Category Archives: military

by Joel | 12 March 2011 · 5:12 pm

Railroad vs. U.S. Army Jobs, 1854

From A Most Magnificent Machine: America Adopts the Railroad, 1825-1862, by Craig Miner (U. Press of Kansas, 2010), p. 188:

Similarly elaborate was a great excursion celebrating the completion of the Rock Island in 1854. Two trains of twelve cars each left Chicago loaded with 1,300 people to the cheers of a vast crowd. They proceeded through the prairie and stopped for people to gather wildflowers and grasses and to observe the substantial stone houses and gardens already established along the line. The prairie, a traveler on that train said, “was in its way as grand as the White Mountains, or Niagara Falls.” Arriving at Rock Island and the Mississippi to a cannonade, there was a banner at the depot reading- “The Mississippi and the Atlantic Shake Hands.” Drawn up to the wharf were six of the largest Mississippi River steamboats—War Eagle, Galena, Lady Franklin, Sparhawk, Golden Era, and Jenny Lind. Each had a band playing on the upper deck.

The “Conquests of Civilization” looked especially impressive that day comparing favorably with any military conquests of old. Wrote a man celebrating the excursion opening the Rock Island: “Our invasions, instead of desolating and laying waste the regions into which they are carried, spread fertility and abundance on their track, and they bring us back, instead of weeping captives to minister to our ostentation and pride, the fruits and riches of the earth, garnered from the most distant climes and kingdoms.” The Illinois Central Company was bigger than the U.S. Army. That army had 10,000 in 1854. The Illinois Central railroad employed 19,000 who earned a total in wages of nearly $4 million per year. In three years it would build 700 miles of railroad, whereas in thirty years the federal government had spent $200 million on the army “for which they have nothing to show but some old forts, guns, battered uniforms, and demoralized veterans.” Soon enough, in 1856, trains passed over the Mississippi on the great Rock Island Bridge, 1,581 feet long with a draw in the center. “Yes, the Mississippi is practically no more. It is spanned by the mighty artery of commerce and enterprise—the railroad.”

The uninhabited prairie might be sublime and a “solemn” sight, but seeing the plains of Illinois divided into farms was more exciting still The fields would “drop fatness” when in time “the old fogy sod, matted conservatism of centuries, is overturned by the revolutionists, the ploughshares, and penetrated by those radicals, the grain roots, and the wheat fields stretch out green and wavy as the seas.”

Leave a comment

Filed under industry, military, travel, U.S.

by Joel | 6 January 2011 · 9:29 pm

Origins of the Indonesian National Army

From A Japanese Memoir of Sumatra, 1945-46: Love and Hatred in the Liberation War, by Takao Fusayama (Equinox, 2010), pp. 38-42:

The Allied Forces began a full-scale advance on Indonesia by the end of September [1945]. Three British-Indian divisions commanded by Lt. Gen. Sir Phillip Christison advanced to Indonesia, with two divisions allocated to Java and one division to Sumatra. Before leaving Singapore for Indonesia, Christison declared that his army was landing in Indonesia only for the purpose of disarming the Japanese and had no desire to intervene in the domestic affairs of the Dutch East Indies.

The 2nd Southern Expeditionary Fleet of the Japanese navy commanded by Vice Admiral Yaichiro Shibata and the Mixed Defense Brigade of the Japanese army commanded by Major General Shigeo Iwabe were stationed in Surabaya. They were caught in a serious dilemma between their wish to hand over their arms to Indonesians and the prohibition by the Allied Forces. Fortunately, something happened to resolve their dilemma. On September 21, a Dutch advance officer, Captain Huijer, unexpectedly landed in Surabaya accompanied by only a few soldiers. Displaying his authority as the victor, he defiantly ordered the Japanese commanders to surrender to him immediately and to leave their arms under the guard of the Indonesian authorities until the Allied Forces took them over. Because Captain Huijer used to live in Surabaya, he thought that most Indonesians would be obedient to the Dutch when they returned, just like before. He did not know that the attitude of the Indonesian people had completely changed during the Japanese occupation.

When the Indonesians rushed to the Japanese barracks, Vice Admiral Shibata and Major General Iwabe ordered their soldiers to hand over all arms without resisting, explaining that in obeying the orders of Captain Huijer, the Japanese forces were to disarm themselves, leaving their weapons in the care of the Indonesians until the Allied Forces received them. The Indonesians thus obtained 26,000 rifles, 600 machine guns, cannons, anti-aircraft guns, and other weapons in the space of a few days. A large amount of war funds were also secretly given to the Indonesians by a naval paymaster, Lt. Kazuyuki Mike. A great Indonesian military power was thus established for the first time.

On October 5, President Sukarno announced the foundation of his public security force, Tentera Keamanan Rakyat (TKR) and steadily expanded the army by gathering together the former volunteer and auxiliary soldiers trained by the Japanese. Ten divisions in Java and six in Sumatra were organized.

On October 26, the 49th British-Indian Brigade of 5,000 landed in Surabaya. The Indonesian force in Surabaya, who were well-armed with Japanese weapons, resolutely risked a night attack taught by the Japanese and completely destroyed the brigade, killing the commander. In early November, the British forces made an all-out counterattack on Surabaya, with one complete division of 24,000 and the support of shelling from warships and bombing from airplanes. Indonesian anti-aircraft guns given by the Japanese shot down three of the planes. The street fighting continued until November 12. The Indonesians tenaciously continued to resist with the song of “Merdeka atau Mati [Freedom or Death]” blaring through loud speakers….

In addition to the establishment of the independent government, the Indonesian soldiers who had been trained by the Japanese as Giyugun [義勇軍 ‘Loyal Manly (=Volunteer) Army’ or] Heiho [兵補 ‘Soldier Assistant/Probationary’], and discharged at the time of the Japanese surrender, quietly gathered back at the Giyugun barracks. They were organized into the public security force, the TKR, with educated youths appointed to various positions as commanders.

A further category of labor mobilized by the Imperial Japanese military was known as 挺身隊 teishintai ‘offer self/body corps’ (Kor. Chongshindae or Jeongshindae), which included various sorts of organized physical labor battalions, including those euphemistically called “comfort women” (従軍慰安婦 jūgun ianfu ‘serve-military comfort/consolation/amusement-women’).

Leave a comment

Filed under Indonesia, Japan, military, nationalism, war

by Joel | 4 January 2011 · 8:29 pm

Japanese Revolutionaries in Indonesia, 1945-46

From the Introduction by Saya Shiraishi to A Japanese Memoir of Sumatra, 1945-46: Love and Hatred in the Liberation War, by Takao Fusayama (Equinox, 2010), pp. 9-11, 13-14:

I have three namelists in front of me which I acquired during the course of my research on the Japanese occupation of North Sumatra. They were composed by a former Japanese military officer in Medan, East Sumatra, and dated May 11, 1952. The title of the first list reads, in Japanese, “Namelist of the Japanese who died in battle or of illness in/around Medan.” It contains 102 names, each with information concerning the person’s “former military affiliation,” “hometown” in Japan (one, however, is from Korea, one from Taiwan), and a brief record of how and where he died. A certain “Shimada,” for example, “died during the fight against the Dutch in front of Siantar Railroad Station, July 27, 1947. An art college graduate, an excellent painter.”

Three notes at the end of the list inform the reader that there are 88 additional Japanese who reportedly died in the region, among them the 83 who were massacred in Tebing Tinggi in December 1945 (see below, Chapter 8), but their names are unknown. There may have been further deaths which have not been confirmed. With the few exceptions of those who died of malaria or other illnesses, “most are martyrs to Indonesian independence who fell in battle against the Dutch.”

All the deaths took place after August 15, 1945, the date marking the “end” of World War II for Japan. This record provides a basis for the claim that there were more Japanese casualties during Indonesia’s revolutionary war than during Japan’s three-and-a-half year occupation of the tropical land.

The second list contains 97 names of the “members of the Japanese Association in Medan.” It provides such data as birth date, age, former military affiliation, family address in Japan, current address, marriage and children, current occupation. These men were living in Medan with their families (presumably Indonesian-born) as “mechanics,” “automobile repairmen,” “plantation clerks,” “pharmacists,” “blacksmiths,” “judo instructors” etc. Their birth dates range from 1907 to 1923. When the list was prepared in 1952, they were 29 to 45 years old. Some had already lived in Sumatra for ten years since the Japanese landing in the island in 1942.

I was also told in interviews I conducted during my research that, in addition to the names listed here, there must be other Japanese who when they married entered the wives’ families, becoming Muslims, acquiring Indonesian names, and being lost to their fellow Japanese. A few more names would then be mentioned of those who had come to the Dutch East Indies before World War II, had subsequently been recruited to serve in the Japanese occupation government, and then remained on in Indonesia which had apparently become their home.

The third list contains 20 names, with their family addresses in Japan, of people who in 1952 had just been sent back by ship to Japan from Medan. I met some of these returnees in Tokyo in 1974. One said that he was happy that he had been able to come back to Japan, had started life anew, and was planning to write a memoir after his retirement. Indeed, his book was published some years later. Another made it clear that he had been “forced” by the Indonesian government to leave the village in Aceh where he was farming. According to his old friends, he had close trusting relationships with the religious and political leaders in Aceh, among them the charismatic Tgk. Daud Beureueh who was to lead a revolt against the government in 1953. Two others did not want to talk about their experiences. They were working for the Japan-Indonesia petroleum trade and their “past” was currently both an asset and liability It was not an “unforgettable, exotic” experience, but their life was still tied to it.

During the 1970s, large numbers of war-time memoirs were written* and published in Japan. Among them, the “Indonesian experience” of sharing with young revolutionaries their historical moment (the period of the revolutionary war rather than Japan’s occupation of the land) was remembered with unfading enthusiasm. The experience was something too significant for the veterans to let it vanish from their life.

*The combined figure is significant enough considering the fact that by the end of World War II, (1) in the whole of Sumatra, there was only one division (Konoe-Daini Division) in the north and one brigade in the south; (2) due to the drastic reduction in the numbers of Japanese soldiers, the “division” barely managed to maintain its structure through incorporating the hastily organized Giyu-gun forces of local youths (at least 15 companies and 4 platoons in Aceh, 4 companies and 3 platoons in Medan) into its rank and file. See Saya Shiraishi, “Nihon Gunsei Ka no Aceh [Aceh under the Japanese Military Administration]” Southeast Asia: History and Culture [Tokyo] 5 (1975): 141.

…
The readers of this “documentary novel” written by Takao Fusayama will perceive the zeal with which his story is narrated. It is also his dedication that has brought his recollections across the Pacific. He not only published his memoir in Japanese, but also took the pains to translate it into English himself and search for an English-speaking audience. This unceasing commitment to the memory of the brief period of their youth, during which the lives of some hundreds of Japanese young men actually did change, is the notable feature shared by other memoirs as well. Behind their narratives we find this zeal for life. It is there, because it was their own life. Their own youth. We hear in this book, the voice of hundreds of youths whose “personal” life-stories in a “foreign” land have been edited away.

It is through this voice, however, that we may come closer to understanding the nature of the revolutionary war and the “stateless youth” who fought it. One of the former Japanese “deserters” [!] once answered my question as to why he had not returned home, “Oh, it was just natural for me to stay there.” He did not choose to be sent to Sumatra as he did not choose to be born a Japanese. He found, nevertheless, that his life should belong to Sumatra whose natural beauty he loved dearly. He had had enough of the military, enough of the state’s arbitrary control over his life. He had never forgiven the state, Japan, that had intruded into his life and, upon his graduating from college, sent him out to the warfront. He was a revolutionary youth “himself.”

His story is yet to be written. Takao Fusayama’s account of his own experiences, however, will open up and invite more attention to this unexplored field.

2 Comments

Filed under Indonesia, Japan, migration, military, nationalism, war

by Joel | 3 October 2010 · 6:25 pm

Goals of Thai Volunteer Soldiers in the Vietnam War

Normally, I try not to excerpt from books hot off the press unless they offer new historical perspectives on recent events. This ground-breaking book seems long, long overdue, and the rest of the chapter from which I’ve quoted is available online. It offers a useful corrective to those who view every regional conflict through the lens of their own far-removed national partisanship, those who see every wartime ally of a hegemonic power as a bought-and-paid-for puppet, or those who imagine that Buddhists cannot be just as warlike as members of any other religion.

From In Buddha’s Company: Thai Soldiers in the Vietnam War, by Richard A. Ruth (U. Hawaii Press, 2011), pp. 4-8:

The most important of the Thai national symbols constructed during the war was that of the volunteer soldier. He was an idealized man who was brave, devout, patriotic, and selfless. His image was the incarnation of modern Thainess in an age of anticommunist furor. For a while, he would be hailed—in Thailand at least—as what was intrinsically good about the Thai nation in the postcolonial age. He would restore honor to the Thai military in the wake of its ignoble adventures during World War II, and make the goals of the military appear consistent with those of the civilian population. In the years before 1973–1976, when this idealized soldier-citizen was put to sinister use by the Thai military and by the Thai paramilitary vigilante organizations that emerged from the military’s dark shadows, he was someone to be admired, envied, and supported.

As symbols, the Thai volunteer soldiers reflected the evolution of Thai society in several critical ways. They stood at the nexus of many of the important themes that defined Thailand’s history in the 1960s. In this way they can be read as the embodiment of the changes that affected the country after World War II. These trends are related principally to Thailand’s relationship with the United States. In the period now known as the American Era, these troops became Thailand’s official representatives in the biggest US-dominated event: the war against communism in South Vietnam. They were physical reminders of America’s close relationship with Thailand during the period of the conflict. They wore American uniforms, carried American weapons, and conducted military operations according to American training. They departed and returned to Thailand aboard American ships and planes. They lived in an American-built camp bearing an American name. They carried American currency with which they purchased items of American material culture. The stories they carried back were as much about things American as they were about the people and culture of South Vietnam. Their repatriated casualties received prominent American visitors—some of them international superstars—in Thai military hospitals. And some of their dead ended up buried in American soil to be mourned far from home by American strangers. In an age defined by an American idiom, they bore the marks of close contact with the Americans.

The troops were also a product of the other great theme of the day: development (kan-phatthana). The American-built roads that transformed rural Thailand’s physical landscape and social and economic systems in the 1950s and 1960s also transformed its people. The infrastructure constructed with American aid, machinery, and advice profoundly altered the relationship between the people of the countryside and those of the urban center. For the first time in Thailand’s history, the people and circumstances of the rural areas rivaled those of the capital in importance to the national state. The need for industrial labor, construction workers, and service employees brought waves of internal migrants from what had once been Siam’s hinterlands to live and work in Bangkok. The newcomers changed the face of Bangkok, a city whose dynamism had previously been understood to be almost the exclusive product of the Chinese immigrant and entrepreneurial energies. And in doing so they changed Bangkok’s self-image. These upcountry people redefined what it meant to be Thai. Their migration patterns from rural to urban were not one-way journeys. Their ties to their homes and the seasonal nature of the farms they left behind contributed to the exchange between two formerly antithetical geographic cultures. The newly mobile brought back the ambitions, ideas, and perspectives of the capital city. These men and women became a migratory population whose outlook was simultaneously rural and urban, traditional and modern, settled and restless.

The Thai volunteer soldiers were products of this age of rural transformation. Changes in national politics, economics, and education were influential agents in the formation of their outlook. Their individual stories describe the profound changes under way in areas where the people had only recently begun to see themselves as belonging to the center, as being truly Thai. This process of transformation coincided with some of the earliest academic studies of Thai regionalism. The experiences of the Thai volunteers complement such studies as Charles Keyes’ Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand. The stories of their youth and young adulthood, of their time before, during, and after their tours of duty in South Vietnam, are the stories of rural Thailand in this era. The rapid expansion of government public schools, and the emphasis on national loyalties over local loyalties, encouraged rural youths of this era to consider themselves subjects of the state to an unprecedented degree.

Although they were not the first generation to be educated in Thailand’s government schools, the volunteer soldiers were the first to have been schooled at a time when secondary education was a possibility for all children of the rural poor. The expansion of upcountry secondary schools and technical colleges provided some of these people with the educational infrastructure for more advanced degrees and also the broadened ambitions and expectations that come with higher learning. Similarly, the traditional intrusions of the state, obligations such as taxes and conscription, were less odious, if not less onerous, to a young population that saw its adult fate as entwined with that of the nation. As per the requirements of the Royal Thai Army’s guidelines for the recruitment of soldiers for South Vietnam, all of the volunteers had graduated from secondary school, a newly possible feat for the rural poor. Many of them had continued their education while serving as draftees in the army. The sheer number of volunteers who qualified for service in South Vietnam was a reflection of the rise in education levels throughout the country. As young adults, many of these men had wanted to elevate their social status but had failed so far. Most of them had missed out on the opportunities available to the expanding middle class located almost exclusively in Bangkok’s urban sphere. Unwilling to join the unskilled labor force in the capital, they pinned their hopes on gaining positions as civil servants—bureaucrats, policemen, and teachers—in the upcountry provinces of their births. Lacking the advanced education to become teachers and the connections needed to secure a spot in the provincial government, these young men became soldiers. Even this avenue was only a stopgap measure. Like the civil service, the Royal Thai Army lacked the capacity to absorb all of those who sought long-term careers. With the exception of the few who had made a career in the military, most soldiers served only two years as conscripts. The opportunity to reenlist with the Queen’s Cobra Regiment and the Black Panther Division represented an unexpected second chance at an army career.

The strong desire the volunteer soldiers expressed to visit foreign lands and learn about neighboring cultures reflected a correlated elevation in ambitions as well. The largely rural population of young who volunteered for service in South Vietnam had taken the government’s mantra of kan-phatthana and applied it to themselves. A tour of duty as a member of the celebrated volunteer corps confirmed their personal worth as well as their value to the state. Going to South Vietnam became a major goal in their personal program of change. To this day, many veterans cite their time in South Vietnam as the pinnacle moment in this process of transformation. Long after they returned home, and long after they had spent the monetary rewards they had acquired as compensation, the lingering aura of exceptionality garnered them a measure of distinction, of a special social status, in the societies that had produced them. Many got jobs that were better than they would have previously expected. And, a generation later, their children enjoyed even better lives, thanks to the continued financial, educational, and health benefits and expanded horizons that Vietnam service provided.

The Thai volunteers saw themselves as Buddhist warriors. Theravada Buddhism—especially the layman’s expression of Buddhist culture popular in Thailand in the 1960s—played a critical role in the lives of these soldiers and in the national adventure that sent them to South Vietnam. Thailand’s sangha (Buddhist ecclesiastical order), after some deliberation, sanctioned their military mission. The Supreme Patriarch and other prominent monks blessed the departing troops and the returning casualties in public ceremonies. The military units transported Buddha icons along with their weapons and support equipment. A crowded Buddhist altar dominated by a Sukhothai-style Buddha statue was set up in the Thai contingent’s field headquarters as the backdrop to all meetings with the Thais’ “Free World” allies. Some troops put Buddha images on their military vehicles. And the most emblematic symbol of the Thai fighting man was the string of Buddhist amulets that ringed his head and filled his pockets. Some soldiers brought as many as 100 tiny Buddha statuettes—enough to field a full combat company—for their protection. These iconic symbols would impress their American GI counterparts, facilitate their illicit trading schemes, and neutralize foreign magic in the spirit-rich forests of Bien Hoa.

I blogged earlier about South Korean attitudes toward the Vietnam War.

Leave a comment

Filed under military, nationalism, religion, Thailand, U.S., Vietnam, war

by Joel | 6 September 2010 · 5:00 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Birds for Trains

“So what is a shirasagi, anyway?” I asked the JR clerk in Nagoya Station who had initiated our rail passes and booked reservations on the Shirasagi Limited Express to Hida Takayama. “Could it be a white rabbit (shira- ‘white’ + usagi ‘rabbit’)?” She had no idea. But I should have known it would be a bird.

Before the advent of the Shinkansen bullet trains in 1964, the most famous limited express train along the Tokaido Main Line was the Tsubame ‘swallow’. In fact, the Japan National Railways (JNR, 国鉄) used a swallow logo on its bus system and called its professional baseball team the (Kokutetsu) Swallows. Two other notable limited express trains we rode in those days were the Hato ‘dove’ and the Kamome ‘seagull’.

Most express trains were named for destinations, like the Miyajima Express that I used to ride home to Hiroshima from boarding school in Kobe, but the fastest limited express trains tended to be named for birds. The first bullet trains went for even speedier names: Kodama ‘echo’ (speed of sound), Hikari ‘flash’ (speed of light), and the latest, postmodern-sounding Nozomi ‘desire’. But regional bullet trains have revived a lot of the old limited-express bird names: Hayabusa ‘peregrine falcon’, Kamome ‘seagull’, Toki ‘crested ibis’, Tsubame ‘swallow’.

On our latest trip, we were in the Hokuriku region, off the Shinkansen grid, where the fastest trains are traditional limited expresses, so we encountered several bird-named trains that were new to me. Shirasagi can be translated ‘snowy egret’ (Egretta thula), although sagi labels the whole family of herons (Ardeidae), as in aosagi (lit. ‘blue heron’) ‘gray heron’ (Ardeia cinerea).

Coming back to Kanazawa from Nanao on the Noto Peninsula, we rode the Sandābādo/Thunderbird, whose name left me a bit nonplussed until we paired it with Raichō ‘rock ptarmigan’ (Lagopus muta), a limited express that runs from Osaka through Kanazawa to Toyama. Thunderbird began operations as Super Raichō (Thunderbird), and Raichō (雷鳥) literally translates as ‘thunder bird’. The rock ptarmigan is a symbol of Toyama Prefecture’s Tateyama, one of Japan’s 三霊山 Sanreizan ‘Three Holy Mountains’, along with Fujisan and Hakusan. (Doesn’t the Rock Ptarmigan sound like a good name for a smaller version of Ford’s SVT Raptor?)

Another limited express we rode between Kanazawa and Toyama was the Hakutaka, whose name is always written in kana, not kanji, and whose train cars carry an emblem with the English words “White Wing.” The name evokes an old Tateyama legend about a white hawk (白鷹, which would normally be pronounced shirataka), but also evokes the name of a long-distance train, Hakuchō (‘white bird’ =) ‘swan’ that used to run all the way from Aomori (where the swan is the prefectural bird) via Ueno and Kanazawa to Osaka. The name Hakutaka was independently used for trains running on the leg between Ueno and Kanazawa until that leg was disrupted by the extension of the Shinkansen toward Nagano and Niigata in 1982. In 1997 it was revived for limited express trains running along the Japan Sea coast between Fukui and Niigata prefectures.

The first Japanese long-distance trains to receive names seem to have been the Fuji and Sakura, which began running between Tokyo and Shimonoseki in 1912, but were not named until 1929.

The first train named Hato ‘dove’ was an express on the South Manchuria Railway (満鉄 Mantetsu) running between Dalian and the new (in 1932) Manchukuo capital, 新京 Shinkyō (now Changchun). The limited express on that route was named あじあ Ajia ‘Asia’.

POSTSCRIPT: The first trains named Hikari and Nozomi were Mantetsu expresses running between Busan (釜山) and Shinkyō (新京). (Japanese Wikipedia offers very detailed coverage of Japanese train systems, past and present.)

And, speaking of Imperial Japan, many of the same bird names were used for Hayabusa-class torpedo boats built between 1900 and 1904 that served so well in the Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War.

Leave a comment

Filed under industry, Japan, language, military, travel

by Joel | 4 July 2010 · 8:08 am

The Heifer Project’s First Goats for Okinawa

From: Comfort All Who Mourn: The Life Story of Herbert and Madeline Nicholson, by Herbert V. Nicholson and Margaret Wilke (Bookmates International, 1982), pp. 127-129:

An organization called Heifers for Relief, sponsored by the Church of the Brethren, decided to accept my offer to raise money and take goats to war-torn Japan.

Milk was in desperately short supply overseas and the Japanese children were being severely affected by the shortage. Ordinarily the Heifer project sent only bred heifers to ravaged areas. In this case, goats answered the need more readily, so goats were sent for the first time in its history. Later they sent all sorts of farm animals to many countries and aided poor farmers in the United States as well.*

When I received approval of the goat project I went to work. I raised a good part of the money and bought most of the goats myself. Then I gathered a little group of men to accompany me on the first trip. Sim Togasaki, a Nisei from San Francisco, wanted to come because he needed to make contacts in Japan for his importing business. Although he knew nothing about goats, he was a hard worker and a great help because he spoke fluent Japanese. Ted Roberts, a dairyman who had always been interested in the Japanese, and Paul McCracken, a goat expert, also came with us. Paul was a Quaker, too, so I was glad to have him along. My son Samuel also came. He took color slides everywhere which later were a great help in raising money for more goats.

In October, 1947, we arrived in San Francisco ready to load up for a trip when we found, to our great disappointment, that the Army had decided to send us to Okinawa rather than Japan! The following load would be scheduled for Japan. That disappointment was to become God’s surprise for us. What lay ahead was a wonderful adventure.

The Army had built pens for our two hundred goats on the rear deck of the Simon Benson, a small liberty ship which was not in good shape. We had a rough trip across the Pacific and were very relieved when we reached Okinawa safely. Later we learned that on its next trip the ship had split open! It was easy to believe.

Our arrival in Okinawa was an unforgettable experience. The harbor at Naha was full of sunken ships. The city had been completely destroyed. We could only stare in shock and pity.

We received a warm welcome and were greeted by the governor and other dignitaries. It was a delight to discover that Mr. Shikiya, the governor, was a Christian. After the ceremonies, in which we presented a goat to the community, we milked the remainder of our goats and took the milk to an orphanage.

We discovered that we were to be housed at the Military Government Headquarters across the island from Naha. Our escort there was a former missionary to Japan, Everett Thompson, who was in charge of LARA (Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia). The occupation forces did not want to work with a lot of separate relief organizations, so they formed this agency to coordinate all relief efforts. The Heifer project joined LARA, as did the Church World Service, the Friends’ Service Committee, and many others.

At the Military Government Headquarters we were taken to the officers’ quarters. What a surprise to discover that we goatherds were classed as colonels.

* Nicholson seems to have been unaware that the Heifer project had already been sending horses and chickens as well as cattle to war-torn Europe in 1946.

2 Comments

Filed under Japan, military, NGOs, religion, U.S., war

by Joel | 25 June 2010 · 3:30 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Ittouhei, Haiboku

I learned my first two Japanese terms for military ranks from watching The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin on Japanese TV during the 1950s. In the dubbed Japanese dialogue, the lieutenant was addressed as 中尉 chuui and the sergeant as 軍曹 gunsou. But I never learned the terms for the lowest ranks until I recently watched an epic film trilogy from the same era, The Human Condition (人間の條件, Ningen no jouken) via Netflix. It is very long and often slow-paced, but fascinating for both historical and linguistic reasons. It starkly depicts both the brutality of Japan’s occupation of Manchuria and the deadly and chaotic aftermath of Japan’s defeat there. Based on a novel, it also reflects the personal experience of the director, Kobayashi Masaaki (小林正樹), a university-educated pacifist who refused to become an officer when drafted to serve in Manchuria.

The film chronicles the gradual erosion of socialist ideals in the face of insurmountable realities. The lead character first fails to transform a Japanese mine employing Chinese slave labor into a more humane and efficient enterprise. After being drafted for insubordination and joining a labor battalion, where he takes many a beating without fighting back, he is eventually forced to fire his weapon and kill an enemy soldier when Soviet tanks overrun his hapless platoon. As a prisoner of war, he finds that life under communism falls far short of the egalitarian paradise that he had imagined when he had earlier considered defecting. The Soviets treat him just as brutally as the Japanese imperialists treated their slave laborers. After he escapes, he ends up becoming a leader despite his low rank, forced to make life or death decisions about the fate of starving Japanese soldiers and colonists straggling back toward their homeland.

一等兵 ittouhei ‘Private, PV2‘ – (Japanese Wikipedia offers the most thorough compilation of terms for military ranks in multiple languages that I have found so far.) The rank just below 一等兵 ittouhei (lit. ‘1st-level solider’) ‘PV2’ is 二等兵 nitouhei (lit. ‘2nd-level soldier’) ‘Private, PV1’ and the rank just above it is 上等兵 joutouhei (lit. ‘upper-level soldier’) ‘Private First Class, PFC’.

When I faced the draft after dropping out of college in 1969, I had rather pacifist tendencies, which were fortunately never tested in real conflict. I opted for language school rather than Officer Candidate School, and never even had to fire a weapon after basic training. As company clerk, I would just qualify myself on paper. By the time I got out in 1972, I had reached the rank of SP5, a rank abolished in 1985 that corresponds the lowest level of SGT.

敗北 haiboku (lit. ‘lose-north’) ‘defeat, rout’ – The Human Condition (人間の條件, Ningen no jouken) set of DVDs from Netflix contains 3 interviews: one not very remarkable one with the director, Kobayashi; a much more recent and interesting one with the star, Nakadai Tetsuya (仲代達矢), who many years later starred in Kurosawa’s classic Ran; and a truly excellent retrospective with Shinoda Masahiro (篠田正浩), who puts the trilogy in much broader context.

Shinoda uses a lot of contemporary gairai-go, but the word he uses for Japan’s defeat is 敗北 haiboku (lit. ‘lose-north’), a word that goes back to the Heike Monogatari, about the epic struggle for supremacy in 12th-century Japan between two clans, the Taira (or Heike) and Minamoto (Genji). One of its synonyms is 敗走 haisou (‘lose-run’).

So what does 北 ‘north’ have to do with fleeing a lost battlefield? Does it suggest retreating to the northern frontier of Heian Japan, that is, northern Honshu? Or does it suggest losing the north at your back, as the imperial palaces were oriented in Kyoto, Seoul, Beijing, Xian, and other capitals within the Sinosphere? In modern Mandarin, the term 败北 bàiběi (‘lose-north’) is literary, implying it goes back a long way and was not adopted from Japanese (as many modern coinages were). The more common way to write ‘defeat’ in Chinese is 打败 dǎbài (‘hit-lose’).

UPDATE: Matt of No-sword has a few observations about the Japanese association of 北 ‘north’ with flight from battle and with death.

Leave a comment

Filed under Japan, language, military, war

by Joel | 27 May 2010 · 6:47 am

Wordcatcher Tales: Kamaboko heisha

While poking around looking for something else in my Spahn & Hadamitzky Japanese Character Dictionary: With Compound Lookup via Any Kanji (Nichigai Associates, 1989), I came across a wonderful, but sadly obsolescent compound, 蒲鉾兵舎 kamaboko heisha, which seems to be yielding to a katakanago loan from English: クォンセット kuonsetto ‘Quonset hut’. A Quonset hut is a Kamaboko(-shaped) barracks. Nice image.

The 舎 sha of 兵舎 heisha ‘barracks (lit. soldier-lodge)’ also occurs in 牛舎gyuusha ‘cowshed’, 鶏舎 keisha ‘chicken coop’, 犬舎 kensha ‘dog kennel’, 豚舎 tonsha ‘pigpen’, and 田舎 inaka ‘countryside (lit. paddy-lodge)’. It indicates a fairly rustic or rudimentary sort of accommodation.

The kanji components of 蒲鉾 kamaboko ‘boiled fish paste, fish cake’ are less straightforward. The 鉾 hoko is a kind of heavy pole weapon more commonly written 矛, which Spahn and Hadamitzky gloss rather loosely as ‘halberd‘, which has a much more complicated head on it. I suppose the fish paste is (or was) extruded into long spears before being cut and packaged into standard blocks.

The character 蒲 is usually pronounced gama and means ‘cattail, bulrush‘ (although many people seem to confuse it with 蝦蟇 gama ‘bullfrog’). A couple of summers ago in Japan, we met two of my wife’s former students who hailed from 蒲郡 Gamagōri on the coast below Nagoya. One tutored English and the other tutored Italian, and they both admitted to being mildly embarrassed to tell people they were from an outlying district whose name can be translated as ‘Cattail County’.

The principal Sino-Japanese reading of 蒲 is FU, as in 蒲団 (usu. 布団) futon, but it can also occur in a crazy kanji representation of tampopo ‘dandelion’, 蒲公英, which is usually written in kana.

Even though its use may be fading with regard to Quonset huts, the modifier かまぼこ型 or カマボコ型 kamaboko-gata ‘kamaboko-shape’ still thrives as a descriptor of all manner of semicylindrical objects, like some kamaboko-gata pataa ‘mallet putters’ in golf.

1 Comment

Filed under Japan, language, military

by Joel | 26 May 2010 · 6:09 am

Who Toppled Mossadegh?

From: Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World, by Vali Nasr (Free Press, 2009), Kindle Loc. 2154-75:

History has charitably characterized the Mossadegh period as a democratic revolution in the making. But Iranian politics was not then truly moving in the direction of liberal democracy. Mossadegh talked of reducing the power of the Shah but was amassing power in his own hands and was quick to cross the constitution when it suited him—including dismissing the parliament in 1953. Far from liberal democracy, Iran seemed to heading for the familiar story of an elected Third World politician riding the wave of nationalism and transforming himself into an authoritarian ruler, leaving his country broken in the process.

As Mossadegh stepped up tensions with Britain, cutting off diplomatic relations in October 1952, the British government requested U.S. assistance, suggesting that the United States collaborate in overthrowing Mossadegh. The Truman administration refused to take direct military or diplomatic action against Iran, fearing that Mossadegh was naïve about the Soviet threat and too close to the communist Tudeh Party, which had backed Mossadegh’s election. Cold war paranoia fueled fear that Iran would join the Soviet sphere of influence. Shortly after Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency in the 1952 election, he approved a plan for the CIA to sponsor a propaganda campaign to foment protest against Mossadegh, allocating $1 million in funding to the plan (of which not much more than $60,000 was eventually spent), which was dubbed Operation Ajax.

The CIA urged the Shah to execute his constitutional authority to remove Mossadegh from office, but he resisted doing so, and in a preemptive move, Mossadegh, who had learned of the intentions against him, announced that he was dissolving parliament and he organized a national plebiscite to affirm his hold on power.

His extreme moves ignited further agitation against him, and the crisis came to a head when, in August 1953, the Shah finally did formally dismiss Mossadegh from power. When Mossadegh refused to step down, the Shah fled the country to Rome, appointing retired General Fazlullah Zahedi prime minister. With Mossadegh still in charge and the Shah gone, however, the Anglo-American plan failed and the crisis deepened. Massive protests erupted in the streets of Tehran and around the nation, with brutal fighting breaking out between pro-Shah and pro-Mossadegh factions. Four days later General Zahedi, widely popular in the royalist military, led troops to storm the capital in a second coup attempt. Mossadegh surrendered to Zahedi the next day, and the Shah was reinstalled in power. It has been common wisdom that the CIA did all the heavy lifting for the coup, but in reality it was General Zahedi, taking advantage of the growing popular apprehension with the worsening situation, who planned and led the second coup that won the day.

Leave a comment

Filed under democracy, Iran, military, nationalism, U.K., U.S.

by Joel | 31 March 2010 · 5:18 pm

South Moluccans: Teachers before Soldiers

From: Being “Dutch” in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500–1920, by Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, tr. by Wendie Shaffer (National U. Singapore Press, 2008), pp. 173-176:

Migration to other territories within the vast Indonesian archipelago was also part of a general pattern in the Moluccas. From the letters of the Neumann family, we gain a unique picture of an Ambonese family that became widely scattered. The letters also offer an occasional glimpse of the poorer relatives who sent their children to study in Batavia in the hope that they would gain an acceptable job as office clerks. Family members who emigrated remained in contact with each other, forming a small colony in the city of Batavia and maintaining their links with Ambon. Relations with home were maintained, and presumably this held true for all the Moluccans who left their native islands and ranged out across the Indonesian archipelago. According to the 1930 census, about 16 per cent of Moluccan Christians lived outside their home islands. Traditionally, the highest status an Ambonese Christian could attain would be Burghership, and a position as clerk or teacher. In contrast, a position in the army was generally spurned. This aversion to military service had already been prevalent in the 18th century when village headmen had to furnish young men for the annual patrols guarding the clove monopoly. For those living on the Ambon islands, upward social mobility came through education, missionary work and Burghership, while the army was traditionally considered to be an instrument of economic oppression.

The bases for missionary work and education, also in the Dutch language, were already laid in the 17th century. However, these became gradually eroded in the 18th century, a period of economic decline in the Moluccas. Things began to pick up when the Reverend Joseph Kam, shortly after his arrival in 1815, installed a small printing press at the back of his home; here he produced religious matter for his local readership. Then in 1834 the missionary Bernhard Roskott founded a teachers’ training college, which by 1855 had turned out 82 teachers. Most of them found jobs in the village schools on the Moluccan islands. Although these pupil-teachers in the main received Bible instruction, the missionary background undoubtedly enhanced the status of the elementary schoolteacher. From 1856 on, children of native Christian Burghers had the opportunity of attending a European elementary school without having to pay fees. As on the island of Ternate, so too on Ambon, in most cases a distinction was no longer made between the descendants of Europeans, and Christian Burghers; admission to elementary school, and hence the opportunity of gaining a job as a low-ranking civil servant, became equally possible for them all. However, this was only in principle; the two elementary schools on Ambon could not possibly accommodate all the children of the 8,000 Ambonese Burghers. There were, furthermore, few job opportunities in the Moluccas for these junior civil servants — unlike the encouraging outlook for schoolteachers.

It is doubtful whether the missionary teaching made much impact on Dutch fluency among the Ambonese — the Bible was, after all, translated into Malay. Nevertheless, in the second part of the 19th century the Dutch language spread even to the small villages. The inspector for education. Van der Chijs, reported in about 1860 that the Ambonese were more inclined to regard Dutch as their language than were the Indo-Europeans in Java. The affection for the Dutch language would only grow stronger. After the establishment of the second European school in 1856, the Ambon Burgher School was founded in 1869; this was intended for the native Christians of Ambon and had Dutch on its curriculum. Pupils with the highest marks in their school-leaving exams received the diploma of junior civil servant. It seems that in the 1860s there was enormous enthusiasm among the Ambonese Christians to become teachers. Indeed, they were so keen that it was reported, “If they are not curbed, half the male population would become a schoolmaster”. Not surprisingly, when the government teacher training college opened its doors in Ambon in 1874, there were many applicants. Anyone with a certificate as junior civil servant or schoolteacher who failed to find work in the Moluccas left for Java, for the towns of Surabaya, Semarang or Batavia. Some students found their way to the STOVIA ([School Tot Opleiding Voor Indlandsche Artsen =] college for training native medical doctors) in Batavia, which had been founded in 1852.

Although the army did not enjoy great popularity in the Moluccas, the colonial administrations found it most important to have a sizeable contingent of local Christian soldiers in the army, since it was largely composed of Javanese Muslims. Native Christian soldiers had enjoyed the status of semi-Europeans ever since, in 1804, Daendels had declared that the military from the Ambonese islands, Timor and Minahasa were to be treated as equals of European soldiers. Nevertheless, army recruitment in the Christianised islands proved a very difficult task throughout most of the 19th century. In 1854 the local government began a recruitment campaign to increase the numbers in the military, but at the end of two years the army authorities had to concede that all their efforts had yielded no more than a meagre 77 recruits per year for Minahasa and the Ambon islands combined. In 1860, however, the army managed to recruit 1,308 “Ambonese” — this term was used in army statistics to describe soldiers from both Minahasa and the Moluccas. Half this number came from Minahasa. Midway through the Aceh War, in 1875, the numbers from Minahasa had declined to 498, and those from Ambon were merely 398. When the war started in 1873, the residents of Ternate, Manado and Ambon were exhorted to concentrate on recruiting — especially in the Christian villages; but this had little effect, despite a 50-guilder premium to the village headmen for every soldier they provided. At the beginning of the Aceh War, army recruitment moved at a snail’s pace. In addition, in 1864 the cloves monopoly was rescinded, which not only led to a growing trek towards the towns but also produced an economic revival in the villages, since during the 1870s and 1880s cloves were fetching a very good price. In Minahasa, too, the numbers of Christians from the Manado district remained meagre, despite a large number of conversions to Christianity during the 1850s. Only at the end of the 1870s, when the early losses in the Aceh War had made enlistment in the military even more unpopular, did the army authorities manage to attract more recruits. In 1879, when a school was opened in Magelang, Java, for army children from the Moluccas, Minahasa and Timor, it proved exactly what was needed. And, besides, training for the military was expanded. Thus, the army became a feasible route to social advancement, all the more since employment as a clerk or teacher proved unattainable for most
literate Moluccans.

By 1883 the Ambonese contingent in the Dutch-Indies army had doubled to 801 from Manado and 708 from Ambon. The appeal of the army would increase even more on the Ambon islands in the 1890s, when the prices of cloves fell once again. At last there were sufficient volunteers — and the same was true for Minahasa. Indeed, here the army authorities were even able to select out of the large numbers who applied. Ultimately, the greatest number of soldiers would come from Minahasa; in 1918 there were 6,388 soldiers from Minahasa compared with 3,674 from the Moluccan islands. The increasing majority from Manado can easily be explained: in the 1870s the Christian populations of these two areas were more or less the same size, that is, around 60,000. The figures for the 1900 census, however, are 72,359 native Christians on the Ambon islands compared with 164,117 in the Minahasa region.

The former military became part of the village notables, along with the raja and other village headmen and the schoolteachers, who were on a slightly lower rung of the social ladder. Both in Minahasa and on the Ambon islands it became part of the local pattern of social mobility to enter military service; it also formed a confirmation of the Christian identity of these communities. The army did not, however, initiate the integration of the Christian communities in the colonial world. The image that has evolved in Dutch colonial history of the Ambonese as a martial race is primarily a colonial picture and does not reflect a predilection for the military life on the part of the Ambonese.