Chronology of WW2 in Japan ~ Rikidozan, Baba and Inoki, the experience of everyday life and how the war shaped them, and Puroresu (1938 - 1952)
"If Rikidozan was the creator of puroresu, then Baba and Inoki where the fathers who raised it"
~ IGF President Hitoshi Takahashi
This chronology is intended to show how Puro had it's roots in the hope given to the Japanese people after the carnage of the Second World War, and to do this this we need to start looking at the effect the war had on the ordinary population from the beginning to the end. The chronicle will document significant events in everyday life, hopefully reflecting on how people lived through the war, so the reader can get an idea of how much Rikidozan's match meant to a country that had suffered starvation, rationing, rampant militarism, loss and then defeat and occupation, and how Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki, the two founders, grew up in this environment. I have started from 1938, as this was the year Giant Baba was born. Antonio Inoki, (while not majorly the subject of this blog, as it primarily deals with All Japan and Noah), was born in 1943, the year the Japanese people began entering what has been termed "The Valley of Darkness", and often Inoki's story overlaps with Baba, as both lost their brothers in the war; Baba's was killed overseas, Inoki's was a Kamikaze pilot. Baba grew up in a pre war world in the rural north, and was two when Japan invaded Manchuria, while Inoki was thrust into it following his birth in Yokohama five years later. As an infant, his earliest memories must have been of the bombing (at this same time, twelve year old Yoko Ono was watching from her bedroom window as Tokyo burned) and of the hunger that came with the war and its privations. I do sometimes wonder if this influenced their styles, as it certainly did Yoko Ono, as she reflected her own experience of rags to riches gave her an "aggression" and an understanding of being an "outsider". As Keiji Mutoh summed them up, "always passive Mr Baba, and always aggressive Mr Inoki". Baba, born into the then Empire of Japan it its few golden years left before the war, had known a country at peace (despite what was going on in the Pacific and closer to home, the rise of nationalism and militarism), albeit for a short time, Inoki had not. He was born to the whine and crash of falling bombs and flying debris. By the end of the war, rural living standards had estimated to have dropped by 65% compared to pre war levels, and for Inoki in Yokohama, about 35%, Baba would have been more aware of the differences, to Inoki, this was just something he was born into and grew up with.
I have decided to end the chronology in 1952, for reasons which can be best summed up by the author, John Dower in "Embracing Defeat"; "World War II did not really end for the Japanese until 1952, and the years of war, defeat, and occupation left an indelible mark on those who lived through them. No matter how affluent the country later became, these remained the touchstone years for thinking about national identity and personal values."
“Looking at the history of Japanese professional wrestling, I believe it was born out of war” ~ Katsuhiko Nakajima (Interview with Weekly Pro, April 2025)
1938
1940
27th September: Japan signs the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, formally aligning itself with the Axis powers
27th September: Japan signs the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, formally aligning itself with the Axis powers
1941
"I thought that the attack on Pearl Harbor would awaken the sleeping lion called America. At that time I was considered out of my mind. We must shoulder the responsibility for this" ~ a Japanese colonel
December 7th: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, which brings America into the war. Contrary to popular belief, Emperor Hirohito did not condone the attacks, he was angry as he felt it was very wrong to attack without warning. It is not generally know that the Japanese did not just attack without a declaration. What had happened was that Japan had informed America that they were breaking off relations between the two countries, but the note was never received in Washington before the attack, due to an embassy staff member taking too long to type it up.
December 8th: Japan declares war on the United States and the British Empire.
1942
"Cherry Blossoms of The Same Period"* - a patriotic song.
"The Special Attack Force" and "In Praise of The Special Attack Force" were sung in schools. "The Special Attack Force" was sung by fifth graders, while the other was a more general song. Baba would have grown up knowing both, and probably singing the latter.
4th - 7th June: Although still a secret to most Japanese, the course of the war begins to turn against Japan following the Battle of Midway.
11th- 12th October: Sea Battle of Savo Island, Solomon Islands: Baba's older brother is killed in action. Baba said that as a child when it snowed, he would think he heard his brother walking up to the house, and that he was coming home. When a family member was killed in action, the government told people to say "Congratulations", instead of condolences. Naturally, people found this hard to do. Young men received their draft notice by red paper. Either you went, or you were killed by the Kempetai. Baba would have been about three or four when his brother died, not old enough to remember him that much, but old enough as the above indicates for him to have been a significant presence. Baba's experience echoes the experience of a father in Tokushima. After his son was killed as a Kamikaze pilot, for seventeen years this poor man thought he heard his son come home and call, "I'm home, father!" and he would rush to the door to greet him.
1943
“Little by little, even in our daily lives, we are coming to feel the inadequacy of things in our surroundings” ~ Kiyoshi Kiyosawa
In early 1943, Kiyoshi Kiyosawa noted in his diary that women who left the house in kimono, were made to go home and change into mompe*. In addition, schoolgirls were wearing the work uniform to school. This was due to material and clothing rationing. Trees were being cut down to build boats, and even iron was being taken from the bottom of doors to be used towards the war effort. The Japanese cedar avenue at the Nikko shrine in Tochigi (the shrine itself under the Meiji government had been given an annual stipend to maintain it for perpetuity), were also felled.
February: Bombing raids begin on Tokyo.
February: Rikidozan loses his adopted mother, who died of a lack of medicine. His fellow sumo wrestler (and later tag partner), Azumafuji, loses his mother and brother in the bombing.
February 20th: Kanji "Antonio" Inoki is born in Yokohama, Kanagawa. The family are involved in coal wholesale.
March 25th: Japan's first animated film, "Momotaro's Sea Eagles" is released. It is a propaganda film, which superimposes Pearl Harbor, and was commissioned by the Navy to publicize their success. However children (probably including Baba with his knack for observation, who would have been five at this time), asked why there were nine pilots for five submarines. The truth was that the tenth pilot had been captured by the Americans, which was hushed up by the Navy.
March 26th: James Ranicar Blears (who would wrestle under "Lord James Blears" and would be involved with Giant Baba) is serving as second wireless operator on board the SS Tjisalak, a Dutch merchant ship, when his ship was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-8. The survivors are taken prisoner, and beheaded by the Japanese. Blears managed to escape by leaping into the water and found his way into a lifeboat, where he and four other survivors began attempting to sail to Ceylon until the United States Navy liberty ship SS James O. Wilder retrieved them three days later. Blears was given a can of peaches by his rescuers and celebrated every year thereafter on March 29 by eating a can of peaches.
April 18th: Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, dies after his plane is attacked by American aircraft, and crashes into Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. He had been making a tour to inspect the navy to boost morale after the Battle of Guadalcanal, (which Baba's brother had been killed in). His death was a blow to the morale of the Japanese military. The radio announcers who broke the news were in tears, as were the Japanese public. He was cremated with half of his ashes being buried in Tokyo, and the other half in Nagaoka City, Niigata, which was about half an hour away (in modern day terms that is) from Baba's hometown.
May: The serialization of novels stopped in newspapers due to the space needed for war news.
May: Soldiers started taking over public recreation areas like golf courses, and used them for training.
May 16th: Following the Battle of Lunga, the Japanese newspapers used the phrase "Air Battle" for the first time.
June: A woman in Yokohama was taken to a police station, and warned that having maids in her house, was "an extravagance". Any spare room should be given over to industrial workers. Factory owners who were expected to provide dormitories and bedding to their workers, were having significant difficulties due to the lack of materials. There was no cotton stuffing to be found in Tokyo, and one owner had to travel to Kyoto to obtain it.
June: Osaka, a port city, had their exports stopped and the city ran out of sugar, salt and butter, even in the first class hotels. You could not even find a postcard to send home, or a new umbrella if yours broke, you couldn't even get it repaired due to lack of materials. Trains were running late, and travel was difficult.
June: The government organized zealous youth groups to strip peoples home Buddhist altars for copper and iron, by taking the votive lamps. The older generation said that this was going too far. By October 1944, not even cemeteries had been spared with the bronze Buddhas removed.
July 2nd: Tokyo is renamed the feudal "Tokyo City".
August: University students and students at specialty schools (i.e. Agricultural college), "returned their holidays to the Emperor" and worked through the summer towards the war effort.
August: Japan was becoming a dangerous place to be. Pickpockets and thieves swarmed Ueno Station in Tokyo, preying on commuters and stealing pocketbooks and suitcases. Nationwide, nothing was safe anymore. Shoes were stolen when removed, especially on trains when people (in that era) removed their shoes to travel on them, author Kiyoshi Kiyosawa had his nine iron stolen while playing golf. There were also fatalities due to the trains running late and the difficulty in connections, when people jumped from train to train.
September: People began constructing air raid shelters at the behest of the government. Due to the food crisis, Neighborhood Associations are warned that they should have defenses in place due to the plundering of food supplies that will go on during air raids. People in the countryside in particular, were relying on the Black Market to get buy as there were hardly any vegetables, which is particularly relevant when you consider that Baba's father ran a greengrocer shop.
November: The police started to set themselves up in strategic positions on trains, in order not to catch thieves, but to check peoples luggage for contraband (i.e. more food than the rations allowed, and anyone buying from the black market), and confiscate if so. One man killed himself when he was discovered to have more rice than was mandated. You had not only the civilian police, but the dreaded Kempeitai, the military police.
December: People had now reason to fear for their possessions, even at home. As the weather worsened as winter bit and the food crisis deepened, the moment people took off their coats and shoes, they would vanish from the entry hall. Possessions were even stolen out from under seats at the Kabuki theatre.
New Year 1943: Visiting family was almost impossible. Taking a train meant standing from eight o'clock in the evening all night in line to get a ticket, or buying one on the Black Market which had a ten yen tip.
1944
"You left your mother behind and went to war, believing that it is the way to save the one hundred million Japanese" ~ poem by Ichizo Hayashi about her son who was killed as a Kamikaze pilot.
January: The food crisis deepened, and the traditional rice cakes were now a luxury. Servants were stealing food from their employers, some where even stealing children's school lunches, but even children were being effected at school, as their lunches were stolen from the stoves used to warm them on (Baba was school age at this time). A housewife was harassed over five sho of rice (about 1.8 liters), and in a rage, her husband killed the police inspector. If there was no food at home, you could try a restaurant, but people were eating at about three in a row, just to get a full meal, but they still left hungry.
March: The Japanese were told by their government that rice would only be guaranteed for the next ten months, and even so, there was only enough for two meals a day. Half a radish was allotted on rations to feed a family of four for four days.
March: It was being reported that in Niigata, enemy prisoners were dying of the cold and of starvation, and were being secretly buried.
March: At the Matsuya Department store in Asakusa, Tokyo, lunch queues stretched over three or four floors. If you did get lunch there was no rice, only a small portion of vegetables, perhaps a broth, and "questionable seaweed".
March: The police now required a permit for anyone to travel more than 100 kilometers. Sleeping and dining cars on trains were now eliminated. Western style rooms in hotels were closed.
March: Students from Tokyo University were conscripted to work on drainage projects at Tarui, Shizuoka (note, research indicates this was a farm that grew tea)
5th March: The government announced that Sundays would be abolished completely, and now everyone had to work seven days a week.
April: People (mainly youths, as youth crime was on the rise) where breaking into houses just to eat. In Gunma, agricultural laborers who were paid only in one sho* of a rice a day were the usual culprits. In some homes, food was stolen when it was cooking in a pan, along with the pan, especially if it was western made. If people weren't breaking in, they were begging door to door, maidservants were selling their employers food for money, and when dismissed they would take their employers food, saying that these were their rations (cases were also reported of maidservants licking empty sugar bowls). People in the countryside, especially the coastal regions, were eating better than the cities, but in some rural areas the only food available was canned food and a few vegetables, which makes you think of Baba's fathers grocery shop. Shockingly, some coastal cities produced more fish than could be used, and so there was waste due to a problem with distribution, you couldn't simply send a care package to any friends or family in the city, as not only had postage rates risen, but the government announced that you could no longer send fresh produce through the mail. If you had a small boat, things were easier as due to a lack of oil bigger fleets could not operate for long.
April: Geisha continued to entertain as high class restaurants were bought by the military, the navy or else munitions companies. By May 1944, only Geisha in places like Tokyo and Gion remained, the lesser known quarters like Nagasaki had closed down, and only low class Geisha remained.
April: Khaki clothes were cheap, but to wear them (other than if you were a woman wearing mompe), meant you weren't respected as people thought you were an official.
April: A man had hot water thrown in his face while at a bathhouse as thieves wanted to steal his soap.
April: The government decided that in late April students should now spend more than six hours a week in academic study, in addition to ten hours daily labor. Unsurprisingly, the results of the civil service exams were extremely poor.
May: There was a bridal procession for Takahito, Prince Mikasa (he was married in 1941, so either this was said in retrospect at the beginning of the war, or else it was linked to the birth of Princess Yasuko, his daughter who was born in April 1944), and furniture belonging to the bride was transported. A chauffeur was overheard grumbling, "We are not even able to eat".
May: The traditional sumo basho took place at Kokugikan in Tokyo, but the military was also using the building, and they wouldn't let it take place at Bunka Gakuen.
June: It was being reported that the police were now beating people on public transport who dared talk about the war.
June: People queued through air raid warnings for a watery rice dish made with vegetables called "Zosui". It was hardly nice, and as the saying went, you couldn't even make chopsticks stand up in it, but people were starving, and emaciation had started to set in. Sadly, when this was discussed with Prime Minister Tojo, he snarled that he had better things to talk about than polished vs unpolished rice and how the bran could be used.
July: People were speaking about what would happen if Japan was defeated. Some said they would take revenge, others spoke of suicide, while others predicted a lawless future of civil disorder, violence, rape and political assassinations. The younger people (of about eighteen to nineteen) took a different view, saying that for better or worse, they would build a new Japan. This speaks of Baba's and Inoki's later attitudes when it came to making the most out of a bad situation.
July: Vegetable rations were now "officially nothing" as Kiyoshi Kiyosawa wrote, and in Osaka you got some once in ten days by August. Tobacco was available, but hard to buy. Basically, 60% of the rations that the human body needed was being rationed.
20th/21st August: Enemy planes flew over Tokyo, but nothing was dropped.
October: Cars had all but vanished from the city streets, and telephones were impossible to use.
October: Until October 1944 it had been forbidden in newspapers to write about people queuing incase the enemy found out that Japan was running low on materials, but by this time, newspapers (which hardly anyone could afford anyway), were openly reporting on it.
October 1944: The Tokkōtai ("Special Attack Force" or "Kamikaze") were created. One of Antonio Inoki's older brother would be enlisted as one, and would sadly lose his life. They were created at a late stage in the war, against an American attack on Japan. Very few people entered voluntarily (despite what government propaganda) would have it believed, most were conscripted. Life on base was hard, and even their letters were censored. The soldiers called this "The Scissors". Even foreign words like "butter" were banned. Any parents who objected were threatened.
November 1944: The human torpedo were created. The idea was conceived by a Navy lieutenant.
23rd/24th October: To celebrate the battle in the Taiwan sea, a special ration of "Celebration Sake" was given, however people were critical as it was food and materials they wanted.
November: People were stripping trains and trams for material. The leather straps that hung down for people to hold on to had vanished, as had the seat upholstery.
November: Air Raid training began in Yokohama. People found it exhausting running around with buckets of water, and some refused to go. Drills also focused on defense, and people practiced with bamboo spears to attack enemy parachutists (it never came to this, however).
November: Holes were dug at the side of roads, and filled with water. These were dug to provide people to dive into should they be caught in explosions.
December: Radio broadcasts advised people that one match could be used for two. A friend of Kiyoshi Kiyosawa wondered what they were talking about, he had lit about twenty, and none of them had worked.
December: The majority of household servants (maids) vanished from homes due to the draft. At this time Japan was also drafting men in their mid thirties and forties. Those women who did stay, only did what they wanted, and felt as if they were staying only to do their employers a favor.
11th December: Air raids started in Yokohama at about 3am, but no bombers yet. Kiyoshi Kiyosawa wrote that it was the nerves that shattered people, not necessarily the damage.
12th December: At 1.30pm, the whole nation offered prayers for victory. This had been something previously advocated in a speech by Premier Koiso. He said it would be something like, "forcibly invoking a divine wind".
13th December: The bombing of Yokohama began in earnest, and people started hearing anti-aircraft guns firing. In Tokyo it was estimated that by early 1945, 60% of bombs had hit their mark, while 40% fell at random. For those killed in air raids (or else died by other causes), weren't cremated. Coffins had to be returned to be reused after funerals.
1945
"There must be some peace of mind for dedicating my life to the emperor, but to be honest, I cannot say that the wish to die for the emperor is genuine, coming from my heart. However, it has been decided for me that I die for the emperor" ~ Kamikaze pilot, Ichiro Hayashi (died April 1945, Okinawa)
“With the arrival of General McArthur, Commander of the Allied Forces, on August 30th 1945, Japan was made to realize what defeat meant”
~ Yoshio Ichikawa
In early 1945, author Kiyoshi Kiyosawa reported a story that when asked by a statesman whether he had the desire to negotiate a peace deal with America, Hirohito said that if it came to that, he would personally go to the front and take his own life. An acquaintance of Kiyosawa's said that instead of becoming a model for the one hundred million* deaths, the Statesman should have said that His Majesty's way of thinking was incorrect, and he should "instruct the people on how to live". Ironically, this is what Hirohito did in August 1945.
January: Kiyoshi Kiyosawa recounted a story heard from a friend, "Ishibashi said that a piano teacher is his wife's friend, and she has two alternatives in her life, either she dies of starvation, or she loses all her possessions on the black market. This is now things are".
January: In the countryside, people were digging for pine roots to make turpentine, this was used instead of gasoline.
January: Train travel was almost impossible. There were no seats, nothing to hold on to, and the windows had been smashed. People started a semi riot when it was announced that trains were delayed or cancelled. In addition, train fare went up in April.
January 14/15th: The Toyouke* Shrine at Ise is damaged by enemy aircraft when it was hit by an incendiary bomb. The Home Minister went and apologized personally to the Gods. National outrage, which was fanned by both the media and the government, was seized upon as a political weapon. However, people did wonder why a shrine was a target, and not a factory.
February: Students by now where all working in factories.
February: For the first time in thirty years, water froze in household pipes in Tokyo. There was no heating, the ration was one bag of charcoal. It was said that this was the coldest winter (almost worldwide) for fifty years.
February: With the Americans now bombing munitions and aircraft factories, the Kempetai were exhaustively trying to root out spies who might have given the Americans the locations of the factories. Anyone who had links to Russia was immediately under suspicion.
February 16th: Air raids on Tokyo lasted from 7am until 4pm. The Americans bombed airfields and trains, worsening the food problems in Japan.
February 26th: Kiyoshi Kiyosawa visited the Kanda district in Tokyo, and found the area burnt out from Kanda Station to Surugadaishita, or still burning. 19,000 houses had been destroyed since the bombing began.
March: No seats on trains, no glass in the windows, travelling by train was now a cramped uncomfortable free for all with people climbing in through the windows. Everyone was crammed together with their luggage, people carrying chests on their shoulders were thought to be transporting bodies, and children relieved themselves on the floor.
March: Hirohito made a rare appearance to inspect air raid damage in Tokyo, he is not treated with the proper deference by local residents.
9th - 10th March: The Great Tokyo Air Raid. Massive firebombing destroys a large portion of the city, killing tens of thousands. At this time, after hiding in a bunker in a safer part of the city, Yoko Ono fled with her mother and siblings to the countryside. Conditions were just as bad in there, and she recalled playing "pretend meals" with her younger brother and sister to cope with hunger. The girl from a rich family, who had been educated in the classical arts, and who had attended exclusive schools, was now dragging a wheelbarrow containing what was left of their possessions, begging for food, while her mother bartered what was left of what they owned, sometimes only for sixty kilograms of rice. In Tokyo, Kiyoshi Kiyosawa left this description in his diary, “I was awakened by air-raid sirens. There was the noisy sound of artillery. When I went outside, the B-29*s were flying at low altitude, and their silver wings were revealed in the searchlights as they flew at a leisurely pace. The anti-aircraft guns were firing vigorously, but they were of little effect. But not even one of our planes was sent up. The B-29s were clearly outlined against the sky and indeed pretty. Immediately the sky in the north became pure red. The wind was blowing very strongly. With such a wind there was probably not any possibility of stopping the fires. There was the smell of burning in the wind, and I grieved over the enormous damage, though I didn't know to which areas. I heard afterward that the 130 planes did not come in formation but attacked one by one" and "In the morning I went to the center of the city to attend a meeting of the People's Scholarly Arts Society. I was told the train was only going to Shinagawa, but I was able to go to Hamamatsuchō. At Kamata Station there was a couple with reddened eyes and smeared with mud. When I asked them about it, they said that the area of Asakusa was burned and the Kannon statue was incinerated. As one approached Tōkyō, there were many people from Hamamatsuchō wrapped in bedding. The crowds of people walking on the railway tracks were exactly like the time of the previous earthquake. The areas to the right and left near Shimbashi Station were burning. Particularly, Shiodome Station was furiously erupting in fire. Here is the most important freight station in Tokyo, and it is to be expected commodities were piled up in great heaps for two or three blocks in all directions. These were being reduced to ashes. But what should be surprising was that very precisely only the freightyard had been specifically struck, and one could only be astonished at the precision of the bombing.” Tokyo's historic Yoshiwara district was also destroyed. Following the firebombing, the general consensus among the people was not to be angry at the Americans, but rather at their own government. For anyone who had lost loved ones, they couldn't bury them and bodies were stacked up in Asakusa, for anyone who had lost their home they were given a five day ration ticket and a coupon for a free train ride.
March 18th: Most (if not) schools were finally closed, but students were still expected to help with the war effort. By April, the schools had been taken over by the military, who were training to be suicide squadrons against the invading Americans. People were now talking in public about this, one woman was injured when she was struck in the face by the Kempetai for wondering when the "American visitors would arrive".
April: Kiyoshi Kiyosawa noted in his diary that an acquaintance of his had to evacuate his seven grandchildren, but he had nowhere to go. His two villas had been confiscated, and he was told that in Karuizawa there were food problems, to quote Kiyosawa "He is worried he may have to evacuate to Niigata or someplace like that" (Niigata was Baba's home prefecture)
April: Kiyoshi Kiyosawa wrote, "There is no gas, there is no water system, there are no lights. We eat meals by candlelight".
April: Soldiers were in Ginza, demanding free food and handouts.
April 1st: Battle of Okinawa
April 4th: Kiyoshi Kiyosawa left this description of a bombing attack over Kawasaki in his diary, “The predawn enemy air raid was the greatest sight I have ever seen. Until now the enemy air raids have been northeast of the city and elsewhere, and I have not been able to actually see them. Today they were something that I could look down upon. The planes bombed the factories in the Tōkyō-Yokohama area, and I was able to see with my own eyes the destructive power of war. The entire family was awakened from its dreams. There were thuds and earth tremors. It is unclear even now whether these were earthquakes or bombs. We put on our clothes and went outside. In the moonlight there were bombs falling everywhere and there were fires. They were spread over the numerous factories in the Tsurumi and Kawasaki areas. Suddenly two illumination bombs fell, and everything became bright as midday. The bombs made a continuous ferocious noise and exploded. The sky suddenly became red as a sunset. Today not a single enemy plane was visible, and accordingly no action on our side was evident. What could be seen was only a scene of leaping flames like signal fires. Sometimes there were flashes of illumination like lightning. Was it the enemy bombs or our anti-aircraft guns? The attack extended from about 1:30 in the morning until before 5:00 in the morning and then stopped. After this there were frequent explosions due to delayed-action bombs.“
April 17th: Following the bombing raids, Kiyoshi Kiyosawa noted that 1.2 million homes had been destroyed in England by German airstrikes, in an extremely short time, the damage to Japan was greater than this.
July 25th: Human Torpedo pilot, Minoru Wada, dies of suffocation when his sub malfunctions and sinks to the bottom of the sea. It is estimated that it took him ten hours to die. In his writings he echoed what Kiyoshi Kiyosawa had observed, that it was young people (in Wada's case it was the young soldiers), who would save Japan.
6th August: The atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped on Hiroshima, 90,000–166,000 are estimated to have either been killed, or died later from radiation poisoning*. Hiroshima itself was never bombed in the war, and life had continued (almost) as usual, so when people heard the air raid siren (which happened that morning as usual, which was followed afterwards by the all clear as the Japanese radar operators assumed that the plane approaching was on reconnaissance), and them saw a plane flying overhead and dropping three items* from it, no one took much notice. However, the area around Hiroshima (i.e. the mountain villages) had been bombed. There had also been rumors that something was being saved for Hiroshima.
To try and give a sense of the full horror of what was unleashed on Hiroshima, I have included some quotes taken from John Hersey's book,
“Mr. Tanimoto saw an astonishing panorama. Not just a patch of Koi, as he had expected, but as much of Hiroshima as he could see through the clouded air was giving off a thick, dreadful miasma. Clumps of smoke, near and far, had begun to push up through the general dust. He wondered how such extensive damage could have been dealt out of a silent sky; even a few planes, far up, would have been audible. Houses nearby were burning, and when huge drops of water the size of marbles began to fall, he half thought that they must be coming from the hoses of firemen fighting the blazes. (They were actually drops of condensed moisture falling from the turbulent tower of dust, heat, and fission fragments that had already risen miles into the sky above Hiroshima.)” (There were also tornados)
“The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns-of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos”
“Of a hundred and fifty doctors in the city, sixty-five were already dead and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were dead or too badly hurt to work. In the biggest hospital, that of the Red Cross, only six doctors out of thirty were able to function, and only ten nurses out of more than two hundred. The sole uninjured doctor on the Red Cross Hospital staff was a Dr. Sasaki.”
(People converged on the hospitals, which had neither the supplies, the equipment or the manpower to help them)
“By nightfall, ten thousand victims of the explosion had invaded the Red Cross Hospital, and Dr. Sasaki, worn out, was moving aimlessly and dully up and down the stinking corridors with wads of bandage and bottles of mercurochrome, still wearing the glasses he had taken from the wounded nurse, binding up the worst cuts as he came to them. Other doctors were putting compresses of saline solution on the worst burns. That was all they could do. After dark, they worked by the light of the city's fires and by candles the ten remaining nurses held for them. Dr. Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so terrible and so compelling that it had not occurred to him to ask any questions about what had happened beyond the windows and doors. Ceilings and partitions had fallen; plaster, dust, blood, and vomit were everywhere. Patients were dying by the hundreds, but there was nobody to carry away the corpses. Some of the hospital staff distributed biscuits and rice balls, but the charnel-house smell was so strong that few were hungry. By three o'clock the next morning, after nineteen straight hours of his gruesome work, Dr. Sasaki was incapable of dressing another wound. He and some other survivors of the hospital staff got straw mats and went outdoors-thousands of patients and hundreds of dead were in the yard and on the driveway-and hurried around behind the hospital and lay down in hiding to snatch some sleep. But within an hour wounded people had found them; a complaining circle formed around them: "Doctors! Help us! How can you sleep?" Dr. Sasaki got up again and went back to work.”
“When he had given the wounded the water, he made a second trip. This time, the woman by the bridge was dead. On his way back with the water, he got lost on a detour around a fallen tree, and as he looked for his way through the woods, he heard a voice ask from the underbrush, "Have you anything to drink?" He saw a uniform. Thinking there was just one soldier, he approached with the water. When he had penetrated the bushes, he saw there were about twenty men, and they were all in exactly the same nightmarish state: their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks. (They must have had their faces upturned when the bomb went off; perhaps they were anti-aircraft personnel.) Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of the teapot”
In the days following the bombing, rumors went around Hiroshima. Some said it was caused by a "Molotov Flower Basket" (i.e. a cluster bomb), others said that it was caused by American parachutists (the military even tried to track them down), and to quote from "Hiroshima" (Jon Hersey), "The bomb was not a bomb at all; it was a kind of fine magnesium powder sprayed over the whole city by a single plane, and it exploded when it came into contact with the live wires of the city power system." It was also said a single plane had sprayed gasoline on to Hiroshima, and then set it on fire. Fact was, no one knew what it was, because no one had seen anything like it before.
7th August: The radio announced, "Hiroshima has suffered considerable damage as a result of an attack by a few B-29's. It is believed that a new type of bomb was used. The details are being investigated".
9th August: The atomic bomb "Fat Boy" is dropped on Nagasaki. Nagasaki was meant to be bombed on the 10th August, but due to a poor weather broadcast, the bombing was moved to the 9th. The bomb was more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, and was magnified due to Nagasaki being in a basin surrounded by mountains. The estimated death toll was 60,000–80,000 people.
15th August: At noon, Emperor Hirohito addresses the nation, and announces Japan's surrender. This would have been the first time that any ordinary Japanese would have heard the Emperor's voice. Speaking in an aristocratic Edo era dialect, the majority of people had difficulty in understanding him, but the message was clear, Japan must lay down arms and "endure the unendurable"*. Contrary to popular belief, the broadcast was not done live. In the greatest of secrecy, Hirohito had suggested to a few close aides, that he break protocol and make an announcement on the radio as to Japan's surrender. The recording had been done in great secrecy the night before, so to keep it secret from those generals who were for carrying on the war. A memoir of the moment in Hiroshima recalled that, “Our Emperor broadcasted his own voice through radio directly to us, common people of Japan. Aug. 15th we were told that some news of great importance could be heard & all of us should hear it. So I went to Hiroshima railway station. There set a loud-speaker in the ruins of the station. Many civilians, all of them were in boundage, some being helped by shoulder of their daughters, some sustaining their injured feet by sticks, they listened to the broadcast and when they came to realize the fact that it was the Emperor, they cried with full tears in their eyes, 'What a wonderful blessing it is that Tenno himself call on us and we can hear his own voice in person. We are thoroughly satisfied in such a great sacrifice.' When they came to know the war was ended-that is, Japan was defeated, they, of course, were deeply disappointed, but followed after their Emperor's commandment in calm spirit, making whole-hearted sacrifice for the everlasting peace of the world-and Japan started her new way."
27th August: The R.A.A (Recreation And Amusement Association) is created to service the American troops (the government is worried they will run amok and cause mass rapes), with 1,316 women enlisting. Most come as there is the offer of food, clothing and shelter, but some come as they are thinking of the wartime doctrine to "offer yourself to the state". Most of these women are desperate, and some even arrive barefoot, but very few of them are actual prostitutes. Nothing is ready by the time the first troops arrive, and fornication takes place without futons or even partitions, and even takes place in the corridors. The press is outraged, and even the local police chief is said to have wept. The girls were estimated to have served fifteen to sixty GIs a day, for fifteen yen a customer.
September 2nd: The instrument of surrender is signed on the deck of the USS Missouri which is docked in Tokyo Bay. As author John Dower wrote, "the ceremony was laden with symbolism". American symbolism that is. The ship was named after the state that had been the hometown of President Harry S Truman, two of the flags flying were the American flag that had been flying over the White House when Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and the flag that Commodore Matthew Perry had been flying when when came to force Japan to open to the world. General Douglas MacArthur oversees the surrender, but he never sees anything of Japan other than Tokyo.
October 9th 1945: Fifteen women form a "Housewives Association" in Osaka to demonstrate and demand rice. This triggers the start of women's movements. In Tokyo that same month a group of Tokyo nurses form a union and negotiate a wage increase.
December: The first ships start arriving bringing back Japanese military and overseas personnel, they also bring back war orphans. Sadly for the servicemen, the communities who had seen them off with parades, now were openly hostile to them. Until about the 1950s shell-shocked war veterans would haunt public places, begging.
December: The first ships start arriving bringing back Japanese military and overseas personnel, they also bring back war orphans. Sadly for the servicemen, the communities who had seen them off with parades, now were openly hostile to them. Until about the 1950s shell-shocked war veterans would haunt public places, begging.
December: State Shinto is abolished.
December: The disparity between the conqueror and the conquered was tragically highlighted by the death of a baby who had suffocated on a train when strapped to its mothers back due to the crush of people on the train. This was not caused by the influx of Americans as they travelled on their own trains, they upgraded their homes to the living standards they were used to, and some even built pools. The American occupiers were not paying for this, the Japanese were, and there was no help for the orphan, the war widow, or the shell-shocked soldier.
December/late 1945: This would have been most relevant to Inoki's family; "In critical industrial sectors such as coal production, moreover, the country paid dearly for long years of class and racial oppression. By the time of the surrender, much of the most onerous heavy labor especially in the coal mines-was performed by conscripted Korean laborers or Chinese prisoners. When liberation came, they deserted their hellholes en masse. One result was that the basic energy sources necessary to fuel industrial reconstruction recovered at a dismal rate. By the end of 1945, preoccupation with human malnutrition had its industrial counterpart in the new concept of a "coal famine." In many critical industrial sectors, productivity declined precipitously after the defeat before beginning to show improvement. In most sectors, it was not until at least 1950 that output returned to the levels of the mid-1930s." (John Gower, "Embracing Defeat").
December: Following the picture of General MacArthur and Emperor Hirohito, the incidents of "lese majesty" increases towards the Emperor. Rumors fly, including that he will be hung in front of the Imperial Palace (people even came out to see if there were gallows). Rumors start that Hirohito is not of purely Japanese descent, as it is claimed that a temple in Shimane proves that his ancestors came from India. Naturally, claimants to the throne emerge, including an "Emperor Sado", who came from Baba's Niigata.
December: The Americans ban the use of the phrase "Great East Asian War". The Japanese had used this to centre the conflict on China and South East Asia, under the new rules, the phrase "War in the Pacific" or "Pacific War" was to be used, as this centered the war on the conflict between Japan and America.
1946
“The country has become small and powerless, food scarce, shame plentiful, life fragile. Stop grieving! Raise your eyes to the treetops, to the sky.”
~ Horiguchi Daigaku
"If the war has taught us what peace is worth, those whom today we remember, will not have died in vain"
"If the war has taught us what peace is worth, those whom today we remember, will not have died in vain"
~ A line censored by the Americans in an English language textbook, for being "Nationalistic Propaganda"
During the war, children had mimicked what they saw around them, playing innocently at war, exploding like the Kamikaze or attacking invading Americans with makeshift weapons. Now they were doing the same after the occupation. The three most popular games amongst small boys and girls (perhaps this was somewhat similar to Baba who would have been eight when Japan surrendered, and maybe Inoki as he grew older, but he was only two or three by this point) was to play black market dealer, prostitute and client, and left wing political demonstrators. Children (most likely Baba as he was older), for calligraphy practice wrote phrases like "Construct a nation of peace" and "Construct a nation of culture" (it is tempting to see something of All Japan in that last phrase)
Most likely Baba experienced this at school - "Until new texts could be introduced, students were required to go through their schoolbooks with the guidance of their teachers and systematically excise with brush and ink all passages deemed to be militaristic, nationalistic, or in some manner undemocratic. This practice of "blackening over" (suminuru) actually was initiated by the government before the Americans even set foot in Japan. For pupils and teachers alike, this was a visceral undertaking-simultaneously a ritual exorcism of teachings that had only yesterday been deemed sacrosanct and a practical exercise in encouraging criticism of received wisdom. Yuri Hajime, who lost his father, brother, and uncle in the war and was thirteen when hostilities ended, was typical in never forgetting this experience. After his home in Yokohama was destroyed by bombing, he was evacuated to the countryside and entered a poor middle school where it was necessary to make his own hand copy of the language textbook used by his class. Following the arrival of the occupation forces, classes were suspended for a period of months in the three subjects deemed most pervasively nationalistic - ethics, Japanese history, and geography (in which Japan's overseas empire had been extolled)—while the Ministry of Education and a host of publishers hastened to produce new textbooks appropriate to the times. In the meantime, he was required to deface his painstakingly copied language text. The experience was traumatic. The mutilated text struck him as "abnormal and even grotesque," but the episode left him with a lasting awareness that received knowledge could be challenged and education itself could be a relative thing. Decades later, Kurita Wataru recalled the same formative experience. "We held the splotched pages up to the sunlight and if the words could still be read, we applied a fresh coat of ink. That day, for the first time, I felt besieged by a jumble of contending values, a feeling that has persisted ever since." ("Embracing Defeat" ~ John Dower)
In 1946, John Hershey's "Hiroshima" was published in the New Yorker, but due to censorship, it does not get released in Japan until 1949. The Japanese writings on Hiroshima (aside from poetry allowed in Hiroshima newspapers), does not emerge at all until 1948 due to it being strictly forbidden. This even extended to scientific data, and for over six years Japanese and American doctors and scientists were denied access to the data, which meant they could have helped the atomic bomb victims. Censorship could be overly strict, even a haiku;
Small green vegetables
are growing in the rain
along the burned street
was also banned, as the Americans felt this was "criticism of the United States of America". Even the survivor of The Yamato, Mitsuru Yoshida, had his memoirs heavily edited.
January: A radio show called "Returnee News" begins, this is to inform people of the arriving ships, and to read out a list of names of those on them. There was also a segment called "Missing Persons" where families could write in and ask for details on loved ones. The show was swamped with letters.
January: A "new yen" is introduced to try and combat inflation, despite this the price of rationed rice tripled.
January: The R.A.A is abolished, as is any "public prostitution". The government cite women's rights, but privately they are alarmed by the rise in STDs in the troops. The women are sent off without severance pay.
February: The footage filmed by the Japanese following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is confiscated by the Americans. The film is sent to Washington. The Occupation Forces are instructed to make sure that not one single copy remains in Japan.
1st February: "Come, Come English" a cheery radio show begins to teach people English. With its happy tune set to an old Japanese song, with the words in English about candy and happiness, it runs for seven years, reaches an estimated 5.7 million households, and has textbooks published in conjunction. The song style was chosen as they wanted a bright and cheery song after the years of war and military songs.
March: A picture appeared in a newspaper before the first general election. It showed people crowding around a street stall to purchase sardines, and ignoring the political candidate on the soapbox.
April: In order to treat the rising tide of STD among their troops, American pharmaceutical companies sell patents of penicillin to Japanese companies.
May 19th: "Food May Day", a nationwide demonstration against the Japanese government, and their disastrous handling of wartime rationing takes place. Just as they had during the rice riots following World War I, it is housewives who lead the charge. Japan had celebrated May Day since the 1920s, but had stopped in 1936 due to the rise of militarism and nationalism. This would have been the first May Day that both Baba and Inoki would have known. They grew up with the Emperor's birthday being the holiday, compared to their parents who had at one point known both. The change now was that the Emperor's birthday was not the holiday. It was a change for everyone.
June: A new radio show "Missing Persons" begins as the segment on "Returnee News" could not cope. This show would run from June 1946 until March 31st 1962.
September: The post war Black Market finally came out of the shadows, thanks to brazen criminal gangs and the plunder of stockpiles by the military and politicians. In September 1946, a big blazing sign, erected over bombed out Shinjuku, and lit by one hundred and seventeen one hundred watt bulbs, was seen for miles advertising "Brightness from Shinjuku", which "promised sales at at proper prices". The name was a play on "Light of Asia", which had been used during the war in south Asia. Also springing up at this time was the "Blue Sky Markets", which were people bringing back produce from the countryside, and selling out of their sacks. One market stall sold edible frogs. In Osaka, there was a trade in selling blankets and the clothing of dead people. The blankets had come from tuberculosis sanitariums. Despite the money made hawking goods that had been so scarce for the past few years, there was little thought to the future. Vendors drank alcohol while working, to "numb consciousness and gain courage". Enough money was put aside for the next day, while the rest was spent on liquor and prostitutes. This was also the time when the stereotypical thug appeared in his Hawaiian shirt, nylon belt and rubber soled shoes.
November 3rd: Hirohito announces the new constitution. It states along with clauses of democracy, and women's rights, that Japan will never be allowed to have a standing army, navy or air force for the purposes of "aggression".
December 5th: The Japanese Diet announce that the "Gengo System", will be maintained, despite the Americanization of Japan. This ensures that each time you read a book or see a date in traditional form i.e. "Showa 21" for 1946, you will be reminded of the Imperial presence. This is particularly relevant in the context of this study for puroresu.
1947
The war had touched all levels of society, in 1947 the families of former Prime Minster Hideki Tojo and Admiral Takahashi Sankichi among them. The police rounded up vagrants in the Nanba district of Osaka, and found Hideki Tojo's brother among them. The son of Admiral Sankichi, was working as a sandwich-board advertiser.
During the war, Momtaro had been used for propaganda, the quintessential Japanese nationalistic hero, who defeated the demons (i.e. the Americans), and returned with the spoils of war. After the war, with no illustrations of the spoils, schoolchildren decided that the spoils must be food and money.
1947: Yokozuna Futabayama joins a religious group, the "Jiu", whose doctrine is to follow a woman who claims to be the reincarnation of Amaterasu (Japan's sun goddess and ancestress of the Imperial House). The police raid the groups facility on the grounds that illegal foodstuff is being stored there, only to be attacked and "tossed around" by Futabayama.
1947: With the Cold War starting, America turns Okinawa into a military base, and uses it as a penal colony, sentencing those Japanese guilty of crimes, to hard labor here. Throughout the whole of the occupation, Okinawa is never mentioned. There are no photographs, no newspaper articles, only the threat of it being a penal colony is known.
Mid 1947: "As time passed, the playtime repertoire expanded. In mid-1947, a teacher in Osaka reported that his pupils seemed absorbed in playing "train" games, using the teacher's platform at the front of the classroom as the center of their activities. In "repatriate train," children put on their school knapsacks, jammed together on the dais, shook and trembled, and got off at "Osaka." "Special train"-obviously a takeoff on the railway cars reserved for occupation personnel—allowed only "pretty people" to get on. A "conductor" judged who was favored and who wasn't. A button missing? Rejected. Dirty face? Rejected. Those who passed these arbitrary hurdles sat in leisure on the train. Those rejected stood by enviously. In "ordinary train," everyone piled on, pushing and shoving, complaining about being stepped on, crying out for help. Every so often, the conductors balancing on the edges of the platform announced that the train had broken down and everyone had to get off. It was, the teacher lamented, a sorry spectacle to behold: from playing war to playing at utter confusion." (John Dower, "Embracing Defeat")
15th January: A "Miss Ginza" competition is held, the same day a nude tableaux (think naked models standing inside of a picture frame) opens in Shinjuku. The media, beforehand muzzled and commanded to report only propaganda and wartime news, produces "Kasutori magazines", which are along the same lines as above, if anything, despite the difficulties in printing and materials, and factories being bombed, publishing was the first industry to recover.
3rd May: The new Constitution of Japan is enacted, renouncing war and establishing a parliamentary democracy. A band plays the "Stars and Stripes" on the plaza before the Imperial palace, but not everybody is happy.
December: A popular song "In The Flow Of The Stars" suddenly appeared. The song reflected the lot of women forced in prostitution just to make ends meet. Tellingly, the song does not blame the pimps or the procurers who exploited her, but placed the blame squarely on the government.
1948
June: A man in Yokohama is arrested and sentenced to six months hard labor for displaying the Japanese Rising Sun flag (the GI's referred to it as "the meatball"). Such flags, patriotic songs and singing the Japanese national anthem were all prohibited.
23rd December: Former Prime Minister Tojo and six other Japanese wartime leaders are executed for war crimes.
1949
"Well into 1949, children continued to turn social disorders into games. In runpen-gokko they pretended to be homeless vagrants. The game took its name from the German word lumpen, which had come to Japan earlier as "lumpenproletariat" and then acquired the everyday meaning of being an unemployed vagrant. The atmosphere of lawlessness was reenacted in "catch a thief" (dorobo-gokko) and "pretending handcuffs" (tejō- gokko). "Catch a thief," it was said, had replaced hide-and-seek in popularity. Desire to strike it rich was captured in a lottery game. Predictably, child's play also included kaidashi-gokko, pretending to leave home to search for food" (John Dower, "Embracing Defeat")
October 1949: Censorship was lifted, but not totally. Traditional theatre (Bunraku, Kabuki, Noh) returned, but anything "undesirable" was still removed.
1950
October 1949: Censorship was lifted, but not totally. Traditional theatre (Bunraku, Kabuki, Noh) returned, but anything "undesirable" was still removed.
1950
"I was born in 1950, five years after the end of World War II. During the war, my father was highly ranked in the military, and my family lived in Manchuria with a household staff of 10 personal soldiers. Just before the war ended, with two sons dead of natural causes, my mother fled Manchuria with my brother and sister and returned to Japan. My father became a prisoner of war in Indonesia. He returned to my mother a few years later with only a backpack of clothes. Although my father and mother were well- bred and educated, my father was not allowed to hold a government position after his return from the prison camp in Indochina. Financially life was very hard. Part of our family heritage is based on Shintoism and the duties of maintaining the Shinto shrine. When the war was first beginning, the entire country prayed for victory before the Shinto gods. With the ending of the war, Shintoism's popularity was shattered and shrines were left to ruin. Emperor Hirohito, the living incarnation of god, had let the people down, too many had died. The belief in Shintoism died as well." ~ Gaku Homma
25th June: The Korean War breaks out. Japan is mobilized by the Americans for "Special Procurements". "Special Procurements" are basically everything from napalm bombs to repairing tanks and building facilities for the new influx of American military. An estimated 2.3 billion dollars flows into Japan between 1950 and 1953, far exceeding the total amount of aid from the US during the early years of the occupation. The Korean War gave Japan the opportunity to develop its shipbuilding industry and car industry, as it was the only country with spare engineering capacity.
August 6th: Toshi and Iri Maruki publish a book called "Pika-Don" (literally "flash-bang") about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book is a collection of illustrations of what they themselves witnessed, and the stories that they heard. That same year, they held an exhibition of a painting called, "Procession of the Ghosts" (which also dealt with the aftermath of the bombing). Iri Maruki explained that they had released the book and done the pictures, as they were scared that any Japanese voice or opinion regarding what had happened, would be lost.
August 6th: Toshi and Iri Maruki publish a book called "Pika-Don" (literally "flash-bang") about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book is a collection of illustrations of what they themselves witnessed, and the stories that they heard. That same year, they held an exhibition of a painting called, "Procession of the Ghosts" (which also dealt with the aftermath of the bombing). Iri Maruki explained that they had released the book and done the pictures, as they were scared that any Japanese voice or opinion regarding what had happened, would be lost.
1951
11th April: President Truman dismisses MacArthur from all his commands, citing "insubordination" (amongst other things, MacArthur had been critical of the handling of the Korean War).
16th April: MacArthur leaves Japan to a heroes send off. In his five years and eight months in the country, he never saw any of it other than a limited part of Tokyo.
8th September: The Treaty of San Francisco is signed, officially ending the Allied occupation of Japan.
1952
1952
Consumption of food returned to pre war levels, material was again affordable and available, as were sewing machines and refrigerators. Also, for the first time in a long time, people were able to have personal savings.
March 28th: The political prisoners at Sugamo Prison are treated to a baseball match between the Yomiuri Giants and the Mainichi Orions. Three years later the Yomiuri Giants would scout Giant Baba. They are also treated to western style wrestling (although I do not know whether this involves Rikidozan or not)
April 28th: At 10:30pm, the occupation officially ends. There are minimal celebrations, the American military stays on, and Hirohito writes a poem about spring arriving. When polled only 41% of people thought that Japan was an independent nation. Soon after this, Emperor Hirohito travels to Ise to report to Amaterasu, the progenitor of the Imperial House, that sovereignty has been restored. He has no intention of abdicating.
May 1st: "Bloody May Day". Crowds protesting the Okinawa militarization and the continued presence of America in Japan (some have signs reading "YANKEE'S GO HOME"), turn ugly. Two are killed, twenty-two are shot by police, eight hundred policemen are injured. American cars are overturned and burned, three GI's are thrown into a moat and stoned (they are rescued by other Japanese).
May 2nd: The Emperor and Empress lead a ceremony in memory of the Japanese war dead in Shinjuku Park. This is the first time that this has happened since the occupation.
August: Japan finally is allowed to see pictures of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Notes
Mompe: Women's clothes worn for labor. Women combined their kimono with trousers in order to carry out work such as washing clothes (as romantically depicted to the left), rice planting and harvesting, attending to farm work etc. However, as the war wore on and materials were rationed, women complained that they resembled "mud animals" with their ragged clothing and messy hair.
Endure the unendurable: When the Americans arrived in Japan, not only where they shocked by the scale of the devastation, they were also amazed by the people. Far from being resentful to the occupiers and "fighting on like shattered jewels" as they had been urged to do, the Japanese were more angry towards their own government, who had led them into this. What the Americans found was an exhausted populace worn out by the war. However, they never really understood the Japanese. In America and Europe, for example when the crops failed, a family could be evicted from their farm by the landlord, in Japan, a landlord had a duty to feed his tenants. Germany too was under occupation, but the Germans were familiar Anglo-Saxon protestants, as John Dower put it, "Race and culture also set Japan apart. Unlike Germany, this vanquished enemy represented an exotic, alien society to its conquerors: nonwhite, non-Western, non-Christian. Yellow, Asian, pagan Japan, supine and vulnerable"
The bombing of Hiroshima: When the schools reopened, a little boy who had been caught up in the bombing, stood up to tell his class about it. As he was a child, to him it was all very exciting as he recalled "a big flash, black rain" and then seeing fire engines turned on their sides. He then recounted that his mother had become sick, but he didn't know why.
Three items: The bomb, a camera to photograph the blast, and a device that would measure it. The pilots recalled after dropping the bomb, there was a huge flash, the plane was rocked by the winds that came with the blast sucking in on itself (i.e. the mushroom cloud), and the taste of metal in their mouths. It is hard to swallow the congratulatory message that came through the radio, saying there would be a celebration with sandwiches and lemonade back at the base, when you consider the terror that had been unleashed below.
Sho: About 1.8 litres
Toyouke: Shinto Goddess of agriculture, industry, food and houses.
The Hundred Million: The people of Japan
"Cherry Blossoms of The Same Period": Atsushi Onita echoed a similar sentiment to a line in the song, when he told KENTA (also an All Japan wrestler), that they were "family" as he and Misawa were "blossoms from the same branch". This echoes the line, "You and I are two Cherry Blossoms, we bloom on the branch of the same squad"
B-29: The Japanese called these "Mr B"
Bibliography
A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyoshi Kiyosawa
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II ~ John Dower
Strength of Friendship: Rikidozan and Azumafuji
The Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking ~ Gaku Homma
The Folk Art of Japanese Country Cooking ~ Gaku Homma
Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, & Nationalisms - The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History ~ Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney
OVER the WAVES Yesterday ~ Today ~ Yoshio Ichikawa
OVER the WAVES Yesterday ~ Today ~ Yoshio Ichikawa
Hiroshima - John Hersey
*Please note this is an ongoing work in progress*
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