Imperial Japan's World War Two, 1931-1945 (review)

The theme of this book can be summed up briefly. From 1931 to 1945, Japan waged an aggressive war of conquest during which she enslaved, starved, tortured, and killed millions of Asians, Westerners, and Pacific Islanders. Japan's atrocities and other war crimes fully justified the use of atomic bombs against her to end the war. And the postwar refusal of the Japanese to accept their guilt and atone for it accounts for the "lingering, sometimes strong, dislike and distrust of Japan throughout much of Asia" (p. 224).

The author's searing indictment of Japan is based on a detailed compilation and statistical analysis of Japanese World War II atrocities. A former chief of NASA's Cost and Economic Analysis Branch, Werner Gruhl buttresses his text with more than a dozen statistical tables depicting military and, especially, civilian casualties inflicted by the Japanese. He provides categories, dates, types, and locations, including deaths from famine and disease, as well as Japanese losses, plus comparative figures from other wars and conquests. His sources are almost entirely English-language books (with a few surprising omissions), plus a small number of interviews and first-hand accounts.

The opening chapters offer an overview of the war, beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. They particularly focus on events in China which, along with that nation's contribution to the war effort, Gruhl feels have not been adequately emphasized in Western literature. The remainder of the book is a detailed description and statistical analysis of Japanese atrocities in each area of conflict, with heavy emphasis on civilian casualties: the latter totaling twenty million in Gruhl's calculation. Comprehensive tables include comparative data on deaths by various causes: battles, massacres, forced labor, starvation and disease, germ and chemical warfare, torture, brutality, population flight and dislocation, purposeful neglect, and other individual atrocities. These figures are broken down by timeframe and geographical area and compared with similar data from other conflicts. It is sometimes difficult, however, to reconcile numbers in one table with those in another, and even within the text itself. Many are admittedly estimates; Gruhl concedes that most are "approximate and subject to debate" (p. 15). He assesses the total number of victims, primarily civilian, as some twenty-three million and, even if that figure is debatable, it emphasizes the enormity of Japanese-imposed suffering. The tragic sum, he believes, is "reasonable for what we understand about the war's impact today" (p. 16).

Gruhl rejects revisionist arguments that Japan's behavior in World War II was not much worse than that of the United States and its allies. Not only were Japanese atrocities far greater in scope and scale than those of the nations she attacked, but they were also "far more intentional" (p. 183), reflecting policies and attitudes whose effects could have been readily predicted. He takes particular issue with John Dower (War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War), not only on the question of Japan's responsibility for the war but also on that of her culpability for the atrocious manner in which it was fought.

Gruhl also differs from those who question the necessity or morality of the use of the atomic bomb. More than half a century of study and debate on this subject, he writes, has failed to produce "a plausible and clear alternative means of achieving the same short and long-range positive ends" (p. 13).

Imperial Japan's World War Two is a full and unique statement of Japanese war crimes during fourteen years of conflict. No other single publication includes such a complete listing of atrocities (and, even then, Gruhl has missed a few), nor anything near the author's compelling statistical analysis of those appalling war crimes. His compilation of human suffering goes beyond any other single source in its gruesome totality. And his succinct refutation of revisionist views on relative...