Amidst strong protests from Asian neighbors, Prime Minister Koizumi has 
made another visit to Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial for Japan's war dead 
but also a congregational point for those who consider the country's 
past war a benign act of defense.

Recent polls show that the percentage of Japanese citizens who support
Yasukuni Shrine visits by the prime minister is going down.  This is
most likely due to the recent reveal of a private memo by a personal 
aide to the late Showa Emperor Hirohito showing that the monarch 
disapproved of the consecration of class A war criminals at Yasukuni Shrine.

This imperial memo, while raising several issues, works against a 
logical short-circuit that has developed among nationalists: those who 
support Yasukuni Shrine respect soldiers who fought and died for the 
state while those who oppose don't.  To them, all who disagree with 
their views are rude people, tainted by foreign influence, whose words 
carry little weight.

Listening to debates on how to remember those who died in the war, it is
unfortunate that many speak without a sound understanding of the true
nature of the war and the feelings of the Japanese soldier who had to
face reality.  Few messages submitted to Usenet newsgroups contain tales
by elder friends or relatives which we can share and learn from.

Here I provide some books which provide first-hand accounts:


Listen to the Voices from the Sea
Original title 'Kike Wadatsumi no Koe'
translated by Midori Yamanouchi, Joseph L. Quinn
University of Scranton Press
ISBN: 0-940866-85-4

This is a collection of diary entries and letters by university students
drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.  Several Kamikaze
pilots write of their thoughts as the final mission approaches.  It is
one of the best-known books of the war, available in any Japanese 
community library, but it appears that much of the younger generation do 
not even know of this book.

The voices in this book are those of the highly educated elite.  They 
may be quite different from the thoughts of the common soldier of 
peasant upbringings.  But also notable is the fact that some families 
say that the manuscripts brought out for this book had been smuggled out 
of the barracks.  Though the book conveys an important message,  the 
organization behind it, the Wadatsumi-kai is a victim of the infighting 
and fragmentation typical of left-wing movements.

Review from Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0940866854/

   [ Reviewer: Timothy R. Allan, Ph.D., Professor of History,
   Trocaire College (Buffalo, New York) ] "Professors
   Yamanouchi & Quinn offer a much needed corrective to the
   five-decade old demonization of the Japanese soldier. This
   evocative, poetic, and compelling collection of soldiers'
   letters strikes down the dusty image of Japan's warriors as
   mindless, unthinking fanatics. In this volume we discover
   an entirely new and fresh insight into the mind-set and
   attitudes of young sailors, soldiers, and airmen who died
   in the service of Japan.  ..."

-----

Japan at War: An Oral History
Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook
New Press
ISBN: 1-56584-039-9

This is a collection of personal narratives which shows how ordinary
Japanese people lived through the war.  A wide variety of experiences
and attitudes toward the war can be found here.  The majority of
speakers are ordinary citizens, but several prominent figures from
post-war Japan also appear in this book: fashion designer Ayako Koshino,
cartoonist Ryuuichi Yokoyama and Masahide Ohta, Governor of Okinawa-ken
(1990-98).  A post-war priest of Yasukuni Shrine tells how he got his
calling.

Few books (of any genre) come close to this one in the breadth of human 
experience covered.  This is a highly captivating book, hard to put down 
but some accounts seem rather short to satisfy the reader's curiosity. 
Few Japanese know of this book.

Amazon has sample text, table of contents and reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565840399/

-----

Tales by Japanese Soldiers of the Burma Campaign
by Kazuo Tamayama and John Nunneley
Cassell Military Paperbacks, Orion Books
ISBN: 0-304-35978-5

This book is mostly combat: marching, digging and shooting.  There are 
62 stories in all, each told by a Japanese soldier (private to major) in 
the first-person voice.  There is one chapter (seven stories) about 
combat in the Assam region of eastern India and retreat therefrom 
(March-July 1944), a disaster not unlike Napoleon's Russia campaign.

There is little on colonial administration, association with the 
indigenous population, etc. in this book.  60% of Japanese troops sent 
to Burma died.  We do not have accurate statistics but scholars believe 
more were killed by starvation and disease than by bullet.  The episodes 
in this book, centered around organized fighting, are as a whole not in 
proportion with this.

This is a good source if you want to understand Japanese battlefield
burial rituals.  One that appears frequently in this book is cutting off 
a small part from a dead man's body, usually a finger, to place in his 
family grave.  Only one soldier mentions Yasukuni Shrine:

   We did not know why, but the enemy seemed to shell us heavily on
   Fridays and days involving the numeral 8.  I thought, 'Tomorrow
   is the 18th so I may have to die and be consecrated at Yasukuni
   Shrine.'  Suddenly I recalled the face of my mother who was far
   away in our homeland and tears poured out.  I wished her well.

   - February 1944  Senior Private Takeo Kawakami