Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Yoji Watanabe
Capt. Kurusu, born in January 1919, died due to an accident at Tama Army Airfield on February 16, 1945. When an air-raid siren sounded at the airfield, all pilots including Capt. Kurusu ran to their aircraft. As he was trying to pass in front of one plane, it moved forward two to three meters, and its propeller cut his neck. His severed head flew up two meters, and his headless body moved forward four or five more steps. This accident was unavoidable even though 1st Lieutenant Umekawa, the pilot of the plane that hit Capt. Kurusu, had fourteen and a half years of flying experience. If someone had given instructions to 1st Lieutenant Umekawa on the taxiway, this unfortunate accident could have been avoided. However, no one was giving directions to the aircraft. Capt. Kurusu was running in 1st Lieutenant Umekawa’s blind spot as everybody hurriedly ran to their planes to make sorties. 1st Lieutenant Umekawa honestly reported the accident to his commander, Maj. Yoshitsugu Aramaki. Maj. Aramaki did not say anything to 1st Lieutenant Umekawa, whose face was pale. Later, the Imperial Army leaders overlooked the accident since it was unavoidable.
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"Riding the East Wind"
ReplyDeleteby Otohiko Kaga
translated by Ian Hideo Levy
This historical novel, published originally in Japanese in 1982, features diplomatic intrigue, strong family bonds, and intense wartime suffering. The Association for 100 Japanese Books, an organization that promotes translations of modern Japanese classics, provided funds for this fine English translation.
Ken Kurushima, the son of a senior Japanese diplomat and an American woman, joins the Japanese Army and becomes a test pilot for new fighters. Although he strongly supports the continued development of a high-altitude fighter with a pressurized cabin in order to stop American B-29s, the Army leadership decides to concentrate on production of suicide planes to be used in ramming attacks on B-29s. When Ken departs in a Hayate fighter to meet a B-29 squadron, he says to a friend, "I'm not a Kamikaze. If I attack I'll do it with my guns." However, when he spots a B-29 below him, he dives to make a ramming attack that brings down the American plane.
Real people and events form the basis for this novel. Saburo Kurusu (named Saburo Kurushima in book) served as Japan's special envoy to Washington in a eleventh-hour attempt to conduct peace negotiations with President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull. Although most historians depict Kurusu's mission as a tactic to delay and deceive the Americans while the Japanese Navy prepared for an attack, Kaga suggests that Prime Minister Tojo deceived Kurusu by telling him to try to reach a peaceful settlement while never revealing the plan to attack Pearl Harbor. Just like the novel, in real life Saburo had an American wife named Alice who became a Japanese citizen when the two married. Saburo and Alice Kurusu had a son named Ryo, who served in the Japanese Army as in an experimental fighter squadron. The original Japanese title of this translated novel is Ikari no nai fune (Ship Without an Anchor), which aptly describes the Kurusu family (and Kurushima family) members as they moved to several diplomatic posts around the world before 1941. The Japanese title also portrays the lives of Alice and her half-American children as they lived in Japan during the war.
The author, Otohiko Kaga, became a cadet in the Junior Army Academy as a teenager and saw his hometown Tokyo go up in flames in the last year of World War II. He started his career as a professor of criminal psychology and in his late thirties turned to writing novels. Kaga's works achieved best-selling status in 1979 with The Sentence, an epic novel about Japan's condemned prisoners. Riding the East Wind is his first novel to be translated to English.
This epic novel covers events chronologically from August 1941 to August 1945, with the first half focused on Saburo's diplomatic efforts to stop the war and the second half concentrated on Ken's experiences in the Army. In addition to Saburo, Ken, and Alice as the protagonists, Kaga also carefully develops distinct personalities for another dozen or so minor characters. For example, the journalist Arizumi enthusiastically supports the ultranationalists and Nazis, which sharply contrasts with the tactful, diplomatic approach of his father-in-law Saburo. Kaga skillfully weaves historical events into the plot and accurately presents the harsh conditions faced by Japanese people near the end of the war. Descriptions of near starvation are especially heartbreaking, as many people must barter their household goods just to obtain food to survive.
ReplyDeleteThe book's characters present varied attitudes toward suicide attacks carried out by the Japanese military near the war's end. Ken's mother Alice expresses several times in the book her desire for her son to stay alive. Lieutenant Colonel Asai from Imperial Headquarters expresses the official military view (p. 397), "In the Philippines we've already had magnificent results with Kamikazes attacking enemy ships. If we're not willing to use suicide planes, we'd be failing in our duty to protect the Emperor." Ken expresses the opposite position held by many Army fighter pilots (p. 399), "Kamikaze tactics involve the loss of men and planes. It would be better to complete an advanced fighter." Ken gets rebuffed by a General from Air Command, "You coward! Trying to save your own skin, are you?" Ken's two good friends have different views toward the idea of suicide attacks. Lieutenant Haniyu, who played a Mozart duet with his younger sister during a visit to Ken's home, volunteers for a suicide squad and brings down a B-29 over Tokyo in a suicide ramming attack. Lieutenant Yamada, who marries Ken's other younger sister after the war, reminds Ken before his final flight not to forget his parachute and to come back alive. Even though Ken had expressed his opposition several times to suicide attacks, in the end he decides to ram a B-29 with his fighter.
Kaga's brilliance as a novelist shines through even in a translation. He lets readers think for themselves regarding the truth behind certain actions and situations, since he only provides some facts and certain characters' opinions but does not give definitive conclusions. This reflects real life where people often do not know for certain the entire truth. For example, the local police arrest Father Henderson, the Anglican Church pastor in the Kurushima family's neighborhood, on suspicion of being a spy, but the reader never knows for sure whether or not the police planted the evidence.
The book depicts racial prejudice in several different forms. Ken sometimes receives physical abuse in the Army for his foreign-looking face, but he has reserves of strength since he had received beatings since starting in schools in Japan when he was eight. He also recalled his time in Chicago, where children at the Japanese Consulate there were spat on, tripped up, or sworn at by children simply because they looked Asian. After Ken rams a B-29 bomber, he somehow survives after a crash landing. However, three men from a local village kill him with bamboo spears since he looks like an American soldier.
[The actual death of Ryo Kurusu, son of Saburo and Alice Kurusu, was quite different than Ken Kurushima's fictional death described in this book. Yasukuni Jinja (2003, 76) states that he fought single-handedly against eight American planes and shot down one on February 16, 1945. Watanabe (1999) gives the above account of Ryo Kurusu's tragic death after returning to base (translation by Mieko Morita).]
ReplyDeleteWith an evenhanded approach, Kaga presents a moving story of the conflicts faced by this Japanese-American family in the midst of war. The novel provides excellent insights into wartime Japan and the Army pilots who made ramming attacks on B-29s.
The Unforgettable Alice Kurusu, Wife of a Diplomat
ReplyDeleteThe Rev. Dr. Neal Henry Lawrence, OSB
http://www.asjapan.org/web.php/lectures/2000/05
The genius of Alice Jay Kurusu was her presence -- royal, warm, intelligent, vibrant and gracious. She was born in New York of British parentage. Her father, James Little, was an Anglican clergyman who died when she was four, leaving her and her two brothers to be brought up by their mother. Mrs. Little was a grande dame with a dominant personality, and Alice doubtless followed in her footsteps. She was educated at Columbia University, but never graduated, as she took only the courses she was interested in; nevertheless her knowledge was encyclopedic. The whole family had an interest in Japan, and she and her brother Norman met Kurusu at meetings of the Japan-American Society. Kurusu wanted to improve his English, and Norman agreed to help him, so he was often at the Little home. He was a handsome young man with cosmopolitan manners. He had already perfected his English at Hitotsubashi University, and was infatuated with America. She was a striking beauty, with raven hair and jet black eyes, and ruby red lips which she was proud of, disdaining the use of lipstick.
Saburo and Alice were married in October 1914, when he was vice-consul in New York. Shortly after that he was appointed consul in Chicago, and the family remained there throughout World War I, returning to Japan in 1919. Alice's upbringing fitted her perfectly to be a diplomat's wife. She was a natural hostess, entertaining people with ease and good taste, and Saburo was always grateful to her for her contribution to his career and her ability to adapt. He said she had the good sense to remain quiet until her opinion was sought, but then was intelligent enough to say something worthwhile.The Kurusus, with a son and daughter, arrived in Yokohama in 1919. Alice had become a Japanese citizen upon her marriage, but this was her first visit, and she was given the unique sight of all the heads of the Kurusu family coming to greet them in order of precedence. Everything was done to make her feel at home, and a house was provided for them in Hakone. On the first morning, when Saburo had to go to the Ministry in Tokyo, the whole household turned out to see him off. He prepared to kiss his wife as he had always done in America, but she held him off; he was puzzled by this until he returned in the evening, when she told him the family would have been shocked if he had done that!
ReplyDeleteBefore long Saburo was sent to the Philippines as the first consul general, being considered the man most able to stop the passage of the 'Jones Bill,' which would have meant the confiscation of the property of Japanese colonists in the Philippines. Subsequent postings were to Chile, Peru, Greece, Italy and twice to Germany. In recognition of his brilliance as a diplomat, Kurusu was appointed ambassador to Belgium in 1936; although Japan was now looked down upon, the Kurusus were tremendously popular, and entertained not only national leaders but also King Leopold and Elisabeth the queen mother. In August 1939, Kurusu was asked to become concurrently ambassador to Germany. Madame Kurusu recalled being sent an enormous bouquet of roses from Hitler on her arrival, and it was clear to her that Germany was out to woo Japan. Kurusu had tried to refuse the appointment, as he disapproved of the Tripartite Pact, but the Emperor had ordered him to go, so he had no alternative. After signing the pact he resigned from the diplomatic service in protest.
During the war Kurusu lived in retirement, and the family spent most of their time in Karuizawa, living there exclusively after their Tokyo home was bombed. During those difficult days Alice displayed her customary initiative and ingenuity. She rescued the daikon tops the farmers threw away, and boiled them as greens. She also used the plants that the chickens ate. She once boiled up a whole cow's head, giving a shock to an inquisitive neighbour who lifted the lid! There were also many tales about the ways in which she helped her Japanese neighbours to survive during the war, making herself beloved of the local people at a time when there was hard feeling against the Anglo-Saxons. Even in times of personal tragedy, she displayed an indomitable spirit. When their son Ryo was shot down and killed in February 1945, she remarked to someone who tried to console her "You should rather congratulate us, for our son had the honour of dying for the emperor."
The courses in medicine that Alice had taken at Columbia proved useful in 1948, when Saburo suffered a stroke and the doctors gave him no chance of living. With her nursing skills she helped him to live six years longer, leading a fairly normal life and working to have the purge order against him removed. They sold the house in Karuizawa and moved to Tokyo, where he could get the necessary medical treatment. They built a new, smaller house on the site of the old house, and 'Momie' did her best to make sure that they lived with as much as possible of the dignity to which they had been accustomed. One of her characteristics was the frequent changing around of the furniture to make the home more attractive, and this was a standing joke in the family: Kurusu would ask the children "Which room am I sleeping in tonight?" After Saburo's death in 1952, Alice latterly shared this house with the family of her adopted daughter Masa, having an apartment to herself upstairs. (Her own daughters, Jaye and Pia, had married Americans and gone to live in the United States.) She made use of her native language to make a living for herself, teaching English especially to those planning to go to American universities, and imparting to them not only English but also her professional knowledge.
ReplyDeleteDuring their diplomatic career, Ambassador and Madame Kurusu were perhaps the best-known couple in the diplomatic world. On her 80th birthday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presented Alice Kurusu with a silver memento for her services to Japan in giving her husband her unstinting support. She had not only made a home for him but had entertained in a charming fashion, conscious of what was necessary to win friends for Japan. She considered the roles of men and women to be different but complementary, and she felt her marriage had been happy because there was both love and mutual respect. Though an imposing lady, she was equally well-known for her kindness and warmth; to the staff of the places she visited regularly she was the great Madame Kurusu, but they also knew her for her friendly greetings and would go out of their way to serve her. The waiters and waitresses at International House missed her after her death; they remembered the way she would decide on a table in the dining room and arrange the seating of her guests just as she had done at the height of her diplomatic life, and how she would carefully consider the menu, even though it was always essentially the same. Her Japanese was not equal to all occasions, but she would listen intently and make intelligent-sounding responses, so that the person speaking felt that she understood perfectly. That was her attitude -- always the gracious lady.