|
Hmm, doesn't quote long passages anyways, so much for that...
A very evenly written, unbiased account of the war. On the one hand a passage at the end of chapter thirteen quotes a school song sung by the volunteer corps:
A rifle in your hand, a hammer in mine--
But the road into battle is one, and no more.
To die for your country's a mission divine
For the boys and girls of the volunteer corps!
Sounds very patriotic but in the ninth chapter Ueda says, "That's what happens when you chase after ideals like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere... War widows on the increase, young men on the decrease, while some people get unfair shares of certain commodities."
Chapter ten, "Had this woman who lay dead here--I kept asking myself -- made no move to stop her son from volunteering to be trained as a human torpedo? War, I concluded, paralyzes a people's power of judgement."
In eleventh chapter the narrator says, "I hated war. Who cared, after all, which side won? The only important thing was to end it all as soon as possible: rather an unjust peace, than a 'just' war!" and '"If only we'd been born in a country, not a damn fool state," said his companion wistfully.'
"Hiroshima was no more....Yet who could have forseen that its end would be of such horror as this?"
Ibuse certainly shares the horrors of Hiroshima with us yet he also makes it clear that Japan was ready to fight tooth and nail to defend its soil. And they wanted to drop the same bombs on American forces.
|