Chronology of WW2 in Japan ~ Rikidozan, Baba and Inoki, the experience of everyday life and how the war shaped them (1938 - 1952)

INTRODUCTION

"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.  

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."

1938

23rd January: Shohei Baba (pictured to the left with his parents and older brother) is born in Sanjo, Niigata. His father ran a greengrocer shop.

1940
27th September: Japan signs the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, formally aligning itself with the Axis powers

1941

December 7th: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, which brings America into the war. 
December 8th: Japan declares war on the United States and the British Empire.

1942
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.  

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.

20th February: Kanji "Antonio" Inoki is born in Yokohama, Kanagawa. The family are involved in coal wholesale.  

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 miliary. 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. 

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. 

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

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 has 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. 

1945
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.

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, and 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. 

9th August: The atomic bomb "Fat Boy" is dropped on Nagasaki. Nagasaki was meant to be bombed on the 10th August, but due to 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*. 

1947

3rd May: The new Constitution of Japan is enacted, renouncing war and establishing a parliamentary democracy

1948

23rd December: Prime Minister Tojo and six other Japanese wartime leaders are executed for war crimes.

1951

8th September: The Treaty of San Francisco is signed, officially ending the Allied occupation of Japan.

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. 

Bibliography 

A Diary of Darkness: The Wartime Diary of Kiyosawa Kiyoshi

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II ~ John Dower

Strength of Friendship: Rikidozan and Azumafuji 

*Please note this is an ongoing work in progress*