TALES BY JAPANESE SOLDIERS

Very few memoirs of Japanese soldiers who fought in WWII have come to light, so the Japanese combatant of that era has become something of a mythic figure, viewed chiefly through the recollections of former enemies. This volume, originally published in the U.K., offers a rare series of first-person accounts from at least one group of men who served with the Imperial Japanese Army. Filled with pathos and humanity, these 62 tales reveal what life was like for ordinary Japanese soldiers on the bloody Burma front. Here we find a Japanese soldier stunned at being denied an expected discharge on December 8, 1941. He soon learns the reason his commanders need him to remain in uniform, and then has trouble convincing others in his unit that Japan has in fact declared war on the United States. Elsewhere, a frightened nurse hiding in the jungle is surrounded by "horrible worms." Rather than be captured by the enemy, the nurse tries to strangle herself with her belt. (She is captured and survives to tell her harrowing tale.) Japanese soldier Manabu Wada gives a cigarette to a British prisoner who is assigned to a bridge construction crew. While the British prisoner is smoking Wada's cigarette, he begins to criticize the Japanese for inefficient use of prisoner labor. The two men argue, but he and the British prisoner end their heated conversation with a handshake. "Because he spoke with such confidence of the virtues of his mother country," Wada writes, "I bore him respect and at the same time had an affection for him." Wada then repeats a Japanese proverb: "Yesterday's enemy is tomorrow's friend." All told, this is a West-friendly collection from long-silent voices. (May)