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Reviewed by:
  • Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories
  • Yoshihisa T. Matsusaka (bio)
Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories. Edited by Paul H. Kratoska. M. E. Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., 2005. xxii, 433 pages. $84.95, cloth; $32.95, paper.

The last two decades have seen renewed scrutiny of Japan's wartime conduct and have cast new light on issues such as military sexual slavery ("comfort women") and the Nanjing Massacre of 1937. This attention, coming some four decades and more after the event, results in part from high international politics embroiling Japan and its Asian neighbors but, more important, it has stemmed from initiatives for recognition and reparations from within Asian civil societies. Controversy generated by social activism as well as politics have, in turn, stimulated new scholarship and popular writing on Japan's wartime empire. Still, important aspects of the subject have remained relatively obscure.

A case in point is what may be described euphemistically as the "mobilization" of labor within Japan's wartime empire in Asia. This process ensnared millions and entailed practices that ranged from aggressive and often deceptive recruitment to outright enslavement under brutal conditions that left hundreds of thousands dead from overwork, malnutrition, and disease. Empire-wide labor mobilization produced some of the most systematic atrocities of the war in East Asia that culminated in a staggering loss of life and suffering on a scale difficult to imagine. Some writers, including the editor and contributors to this volume, have written previously about specific aspects of this story. Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire represents, nonetheless, the first English-language collection to focus on labor mobilization throughout what came to be known as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As such, it offers an important and timely contribution to our knowledge of Japan's wartime empire and the experiences of its subjects.

Asian Labor brings together a far-ranging body of international scholarship [End Page 216] working with Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Allied military, and other archival sources. Many of the articles also draw upon interviews with survivors. The volume consists of 17 chapters grouped into parts based on country and region, although only a few parts contain more than one article. Paul Kratoska provides an overview chapter that includes Japan, followed by five dealing with the older segments of the Japanese imperial sphere. David Tucker examines Manchukuo; Ju Zhifen, North China; Utsumi Aiko and Naitou Hisako, Korea; and Hui-yu Caroline Ts'ai, Taiwan. Nine articles deal with the newly conquered territories of Southeast Asia. Shigeru Sato, Harry Poeze, Kaori Maekawa, Remco Raben, and Henk Hovinga explore labor mobilization from a variety of vantage points in Indonesia. Kratoska and Nakahara Michiko look at Malaya while Ricardo Jose and Tran My-Van discuss the Philippines and Vietnam respectively. Two closing articles deal with specific topics as well as memory and the state of postwar awareness. Chin-Sung Chung reviews the history of military sexual slavery along with the movement for recognition and reparations of the last two decades. Bruce Reynolds discusses the Thailand-Burma Railway made notorious by David Lean's film, Bridge on the River Kwai, and offers some reflections on history and memory.

Many of the chapters are primarily descriptive whereas others adopt a more analytical perspective. Some emphasize the conduct of policy, but most deal, insofar as possible, with the experience of working under Japanese occupation regimes. The combined effect of the accounts in this volume is chilling, unveiling a profoundly disturbing picture of what "labor mobilization" meant to the millions of Asians affected directly and indirectly. It becomes apparent that the Japanese empire had set virtually unachievable economic and manpower goals during the war. Such imperialist hubris resulted in horrific human consequences that raise questions as to whether Japan's "liberation" of Western colonies had any of the redeeming qualities claimed by increasingly influential Japanese nationalists today.

The authors of this collection offer a stark portrayal of the realities of labor mobilization but also delve into events and processes that were extremely complex and marked by great variation across the breadth of the wartime empire. Indonesia and Malaya...

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