Famous Non-Hawaiian Prompts AP Style Change

Heavy news coverage of Hawai‘i's most famous current sports personality has finally prompted the AP to conform its stylebook to reflect the meaning of the term "Hawaiian" as it is used in Hawai‘i rather than the meaning assigned to it in Webster's. Nelson Daranciang of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports:

Outside the state, few people know that all Hawaii residents are not Hawaiians. [My personal stylebook recommends rephrasing that as "not all X residents are Xians"--J.] For years, "The Associated Press Stylebook" and libel manual, a guide commonly used by newspapers around the country, said there was no difference.

That has changed.

The AP has informed its member organizations of an update to the stylebook on the use of the term "Hawaiian." From now on, Hawaiians will be used only to describe members of the ethnic group indigenous to the Hawaiian Islands. "Hawaii resident" or "islander" describes anyone who lives in the state.

Previously, "Hawaiians" could be used to describe residents of Hawaii....

AP Honolulu Bureau Chief Dave Briscoe said, "We've actually been trying to get a change for years."

He said the use of "Hawaiian" becomes an issue whenever a prominent person from Hawaii makes national or international news. He said the bureau has had to change Hawaiian to Hawaii resident in stories originating on the mainland describing teenage golfer Michelle Wie.

Wie is an American of Korean ancestry. She is also a Hawaii resident.

Briscoe said he had difficulty persuading AP to make the change, because the organization bases much of its stylebook on dictionary definitions. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, Hawaiian is a native or inhabitant of Hawaii.

I remember having a go-round on this point in the comment thread of a Language Hat post a while back.

First Impressions of China after North Korea

The river crossing didn't take long, two minutes, perhaps, of running across the ice with as little noise as possible. I still remember clearly the mix of emotions I felt just then. There was certainly fear--of getting caught and of what awaited me on the other side--but I also felt sadness. I was abandoning something indefinable that was reproaching me for leaving. ... Those two or three minutes on the ice were like an eternity.

Though the area was supposed to be under surveillance, we didn't see a single guard. Running across the border today is even easier: many more people are at the starting line, and the guards are more lax than ever. Just give them some money or a good pack of cigarettes and they'll let you pass. Back in 1992, if they saw a fugitive, they would cry "Halt," then start firing.

We arrived at our guide's house tired and out of breath. We found him dressed in South Korean-made jacket and pants, which must have cost the equivalent of a North Korean worker's monthly wages. He was a man bubbling over with plans, the first of which was to move to South Korea as soon as he had enough money saved up. "Going from the North directly to the South is impossible," he said with effect, trying to bait us. But we weren't going for it. We had taken the precaution of not telling him we were wanted by the authorities. While he was happy to help people make little "business" trips into China, he had no interest in running seriously afoul of the law. To help ensure he kept quiet about our crossing, I gave him a handsome wad of cash [sent by relatives in Japan], for which he was also supposed to find us a truck to Yonji--or Yongil, as we say in Korea--the capital of China's autonomous Korean region. As we sat chatting that first night, we heard some astonishing things from our guide. We learned, for example, that he was actually a member of the Chinese Communist Party. It was totally baffling. Korean Communists were hard, austere ideologues--or at least tried to act that way--and here was this Chinese Communist proudly flaunting his wealth!

The next evening's meal was as ample as the first. The guide's wife claimed it was just the usual fare, but what was ordinary to them was gargantuan to me: there were many different dishes, and several had meat! I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt as if I'd been invited to a feast for Party cadres. In the North, alcohol is very expensive; an average bottle sells for 10 won, one-tenth of a worker's monthly wages. The most popular spirit, pai jou (white alcohol), comes from China. It costs 60 won a bottle and is usually reserved for special occasions. Here it was being poured into our glasses as an ordinary accompaniment to an improvised meal! ... China was like paradise, and I began to sense the huge gulf separating the universe as I knew it and the world as it might actually be.

There were more surprises to come. After dinner, our host suggested we walk to a nightclub in the neighboring village. We accepted the invitation--though I couldn't help thinking, Don't these people go to work? It was nearing midnight, and we were only now stepping out! Finally, I worked up the courage to ask, "Don't you have to wake up early tomorrow?" His answer left me stunned: it was "up in the air!" His next observation, though, is the one that really did me in. "In any case," he said, "the important thing isn't work; it's to enjoy life." I was speechless.

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 197-198

Diary of a Tokyo Civilian After Surrender, August 1945

August 16, 1945

The expressions on people's faces haven't changed much at all. When one meets people, instead of uttering the usual greetings, they blurt out, "What's happened is terrible."

This morning there was an air-raid warning and alert. At the company, we were told that female employees would be on vacation until there was a better sense of what would happen next. Whether I'm in the mountains or wherever, I just want to stay in touch. Apparently, government offices will tell us what procedures to follow. What in the world are they thinking of doing? I expect there is a mountain of serious problems, but what are the officials managing the country getting so excited about?

Haven't they lost their power and been defeated? The military is calling for complete resistance and appealing to all citizens. This is a very difficult problem. The true nature of a people is apparent when they lose a war, rather than when they win, and the day has arrived when we should reveal Japan's greatness.

Now that we've been defeated in war, I'm eager that our national identity as a people not be completely ruined.

August 17, 1945

Clear. Beginning today and for some time, it was OK to stay home from the company, but because I was the only one who knew how to handle mail transfers, I went to work. There were reports that the young military men haven't accepted the peace and were still active, and wild rumors circulated. We were fearful of what couldn't be foreseen, perhaps because we were hearing that everything was in chaos and that people were uneasy about the evacuation of women and girls and because as a people we had never experienced defeat. [There were widespread fears of rape by the victorious American troops.]

Today leaflets were dropped from friendly aircraft.

At Kanda Station I saw a flier plastered on a wall that read, "Both the army and navy are fine and believe that the people will endure," and people had signed their names. As far as the feelings of military people were concerned, I thought this was not unexpected, but we already had had a statement from the emperor. If we are to build the future, don't we have to begin clearing a path today? Dying is cheap. In the long history of the state, this defeat probably will not amount to very much, whereas the reconstruction that was about to begin could end up as a great achievement.

What was there to say? We did our best and were defeated. Only those who did not work as hard as they might have would feel any regret.

Take C, for example. While he was in the city, he was angry about everything and said he wanted to go off, even to the mountains, and I was surprised by the narrowness of his perspective. That may be a purist position to take vis-à-vis the country, but it was only his personal philosophy, one that was too beautiful, and it really hadn't taken root or spread. C's philosophy made me feel the need to broaden my vision.

SOURCE: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, by Samuel Hideo Yamashita (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005), pp. 218-219

Korean Scholars Now Exploring Collaboration Issues

South Korean scholars are finally beginning to re-evaluate the sharp dichotomy between "collaborators" and "nationalists" in their narratives of the Japanese colonial period, according to an article entitled "War and the Colonial Legacy in Recent South Korean Scholarship" by Kyu Hyun Kim in IIAS Newsletter no. 38.

In the mainstream Korean narrative of the wartime period (1941-1945, or more accurately 1937-1945, dated from the outbreak of the continental war against China), Koreans are relegated to the position of victims. It was during this period that Japanese exploitation of Korean socio-economic resources, both material and human, reached its height. It was also during this period, according to most Korean scholars, that the Japanese colonizers tried to eradicate Korean culture by forcing Koreans to worship at Shinto shrines, by banning the Korean language from official use and designating Japanese as the ‘national language’ (kokugo), and by adapting Korean family lineages into the Japanese household system, compelling the latter to choose Japanese-style names. Koreans have come to refer to this set of policies, promoted under the ideological campaign of naisen ittai 内鮮一体 (Japan and Korea as One) as ‘ethnocidal policies’ (minjok malsal chôngch’aek 民族抹殺政策) through which the Japanese colonizers sought to eradicate Korean identity altogether, absorbing it into the ontological category of the Japanese imperial subject (kôkoku shinmin).

The wartime period was characterized as a pitch-black vacuum (amhûggi 暗黒期, the ‘era of darkness’) in which only certain elite members, the ‘pro-Japanese’ traitors (ch’inilp’a 親日派), were allowed to profit and flourish at the expense of the majority of Koreans. However, this characterization of the wartime period has also suppressed frank, open-minded investigation of the actual circumstances involving Japanese colonialism’s infiltration into Korean culture and society. Studying the colonial-period ‘collaboration’ between Japanese and Koreans was anathema for many years, especially under the dictatorial regimes of Syngman Rhee (1946-1960) and Park Chung-hee (1961-1979). Indeed, President Park, who seized presidential power through a military coup d’etat, was a direct progeny of Japanese wartime militarism, a graduate of the Manchurian Military Academy.

Democratization and rehabilitation of the South Korean public sphere in the late 1980s and early 1990s, following monumental protest and resistance against Park’s junta successors, finally opened the space to examine the collaborationist activities of the Korean colonial elite. ‘Progressive’ scholars and critics, riding the surf of democratization and liberalization and embracing hitherto-forbidden Marxist and radical-populist perspectives, challenged the whitewashing and exposed the lacunae found in historiography, literary collections and the biographical data of ‘collaborators’. Scholars excavated shrill pronouncements written by prominent writers, intellectuals, educators and government leaders of post-liberation South Korea, inculcating Korean youth to throw away their lives for the glory of the Japanese empire, or fictional works enveloped in a sheen of patriotic fervor and serene acceptance of the Holy War, looking to a future when Japan would emerge triumphant in the titanic struggle against the venal white races.

By the mid-1990s, this newfound freedom in exposing the past sins of the fathers and the scholarship it engendered moved into a new phase. While the democratically elected regimes of Kim Dae-jung (1997-2002) and Roh Moo-hyun (2003-present) have continued to struggle with ‘the dark legacy’ of the colonial period, South Korean scholars, now relatively unencumbered by the desire to subordinate such reflections to the political objective of overthrowing military dictatorship, have begun a long and arduous process of parsing through the legacy of the colonial period, engaging in long-overdue reflection on the possibility of post-colonial identity for Koreans.

via Hunjangûi karûch'im

Aliens Invade NK Prison Camp

In the summer of 1982, my situation improved further. I finally made a friend. The camp had received two new prisoners, space aliens practically, whose extraordinary clothes and looks reminded us of our lost world. They were an elegant woman with dark glasses and her handsomely attired son, whose delicate white skin contrasted invidiously with our own, which the sun, wind, and snow had tanned into leather. Our jaws dropped when we saw them.

Within a few months their finely cut clothes would lose all their charm. The woman stopped wearing her glasses; she and her son looked just like everybody else in the camp. Less than a year after their incarceration, the boy, whose name was Yi Sae-bong, fell seriously ill and couldn't move his legs. Fortunately his paralysis didn't last. At first we had a hard time communicating, because having grown up in Japan, he only knew a few words of Korean; but he learned the language quickly and was soon able to tell me how he arrived in Yodok. He was a little older than I was and his family had lived in Kyoto, the city with the most powerful Chosen Soren cell outside the homeland. When the Party leadership in Pyongyang chose Han Duk-su to head the Japanese wing, the Kyoto cell protested. Han Duk-su, they said, was being parachuted in; he had never done anything for the struggle in Japan. The opponents backed down when they learned Kim Il-sung himself was backing the controversial nomination, but by this time the Great Leader's embittered candidate was determined to exact revenge. Many members of the Kyoto cell wound up in the camps. They had opposed the will of Han Duk-su and, by extension, that of Kim Il-sung, and this was a crime that could not be easily forgiven.

Like so many who hadn't understood the danger, Yi Sae-bong's father decided to move his family back to North Korea. He planned to come first, then send for his wife, three sons, and daughter. Shortly after arriving, however, he was arrested for espionage and sent to a hard-labor camp. When weeks passed without a word, Yi Sae-bong and his mother came to North Korea to try to find out what had become of him. Instead of receiving information, they were arrested and sent to Yodok.

I loved to hear Yi Sae-bong's stories about Japan. I was amazed by all its brands of beer-imported from all over the world--and by the huge black American soldiers that walked the streets. My imagination soared at the mention of France, England, Germany, and Czechoslovakia--the latter inspiring particular wonder. What most sparked my interest were the thick, juicy steaks people ate with a knife and fork. I wanted to know how they were cooked, what they were garnished with, the side dishes that accompanied them. I was sad I couldn't imagine the taste of catsup and offended by the rampant wastefulness, which included the lighthearted dumping of half-eaten meals. More shocking was my friend's contention that grocers sold fruits the whole year round. I was almost ready to suspect him of lying. It was either that or believe that Japan really was a paradise--a possibility that, despite my father and uncle's warm recollections, I still found difficult to admit.

Yi Sae-bong was the person who really introduced me to Japan. I hassled him constantly for details about his school, the traffic, the movies, the department stores. I was amazed at his description of the automobile assembly lines, where robots put entire cars together in a matter of minutes. The most astounding things, though, were the toilets: they had chairs where you could sit and read a paper, or have a cup of coffee. It seemed so incredible to me. The first time Yi Sae-bong went to the bathroom at Yodok, he threw up.

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 119-121

Yodok Burial Detail and Human Fertilizer

In the spring of 1981, I was assigned to help bury the bodies of prisoners who had perished during the previous winter, when the frost-hardened earth had made timely interment difficult. As with any detail, the work was carried out after school; but since it was considered somewhat unusual, we were rewarded with a few noodles to supplement our ration of corn. This would have sufficed to make interring bodies a desirable detail, but the work offered another very practical advantage. The burial team could strip the corpse of its last remaining clothes and either reuse them or barter them for other essentials. But the fringe benefits came at a price. Since Korean tradition requires that people be buried on a height, we had to carry the bodies up a mountain or to the top of a hill. We naturally preferred the hills at the center of the camp to the steep mountain slopes near Yodok's perimeter. Their proximity allowed us to follow tradition without traversing tens of kilometers. But the neighboring hills eventually became overcrowded with corpses, and one day the authorities announced we would no longer be allowed to bury our dead there.

We thought the order had been given for health reasons, but we soon found out how wrong we were. I was walking back to the village with my team one evening after a day of gathering herbs up in the mountains, when we were overtaken by a terrible stench. As we walked on, the odor grew stronger and stronger until we finally came upon the cause. There were the guards, bulldozing the top of the hill where we'd buried so many of our dead. They actually dared to set upon corpses! They didn't even fear disturbing the souls of the dead. An act of sacrilege held no weight for them compared to the possibility of growing a little more corn. As the machines tore up the soil, scraps of human flesh reemerged from the final resting place; arms and legs and feet, some still stockinged, rolled in waves before the bulldozer. I was terrified. One of my friends vomited. Then we ran away, our noses tucked in our sleeves, trying to avoid the ghastly scent of flesh and putrefaction. The guards then hollowed out a ditch and ordered a few detainees to toss in all the corpses and body parts that were visible on the surface. Three or four days later the freshly plowed field lay ready for a new crop of corn. I knew several people from my village who were assigned to plant and weed it. Apparently, it was horrific work. Since only the larger remains had been disposed of during the initial cleanup, the field-workers were constantly coming upon various body parts. Oddly enough, the corn grew well on the plot for several years running.

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 101-102

Hidden Family Heritages Unearthed in the New World

Regions of Mind directs attention to a very interesting post by Ann Althouse. Here's Geitner's summary.

One of the most affecting aspects of the Jewish experience in Inquisition-era Spain was how many Jews professed to have adopted Christianity but in secret maintained the rites of Judaism. Ann Althouse has a terrific post on a 21st-century tangent of this story: Some present-day Latino residents in the United States are discovering that, despite their Catholic heritage, they are the descendants of those Iberian Jews. The comments at Ann's site are quite interesting, too.

One of Ann's commenters notes that the hidden infidels who fled the Spanish Inquisition to the New World after 1492 were just as likely to have been Muslim as Jewish.

Diary of a Tokyo Christian, 9 August 1945

August 9, 1945, Thursday

This morning Nobukazu went off to Gôra and returned in the evening. When he finished dinner, he had to leave again--this time to board a nine o'clock train to Karuizawa, his school's evacuation site. And so after he finished dinner, he left the house. It was about seven.

The same sort of strange bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima three days ago was dropped on Nagasaki today, and it was wiped out. This bomb possesses extraordinary power. Photographs showed that Chinese ideographs written in black on signs at train stations had burned, and it was explained that white things wouldn't burn. Up to now, we've been ordered not to wear white garments, not even when it was hot, because they were easy for enemy planes to see. Now we're warned not to wear black garments because they burn easily.

So what in the world is safe for us to wear? We don't know anymore. The thought of a single aircraft destroying a large city in an instant is driving us to nervous breakdowns, and I feel as though we have no choice but to die or go crazy. I can't help but hate those responsible for placing human beings in this situation and continuing the war. At this point, continuing the war will save neither us nor our country. When one comes to this point and when those responsible realize that they have no escape and contemplate the punishments they will surely receive, I believe they will continue the war because they simply don't know whether or not fighting until the last Japanese falls is a good idea. In this country, where human morality is based on the relationship between masters and followers, we submit to our leaders' will and simply do as we are told. Because ours is a country in which each person lacks any kind of individuality and because our citizenry doesn't realize that they themselves have the power to revere their own individuality, we have fought this unprofitable war right up to the present, muttering all the while, "We will win, we will win." At the very start of the war, Japanese declared in unison, "Today we take pride in our good fortune to be born a Japanese." I myself could only lament "my misfortune at being born a Japanese today."

If Japanese had not been cursed by this sort of feudalistic thinking, I believe we could have expected our country to have ended the war sooner than Germany or Italy did. At the beginning of the war, I predicted that we would lose in the way that we have and worried about it. My arguing that we should have stopped the war at Singapore was an earnest and heartfelt plea. Those of us who thought this way were called traitors; our beliefs were regarded as unthinkable; and we were seen as potential spies. I blamed this on the ignorance fostered by feudalistic thinking. No matter what, I can't accept the fact that my own life has been taken from me for the sake of the lawless promoters of this feudalistic way of thinking, and I am not happy about it.

SOURCE: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, by Samuel Hideo Yamashita (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005), pp. 186-187

The diarist, Takahashi Aiko, was born in Tokyo in 1894, but her family immigrated to the United States in 1916 or 1917. There she met Takahashi Shôta, a physician practicing in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. They married in 1922 and had two children, Nobukazu and Emii. In 1932, the family returned to Tokyo, where Dr. Takahashi opened a practice. During the war they lived in Hiroo, "a fashionable area in central Tokyo not far from Sacred Heart Girls High School, where their daughter was a student. Takahashi and her husband may have chosen Sacred Heart because they were Christians" (p. 161).

UPDATE: The Marmot and Coming Anarchy have long and relatively well-informed comment threads about questions of effectiveness and war-criminality with regard to both fire bombing, atomic bombing, and other attempts to win the war as well as end it.

Perils of Privilege in Prison Camp

My uncle was the [Yodok camp] distillery's technical chief for seven years. No one had ever held the position for that long, and only the handful of detainees who worked in the guards' office or in the bachelors' kitchen ever enjoyed as many privileges. To land such a job, a prisoner needed to win the protection of a guard, which is what my uncle somehow managed to do. His ascent had begun with the unpleasant surprise of being called on to serve as an informant. My uncle was not overjoyed at the prospect but was afraid to refuse. He also knew that if his reports were sufficiently useless, he would be cut loose from the duty in no time anyway. As it turned out, my uncle's reports were not bad, though, just innocuous. This avocation earned him a few packs of cigarettes and some extra food, but more importantly it gave him the chance to befriend a guard, whose good word later helped him get the job in the distillery. My uncle's degrees in biochemistry, which gave him a competence in matters of distillation, no doubt also influenced the authorities' decision. After becoming lord of the alcohol bottles, my uncle wielded enormous power and prestige in the camp, though his position was mined with countless dangers and intrigues. Security agents were always dropping by to ask for a bottle on the sly, which left my uncle with a very dubious choice. If he refused their request, the agents had no shortage of ways to exact their revenge; if he relented, he could run into serious trouble during the next production audit.

His work also came under the daily supervision of a security agent who was assigned to the distillery, a man not likely to forgive irregularities. My uncle had to play it slick, fulfilling his substantial clandestine distribution while making everything appear on the up and up. Pressured by a number of different guards--some of whom were rivals--my uncle had plenty to keep him up at night. One day he was called before a camp official who wanted him to admit he'd given alcohol to a colleague who ran the distillery. My uncle firmly denied the charges, guessing correctly that the interrogation stood on little but rumors and suspicions. The official wasn't so easily put off, however, and at one point he suggested the sweatbox might help stir my uncle's memory. The thought was almost enough to make him confess, except that a confession would land him in the sweatbox all the faster--and as a confirmed criminal, rather than a mere suspect. Moreover, the guards compromised by his confession would become his sworn enemies and make him pay for their troubles. He would also risk a transfer to Senghori or to one of the other camps of no return. So he kept his mouth shut. Toward 3:00 a.m., the tone of the interrogation changed. The official suddenly stood up, perfectly calm, and led him out of the office. Outside, he turned to my uncle and said, "Your silence is appreciated. Keep it up!"

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 92-94

Getting to Know Your Snitches

Yodok and the hard-labor camps did have several points in common, the first of these being the snitches. During the first days and weeks of our detention, my father and uncle felt most oppressed by the physical demands of forced labor and the looming threat of punishment. The slightest wrong move, it seemed, could mean extra work or a stint of solitary confinement in a sweatbox. This fear, they soon realized, was the consequence of the network of snitches that pervaded the camp. The informants were at every turn. There was no one to confide in, no way to tell who was who. The veteran prisoners sometimes laughed at my father and uncle because of all the naive questions they asked, which only made them more depressed. The only advice their fellow prisoners could offer was to have patience: they would learn to pick out the snitches soon enough. Until then, they would do well to keep their thoughts to themselves. The camp's common wisdom turned out to be true. Within a few months, we all developed a sixth sense--a snitch radar, if you will--that told us who could be trusted and who could not. Yet a snitch is not necessarily a bad guy. The prisoner is usually picked for the job without being asked his or her opinion, and, in most cases, the honor is not one for which he or she is proud.

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), p. 77

My impression, during my year in Ceausescu's Romania (as a privileged foreigner, not a prisoner!) was that many of the Romanians who befriended us, and thus had to report periodically on our activities, were among the more interesting and entertaining of our small circle of local acquaintances there. The building manager who lived just across the hall from our apartment, however, was a complete sleazeball. I went out of my way not to ruffle his feathers.

Next, Lotte Marines vs. Chicago White Sox?

Bobby Valentine, manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines (and nicely profiled by Japundit), sounds just a bit pumped up after seeing his team take the Japan Series in 4 straight games, outscoring the Hanshin Tigers by 33 to 4. The Asahi Shimbun reports his challenge to both Japanese and North American pro baseball.

NISHINOMIYA, Hyogo Prefecture--Bobby Valentine is nothing if not ambitious.

The 55-year-old manager of the Chiba Lotte Marines issued a challenge Wednesday to the winner of the World Series: "Let's do battle in a real World Series."

Valentine, who on Wednesday became the first foreigner to manage a team to a Japan Series title, says the level of play in Japan has risen to that in North America and the time has come for a best-of-seven series between the Japanese champions and the World Series champions....

The Marines swept the Tigers in four games to claim their first championship in 31 years. Valentine says his club has what it takes to compete against either of this year's World Series combatants, the Chicago White Sox and the Houston Astros.

"(Lotte) is as good a team as I've ever managed," Valentine said. "I don't like to rate the teams I've managed, but it compares very favorably to the teams playing in the World Series.

"The White Sox have a little more power than us, but so did Softbank [Hawks] and so did Seibu [Lions]," he added, referring to the two teams the Marines beat in the Pacific League playoffs.

"The only reason I am saying this is because I am the only person to have managed in both the World Series and the Japan Series," Valentine said. "I've watched our guys all year and I've watched the two teams in the World Series on TV and the level is equal. The competition would be great, it's time to do battle."

The Japan Times adds more player reaction.

Valentine's players also think a champion-versus-champion showdown would be beneficial.

"I would like to play against the major league champions," said Lotte pitcher Hiroyuki Kobayashi, the winning pitcher in Game 3 of the Japan Series. "The (Chicago) White Sox have home-run hitters with (Paul) Konerko and (Joe) Crede. Some matchups would be more problematic," Kobayashi admitted.

Former Fukuoka Daiei Hawks star Tadahito Iguchi, now with the White Sox, would worry Kobayashi more than anyone, he said.

"He hit me pretty good," Kobayashi said. "I faced him enough."

According to Lotte outfielder Benny Agbayani, who played for Valentine's New York Mets in the 2000 World Series, the biggest winners if such a series were to take place would be the fans.

Well, So Much for the Rakuten Eagles

Jack Gallagher reports in the Japan Times on the quick demise of the once-brash upstart Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. (I prefer to call them the Igloos, which sounds much the same in Japanese.)

Last fall, the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles emerged on the Japanese pro baseball scene as the first expansion team in 50 years and optimism abounded that a new era in the game had dawned.

The Eagles hired the first non-Japanese general manager ever in American Marty Kuehnert, then brought rookie manager Yasushi Tao out of the television booth to lead the team.

They marketed the club like it had never been done before here.

The term "fan service" was actually brought into the lexicon and seemed certain to have an impact on how pro baseball teams in Japan treated their supporters.

These moves were definitely not out of the traditional Japan pro baseball textbook and had the establishment feeling a bit uncomfortable, to say the least.

Eagles owner Hiroshi Mikitani seemed to be the face of the future. A 38-year-old business magnate who was determined to drag the game into the 21st century.

But, lo and behold, a funny thing happened on the way to changing history.

The more time passed, the more the Eagles began to look like the other 11 franchises in Nippon Pro Baseball....

[T]he team did not enjoy the benefit of an expansion draft -- where they could choose players from the existing NPB teams -- like new franchises do in Major League Baseball.

No, the Eagles were constructed almost entirely from the leftovers of the merger between the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes and the Orix BlueWave.

The only two true stars the team had were ace pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma and outfielder Koichi Isobe, who refused to play for the Orix Buffaloes -- the team created by the merger.

The results were predictable.

The Eagles finished their inaugural season with a record of 38-97-1, the worst mark in the NPB in 40 years.

Read the whole sorry story, if you have any interest in Japanese baseball.

UPDATE: And here's another sad story by Gallagher about the nasty treatment of foreigners by Japan's sports media.

A Kiwi Officer in Borneo, 1965

The website of the Royal New Zealand Artillery Old Comrades Association contains a lot of military memoirs from the days when New Zealand had more of a military than it does now. Here's a tale recorded in April 2001 by former Captain John Masters MC from his days on the border of Malaysia and Indonesia.

It was 1965 in the jungles of Borneo. In the tropical rain forest we lived in a constant sauna. The temperature was the same at 2 in the morning as it was at 2 in the afternoon.

As a young subaltern, my first independent command on active service was small, but we were certain we were elite. Well, after all, we were Royal Horse Artillery.

My single gun crew were all Glaswegians. The Sergeant was a big taciturn Kentishman. I had a battery surveyor, a signaller and a gleaming, well-oiled 105mm howitzer which we made no effort to camouflage. We fired it regularly in support of C Coy, 3 RAR with whom we co-habitated on a little ridge a few feet above the mangrove swamp, and we believed in advertising our presence. Thus we spent three months, never more than fifty miles from the Equator, and never more than fifty feet above sea level.

After seven weeks of this untroubled existence (stress-free because we were forty miles across untracked virgin forest from Battery HQ, and the BSM) we were to be visited in our base by the Director Royal Artillery. He was a wonderful old fellow out from London to visit the only Regiment in the British Army, which was on active service that year. We assembled in our immaculate gun-pit, stripped to the waist and in our Hats, floppy, but with polished brass and our boots gleaming.

My last briefing to the troops, as the General's helicopter landed, was to tell them to speak when spoken to. "Don't hesitate to say what you think if he asks you a question." I was well aware, of course, that Sergeant Smithers had already threatened dire things if anybody moved a muscle.

The dear old chap was overweight and drenched with sweat, but he carefully inspected us all, had a word to each, and then stood us at ease. He then asked if there was anything he could do for us.

Gunner Wilson, the layer, was from the Gorbals. Even after many weeks he was still blue-white in colour. Somewhat flat-chested and with a rather prominent adams apple, he did not look too capable of much initiative in such circumstances. He was however, as I was well aware, the Regimental featherweight champion. I had seen him very effectively deal with a well-muscled Australian who took him at face value, in two rounds.

Well, Gunner Wilson immediately snapped to attention, cleared his throat, and, looking fixedly into the middle distance, belted out, "Sir, when our beer comes in it is too hot." Sgt. Smithers seemed to lose two inches in height, his jaw muscles slackened into rictus, and his eyes rolled to heaven.

The DRA blanched, but only slightly. He wasn't a General for nothing. He knew he could do nothing for Gunner Wilson, but, with only the barest pause, he came up with a response none of us ever forgot. Reaching back to his subaltern days on the Indian sub-continent, he said, "Well, I remember, when we had that problem we would hang the bottles in the trees, and the breeze would blow, and cool our beer."

There was a frisson that rippled through the little group in the gun-pit. An eyelid flickered, a face muscle twitched, but they were British, by God. Unlike any bunch of Kiwis who would have fallen about laughing, they held themselves erect until the General's helicopter lifted off. Then they fell about.

For the rest of our tour, the answer to any question, or the reaction to any complaint was "Just hang it in the trees, and the breeze will blow, and the beer will be cool." I loved the Brits.

via Japundit, by a very circuitous route

Fraser Weir on Islam's Arrival in Coastal Southeast Asia

Fraser Weir's A Centennial History of Philippine Independence, 1898-1998 gives an account of Islam's arrival in coastal Southeast Asia in the 14th and 15th century, closely followed by the arrival of the first Portuguese and Spanish Christians.

Regular coastal trade in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea linking Mesopotamia and the Indus valley dates from at least the time of the Assyrian Empire (729-612 BC). Arab and Persian merchants are reported in the southern Chinese port of Guangzhou (Canton) in the 8th century AD. However, after Mahmud of Ghazni's invasions of the Indus valley (997-1030), the Sword of Islam added a vigorous religious and political dimension to the commerce.

On his return to Venice from the court of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo noted in 1292 that Pasai in northern Sumatra had converted to Islam. The Sultan of Pasai, the first Muslim ruler on Sumatra, died in 1297 and Pasai returned under Majapahit's Hindu ambit in 1350. Despite this reverse, Islam was moving steadily through the archipelago.

Islamic inscriptions in Malaya date from 1326. A Muslim scholar, Mukdum, from Malaya is reported in the Philippine's Sulu archipelago in 1380. In 1400, the northern Sumatran province of Aceh converted to Islam.

When Majapahit captured the Sri Vijayan capital Palembang in 1377, a prince of the royal house, Parameshwara, escaped to Malaya. In 1402 he chose the choke point where the Straits of Malacca narrow to 53 km in width to found his new capital, Melaka. Parameshwara moved quickly to protect his fledgling state. He sent a mission to the Emperor Zhu Di (Yong Li) seeking Ming protection from his Majapahit enemies. Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho) arrived at Melaka in 1409 with the Ming's Dragon Fleet. Parameshwara paid a personal visit to Beijing in 1411 to cement his alliance with the Ming Empire.

In the same year as a Muslim mission was attracting converts far to the east on Ambon in the Moluccas, Parameshwara announced his conversion to Islam in 1414 and proclaimed himself Sultan of Malacca. The appeal of Islam was strong. The Sultanate's arch rival, Majapahit converted in 1447. Hindus who wanted to retain their faith were under siege. From mid-century on, Javanese Hindus concentrated on the island of Bali where they have succeeded in preserving their religion to the present day. In 1475 the Moluccan islands of Ternate and Tidore converted to Islam.

Through the 15th century the upstart Sultanate of Malacca grew from strength to strength. It successfully repelled overland and seaborne attacks from the Thai Empire in 1445 and 1456. The Sultan Mansur Shah put down the Thai's peninsular allies Kedah and Pahang in 1459. Finally in 1498, by the efforts of its Admiral Hang Tuah, Malacca had secured the monopoly. All the trade in the Straits, and especially the spices from the Celebes and the Moluccas, moved under its protection and through its markets.

Considering that in over a thousand years, Buddhism and Hinduism had barely made an impression east of Borneo, for Islam to have travelled the length of the archipelago from Sumatra to the Moluccas in under two centuries is remarkable. As a religion, Islam had popular appeal. The Hindu and Buddhist religions had been used mainly to deify the rule of the Rajas. Islam offered its converts a personal salvation.

Islam was also carried with the mobility of the merchant community. The landed Hindu-Buddhist Rajas were content to let the trade come to them and tax it as it passed through their ports. Lacking a fixed land base, the Islamic merchants followed their commercial instincts knowing that the best profits on the trade were to be made at source. The trail of conversions led straight to the spices.

Perhaps most important of all, Islam brought with it gunpowder, firearms and cannon. Recalling how smartly the Sultan of Malacca accepted the new faith and how quickly others followed his lead, access to the new weapons may have been restricted to the faithful. The religion's rapid progress through the islands may have been, at least in part, an arms race.

The year that the Sultanate of Malacca finally consolidated its hold on the Straits was fateful. That same year, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope from Portugal with four ships, crossed the Indian Ocean and landed on 27 May 1498 at Calicut on the Malabar coast. Indian Hindus and Portuguese Christians shared in common a deep animosity for Islam. In 1510, Affonso de Albuquerque, the Viceroy of India, by treaty with Krishna Deva Raya, the Emperor of Vijayanagar, secured the port of Gao [sic] as a naval base for Portuguese operations in the Indian Ocean.

Albuquerque had already learned of Malacca's strategic importance to the spice trade. The very next year, in 1511, he took with him eighteen Portuguese warships from Gao [sic] and ended the Sultanate of Malacca. The loss of Malacca shattered the Islamic trade network at a blow. From so far away, though, Portugal was operating at the very limit of its power and was never quite able to rebuild the trading network it had destroyed. Ten years later, the Portuguese were greatly alarmed to see Magellan's flagship Victoria returning to Spain - westward from the Philippines.

A New Homeland Lost to Each New Generation

Growing up, I was never aware of my uncles' disaffection with Kim Il-sung: I was too young to imagine such a thing was possible. Looking back now, their transformation seems telling: the silence of one, the alcoholism of the other, my father's sudden obsession with music. They were each running away from reality, avoiding the words that might indict the political system or, worse yet, the parents who had brought them to live in it. My father was learning all the popular international songs by heart. He knew "Nathalie" and "La Paloma." To our great joy, he also sang us the famous "O Sole Mio." I now realize this was his way of escaping the military marching music and the glory hymns to Kim Il-sung.

I mentioned that he had been married to a woman whose family also had returned from Japan. Many marriages took place within this immigrant community, which proves just how difficult integrating into Korean society really was. The former Japanese residents, especially the young ones, had grown up in a different culture. This made communication with North Koreans difficult. Neighbors and security agents never let slip an opportunity to remind them that they were no longer in Japan, that they should express less originality, that they should show more respect for the laws.

Having been exposed to the wider world, my parents, like most former Japanese residents, felt superior to the people who never left North Korea. Their payback was being viewed as strangers. The old enmity between Korea and Japan also played against us. To many people, my family's former immigration to Japan seemed more important than its decision to come back. The family's material advantages were also the cause of barely veiled jealousy. As part of the next generation, I always felt profoundly and unequivocally Korean--indeed, North Korean. Yet, even as a young child, I sensed the chasm that separated my parents from their neighbors. My mother's accent, which bore traces of her years in Japan, was the cause of constant laughter among my friends. Every time she got home from work and called me back inside, they would mimic her voice, making me blush with embarrassment. Finally I asked her not to do it anymore. I think I hurt her feelings, but she didn't say anything, and from then on, whenever she wanted me to come home, she walked over to where I was playing and gave me a little tap on the shoulder....

As the family's situation worsened, Japan became an ever-expanding reservoir of idealized memories, nostalgic images, favorable dispositions. My family was once again a family of uprooted emigrants. That feeling of nostalgia is still in the family, but with every generation its object continues to shift. My grandfather lived in Japan full of longing for his native Cheju Island. My father lived in North Korea and was nostalgic for Japan. And me, I sit recalling my life's story in Seoul, gnawed at by the Pyongyang of my youth.

SOURCE: The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, by Kang Chol-hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (Basic Books, 2001), pp. 32-34

Japanese Soldier's Diary, Okinawa, 13 September 1945

September 13, 1945 (Thurs.), clear and windy

We talked all day, half-believing and half-doubting what the pacification team members told us last night. I lay down alone and dozed. No matter how much we talked about it, without seeing the evidence the pacification team said they'd bring, conversation was pointless. I didn't like talking.

It was around eight in the evening. The same two members of the pacification team who had come last night arrived with conclusive evidence of imperial Japan's surrender.

First, letters from our war buddies in units that had been attacked and surrendered were distributed to each of us. The letters explained Japan's unconditional surrender and urged us to surrender right away. Then they showed us copies of the "Potsdam Declaration," which Japan had accepted; the emperor's "Surrender Rescript"; and the "Surrender Instrument" from the deck of the USS Missouri. There also were orders from Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, the top official overseeing the occupation of our country, and issues of the Asahi, Mainichi, and Yomiuri newspapers that had pictures and articles about the August 9 "Soviet Invasion of Manchuria," the "Damage from the Atomic Bombs" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the "Failed Suicide Attempt of Prime Minister Tojo.

The seven of us stared silently at the evidence--its meaning was all too clear. I felt as though my whole body had suddenly collapsed and I were being attacked by a dark loneliness.

Then after recovering from this feeling of loneliness, I was assailed by an inexpressible anger. Who or what in the world was the object of my anger? I couldn't say.

I stamped my feet on the floor like a child and screamed words of anger. I felt the urge to run like a cannonball right into the center of the American camp.

In the end, even as I was being attacked by these violent feelings, I agreed with everyone else that we should surrender.

Frankly, even if I acted alone and raced out of the bunker, the surrender of Japan as an actuality wouldn't change, and the mop-up operation the American troops would launch in the wake of such an action would be directed continuously at all the Japanese soldiers in the vicinity of the military field warehouse bunker.

Rather than rant and rage, I kept my thoughts to myself, left the group, and slowly walked to the back of the bunker.

SOURCE: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, by Samuel Hideo Yamashita (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005), pp. 154-155

This soldier, Nomura Seiki of Kochi City on Shikoku, surrendered the next day, but didn't retrieve his diary until later, after which he wrote a long and poignant account of his actions and feelings on his final day as a soldier of Imperial Japan. It was too long to excerpt here, but here's his subsequent and final diary entry on 10 November 1945.

Today, with the help of American soldiers, I visited the field storage bunker at Shuri and was able to recover the diary I left in the back of the bunker the night before I surrendered on September 14. This was a wonderful find. I have followed and recorded my memories of that day that brought things to an end for me as a Japanese soldier, and this is the end of this diary.

Marines (and Sox) on a Roll

Canada.com carries an AP report on Game 2 of the Japan Series.

TOKYO (AP) - Saburo Omura, Matt Franco and Lee Seung-yeop all homered in the sixth inning Sunday, leading Bobby Valentine's Chiba Lotte Marines to a 10-0 win over the Hanshin Tigers in Game 2 of the Japan Series.

The Marines, bidding for their first Japan Series title in 31 years, take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven championships.

After scoring single runs in the first two innings, the Marines blew the game open in the sixth with five runs.

Read that lede once again, savoring the names as they stumble off your tongue. Okay, now let's compare the AP lede for Game 2 of the World Series in frosty Chicago.

CHICAGO Oct 24, 2005 — Scott Podsednik made it two electrifying home runs for the White Sox and two World Series wins. Podsednik's home run off Brad Lidge in the ninth inning gave Chicago a thrilling 7-6 victory over the Houston Astros on Sunday night and put the White Sox halfway to their first World Series title in 88 years.

"I don't think anyone in the ballpark was thinking about me hitting the ball out of the ballpark," Podsednik said.

After yet another questionable umpiring call, Paul Konerko capped a momentous week with a seventh-inning grand slam on reliever Chad Qualls' first pitch, giving the White Sox a 6-4 lead and sparking the crowd of 41,432 to life on a drizzly, dreary night.

A few old-fashioned MLB names there.

Just to rub it in, here's a 2004 profile of the White Sox by the Yankeecentric YESNetwork's Steven Goldman.

THE BEST: Nothing. Okay, Paul Konerko, maybe Aaron Rowand, Shingo Takatsu.

THE WORST: A random starting rotation — pitchers to whom consistency is a dirty word, an outfield without much pop, a manager who thinks he's living in the dead ball era. To be more specific, Orlando Hernandez won't feel up to making a third of his starts, Jose Contreras will run up the white flag like he thinks the French Foreign Legion is attacking. Trading for Scott Posednik is risking getting exactly what you think you need, and Ozzie Guillen apparently slept through his entire career, which involved increasing numbers of baseballs being whacked over his head.

EX-GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND: The one whose vanity far outweighed any realistic appraisal of their charms.

FINISH: Fourth in the Central.

And here's YESNetwork contributor Will Weiss rubbing it in, too.

World Series showcases what could have been

Jose Contreras and Roger Clemens will start Game 1 of the World Series Saturday night in Chicago, Andy Pettitte will start Game 2 for the Houston Astros, and lurking in the Chicago White Sox' bullpen is Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.

And the Yankees will be watching them on TV like every other baseball fan.

Following Contreras's complete-game, pennant-clinching victory for the White Sox in Anaheim, numerous message board threads on YESNetwork.com and other Yankeecentric Web sites popped up about the possibility of Contreras, El Duque, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens squaring off in the World Series. The Astros' win in Game 6 of the NLCS in St. Louis made that notion a reality (Pettitte stood as the winning pitcher in Game 5, until Albert Pujols' monster shot sent the series back to Busch Stadium).

Yankees fans have every right to stew at the fact that what could have been 80 percent of the 2004 rotation will have a say in who wins the World Series, albeit for teams not bearing an interlocking NY on their caps. A majority of fans might look at the postseason performances of Contreras, El Duque, Clemens and Pettitte, and the way they led the White Sox and Astros to the World Series and say, "This figures." In Contreras's case, countless fans said, "Where did this come from?"

Diary of a Kyoto Civilian at New Year, 1945

December 31, 1944, Sunday
End-of-the-Year Thoughts

At long last, today is the last day of 1944, and when the new day dawns, we'll greet 1945, the Year of the Rooster. The enemy attacks are a daily affair, and there's no New Year's spirit. I got up at eight, but there were no sounds of tatami being beaten [in the traditional New Year’s housecleaning].

The crowing of the neighborhood roosters is pathetic, as though their lives were being sucked to the bone.

Toshie and Haruko [daughters] put on their clogs and cleaned the planks laid out over the mud. Up until two years ago, as a morning exercise, they polished the area between the Iroha [billiards parlor] signs with oil until it was smooth, but in no time, this area, which guests were once reluctant to walk on in their shoes, had become muddied and dirty. It was New Year's Eve, and not a single cent was owed me, no loans had to be repaid, no end-of-the-year gift to be given, and nothing coming in. When I thought about this strange, unprecedented sort of New Year's Eve, I simply accepted the fact that it felt good, and that was enough.

New Year's Day
Impressions of a Sweet Potato New Year

Wartime conditions have come to prevail with extraordinary speed, and the weak have become food for the strong. How will we survive in this harried world? The new year promises to be one filled with problems.

It was unusual, but even the enemy planes seemed to have some humanity. On New Year's Day alone, we're not worrying about air raids over our heads. First of all, although it was a small matter, there was mazetakimi rice, some bamboo shoots, and sake. I'm seventy-six, and although I'm of no value for the honorable country, today I realized my humanity, and it felt like an old-style New Year's.

It was a sweet potato New Year's. Otsuru [eldest daughter] must not be surprised. She went to a place about a mile east of Shimokameyama in Mie Prefecture to buy fifteen or sixteen loads of sweet potatoes. What made this possible was the fact that the potatoes were black market goods. We've developed good relations with the farm families, and we came to buy sweet potatoes at one kan [about 8 lbs.] for three yen; even with the train fare included, one kan cost only three yen, eighty sen.

When we eat glutinous rice [mochi], we have to sacrifice one month's worth of rice, and as a rice substitute, the honorable sweet potato is full of nourishment. Under the circumstances, while both [daughter] Toshie and I are in the house, it's strange for us, rather than Otsuru, to be searching for, and eating, food.

SOURCE: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, by Samuel Hideo Yamashita (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005), pp. 108-109

Game Called on Account of Fog

Game 1 of the Japan Series was called in the seventh inning on account of fog, but the Chiba Lotte Marines were given the win because they were ahead 10-1 at the time. The Japan Times reports:

The game was interrupted by fog in the seventh inning as umpires pulled players off the field after Benny Agbayani's two-run homer.

Almost 40 minutes later, home plate umpire Minoru Nakamura called the game.

Lotte's Tomoya Satozaki, Agbayani and Lee Seung Yeop all homered, and Saburo Omura doubled in a pair of runs for the victors....

"It was too bad we didn't get to play nine innings," Lotte manager Bobby Valentine said. "[Starting pitcher] Shimizu was fantastic."

Lotte's powerful offense had little trouble putting runs on the board, as the Marines reached base in every inning.

Starting with the bottom of the fifth, Lotte scored in three straight innings, taking control of the game.

Good for the Marines. And good for the White Sox in the World Series. I hope Game 2 in Chicago is not called on account of snow.

UPDATE: The Japan Times also explains the frustrations of trying to keep up with either Japanese or American baseball on Japanese broadcast channels. (Frustrations other than the broadcast-channel tendency to end coverage exactly on the half-hour, even if it's a tie game in the 9th inning with the top of the order due up to bat.)

This is 2005, the 21st century, the age of cable and satellite and, if you are a baseball fan looking to see the games live, but you don't have extra-terrestrial reception capability, it is going to get worse.

Probably, within a few years, fewer and fewer games will be telecast on the conventional channels, and more and more will be on cable or satellite.

But, to look at it from the opposite angle, it is going to get better. It has gotten better. A lot better.

Go back about 25 years, and all we got on TV throughout Japan were the Tokyo Giants games, home and road, picked up an hour into the game and usually cut off long before the final out was recorded.

Today, if you have the right systems, you can get all six Japan pro baseball games any day of the season, from the first pitch all the way through the hero interview, even if the game goes 12 innings or five hours.

We can also get two or three MLB games per day during the season, all the playoff games and the World Series, live and in English.

What more do you want?

Japanese Pilot's Diary, 3 January 1945

January 3, 1945, cloudy then clear, rain in the evening

We've had stews for the past three days. Today's was the most delicious, perhaps because it was made with a miso broth. I couldn't stomach the strange smell of the herring roe, though. The roe would have been fine if it had been soaked in water for two or three days. Serving things that even the Payroll Department couldn't eat was just for show and was irresponsible.

Take-yan read my fortune with cards. According to what he said--in the tone of a real diviner--I would be poor and struggle, and my social standing and advancement were uncertain. My future was exceedingly uninteresting. Will Dad die before me and Mom live on? Even if I had a romantic relationship, he told me, I'd be completely rejected and defeated. He says that I absolutely will not be bound to anyone and that a man I would approve of will appear, steal her heart, and steadily captivate her. And apparently I will die young. Well, that can't be helped, and besides that's my basic wish. What's strange is that she's going to die young, too.

If he's this sort of diviner, he doesn't need to borrow any cards. When I laughed and said, "If you offer fortunes like this, your business will fail," he said, "Because I do it only when asked, I don't give discounts or do it for free." He nonchalantly and noisily began to eat a pomelo. He gazed longingly at a second pomelo that was big and looked like a head, and he finished that off, too.

I remember that it was two years ago today that I got a thirty-six-hour pass and went home, together with a student pilot at Yatabe, my chest festooned with seven medals. A send-off party was held, and lots of sake was poured. My older brother Kitaro made a speech. I recall that he pointed out that it was the anniversary of the fall of Manila.

I'd like to reflect on that. It's been a full three years since the fall of Manila. Hasn't Manila been transformed into the site of frontline fighting? In that time there was the change of course at Guadalcanal. There was the gyokusai ['jewel shattering' = honorable fight to the death = total annihilation] at Attu Island. The gyokusai at Kwajalein and Rota. The many infuriating results continue: the gyokusai at Tarawa and Makin and more recently the gyokusai at Saipan and Tinian at this time last summer. But we are not defeated. We're winning. We are definitely winning this war. While everywhere we rout two or three times as many enemy and achieve splendid victories, resistance is hard, quantitatively, and we go off to commit gyokusai, pledging resolutely to save the country for seven lifetimes. Decisive battles are now taking place in the Philippines. At the moment, Japan will make a comeback with this last stand, break the enemy's nose, and push with irresistible force, push to the end.

Both the army and the navy have formed special-attack units and are continuing the intense and endless battles. I believe that 1945 is the autumn of emergencies when the Yamato race, one million strong, will choose death and make a last stand. I am overcome with emotion as I remember my send-off two years ago.

SOURCE: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, by Samuel Hideo Yamashita (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005), pp. 65-66