[1] Toshio, Kakiuchi, Sokoku ni inochi sasagete (Giving One's Life to One's Country), (Kyobunsha 1988), p. 135.Google Scholar

[2] Ibid. p. 21. Ito's last will and testament is representative of a number of B and C class war criminals whose last words were collected in Testaments of the Century. See Dower, John, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (W.W. Norton & Co. 1999), pp. 508–21.Google Scholar

[3] Kakiuchi, , Sokoku, pp. 57–8.Google Scholar

[4] Ibid. 337–8.Google Scholar

[5] For development of my critiques of the “orthodoxy” within the English-language media and academy, see Philip Seaton, Japan's Contested War Memories: The ‘Memory Rifts’ in Historical Consciousness of World War II (Routledge 2007), especially the Introduction and Appendix. See also “Reporting the 2001 textbook and Yasukuni Shrine controversies: Japanese war memory and commemoration in the British media”, Japan Forum (2005) Vol. 17.3, pp. 287–309.Google Scholar

[6] Seaton, , Japan's Contested War Memories, pp. 20–28.Google Scholar

[7] Ibid., pp. 17–18. My use of the term “composure” is informed by Alistair Thomson: “‘Composure’ is an aptly ambiguous term to describe the process of memory making. In one sense we compose or construct memories using the public languages and meanings of our culture. In another sense we compose memories that help us to feel relatively comfortable with our lives and identities, that give us a feeling of composure.” Thomson, Alistair, ANZAC Memories: Living with the Legend (Oxford University Press 1994), p. 8.Google Scholar

[8] Seaton, Philip, “Reporting the ‘comfort women’ issue, 1992-3: Japan's contested war memories in the national press”, Japanese Studies (2006) Vol. 26.1, pp. 99–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[9] Hideko, Nishida, “Senjika Hokkaido ni okeru chosenjin ‘romu ianfu’ no seiritsu to jitsuno” (“‘Laborer comfort women’ from Korea in wartime Hokkaido”), Joseishi kenkyu Hokkaido, (August 2003), pp. 16–36. There were about 100 Korean women working in the sex industry in Hokkaido at the beginning of 1938. The establishment of “comfort stations” near mines was officially intended to “prevent laborers running away” but it was also a means to control sexually transmitted disease. Korean women also worked in cafes and bars, although the local police's insistence on health checks for workers indicates that such establishments were viewed as “dens of sexually transmitted disease.” Nishida's survey, based on company documents and the national survey in 1940 (as yet no survivors have come forward to testify), revealed that 333 Korean women, some as young as 14, worked in the entertainment industry in Hokkaido, while around 90 worked in 17 “comfort stations” attached to coal mines. Nishida concludes their experiences exemplify the state's “double policy of oppression” against both Koreans and women.Google Scholar

[10] Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 1983).Google Scholar

[11] Shinbun, Hokkaido (ed) Senka no kioku: sengo rokuju nen, hyaku-nin no shogen (Memories of the War: 100 People's Testimony 60 Years On), (Hokkaido Shinbunsha 2005), pp. 267–8. This book is available online (including photographs of the people who told their stories). Miyamoto's testimony is here.Google Scholar

[12] Ibid. pp. 230–1. Available online.Google Scholar

[13] Ibid. pp. 198–201. Available online.Google Scholar

[14] Following the Meiji Restoration, the government ordered the establishment of Shokonjo or Shokonsha (“place/shrine to invite the souls of the dead”) to commemorate those who had given their lives for the state. Tokyo Shokonsha became Yasukuni Shrine in 1879. In 1939 Shokonsha were renamed Gokoku Jinja (“nation protecting shrine”) and at least one was officially designated in each prefecture to commemorate soldiers from that prefecture. Hokkaido has three designated Gokoku Jinja: in Asahikawa, Sapporo and Hakodate. Other non-designated Gokoku Jinja exist, including in Kushiro (mentioned later in the essay). These shrines, like Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, commemorate those that died in the service of the Japanese military (gunjin) or those attached to the military (gunzoku), such as nurses. People may be commemorated simultaneously at Yasukuni Shrine and their local Gokoku Jinja. Similar to Yasukuni, the shrines became autonomous religious organizations after Japan's defeat. They have annual festivals specifically to commemorate the war dead but also become a focal point for commemorations on 15 August. While officially separate organizations, the Gokoku Jinja are all part of the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho), and the head priest of Hokkaido Gokoku Jinja, Shionoya Tsuneya, told me during an interview (1 March 2007) that he attended annual gatherings with other head priests of Gokoku Jinja at Yasukuni Shrine. See Nelson, John, “Social Memory as Ritual Practice: Commemorating Spirits of the Military Dead at Yasukuni Shrine”, The Journal of Asian Studies (2003), Vol. 62.2, pp. 443–467. See also the Hokkaido Gokoku Jinja webpage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[15] Itoman City (eds), Itoman-shi ni okeru Okinawasen no taikenkishu (A Collection of Testimony about the Battle for Okinawa in Itoman City), (Itoman City 1995), p. 149.Google Scholar

[16] Ibid. 156, 159.Google Scholar

[17] Ibid. 160.Google Scholar

[18] The museum has a webpage.Google Scholar

[19] Yuki, Tanaka, “Japan's Kamikaze Pilots and Contemporary Suicide Bombers: War and Terror”, Japan Focus.Google Scholar

[20] Families in Japan often own a plot of land where the remains of family members are buried and memorial stones are erected to deceased family members. Maeda would not need to be buried there because his body would be lost in the kamikaze attack, but in the same way that soldiers would say “Let's meet again at Yasukuni” (referring to their souls being enshrined together at Yasukuni Shrine), Maeda's soul could rest with his mother's in the family grave. As the television news report (discussed later) about the play based on Maeda's life illustrated, his family did erect a memorial stone to him where relatives continue to pray for his soul.Google Scholar

[21] Kaoru, Muranaga (ed), Chiran Tokubetsu Kogekitai (The Kamikaze of Chiran), (Japuran 1989), pp. 58–9.Google Scholar

[22] Shinbun, Hokkaido, Senka no Kioku, p. 210. Available online.Google Scholar

[23] Seaton, Philip, “Do you really want to know what your uncle did? Coming to terms with relatives' war actions in Japan”, Oral History (2006) Vol. 43.1, pp. 53–60.Google Scholar

[24] Kai, Sapporo Kyodo wo Horu, Senso wo horu: Shogen, kagai to higai, Chugoku kara tonan Ajia e (Unearthing the War: Perpetrator and Victim Testimony from China to Southeast Asia), (Sapporo Kyodo wo Horu Kai 1995), pp. 246–7.Google Scholar

[25] Ibid. p. 251. Tanifuji's testimony contains all the hallmarks of members of the Chinese Returnees Association (Chukiren). Chukiren members were interned at Fushun prison in China until 1956 before returning home and becoming one of the most active groups of Japanese soldiers confessing to atrocities. However, Tanifuji does not explicitly state that he is a member of this group.Google Scholar

[26] Hoaglund, Linda, “Stubborn Legacies of War: Japanese Devils in Sarajevo”, Japan FocusGoogle Scholar

[27] Ayako, Kurahashi, Kempei datta chichi no nokoshita mono (What my Military Policeman Father Left Me), (Kobunken 2002), p. 109. Azuma's story is also told in Ian Buruma, Wages of Guilt, Memories of War in Germany and Japan (Vintage 1995), pp. 129–34.Google Scholar

[28] Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Vintage 1994), Chapter 2.Google Scholar

[29] For themes of racism in World War II atrocities, see Dower, John, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (Pantheon Books 1986).Google Scholar

[30] Shigeru, Kayano (trans. Selden, Kyoko and Selden, Lili), Our Land Was a Forest: An Ainu Memoir (Westview Press 1994), pp. 79–86.Google Scholar

[31] Thomson, , ANZAC Memories, p. 12. The full citation is: “My argument is that an official or dominant legend works not by excluding contradictory versions of experience, but by representing them in ways that fit the legend and flatten out the contradictions, but which are still resonant for a wide variety of people.”Google Scholar

[32] Shinbun, Hokkaido, Senka no kioku, p. 222.Google Scholar

[33] There is a vast literature on the textbook issue throughout the postwar. Two essays that give a good overview of the twists and turns are: Caroline Rose, “The Battle for Hearts and Minds: Patriotic Education in Japan in the 1990s and Beyond” in Naoko Shimazu (ed) Nationalisms in Japan (Routledge 2006); and Nozaki Yoshiko and Inokuchi Hiromitsu, “Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo's Textbook Lawsuits” in Hein, Laura and Selden, Mark (eds) Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States (M.E. Sharpe 2000).Google Scholar

[34] Historical Museum of Hokkaido (see webpage). The English is an accurate translation of the Japanese panel, barring the last sentence, which in the original Japanese makes it much clearer that the lives lost were of forced laborers.Google Scholar

[35] Historical Museum of Hokkaido, From Recession to World War II (Sixth Exhibition Hall Guidebook), (HMH 2000). Forced labor is on pages 42 and 44, air raids are on page 48.Google Scholar

[36] I am grateful to Ikeda Takao of the Historical Museum of Hokkaido for compiling this data.Google Scholar

[37] Hokkaido Shinbun, “Heiwa no imi, kosei ni” (Explaining the meaning of peace to future generations), 14 July 2006 (Kushiro/Nemuro morning edition).Google Scholar

[38] NHK, “Hokkaido Close-up: Machi ni hodan ga uchikomareta: shogen Muroran kanpo shageki” (When shells fell on the town: testimony of the naval bombardment of Muroran), broadcast 29 July 2005.Google Scholar

[39] Hokkaido Shinbun, “Senka nai sekai wo” (Create a world without war), 16 August 2006 (Kushiro/Nemuro morning edition).Google Scholar

[40] For discussion of domestic Japanese debate over official Yasukuni Shrine worship, see Seaton, Philip, “Pledge Fulfilled: Prime Minister Koizumi's Yasukuni Worship and the Japanese Media, 2001-6” in Breen, John (ed) Yasukuni: Contested Meanings (Hurst & Co., forthcoming).Google Scholar

[41] Hokkaido Shinbun, “Gokoku jinja reitaisai, shicho no sanretsu hihan, Asahikawa de seikyo bunri shukai” (Gokoku Shrine festival, Mayor's attendance criticized, meeting in Asahikawa about the constitutional separation of religion and the state), 7 June 2005. Takahashi Tetsuya, personal correspondence, 30 June 2007.Google Scholar

[42] Hokkaido Shinbun, “Heiwa no totosa hishihishi” (The Preciousness of Peace), 16 August 2006 (Asahikawa morning edition).Google Scholar

[43] Thomson, , ANZAC Memories, p. 215.Google Scholar

[44] Sledge, E.B., With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (Oxford University Press 1990), p. 120.Google Scholar

[45] Ibid.Google Scholar

[46] Bishop, Patrick, “Boys, Bomber”, BBC History Magazine March 2007, pp. 14–19.Google Scholar

[47] Fussell, Paul, “Introduction” in Sledge, With the Old Breed, p. xvi.Google Scholar

[48] Buchholz, Petra, “Tales of War: autobiographies and private memories in Japan and Germany”, online.Google Scholar

[49] Seaton, , Japan's Contested War Memories, pp. 57, 94–6.Google Scholar

[50] See Calder, Angus, The Myth of the Blitz (Pimlico 1991). Rather than focusing solely on the “courage and pluck” of the British people, Calder's account also documents conscientious objectors to Britain's war against Germany, class enmity between evacuated Londoners and their rural hosts, and the booing of Churchill and the royal family.Google Scholar

[51] Seraphim, Franziska, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005, (Harvard University Press 2007), Chapter 2, especially p. 84. Regarding pension rights secured by the Izokukai, Gavan McCormack states that in the early 1990s the Japanese government was paying more money per year in pensions to veterans and their survivors than had been paid in total to neighboring countries as compensation. The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (M.E. Sharpe 1996), p. 245.Google Scholar

[52] Nobumasa, Tanaka, Hiroshi, Tanaka & Nagami, Hata, Izoku to sengo (Bereaved Families and the Postwar) (Iwanami Shinsho 1995), pp. 152–5.Google Scholar