I Was Defeated

By Yoshio Kodama, translated from the Japanese. 1959.

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on Yoshio Kodama, noting that he was “a prominent figure in the rise of organized crime in Japan. He was an ultranationalist, and formed a group to assassinate various Japanese politicians, which is why he ended up in prison. During the war he helped move supplies from Asia into Japan, and later became involved in the drug trade. He later helped the US intelligence community work against Communism. He was later invovled in a number of business scandals.

That gives you an idea of the kind of man that Kodama was.

The book starts off with an introduction by Taro Fukuda and says things like “...all the Chinese spoke highly of the man Kodama.” The forward describes him as “a man of justice and passion.”

Kodama writes relating to the Pearl Harbor attack that “Not a single Japanese at that time knew that the attack against Pearl Harbor had been carried out in violation of International Law. He says the Japanese people thought of the US as “seeking to oppress the Japanese in every way.” They were critical of the US aid to China. Kodama describes “...the sincere belief of the entire nation that they were now launched upon a war of righteous and self-defense.”

He adds that they had no way of knowing just how angry the Pearl Harbor attack was going to make the Americans.

In discussing the Japanese Navy, he writes:

”...the Japanese Navy had started this war without any sure calculation of victory and without any conviction that they ahd enough material to see the war through.”

As far as Japanese successes goes, he writes;

”The people of Japan went wild over the fall of Singapore and held lantern parades in celebration of the victory.... each time the victories of the Japanese forces operating in the hot southern regions was announced, the leaders of the Japanese Army and Navy in Shanghai held banquets an feted victory.”

”There was not a single Japanese who could judge correctly and impartially the question of whether the Pacific War was a violation of humanitarian conduct or whether it was a war of racial self-defense.”

In writing about the Battle of Midway, he notes that not only the Japanese people themselves were kept in the dark about the defeat, but even cabinet ministers did not know what had happened.

In relation to the question of why the Japanese people didn't stand up to their government against the war, he writes:

”...anyone criticizing the Tojo Regime was immediately mobilized into the army as a buck private, regardless of whether he were a government official or an influential industrialist. If the critic happened to be an army officer in the central government he was immediately sent to the front line, invariably where the heaviest fighting was taking place, from where he could never hope to return home alive. Such cases occurred frequently in the case of men in the newspaper field.”

He talks about the emphasis the militarists placed upon the “spiritual strength” of the Japanese people, and notes that spiritual strength can't shoot down the B-29s.

He brings up something I hadn't seen in any other book. I've read where there was a major problem with having enough pilots for the planes fighting the Americans, but apparently there was also a major problem having enough pilots to fly planes from where they were being built to where they would be used.The problem of the major shortage of aviation fuel cut down severely on the training time for pilots.

In talking about the kamikaze attacks, he says that they might have had a major effect if the two sides were basically even in strength, but there was such a gap between the two countries that “...no results proportionate to the sacrifice could be expected.” In other words, the kamikazes were basically being wasted.

He also talks about how the Japanese government did not have any programs in place to handle the Allied bombing of Japanese cities. There were not enough relief facilities, crematoriums, or a proper and effective fire-fighting system in place.

One of his strongest statements is this one:

”The leaders of Japan, even though they saw with their own eyes half of Tokyo burned to the ground in one night and 200,000 of their fellow countrymen burned to death, did not awaken from their self-deceptive illusions. They were absolutely incapable of understanding the realities of war and the unfavorable trend of the whole war situation.”

He also talks about Japanese preparations for the invasion of the homeland, and notes that many men were called up but the Japanese Army couldn't provide the men either shoes or guns. They ended up digging trenches or working as longshoremen.

In describing the relationship of the Japanese people to the Emperor, even late in the war, he says “...their confidence and trust in the Emperor hadn't waned in the least. 'To live with the Emperor, to die with the Emperor!' -this racial conviction had not disappeared from the hearts of each member of the nation. It was because of this conviction that the Japanese determined to greet the enemy on the Japanese homeland and to fight even with bamboo spears a last bitter battle.”

He praises the American Army which occupied Japan, saying they behaved quite well.

He notes:

"No volume of fine words explaining democracy and no volume of money spent in propagandizing democracy could have had as great an effect as the disciplined and civilized attitude shown by the American forces when they arrived in Japan.”

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