VLVL2 The GI War against Japan

[pynchonoid]

Some may find this book review of interest re the
Japanese settings, characters, and themes of Vineland.

<http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=114661059720058>

Peter Schrijvers. The GI War against Japan: American
Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II.
New York: New York University Press, 2002. xiii + 320
pp. Bibliography, notes, index. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN
0-8147-9816-0. 

[...] In the first part, "Frontier," Schrijvers
circumscribes four mental maps that structured the
GIs' narratives throughout the war, each of which are
related either to the U.S. image of the American West,
that Richard Slotkin "has called 'one of the primary
organizing principles' of American historical memory"
(p. 14), or to the exotic image, commonly shared in
Western culture, of Asia and the Pacific. The mythical
figures of the pioneers, romantics, missionaries, and
other imperialists are reproduced and even mimicked by
the young soldiery, who had to rely, consciously or
not, on these figures in order to make sense of a New
World. Among those four figures which GIs tended to
adopt in their narratives about the region, the
figures of the missionaries and the imperialists are
probably the most obvious in regards to the historical
setting of World War II. These two figures are closely
linked to each other by their common perception of the
region and its people as backward and primitive (in
the sense of savagism), representing, in the minds of
the GIs, a clear instance of a world stagnating for
the past hundred years. This world, and those
inhabiting it, need the moral, religious, political,
and economical guidance of the redemptive and
civilizing forces of the United States. 

[...] It is interesting, then, to note the continuous
flashbacks in U.S. soldiers' wartime narratives to
either the Indian wars or to the American Indians
themselves, when they are trying to give meaning to
the fights they are involved in or to make sense of
the people they are confronted with, enemies or allies
alike. This pattern was far from being new as it was
present during the Philippines war during which the
Filipino rebellion was often depicted in "Indian"
terms. The imagination of the GIs, nurtured by their
education, the mass media, and mass entertainment, is
also a key factor in understanding the last figure
pinpointed by Schrijvers, namely the romantics. The
Pacific islands, such as Hawaii for instance, were
often places that were expected to match
"prefabricated illusions" (p. 28), which soldiers had
been lulled into by films featuring Dorothy Lamour in
the 1930s and 1940s. Even the U.S. armed forces
guides, aimed at introducing these soldiers to foreign
lands and cultures, used "colourful vignettes and
facile generalization, leaving many blank spaces for
the reader to fill in" (p. 29). 

[...] the American soldiers quickly adopted an
analogical mode of reasoning linking the masses of the
East and their environment, as the latter's
overwhelming and aggressive presence promptly brought
"deeply rooted fears of Yellow Peril to the surface"
(p. 135). The analogy between Asians (not only the
Japanese) and insects is striking in that matter.
Asians' "tireless, unquestioning industriousness"
rendered, to the eyes of many GIs, "the uncanny
resemblance to ants and bees in particular" (p. 137).
The rate of procreation witnessed by these soldiers
among the Asian masses reminded them of what they
witnessed in the animal/insect realm, along with a
disdain for individuals.[6] This uniformity, despite
all the signs of diversity among the population they
encountered, created a practical problem for the GIs,
namely, to paraphrase an extensive information
campaign launched by the U.S. military, "How to spot a
Jap." Physical/racial resemblances between Asians even
prompted the suspicion among the GIs of a "Pan-Asian
reflex of collusion in response to interference by
outsiders." This phantasmagoric threat increased the
sense of isolation of the American male soldiers who,
in this peculiar environment, started to long for
white women (echoing their feeling of the
understrength of the white presence). As it is noted
by Schrijvers: 


Cultural and especially racial boundaries made serious
relationships, let alone marriages, between American
soldiers and native women highly unlikely. But they
could not stop young men from having sexual contacts,
mostly with women whose favors demanded payment in
some form or other. Rates of venereal disease are one
way of tracing the desperate sexual odyssey of
American troops. Their fluctuations reflect the
opportunities for fraternization, the population's
health, and the efficiency of control imposed by civil
governments and the US military. (p. 153) 

[...]

Schrijvers delineates three forms of "fury": human
rage, industrial violence, and technological
destruction. The first form of fury is most often
linked to the hatred American troops felt towards the
Japanese. The following words from a lieutenant of the
11th Airborne Division to his mother illustrate
vividly this point: "Nothing can describe the hate we
feel for the Nips--the destruction, the torture,
burning & death of countless civilians, the savage
fight without purpose--to us they are dogs and
rats--we love to kill them--to me and all of us
killing Nips is the greatest sport known--it causes no
sensation of killing a human being but we really get a
kick out of hearing the bastards scream" (p. 207).
This hatred heightened the dehumanization of the
Japanese soldiers whether alive or already dead. Most
dead Japanese were desecrated and mutilated. "American
soldiers on Okinawa were seen urinating into the
gaping mouth of the slain. They were 'rebutchered.'
'As the bodies jerked and quivered,' a marine on
Guadalcanal wrote of the repeated shooting of corpses,
'we would laugh gleefully and hysterically'" (p. 209).
As the GIs closed in on the Japanese archipelago, the
more the difference between combatants and
noncombatants became fuzzy and almost pointless to
them. 

For instance, rape--which is considered a way to
sharpen aggressiveness of soldiers, steeling male
bonding among warriors, and, moreover, "reflects a
burning need to establish total dominance of the
other" (p. 211)--was a general practice against
Japanese women. "The estimate of one Okinawan
historian for the entire three-month period of the
campaign exceeds 10,000. A figure that does not seem
unlikely when one realizes that during the first 10
days of the occupation of Japan there were 1,336
reported cases of rape of Japanese women by American
soldiers in Kanagawa prefecture alone" (p. 212).
Furthermore, confronted by kamikaze assaults on their
lines, GIs began to see only one solution to the
fanaticism of the Japanese soldiers: mass destruction.
Reasoning was more and more perceived as hopeless
vis-a-vis the Japanese as a whole. War correspondent
Robert Sherrod summarizes a general opinion about the
Japanese shared by many GIs: "killing them was easier
than teaching them" (p. 222). 

Nature and the Japanese proved to be two almost
unconquerable opponents against which superior
technology and overwhelming force were required.
Beyond the traditional means used in warfare, a
specific machine reflects perfectly a modern form of
destruction: the bulldozer. Robert Sherrod bumped into
one during the landing on Betio Island and noted that:
"This ... was the American way to fight a war--to try
to get a bulldozer ashore, even before many men had
preceded it" (pp. 229-230). A bulldozer was "a fine
weapon" for Sherrod as it could demolish bunkers as
well as seal caves and holes to either prevent their
reoccupation by the Japanese or more likely to bury
the enemy alive. Sherrod was correct to metaphorically
describe the bulldozer as the American way of warfare:
it was a massive and decisive mechanical device which
could not only destroy but also build, a machine that
was reflecting "America's material and technological
might" which gave the GIs a sense of pride and
superiority (pp. 237-238). [...] 









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