WWII

Abe’s WWII Anniversary Speech – A Status Quo Statement?

August 25, 2015 by Strife Staff

By: Jeroen Gelsing

Photo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (published under fair use policy for intellectual non-commercial purposes)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! It’s an… apology, sort of. In fact, nobody seems quite sure whether Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did any sort of apologising in his public statement of August 14, delivered to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender to end World War Two. Though Abe mouthed the words ‘deep remorse’ and ‘heartfelt apology’, he used these in the context of past apologies, issuing no fresh ones of his own. Equally, the object of Abe’s pseudo-apology remained ill-defined as ‘actions during the war’, thereby avoiding specific reference to the key issues of wartime atrocities and ‘comfort women’.

The responses to Abe’s speech by China and South Korea, the two countries at loggerheads with Japan in Northeast Asia’s ‘history wars’, were predictably damning. The Korean media, which have a tendency to see Japanese scheming against it everywhere, uniformly noted dissatisfaction, finding Abe’s speech ‘insulting’ and ‘disingenuous’. Chinese state media, similarly critical, said that Abe’s statement ‘trod a fine line with linguistic tricks’ and called the speech a ‘retrogression’ from past apologies.

But should we indeed insist that Japan fully refresh its sorry-saying at every turn? Abe specifically noted that the position taken by previous cabinets on Japan’s wartime conduct ‘will remain unshakable into the future’. Thus, Abe pledged to uphold the so-called Kono and Murayama Statements, the first of which (from 1993) acknowledged and apologised for the Japanese Army’s wartime use of comfort women, while the second (from 1995) apologised for wartime aggression and damages caused.

Given these facts, Abe argued in the same statement, the present and future Japanese generations, who ‘have nothing to do with that war’, should not labour under the burden of continuous apology for the conduct of their grandparents and great-grandparents. Put differently, Abe calls for closing the book on the past, as has been done successfully with Germany. Seen from this perspective, Tokyo is not to blame for continual historical tension in Northeast Asia. Instead, foreign nations’ inability to put Japan’s past to rest is what keeps historical animosities alive in Northeast Asia. And though Japan could have tried harder to avoid the controversy that tarnishes the sincerity of its apologies, there is something to be said for this interpretation.^[1]

Even so, Abe’s statement could have been less reflective of the amount of apologising Tokyo thinks it needs to do and more about the geopolitical expediency of simply re-issuing a full apology. The problems with that, however, are manifold. First, an apology on par or beyond the Murayama statement would have incurred the wrath of hawks in Abe’s own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP); support Abe needs to pursue his constitutional revision program and effect badly-needed structural economic reforms. Second, each Japanese wartime conduct statement has a dual regional audience (China and South Korea), and these two primary consumers enjoy very different bilateral relations with Japan. In a desire not to submit to the first consumer, Japan cannot but antagonise the historically sensitive second; and if Japan were to accommodate the second, Abe would be accused of being soft on the first, a domestic political impossibility.

Regarding China: even a comprehensive apology from Japan would have left the significant geopolitical flashpoints in Sino-Japanese relations unaffected. There are simply too many areas of contention to bury the hatchet at this stage – from East China Sea island ownership to oil and gas exploitation rights to naval build-up and regional hegemony. Additionally, anti-Japanism is an extremely useful political tool for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Egging on anti-Japanese sentiment is a sure-fire way to arouse nationalist feelings, which, so long as CCP is seen as the protector of the nation, serves to fortify its own grip on power. In short, Abe’s words could not – in and of themselves – have brought about a significant structural improvement in Sino-Japanese relations. There is no missed opportunity here.

South Korean discontent with Abe’s statement, on the other hand, springs from an altogether different well; one less cool and calculating than the CCP’s manipulation of Sino-Japanese relations for its own gain, and more from the Korean public heart. If Sino-Japanese relations are increasingly characterised by regional rivalry with military undertones, Korea’s gripes with Japan revolve around a struggle for recognition – not for sovereignty, but for equality. One could argue that Korean national identity wrestles with a longstanding sense of inferiority towards Japan, conceived in a humiliating 35 years of colonial rule between 1910 and 1945, and thereafter guided by an unfulfilled desire to achieve perfect parity with an indifferent neighbour.

But Korea senses that despite its exceptional accomplishments in the economic and political realms – its per capita GDP is practically even with Japan’s, and it has made a largely successful switch to democracy – Tokyo is unwilling to recognise the present de facto parity. This is evident, for instance, in Japan’s interpretation of South Korea as a ‘junior partner’ in the US-Japan-Korea trilateral security relationship. But nowhere are the consequences of Japan’s ‘little brother’ attitude more egregious than in the issue of historical mistreatment. Tokyo’s cavalier attitude towards South Korean grievances results in a failure to recognise their poignancy, and thus to take them sufficiently seriously.

That is not to say that Japan’s ‘Korea Fatigue’ over Seoul’s unceasing badgering for wartime apologies isn’t understandable, and perhaps partially justified. Yet, neither side benefits from the sharp deterioration in bilateral relations since 2012, largely over issues of history.[2] However, if amicable Tokyo-Seoul relations are the objective, then the ball of reconciliation must be in Japan’s court. This is so because South Korea, as one scholar has argued, is held prisoner by its own national identity. A multi-decade accumulation of ill-feeling towards Japan has led anti-Japanism to become a core component of the South Korean sense of self. As such, South Korea is unable to recast its relations with Tokyo without the latter redoubling its efforts to break down this construct of the vilified other. That there exists no substitute, the United States has discovered through its frantic, yet largely fruitless, mediation between both sides.

By stopping short of full apology, and especially by failing to explicitly voice remorse for Japan’s wartime use of comfort women, Abe has failed to express what Korea is desperate to hear. The obvious tragedy is that Japan and Korea are natural allies – both find comfort under the US security umbrella and contend with related geopolitical challenges. The failure of these two countries to get along causes chronic stress in Washington’s policy planning staff. Yet, even if the political centre in Seoul recognises that Abe has delivered maximum sorry-saying without exceeding the domestic political boundaries in which he operates, it is doubtful that the Korean media and public will offer their government much room to calmly negotiate a better working relationship with Tokyo.

A day after Abe’s speech, Japanese Emperor Akihito struck a more clearly apologetic tone in his personal commemorative address. But given the sensitivity of Tokyo’s neighbours, this will not be enough to offset Korean public dissatisfaction with Abe’s statement. Thus, the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender may well end up marking the state of Northeast Asian reconciliation rather than moving it forward.

Jeroen Gelsing is a doctoral student in War Studies at King’s College London. His research interests converge on the Asia Pacific and include the region’s international security dynamics, geopolitics, and modern history. His work has appeared in Asian Affairs, International Affairs Forum, and the Daily Telegraph, among others.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Richard Coxford for his helpful comments.

[1] Recurring stumbling blocks are the enshrinement of Class-A war criminals at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead; and the Abe administration’s planned revision of national history textbooks to further water down already sparse passages on Japan’s wartime aggression.

[2] A mild thaw has set in only recently. See, for instance, ‘The Hardest Word’, The Economist, August 15, 2015, accessible at: http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21661047-suspense-over-shinzo-abes-statement-will-soon-be-over-hardest-word

A Whiff of Brass: The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson

July 28, 2015 by Strife Staff

By Bradley Lineker:

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, Hodder and Stoughton., 2014. Pages: 416. £25.00 (hardback). ISBN 9781444783025

When young Tories are about to make their maiden speeches in the House of Commons, they can often be found – or so Johnson tells us – in the Member’s Lobby underneath the imposing statue of Churchill, as if trying to channel the great man’s spirit. [1] Indeed, Churchill’s left foot has been rubbed to a brassy-shine with all the attempted thaumaturgy; and while there is more than a whiff of left-footed-brassiness about the book, it is also quite a bit more than this.

Much like Boris himself, the book is an entertaining – if at times buffoonish – introduction to Churchill’s character and achievements that, alongside some very obvious flaws, achieves Johnson’s stated aim: of providing an insight into the life and times of the Greatest Briton to a generation now twice-removed from when he lived.

The structure of the book, similar to Johnson’s other writings, reflects this aim; particularly as the small news-article-style chapters – each thematically dealing with specific parts of Churchill’s character and achievements – emphasise accessibility. While this compliments the breezy conversational prose, there are moments where it can appear lazy – his Jeremy Kyle treatment of Churchill’s fiascos[2] for instance – or grate on the reader – see, in particular, his clunky use of ending paragraphs to introduce new chapters. Furthermore, much like his hero, it seems Johnson has dictated much of the book, and for those expectant of substantive prose, in places it unfortunately shows.

Johnson begins the book by outlining events of 1940, before steadily, and with a rough sort of chronology, moving through Churchill’s life using his character-traits as a sort of guide to base his chapters. Johnson’s chapters arc over Churchill’s courage,[3] risk-taking,[4] use of language,[5] as well as his general character,[6] and personal relationships – to name but a few. This method, while perhaps illustrating how the work cannot really be treated as a work of pure-history (something that Johnson himself admits[7]), is nonetheless effective at offering an accessible kaleidoscope to the man.

The Churchill Factor isn’t a history in the proper sense, nor even is it really a biography, it is more an informal personal appraisal; and it therefore cannot be compared to nor extend the work of Churchill’s other biographers. This is reinforced by Johnson’s constant referral to professional historians, such as Max Hastings’ assessment of the paucity of the British officer class,[8] or Lamb’s account of the destruction of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir[9], as well as his cartoonish metaphors – such as comparing Britain’s war reputation to that of Manchester United and its actual record to Tunstall Town F.C.[10] However, Johnson’s playful cavalierness with people and events leads to gross over-simplifications of history that at times mar the text. For instance, “Germany … and German militarism and expansion”[11] are narrowly blamed for the First World War (an argument that has significantly more problems than that for 1939-1945), which, when situated alongside blithe comments about the effects of the reforms of the 1920s (“[Churchill] helped save Britain from fascism not once, but twice”[12]), among many other examples, betrays a dangerously simplistic retelling of history. Moreover, scattered here and there, there is a faint knee-slapping jingoism, demonstrated by Johnson’s account of British national identity[13] and Churchill’s “foreign names … [are] made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names” telegram[14], which together seem to embellish and glorify imperial Britishness, while dimming its excesses.

Although, one is left to wonder how much of the book is actually about Winston Churchill, as, too often, it is stymied by Johnson’s attempts to work out the ambiguity in his own relationship with the former Prime Minister. While Johnson, much in the same way that a 12-year old Boris may have done,[15] lavishes praise upon the Greatest Briton[16] – even embarking on a pilgrimage, complete with can of “Stella” and cigar, to Churchill’s First World War billet in southern Belgium[17] – the truth seems more ambiguous: “[while] I love writing and thinking about Winston Churchill, the old boy can sometimes be faintly intimidating. I hasten to say that he is always brilliant fun – but as you try to do justice to his life you are acutely conscious of being chained to a genius, and a genius of unbelievable energy and fecundity.”[18] This is the most overt articulation of Johnson’s own presence in the book, where he continually – consciously or subconsciously – compares and at times attempts to match Churchill while recording his achievements.

Some of Johnson’s more welcome interventions are, in fact, when he gives us analysis on the nature of the politician,[19] journalist[20] or writing under the influence of alcohol. [21] Johnson’s deconstruction of Churchill’s speechmaking (“It’s all about the music of the speech, more than the logic. It’s the sizzle, not the sausage.”[22]), and the schmoozing of FDR and America[23] are unique in that they’re being made by an active politician. However his political point scoring can be tedious in places – such as when he says: “[Churchill] was radical precisely because he was conservative. He knew what all sensible Tories know – that the only way to keep things the same is to make sure you change them…” [24] These comments, offered here and there, are interesting in their own right (again, coming from an active politician) but they seem out of place in this book.

The Churchill Factor remains a light-hearted and accessible companion piece to other biographies, an altogether more detailed and distinguished Horrible History,[25] to both a man and his historical period, which remains stunted by its style, marred by wistful historical distortions, disengaged with other histories, and bogged-down with the vanity of its author. The book certainly has its flaws, but it is inescapably entertaining nonetheless – with the easy, conversational charm only broken at times by stylistic chunkiness and a few oddball absurdities that one has to accept as part of the Johnson package. However, in view of its dictated-style and its purposely patchy application of historical and biographical traditions, and especially in view of the excellent McKellen-narrated piece – which share many similarities to Johnson’s book – the question remains: why wasn’t this a documentary instead of a book?

Bradley Lineker is currently a fully-funded ESRC doctoral candidate in the War Studies Department, King’s College London. He has extensive experience working as a consulting research analyst with the UN and the private sector on contexts like Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Kenya, Somalia and Syria. Follow him @BradleyLineker.

NOTES

[1] Johnson, B. (2014), The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (London: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 31

2Ibid., p. 201-224

3 Ibid., p. 56-68 Chapter 5: No Act Too Daring or Too Noble

4 Ibid., p. 201-224 Chapter 15: Playing Roulette with History

5 Ibid., p. 84-101 Chapter 7: He Mobilised the English Language

6 Ibid., p. 134-147 ‘Chapter 10: The Making of John Bull’

7 Ibid., p. 4

8 Ibid., p. 266

9 Ibid., p. 233

10 Ibid., p. 265

11 Ibid., p. 173-4

12 Ibid., p. 162

13 Ibid., p. 136

14 Ibid., p. 199

15 see Ibid., p. 189 for a particular memorable quote

16 Ibid., p. 1

17 Ibid., p. 174

18 Ibid., p. 350

19 Ibid., p. 206

20 Ibid., p. 70

21 Ibid., p. 70

22 Ibid., p. 90

23 Ibid., p. 241-256

24 Ibid., p. 160

25 I have borrowed this likeness from: Coughlin, C. (2014). “The Churchill Factor by Boris Johnson, review: ‘a breathless romp’”. The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11182335/the-churchill-factor-by-boris-johnson.html.

Fury: War up close and personal

January 21, 2015 by Strife Staff

By Alex Calvo:

Since the birth of cinema, war has been a perennial source of inspiration for films. However, the resulting genre is anything but uniform. Under the label “war film” one can find a wide spectrum of films, going from mere action filled with special effects (sometimes referred to as “war porn”) to pacifist pamphlets seeking to denounce the futility of a given conflict or of warfare in general. And there are many sub-categories in between, including historical films and biopics of famous generals. Within the historical film genre, one finds a similar range to that observable in military history scholarship, with some works covering a whole war or campaign, while others focus on some limited action or the experience of a small group of soldiers. Fury, which came out late last year and stars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal, belongs to this latter category.

The viewer is told the setting is Germany, in the closing weeks of the Second World War, but other than that much of the action takes place in the narrow confines of a tank. When not inside the tank we see – at most – a road, a village, or a field, never more than that. This is a film with no generals, no large armies, and no big battles. Engagements feature no more than a few tanks and a handful of troops and other vehicles. This is war up close and personal, war in small scale, war centered on the individual and a small closely-knit group of fellow warriors bent on survival.While not the first war film to adopt that perspective, what stands out in Fury is the balance between the experience of the individuals in the small group and the wider conflict. This is no individualistic, self-centred tale of a soldier’s suffering, disconnected from the reasons for why a war is being fought. Nor is it a mechanistic depiction of a small unit simply following orders on their path to victory and glory. What we find instead, in line with the real-life experience of many combatants, is a group of soldiers determined to do their job, do it well, watch each other’s back, survive, and go home as soon as possible.

This does not mean that the wider political and moral background to the war is forgotten. On the contrary, there is no room for moral relativism in Fury, no attempt to portray the two sides as equal or even comparable, and no room for historical revisionism or the obsession of some media outlets with the misguided notion that the war was won by virtue of strength of numbers and superior firepower alone. As Fury makes clear, regardless of Allied superiority, victory came through myriad small actions and the sacrifice of ordinary troops.

Fury is a story where good fights evil, but is more nuanced than the standard good/bad war films. It avoids cartoon-like characterizations, and focuses on how the motivation to engage in battle comes more from frontline experience – the desire to protect your brothers-in-arms and the raw hatred of the enemy – than from any overarching ideological doctrines. Again, as many with actual combat experience will attest, in many conflicts newly-arrived soldiers will lack the necessary degree of hate towards the enemy to successfully engage them in the field of battle. This was the case even in WWII, a conflict marked by a clear ideological difference between the two sides. The film shows this, taking us through the painful but ultimately essential process through which the tank’s newest crew member comes to understand the rules of the game, not through theoretical lectures on the evils of Nazism, but through a combination of peer pressure, father-like mentoring, actual engagements, fear of death, and the ultimate realization that this is a very different world from the one back home.

Fury is also a story that examines in detail the tight bonds among men who live, eat, and fight together every day, knowing it could be their last. It is done, furthermore, in a realistic way, showing the viewer the different facets of an essential yet often difficult relationship between very different people. This is no group of flawless heroes, they are all different and they often clash, most notably when arguing about the language to be used inside the tank, and then again during the discussions about religion, and most tellingly in their encounter with a German family. These clashes contribute to the credibility of the film, making its characters believable.

The same nuanced approach is in evidence in the way that the film deals with relations between soldiers and civilians, on both sides, and between the crumbling Nazi regime and its population and troops. The suffering of refugees and of civilians caught up in the midst of combat is portrayed openly and in all its cruelty, without embellishment, in a matter-of-fact way, as an unavoidable aspect of war. The same realism is on display when soldiers and civilians meet, including the long lunch scene, one of the most intimate passages of the film.

Central to this very realistic portrayal of combat, and the true nature of war, is the film’s score. Deeply dark, yet full of grit and action when suitable, it succeeds in creating the necessary atmosphere for the viewer to fully absorb the main characters’ experience, and gain a glimpse of what the experience of combat is like. The film’s historical credentials are also supported by meticulous attention to detail when it comes to uniforms and equipment. For example, we see the only remaining working Tiger tank, captured in Tunisia in 1943 and part of the collection of the Bovington Tank Museum. To ensure combat scenes were realistic, the help of four tank veterans was enlisted, among them 91-year old Bill Betts, a Sherman radio operator in the Essex Yeomanry and a D-day veteran, who was shot by a German sniper. While older films like Patton avoid the gory depiction of combat wounds, and Saving Private Ryan’s opening scene gives viewers a no-holds-barred look of a battlefield, Fury walks a careful path, showing the impact of war on combatants yet without distracting viewers from the film’s narrative.

Fury is many things. It is a tale of a small group of men brought together by war, and their ordeal to fight to live another day. It is the story of a newly arrived recruit and his rapid – albeit painful – integration into the group and his discovery of what war and fighting is about. The film is a reminder that WWII was, up to the last minute, a brutal struggle, where despite Allied material superiority there was always the need for close combat, with victory in battle often coming at a staggering cost. It is also an examination of the difficult moral choices one has to make on the battlefield. Fury is also an attack on moral relativism, making it clear who was on the right side of history, while showing us in detail how a green soldier came to understand it.

In a world which has not yet said goodbye to war, where it is often fashionable to commemorate wars without actually looking at combat, Fury is a necessary film. It reminds us that war is violent and painful but sometimes necessary, and that WWII was not won just because of material superiority, but because of the small groups of soldiers who fought to the last moment in unimaginable circumstances.

Alex Calvo is a student at Birmingham University’s MA in Second World War Studies program. He is the author of ‘The Second World War in Central Asia: Events, Identity, and Memory’, in S. Akyildiz and R. Carlson ed., Social and cultural Change in Central Asia: The Soviet Legacy (London: Routledge, 2013) and tweets at @Alex__Calvo. His work can be found here.

WWII

Footer

Contact

Recent Posts

Tags