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One Man's Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Mark Ealey  and
Yoshimura Akira
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Mark Ealey translates and Introduces Yoshimura Akira's novel probing the moral equation underlying the Pacific War in a novel that explores American firebombing of Japanese cities and the Japanese revenge killing of U.S. POWs.

Throughout history, acts of hypocrisy have come easily to the world's Great Powers. In 1938, in reaction to Japan's “barbarous” bombing of Chinese civilians, the United States placed a “moral embargo” on the supply of planes and aviation equipment to Japan. One year later, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the following appeal:

The President of the United States to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and His Britannic Majesty, September 1, 1939.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , February 2005 , e12
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2005

References

Notes

[1] The Doolittle Raid of 18 April, 1942.

[2] The Japanese approach to captured airmen was to withhold POW status from those involved in the bombing of civilians and to treat them as war criminals.

[3] The Battle of Okinawa claimed the lives of between one quarter and one third of the civilian population. The role of the IJA in abusing Okinawans and coercing them to take their own lives rather than be captured has greatly contributed to postwar ill-feeling towards mainland Japan. See: Hein L. and Selden M.: Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power, Inagaki Takeshi. Okinawa: higu no sakusen [Okinawa: a strategy of tragedy].(Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1984) and Appleman, Roy E., et al. Okinawa: The Last Battle. U.S. Army in World War II, 1948. (Reprint. Washington, DC: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1971.)

[4] Joe O'Donnell, Japan 1945. A U.S. Marine's Photographs from Ground Zero documents the destruction and early stages of reconstruction in Fukuoka, permitting comparison with Hiroshima and Nagasaki in photographs taken in fall 1945 and early spring 1946 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005).

[5] See transcriptions of the interrogations of Japanese military involved in the execution of American flyers in Fukuoka.