iscover
The history of international warfare is often a matter of perspective – this frame of reference is almost always written by those victorious in combat.
During a recent trip to Japan, I came across a new surprising angle to the start of war in the Pacific, which ran counter to my established beliefs of an honourable victory achieved by the allied nations against the infamously ruthless Imperial Japanese war machine.
This viewpoint, rightly or wrongly, challenged many years of my own knowledge of Australia and the allies fighting as heroes to protect the innocent and undefended from the military invasion making its way through China and the Pacific during World War II.
The outlook was the perspective of the vanquished and shown at the Yushukan Japanese military and war museum located within Yasukuni Shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo.
The museum itself, established in 1882, is dedicated to Japanese soldiers lost during war and acts as a written history of the Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, preceding events and acts of World War II from the Japanese perspective.
It displays artifacts from that time, including artillery, aircraft, manned torpedoes and war machines such as the Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tank, A6M model 52 Zero fighter, Type 89 field cannon and C56 31 steam locomotive train.
Most memorably, the museum offers a differing rationalisation of the start of the war in the Pacific. Initially, the exhibits describe a “closed country” period of Japan during the late Edo period. A nation already struggling to unite and throw off the shackles of seclusion, just as international trade and opening of two ports are forced upon the country by US Navy ships and 1854’s Treaty of Kanagawa.
It sets forward the ideals that the country was steadily undertaking modernisation with increasingly stretched resources at a time when the British, Spanish, German and American colonial powers were known to have been already making significant advances to annex and colonise the surrounding parts of the Indo-Pacific.
Japan itself was also colonising in Korea, Taiwan and China – this is not disputed at the museum, although there are more favourable versions of civilians “welcoming” Japanese troops and the methods of “civilian suppression” (certainly in some cases, human rights atrocities) are almost completely glossed over.
The museum puts forward the idea that the then-expanding Japanese Empire was on a potentially fatal time limit to economic starvation. It had become singularly reliant on trade and was quickly running out of the critical resources (scrap iron, coal, steel, oil, rubber, etc) it needed to advance its own modernisation and expansion as a world power contender.
In attempts to diversify its supply, Japanese forces were occupying parts of China and French Indochina against the wishes of other colonial powers, according to the museum. Surprisingly, there are almost no details given to governance considerations regarding the civilians in British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, etc – only that those areas had resources required for further moderisation of Japan.
The situation comes to head during the 1940s as the US, which was supplying oil (80 per cent), steel, copper, iron and other goods to Japan, began to enforce tighter restrictions, embargoes and, in a key wedge, froze Japanese assets in the US, according to the museum. These embargoes are followed by similar oil restrictions in the region from Britain and the Netherlands.
It is obvious that through either desperation to continue economic prosperity or by the over-confidence of a battle-ready Japanese military force, the end result occurred in which Japan undertook the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 to blunt any possible US response in the Pacific.
This action begins a historically ill-fated open war with America and its allies, depicted in detail by the exhibits.
The war is shown to be progressing smoothly for the Japanese as they first take and then attempt to “dig in” their territorial gains. The Battle of Midway against US military forces in June 1942 is highlighted as a large turning point in the war as Japanese forces begin being pushed back towards the homeland before total collapse and defeat.
Of particular interest is a surrender broadcast made by Emperor Shōwa on 15 August following the historic atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Despite the best that has been done by everyone – the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our 100 million people – the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest,” spoken in an excerpt from the radio broadcast.
“Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilisation.
“Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.”
It’s obvious that one man’s cruel world-ending bomb is another’s tremendous and necessary scientific achievement. Both views can be correct and all it takes is a change of perspective.
Final thoughts
The Yushukan war museum in Tokyo presents some challenging viewpoints and it would be easy to dismiss them as factually incorrect or corrupted by post-war grief and nationalist fervour. However, let’s remember that history is often only recorded and remembered through the memory of the victorious.
I often wonder if we will remember similar current conflicts between Ukraine and Russia as the defence of an unjust invasion forced upon a peaceful country or as a defiant response to unacceptable NATO expansion into Eastern Europe?
Will we remember a potential second war in the Indo-Pacific between the US and China as another righteous and successful campaign to defend the innocent, uphold the rule of law and allied world order, or as a failed blockade against the People’s Republic of China and their perceived right to self-determination over Taiwan?
Perhaps the line between guaranteeing the establishment of either perspective is only measured by the victory of those involved.
