Samuel Hideo Yamashita. Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945.

Abstract

Daily Life in Wartime Japan, 1940–1945 is a valuable addition to the small field of scholarly literature that covers the Japanese populace during the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945). Samuel Hideo Yamashita had two purposes in writing this book: one was to show that the Japanese citizenry was loyal to the government and willing to make sacrifices for the war effort, even if there were minor grumblings and various forms of resistance; the other was to challenge the misconception that the Japanese citizenry was fanatical, backward, or misled by its government. In achieving these ends, Yamashita creates an intimate picture of the wartime Japanese, who, according to the book’s dust jacket, have remained “a largely faceless enemy to most Americans.” The book is divided into three parts, with a total of eight chapters and an introduction. Part I examines the home front, namely, the degree to which the Japanese internalized mobilization and were sacrificed for the war. Yamashita finds that most Japanese built the war into their daily routines because of their loyalty to the government. Part II covers the experiences of 1.3 million schoolchildren who were evacuated from urban centers to protect them from strategic bombing (61). This section focuses on the indoctrination of the students to make them into “splendid little citizens,” the efforts of families and teachers to monitor the children, and the responses of the children to food shortages. Parts I and II illustrate that food shortages were more serious in the larger cities than in the countryside, but that things became increasingly difficult for all people when Allied bombing began in earnest in November 1944 (56).