555 Commonwealth dead of the Second World War, among them
those who could not be identified and a small number of memorials to casualties known
to be buried in the cemetery, but whose graves could not be precisely located.
The cemetery, which was constructed by the Australian War Graves Group, is divided into
four sections: a United Kingdom section, the Australian section, the Canadian and New
Zealand section and the Indian Forces 1939-1945 section. A Cross of Sacrifice stands in
each of the first three sections. In the fourth section, there is a special monument to the
’Indian Forces 1939-1945’. On one side it is inscribed ‘India’, and on the other ‘Pakistan’.
Approximately two thirds of the graves contain the remains of British servicemen. Most of
them were prisoners of war brought to Japan as slave labour, mostly from 1943 to 1945.
The cemetery also contains the Yokohama Memorial and the Yokohama Cremation
Memorial. The Yokohama Memorial commemorates 20 servicemen from the Indian Army
and the Royal Indian Air Force. In the Yokohama Cremation Memorial shrine, there is an
urn which holds the ashes of 335 servicemen from the British Commonwealth, the USA and
the Netherlands who died as prisoners of war in Japan. Their names can be found on the
walls of the shrine, apart from 51 of them, whose identities could not be ascertained.
A postwar plot contains 171 non-war service and civilian burials.
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