Book Review by Tanaka Hidemichi,
Professor Emeritus of Tohoku University, Ph.D.
John W. Dower: Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World(Translated by Sotooka Hidetoshi, Iwanami Shoten, 2013)
Henry S. Stokes: Falsehoods of the Allied Nations’ Victorious Views of History, as Seen by aBritish Journalist (Shoden-sha New Books, 2013)
Some may say that it is not appropriate for an academic magazine to mention these two books inthe same review. The former is written by an author who is one of the leading scholars on modernJapanese history in the United States and historian who also wrote Embracing Defeat, and the latteris succinctly written by a journalist who has lived in Japan for fifty years.
However, I believe it is worthwhile, in a sense that in examining the relations not only between
Japan and the United States but also between Japan and Britain and between Britain and the UnitedStates during the modern age, particularly at the time of World War II, these two books are
remarkably contrasting, showing how the same historical fact is seen at the same time by a scholar
and a journalist.
Focusing on how British and American intellectuals see the same historical fact, we learn whichside has a more justifiable view of history, beyond the purpose of each of the books.
Mr. Dower is a Marxist scholar, which clearly indicates that he sees history in terms of socialisticideology. The twentieth century was an age of socialistic ideology, as shown by the fact that there
were countries with socialistic names such as the “Soviet Union” and “People’s Republic of China”.
Mr. Dower was born in 1938, and though he is an American (it would be wrong to assume that all
Americans are flexible in terms of thinking), it is very clear that he is dyed-in-the-wool socialist. It isa kind of joke that he continues to be socialist in the 21st century when socialism turned out to beideologically bankrupt.
He doesn’t brazenly show such a petrified ideology in his book, but it is still clearly
demonstrated in an editorial passage he wrote at the request of the Asahi Newspaper:

Regarding the Asian Pacific War, it is both appropriate and important to discuss it in wide
contexts of imperialism and colonialism, world recession and anti-imperialistic nationalism
which sprang up in Asia (China, in particular). It is quite understandable to mourn for millions
of Japanese who died in the war.
However, in the 1930’s and early in the 1940’s, Japan, too, fell into militarism as animperialistic colonial power, invaded, occupied other countries and committed utter atrocities.

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To deny this fact is to fundamentally distort history. It terribly damages the respect and trust
Japan earned internationally after the War.
Japanese leaders were mentally near-sighted and ruthless, who violently victimized theirsoldiers and citizens in the homeland in a war which they hardly expected to win.
(John Dower: Is Tamogami’s Essay “Always Support Our Country” Patriotic?

The morning

edition of The Asahi Newspaper of February 22, 2008)
This passage criticizes Mr. Tamogami Toshio’s essay, based on a view of history that definitely
summarily concludes that Japan, a “villain”, actually committed the “Nanking Massacre” and“Comfort Women” atrocities. In other words, Mr. Dower, as a scholar, stands on the basis of aMarxist view of history and always seeing things in terms of an “imperialist” state engaging in“aggression”, suppressing its people and making them helpless. In his process of delivering hispropaganda, he applies this paradigm to actual history. He merely develops his own view of history,
dismissing other views of history as being “historical revisionism.” In his book, this is also
demonstrated in a passage in which he sympathetically describes Herbert Norman, who ended upkilling himself in Egypt, as a Marxist historian caught up amid anti-communist McCarthyism, after
the War. It is most critical that he does not understand that Japan can hardly be understood in thelight of such a Marxist view of history.
In this book, while Mr. Dower does not himself assert, he advances assertions made by “Japaneseliberalists and leftist writers” that “forcible recruitment of Asian women (comfort women) and otherviolent acts were revealed” and “after an abnormal interval during which an attempt was made toconceal the Japanese memory of invasion in China and violent war deeds,” in the seventies, “thememory was reconstructed again.” All of these were brought up in the seventies and thereafter, butMr. Dower does not seem to have a hint of doubt as to whether these things might have been
fabricated in later years, and he discusses the whole history based on the conviction that these are all
actual facts.
His well-known book, Embracing Defeat, described the issue of racial discrimination, on theparts of both Japan and the United States, examined racial propaganda and “aggression” of bothsides. Here also lies the image, the propaganda of imperialist Japan. Namely, to Marxists, theconclusion foregone, and that all they have to do is attempt to logically explain it. Diversity ofhistory can hardly be understandable. Even less so, beyond their ridged image, Japan’s history is far
from comprehensible to him.
Now, let us look at Mr. Stokes’ journalistic view.
At first, Mr. Stokes, too, was strongly influenced by the thinking “Japanese villains” whocommitted atrocious acts of war. However, he honestly confesses as a Brit that there lay a racial
issue:

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The British Empire collapsed due to the Japanese Army. None of the British people had everimagined such a thing would come to as reality. When the British people were struck with thereality, their shock and humiliation were so easy to anticipate.
It was shocking that Hitler tried to establish a great German Empire after a series of battles
with European nations. Hitler was still a White Christian. So we were able to compare him withus. It was, however, beyond the British frame of thinking that the British Empire, whichenjoyed its prosperity within the White civilized world, fell into the hands of a colored race. Itwas an event that was simply incomprehensible.
There was a hit film entitled The Planet of Apes. What could be comparable to whathappened then is that the fictional world in the film turned into reality. Nobody thinks that thePlanet of Apes will turn into reality. It’s fictional and it’s only a world that exists in film. The
event is just imaginary. The apes – colored people – which tried to imitate the humans – thewesterners – suddenly rose above the humans. If this turned out to be reality, the shock would
be immeasurable. And we can imagine the extent of the impact. The Japanese exerted such animpact on British nationals. A great impact was felt not only by the British but also by all ofWestern civilization.
This description indicates recognition that the “atrocious acts of war” committed by Japan
originally lay in the issue of White racial discrimination. White people equated “apes” with“atrocity” and they were taken aback by unexpected resistance on the part of the Japanese anddeduced that militarist “Japan” was as atrocious as apes. Mr. Stokes frankly points out this western
thinking and further tries to uncover the truth behind Japanese acts of war. And he came tounderstand that the truth is not based on an imperialistic view, as westerns think. On the other hand,
Mr. Dower lacks the willingness to dig for the truth. Thus, he continues to insist, on the thinking that“aggression” was committed by an “imperialist nation,” as before.
Mr. Stokes denies the Nanking Massacre, not from an ideological perspective, but through theflexible examination by a journalist. Up until then, he believed in the popular European andAmerican view that the Japanese Army committed a massacre in Nanking. Then, he learned that thisview derived from Chinese propaganda, through Mr. Kitamura Minoru’s findings, and after studying
the matter himself, he came to the conclusion: it can be clearly said that the so-called Nanking
Massacre was a propaganda campaign contrived in the context of psychological warfare.
This “Nanking Massacre” was first reported worldwide by foreign correspondents in Nanking,Tilman Durdin of The New York Times and Archibald Steele of the Chicago Daily News. In theirreport of the fall of Nanking, “large-scale plunders, rapes of women and slaughters ofnon-combatants” were mentioned. But their report was actually based on the “statement” made by3

Miner Bates, an advisor to the Chinese Nationalist Party, and George Fitch, who was also closely
related to the Nationalist Party. These two men presented themselves in the courtroom of the TokyoTrials. But they never asserted their reports as fact.
Zeng Xubai, Chief of the International Propaganda Bureau of the Nationalist Party had Harold J.
Timperley, China correspondent for The Manchester Guardian, a British daily newspaper, write abook entitled What War Means. Miner Bates, professor at Nanking University and Pastor GeorgeFitch, missionary in Nanking and members of the Nationalist Party’s International Committee weredeeply involved in the writing of the book and a body of leftist intellectuals, the British Communist
Party and Comintern, were behind the scheme. Lewis Smythe, an American, who was in Nanking atthat time, also cooperated in writing several propaganda publications, including Record of Atrocities
Committed by the Japanese Enemy and True Description of War Damages in Nanking. Throughthis scheme, the Chinese never appeared out in front, but instead, they emphasized, “an international
friend who understands the truth and methods of our war of resistance became a spokesman for us.”1Thus, the Chinese succeeded in spreading lies as if they were the truth. Mr. Stokes, being a journalist
himself, was probably able to perceive the wrongdoing of these European and American journalists.
China’s International Propaganda Division held three hundred press conferences over elevenmonths starting from December, 1937, but a “massacre” was never once mentioned. One hundred
fifty or so Japanese newspaper reporters were also in Nanking at that time, but they reported nothingof the sort. According to the Documents of the Nanking Safety Zone compiled in English in thesummer of 1939, there were no cases of murder, one case of rape, two cases of looting on December
13; one murder, four rapes and three acts of looting on the 14th; four murders, five rapes and five actsof looting on the 15th. This is far from a “massacre”. Whatever happened in the midst of theconfusion of war, it was almost the same as nothing happened. Mr. Stokes pointed out, “This is not
the report submitted by the Japanese side. Damages were filed by Nanking citizens and received by
the International Committee and then sent to the Japanese Embassy….No incident of murder
occurred for three days after the fall of Nanking.” We now know how Bates and Fitch spreadintentional falsehoods. Far from three hundred thousand victims as the Chinese insistently claim,
even the forty thousand as some Japanese scholars assert, it was a sheer lie. We can duly confirm
that General Matsui Iwane, Commander of the Nanking Capturing Army, thoroughly carried out
rigid administrative reforms in Nanking after its fall.
Besides Mr. Dower, I wonder what famous American scholars like Ezra Vogel and AndrewGordon think of this all. Those Harvard scholars still firmly believe that the Nanking Massacre didtake place, and so do the Chinese, the Koreans and assorted politicians.
The same is true of South Korea’s “Comfort Women” issue. Mr. Stokes points out that it was
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The Politics of Nanking, Kitamura Minoru, University Press of America, New York,2007, p.28.
4neither forced nor “sex slavery”, based on materials from the American side. “According to a reportsubmitted by the Psychological Warfare Team of the U.S. War Intelligence Office, an investigative
hearing was conducted in August, 1944, at Myitkyina, located far back in Burma and Korean (theywere then of Japanese nationality) comfort girls were interviewed. They were merely ‘prostitutes’ or‘camp followers’ with business purpose. These ‘prostitutes’ earned three hundred yen monthly, thirty
times as much as Private First Class soldiers who earned ten yen a month. They were high-grade
prostitutes,” wrote Mr. Stokes.
He then advises the following: “Though Cabinet Secretary Kohno Yohei expressed his regret,things have not yet been settled. Among the Japanese people themselves, there is a culture oflenience, where saying “I am sorry” settles it all. However, in international society, to apologize
means to admit the fault and the fault once admitted has to be paid for…China and South Korea takeadvantage of Japan’s culture of not refuting back, and use it in their propaganda plot.” Mr. Stokes
argues that Japan should disseminate facts to the world.
Scholars like Mr. Dower write that Japanese “imperialists” (must) have committed atrocities incold blood, as did western “imperialists”, firmly believing their point of view. On the other hand,however, Mr. Stokes, a journalist, after closely examining facts, states that these presumed facts turnout to be lies. As Mr. Stokes was former Tokyo Bureau Chief of The New York Times, the mostradically anti-Japanese paper, we expected him to hold the same anti-Japanese view. On the contrary,through his experience of living in Japan for half a century, he may well come to the conclusion that
the Japanese soldiers could not have done such brutal acts. In either case, one can clearly see thecontrast, that though the book is written in an academic manner, with a historian author still firmly
imbued with strong Marxist ideology, it is no longer able to view history properly, compared withthe other book written by a journalist.

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