Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015. xviii, 282 pp., [8] pp. of colored plates (Figures, tables.) US$39.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8014-5257-4.
Studies focused on wounded soldiers and physically disabled veterans of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) have been largely absent from both Japanese mainstream narratives and English scholarship. Pennington’s work breaks through this silence. Placing these men in the historical shift of Japanese institutions and welfare services from the 1890s to 1952, the author illustrates how they became casualties of war and later “doubly casualties of history” (16). In particular, this project reveals two distinct dimensions of Japan’s war history: the institutions that existed to treat and rehabilitate these men, and the status of the men themselves, seen by the Japanese state as an integral component of the mobilization effort during the war. This research is a vital addition to studies of war and battlefield experiences from the perspective of the defeated.
The use of a rich set of materials widens the scope of the study, including first-hand accounts, medical-related materials, institutional resources, war memoirs, and popular media. For instance, Pennington integrates IJA Physician-Captain Kawahara Kaiichirō’s memoir The Fighting Artificial Arm (1941), which enables readers to perceive how soldiers came to be wounded, how they were treated on the battlefield and at the home front, and how they interacted on a day-to-day basis with other veterans and people in wider society.
The book is divided into three major periods: prewar (1890s–1937), total war (1937–1945), and the Allied Occupation (1945–1952). Although the main focus of this study is the period of total war, Pennington begins with an exploration of military support in the prewar period, arguing that significant progress was achieved during this time. The Japanese state had previously preferred private assistance, and relied on financial contributions and support from civic associations. Following the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–1905, military assistance became a state-driven concern, initiating the establishment of military pensions, the Crippled Soldiers Institute, and the Military Assistance Law. These foundations became an important part of the rise in extensive care for veterans during war.
Another vital element in this period is the state’s shifting perception of wounded and disabled veterans. Particularly, soldiers who fought during the Russo-Japanese War were called “crippled soldiers” and were considered passive recipients of welfare services, incapable of acting for the nation. However, the Japanese state officially re-labelled them as “disabled veterans” in the 1930s, thereby removing negative connotations. Such a change was derived from the state’s need to enlarge mobilization for the imminent total war.
The volume’s major contribution is found in the following two chapters: the first is concerned with the sophisticated medical system at overseas battlefronts and the second with the comprehensive care at home between 1937 and 1941. Pennington demonstrates how the military medical system, and its echelon IJA medical care facilities, were well established at the war front in China, enabling the wounded to be evacuated from the battle lines and receive treatment from field surgeons and medics. Integrating logistics and military medicine, his investigation overturns what Ruth Benedict represents in her well-known work, Chrysanthemum and the Sword—that the standard of the IJA’s medical treatment was wretched.
Similarly, Pennington examines the care services administered for amputees at Tokyo Number Three, a provisional army hospital described as similar to a military barrack. The amputees who were sent back from the theatre of war received physical, vocational, and spiritual rehabilitation at the hospital. The disabled men practiced a variety of exercise therapies from daily calisthenics to sports in order to strengthen their bodies. Functional artificial arms were developed and granted to these men, and vocational training using prostheses was also offered. Spiritual training involved creative activities such as ikebana and tanka, and entertainment from external performers. Such programs were intended to reframe these men as imperial subjects rather than relegating them to the periphery of society.
Focusing on the period between 1937 and 1945, the next two chapters elucidate the favourable treatment given to disabled men who sacrificed their limbs for the sake of the nation. Not only were fully fledged welfare services available to the wounded and disabled veterans, they were also presented as physically capable actors and heroic figures. Pennington employs the term “extraordinary treatment” (174) to characterize the response of the state and wider society. Depictions of these men were positive, affirming, and respectful.
The lives of the defeated soldiers after 1945 are the subject of the final chapter. War casualties, which until this point had been particular to military servicemen, became pervasive among Japanese civilians toward the end of the war. Against this backdrop, Pennington describes how the preferential wartime system for the wounded and disabled men was shattered by the Allied occupation’s introduction of equal welfare services for the needy under its demilitarization and democratization efforts. Additionally, the war-bereaved families became major political actors, as they were depicted as “acceptable icons of sacrifice” (198) after the defeat. These circumstances resulted in a decline in the special status granted to disabled veterans during wartime.
Pennington’s achievement fills a lacuna in studies on Japanese wounded soldiers and disabled veterans of World War II by examining the history of soldiers conscripted by the wartime state. With his fascinating insight into war history, he extensively examines the lives, experiences, and representation of these men in mass culture, and their institutional surroundings. His observations on wartime Japan fit within a broad study that illuminates contrasting aspects of the war in the dark valley. Furthermore, this book benefits Japanese scholarship as, to date, attention to this subject has been anything but voluminous and has been inclined to focus on rather short periods and restricted topics. With these reasons, Casualties of History should attract a large audience with an interest in war history and the history of casualties.
Aiko Otsuka
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
pp. 153-155