Night Train to Munich- A 1940 British Movie Directed by Carol Reed - Starring Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison- 1 Hour 35 Minutes

 Night Train to Munich (1940) is a British thriller film directed by Carol Reed and starring Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison. Written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, based on the 1939 short story Report on a Fugitive by Gordon Wellesley, the film is about an inventor and his daughter who are kidnapped by the Gestapo after the Nazis march into Prague in the prelude to the Second World War. A British secret service agent follows them, disguised as a senior German army officer pretending to woo the daughter over to the Nazi cause.

The film was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $2 million at the box office. It was praised for its suspenseful plot, its sharp dialogue, and its performances, particularly from Lockwood and Harrison. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Actress for Lockwood.

Night Train to Munich is considered to be one of the best British films of the 1940s, and it is often cited as a precursor to the spy films of the Cold War era. The film is a suspenseful and thrilling ride that captures the atmosphere of fear and paranoia that prevailed in Europe during the early days of World War I

Here are some of the things that make Night Train to Munich so special:

Its suspenseful plot: The film is a fast-paced and suspenseful thriller that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats from beginning to end.

Its sharp dialogue: The film's dialogue is witty and intelligent, and it adds to the overall suspense and excitement.

Its performances: The film features strong performances from its lead actors, particularly Margaret Lockwood and Rex Harrison.

Its atmospheric setting: The film's setting in Prague and Vienna during the early days of World War II creates a sense of foreboding and danger.

Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott - 2018, 640 Pages

Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott is a wonderful book, must reading for anyone interested in  World War Two, the Philippines or Douglas MacArthur.  In order to hope to understand the Philippines today you have to ponder the terrible consequences of the Battle for Manila.  For five years after the battle was over the population of the city declined due to lives shortened by injuries, poor diets and rampant diseases.

The book very interestingly  begins with a chapter on MacArthur detailing his life long involvement with the Philippines.  MacArthur had a giant ego, many of those who served under him worshipped him while others nicknamed him "Dug out Doug", feeling he kept himself safe, eating steak while his men were abandoned on Corrigidor Island to the Japanese, he escaping to Australia.  Many of his troops despised him, including his one time aid Eisenhower.  Scott does not take sides here, just shows us the facts.  

The second chapter tells us of the pre War history of General Yamashita, a fascinating account that helped me understand the command structure of the Japanese military.  Yamishita was a poet, served in Europe as an envoy before the war  and  had a German mistress, as MacArthur a Filipina.

The book goes into great detail on the battle for Manila.  The Japanese were determined to destroy Manila, they nearly succeeded, and to kill as many civilians as they could.  They behaved just as they did during the battle over Nanking, raping thousands of women and young girls, killing babies for sport.  The purpose of the Japanese was to delay an American invasion of Japan.  The Japanese were enraged by the very pro-American attitude of the Filipinos.  Additionally they seemed to love causing as much misery as possible.  The Japanese acted  in a barbaric subhuman fashion.  Scott spares no details in showing the pointless cruelty of the Japanese.

Time Line

December 10, 1898 - Spain Cedes The Philippines to The United States

December 7, 1941, a few hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan launched an invasion of The Philippines 

January 2, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur  declared Manila an open city hoping to spare the residents from the war, the Japanese take over Manila 

Manila then has a population of 684,000

April 9, 1942 - The American forces were now headquartered on Corregidor Island.  General Douglas MacArthur, acting on orders from President Roosevelt, leaves the Island, along with Manuel Quezon then president of the Philippines,

for Australia.  His men are taken as POWs.  MacArthur's  pledge that  he would return became the mantra of his life.

Americans as well as Canadians and Europeans were placed in detention.  The largest prison site with about 3400 captives was at The University of Santo 

Thomas.  James Scott greatly details the terrible conditions endured by the captives and made me sense their joy when the Americans liberated them.  The university, founded in 1611, predates Harvard by 25 years.  Our middle daughter graduated from college there in 2017.  Scott does a great job describing the campus converted to a prison.

October 17, 1944 - The Americans invade, coming ashore on the beach at Lingayen Gulf, near the birth place of my wife, about 150 miles north of Manila, on the big Island, Luzon.

October 17, 1944 Douglas MacArthur comes ashore, with coverage from Life Magazine and American army reporters filming it, says “I have returned”.  

The Japanese had 432,000 troops in The Philippines.  

February 3 to March 3 1945 - The Battle For Manila.  The Japanese were determined to kill as many civilians as they could and destroy the city.  As they did in Nanking, the Japanese embarked on a rampage of murder and rape.  Babies were bayoneted for sport.  The Japanese military knew they could not win, their mission was to delay the Americans in their anticipated invasion of Japan.  The Japanese burned or killed with a sword as many as they could, needing to save bullets.  By the end over 100,000 civilians were killed, many by American bombs and strafing.  

Sporadic Japanese resistance, mostly near Baguio, continued until September 5, 1945 when Japan surrendered.  An estimated one million Philippines citizens were killed in the war.  In the war crimes tribunal, over 125,000 incidents of murder of civilians were listed.  The Japanese also executed American and Filipino POWs, contrary to international laws agreed to by the Japanese.  About 10,000 American troops were killed and 225,000 Japanese in the fight to retake the Philippines.  Even though I knew the outcome, Scott made it very exciting.. The incredible fanaticism of the Japanese was a factor in the decision to use the Atomic Bomb.  For five years after the war, the population of Manila continued to decline from war injuries, poor medical facilities, and pestilence.  The economic basis for Life was destroyed.  A once beautiful city, known as “The Pearl of the Orient" was 90 percent destroyed.

General Yamishita, the Japanese commander in the Philippines, was found guilty of war crimes and hung. His defenders at his trial, as shown by Scott, tried hard to advance the claim that Yomishita did not know of the atrocities committed by his troops.  Most of the Japanese troops in Manila were under the command of an admiral, in theory subordinate to Yamishita.  The admiral killed himself rather than be captured.  Yamishita was headquartered in in Bagio, about five hours even today from Manila.  Scott does a very good job helping us to understand the Japanese mentality.  

July 4, 1946 - Philippines Independence Day

Even though we know the outcome, Scott made the battle very exciting if horrifying. This is just a wonderful book, full of great details and fascinating people.  

A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Rampage and Target Tokyo, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Scott lives with his wife and two children in Mt. Pleasant, SC. 

From http://jamesmscott.com

From the publisher

"American General Douglas MacArthur, driven from the Philippines under the cover of darkness at the beginning of World War II, famously vowed to return. This is the untold story of his homecoming.

The twenty-nine day battle to retake Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese soldiers and marines that terrorized the civilian population. Landmarks were demolished, houses torched, suspected resistance fighters were tortured and killed, countless women raped, and their husbands and children murdered. An estimated 100,000 civilians were slain in a massacre as heinous as "The Rape of Nanking."

Based on extensive research in the Philippines and the United States, war crimes testimony, after action reports, and survivor interviews, Rampage recounts one of the most heartbreaking chapters of the Pacific war.

James M. Scott is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and the author of several critically acclaimed books of military history."

If you are into World War Two history, you will binge read this book, as I did.

(My father served with General MacArthur in New Guinea as a junior officer.  I dedicate this post to an observation of his 100th Birth Anniversary

Mel u

Prevail: The Inspring Story of Ethiopia's Victory Over Mussolini's Invasion, 1935 to 1941 by Jeff Pearce (2014', 640 pages)

Prevail- The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia's Victory Over Mussolini's Invasion-1935 to 1941 by Jeff Pearce will fascinate anyone interested in World War Two history, especially in Africa, in Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, Italy's role in the war and those that love an inspiring true story meticulously researched and clearly narrated.  

Italy, as Pearce details, used a trumped up affront over an imagined insult by the Ethiopian government as an excuse to invade Ethiopia.  Mussolini wanted an easy victory to establish his credibility and expand his colonial Empire.  Pearce lets us see how this invasion caused outrage in large communities of African Americans, especially in Harlem.  Pearce lets us see how the war created animosity between Italians Americans and African Americans.  Many Americans wanted to go to Ethiopia to join the war.  There was quite a cast of characters, from heroes to charlatans, from America who got involved.  

The Italians were using machine guns, airplanes, mustard gas as well as troops from their African possessions to fight the Ethiopians, often armed only with near Stone Age weapons.  Pearce lets us see the great courage of the Ethiopian troops.  I learned how things worked in the Ethiopian government, very much centered on the Emperor. The British foreign office at first seemed to promise help but did not follow through. Pearce attributes some of this to the racist views of Churchill.  At the start of the war America was pursuing an isolationist policy.  

Even after the Italians, who bombed intentionally hospitals and attacked unarmed groups of civilians with deadly mustard gas, the Ethiopians kept fighting on through it all.  There are lots of colorful characters, from Ethiopian generals, Americans flying for the very weakly equipped Ethiopian air force, British officials to ordinary Ethiopian citizens.  

This is very good work of popular history.  I strongly endorse it for all those who are interested in the subject matter.  I can see it as must Reading among WW Two history buffs, I suspect even they will learn a lot from this book.

Jeff Pearce has worked as a talk show host, a magazine editor in London's famous "City" district, and a journalism instructor in Myanmar. He is the author of several novels published in the United States and the United Kingdom under pseudonyms and under his own name. He has also written several books on history and current affairs. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Mel u

"Living With the Enemy: A Diary of the Japanese Occupation" by Pacita-Pestano-Jacinto

Welcome to Students from the University of The Philippines-

Living With the Enemy:   A Diary of the Japanese Occupation by Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto (2002, 246 pages-Anvil Publishing-Manila)

Living With the Enemy: A Diary of the Japanese Occupation deserves to be a world wide best seller with a million copies sold.   Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto was 25 years old when the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1941.   She had recently graduated from college and married a doctor from a very good family.   She had a lovely house in a beautiful part of Manila.    One day she heard on the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.    Then they began to bomb the Philippines and shortly after their troops entered the northern provinces of the Philippines.    The cruelty of the Japanese invading force was beyond the human.    The Philippines was a very peaceful country.   If ever there was unprovoked attack on an innocent country this was it.   The rationale of the Japanese was that they were "liberating" the Philippines from the control of the Americans.  

Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto does a simply marvelous job in detailing the changes that come for the people of Manila as the Japanese take over.    All citizens are required to bow  when they pass in front of a Japanese.   When they fail to bow with the proper attitude of humility, they are slapped in the face.   Soon the Japanese begin to take over the best houses for their troops, then they begin to take all the horses, and as time went on they took even the healthy dogs to be trained as attack animals.   Some of the residents of Manila reacted in heroic ways, some became collaborators.    If you read this book,  you will not be so quick to judge those who cooperated with the Japanese as in many cases it was the only way to keep their families alive.    Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto tells us how the prices of common items, even the staple rice, go way up.    She shows what it is like to live in a climate of fear.   Through out the years (the diary is from December 10, 1942 to Feb. 24, 1945) the thing that keeps the people going is the belief that the Americans will return, the faith in the promise of Douglas MacArthur to return.    The Japanese propaganda ministry works over time to try to get the Filipino people to see themselves as part of a new Asian partnership  run by the Japanese for purely altruistic reasons.   The Filipinos have to act as if they agreed with this or face torture or worse.    Government employees are sent to giant rallies where they scream in joy over the speeches of the Japanese.    Venal politicians emerge to be puppet rulers but there are also great and courageous leaders.

Some of the diary is the day to day life of the family.    Some is a detailing of the activities of the Japanese and their extreme cruelties.    Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto writes in a simple beautiful style of a person who may have never heard when she wrote this a native speaker of English.   Her family is lucky in that the Japanese respect doctors and they also need Filipino doctors to tend their wounded.    We get to see how people try to make the best of their lives.   We see a simple house boy grow into a hero.   The goodness, the faith in God, and the family bonds of the Filipino people comes through wonderfully in this book.    Japanese are depicted as inhuman monsters and one can hardly blame Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto  for that.   I knew how the diary would end, of course, and I knew Pacita Pesttano-Jacinto survives the war but it was still very exciting and somehow even suspenseful to await the return of the Americans.    The sadness parts of the diary are near the end.   As the Americans begin to take back Manila and the Japanese know they will lose they make it their goal to kill all of the 500,000 residents of Manila.   They begin to machine gun people at random, they have snipers throughout the city shooting people for no reason other than blood lust.  

There are many poignant moments in the diary.   I reacted with true sorrow when I read of a 16 year old Filipino girl who was impregnated during a group rape by Japanese soldiers.   Even the counsel of her priests and supportive family cannot stop her from suicide.   I had my wife read the entry from October 15, 1944 (she is from Zambales in northern Luzon one of the most brutalized areas of the Philippines at the time of the invasion ).

The streets are full of starving people who swarm the gates of the houses insistently, desperately begging for rice, for a little soup, for crumbs, for anything.   Even during the air raids, while planes fly overhead and bombs shake the earth, this starving army of beggars patrol the streets dragging themselves and their starved bodies from door to door, unaware of possible death from the skies, aware only of the pain of the hunger gnawing at their entrails.

My wife was so effected by this passage she could not read on in the diary past this one entry.   Here is an entry from Feb 8, 1945 (near the end for the Japanese in Manila):

Americans themselves say nothing will remain of our beloved city.   The Japanese have gone on an orgy of savage burning...The Japanese cornered have turned on 500,000 civilians.  The American soldier says "I am used to deaths and killing but my flesh creeps when I remember what I have seen".  He said the acrid smell of burning flesh rises from high in the winds, that the streets are littered with he dead.

This maybe difficult to read but here is what the mother of a six year old boy experienced as they ran from the fires being set by the Japanese (they forced the citizens to remain in the buildings when  they set them on fire):

Then from the shadows of a fallen wall, they saw a figure detach itself.  The woman must have seen it too.   They heard her scream in terror and run.   But she was too late.   As she fell, they saw the Japanese soldier run forward and with his bayonet, strike the child upwards, lifting him from the ground, implanted like meat on a butcher's knife

.Living With the Enemy: A Diary of the Japanese Occupation  is a very honest diary and shows great emotional and political intelligence.   Anyone interested in the history of the Philippines in World War II would like this book, I think, and learn from it.  I know I did.   It will be hard for anyone out side of the Philippines to get a copy.  

Everyday there are fewer people  left with living memories of World War II.   I hope anyone who has a family member or a friend with such memories will take the time to hear their stories as they will all be gone soon.   So far I have posted on two other books by Filipino authors on the world war II experience.   I recommend   Living with the Enemy:   A Diary of the Japanese Occupation with no reservations or qualms at all.   I know it will never be on the N Y Times best seller list but it deserves to be.

Mel u

"Hiroshima Notes" by Kenzaburo Oe

Hiroshima Notes by Kenzaburo Oe (trans. from Japanese by David Swain and Toshi Yenezawa, 1965 and translation 1981, 192 pages) is a collection of essays Oe published after making several visits to Hiroshima in 1965 to attend observations for the 20th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb August 6, 1945.    It also includes a useful introduction by David Swain and two prefaces by Oe.

Hiroshima Notes is a deeply wise book by a man who has thought long and hard on topics most would prefer to move on from.   It is far from a bitter work.    I want  to relay few of the things in the book that stood out for me.

The survivors of the atomic bomb blasts were the very first of the Japanese people to say that the bomb blasts were the fault of the Japanese military government.   Oe feels that the dropping of the bomb was a war crime also.   My first reaction to this was to say that it saved, among other, the lives of millions of Japanese.   (I recall a few years ago I watched a movie from 1944-it was just a very minor movie and I do not recall the name.   Some English school children were looking at a future globe of the world.   They asked the teacher what the big empty space in the Pacific Ocean was.  The teacher laughed and said that was where Japan used to be.)   Oe, agree or not, is suggesting in doing this a force was turned lose on the world that could one day bring an end to human life. Never before could war do this.  It might have been that the Japanese would have surrendered facing a joint American and Russian Invasion (the Japanese knew the Russians would without hesitation send millions of their troops to be killed and that they wanted very much revenge for their defeat in the Russian Japanese Naval War).    Both the Japanese and the Germans were working on Nuclear weapons and clearly would have carpet bombed Australia and England with them and the USA if they could reach it with the planes of the day.   It is also true that the Japanese would have been defeated by nonnuclear warfare.  (I personally feel Truman did what he had to do)  In Hiroshima in 1965 there were 1000s of  women who were children when the bomb went exploded.   They survived but were so badly scarred that they began essentially life long hermits ashamed to go out in public.  No one would marry them as they were thought to be unable to give birth to a healthy child.    There were also in 1965 thousands of older women living alone who were the only survivors of their families.    Some of the young girls who survived did pray daily that no one else ever experience what they did.  Some wanted all the world to go up in a nuclear war.    The Japanese government, aided by American occupation forces, did provide medical care to survivors but they did not provide living expenses so many of the injured had to keep working to support their families so could not take treatment.

The doctors who lived in Hiroshima when the bomb exploded soon became the first authorities on the medical effects of the bomb.   They also suffered the effects.   Rates of leukemia went way up as did other forms of cancer.   Suicides went way up throughout the lives of the survivors.    Oe tells us a very moving story.   A twenty six year old man, age six when the bomb exploded, is advised he has two years to live as a result of leukemia.   He can live out his remaining time in a charity hospital ward.   He chooses to work at hard labor (he has no skills) so he can live on his own and be with his 19 year old fiance, not yet born when bomb exploded.   When he died she took an overdose of sleeping pills stating that her death was also a result of the bomb blast.   There are other equally moving stories.   We see the wisdom and power of the doctors.   We feel a little ashamed when we see different groups fight over who should run the 20 year anniversary memorial but we are also moved by seeing good people from all over the world come together.    

Oe says the greatest gift of the bombing is the wisdom of the survivors.  Oe is clearly humbled by his task of bringing their stories to life.  

The youngest survivors of the bomb are now in their middle sixties.   There are ninety year old survivors that still bear the scars.

I know I do not have the ability to convey the power of this book.   I know most people do not want to dwell on these matters.   I am pretty sure my daughters and children throughout the world can graduate from college and never be told of them by a teacher.    As I read the book, I hope this remark bothers no one, I thought that Oe was the kind of man who could have written the wisdom books of the Old Testament.   At one point he has a long conversation with an elderly woman.   He says her wisdom is so strong that she is able to live a life scarred since her middle years by the blast without a belief in any authoritarian creed.   Oe does not say  that wars are started by those who follow authoritative codes, much of his wisdom is in what he knows he cannot say.

Hiroshima Notes deeply effected me.  I felt an almost Oceanic Feeling come over me as I thought about the book and what I could attempt to say about it.


Mel u

"The Colorless Paintings" by Ineko Sata

"The Colorless Paintings" by Ineko Sata is the fourth selection from The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath (edited and introduced by Kenzaburo Oe) that I have so far read.   It is only thirteen pages long and was first published in a Japanese literary magazine in 1961.  

Ms Sata was born and raised in Nagasaki but was not there when the atomic bomb blast occurred August 9, 1945.    As "The Colorless Paintings" opens the narrator and her friend Y are at the opening day of an exhibit of painting at the very prestigious Tokyo National Museum.   They are looking for painting done by their friend K which are part of the exhibit.   K was a member of the communist party of Japan as was the narrator.   He also had advanced tuberculosis.   They find the paintings.  

The pictures seem like softly moaning heretics..The pictures even remind us of burnt bones...  These posthumous paintings of his completely deny all color.  K, while painting them, repeatedly rejected color..the paintings are powerful precisely because they are colorless, because we see them as an honest expression of the violent drama that took place within him, purity withdrawing into itself.

K's paintings were done after he was diagnosed as having radiation sickness from his presence on August 9, 1945.   K and the narrator were long time associates in the communist party of Japan but she never knew he was exposed to the atomic bomb.   He never spoke of it nor had her friend Y who was also exposed.   K lived the rest of his life in silent anxiety over what the effects of the blast on him might be one day.   Exposure to the bomb was known by the early 1950s to produce high rates of cancer and leukemia in those exposed to it.  They left the exhibit to go to an annually held memorial event for the victims of the bomb.   The event takes place at The Nagasaki Peace Park

Y spoke for the first time about the day when the atomic bomb was dropped.   And because she had done so, K also spoke about it, he too for the first time.   When describing the tragic scene, K seemed to be walking back and forth in the midst of the ruins.   "Everyday I was walking among corpses.   And even after I heard about how K and his friends had wandered around in the radiated area,  I somehow thought of them as being outside the radiation.

The narrator tells us that K died of liver cancer.

The name of the disease is liver cancer.   But what is the name of the thing that deprived this man of all color? What could it be called?   It seems that the ideas suggested by these painting preclude anything that is common place.   They appear to belong to another realm.   They rather seem to be produced by the will to defy, but that defiance had to be painted, even though the colors escaped the artist, and that's why they display an unnamable grief...Y sways and takes a step forward.   It seems as though her body automatically sways and takes a step..Y must have sensed deep in her heart what the paintings were saying.

Ineko Sata  was born in Nagasaki (1904 to 1998)  into a very poor family.   In her late teenage years she worked in a cafe frequented by young literary types.   From these associations she began to write and publish short stories focusing on the problems of  women from poor families.   She began also a life time involvement with the communist party of Japan.   She was briefly expelled from the party when she became an early denouncer of Stalinism.   She married one writer, divorced him and married another.  She was an early advocate of women's right in Japan.   She wrote several highly regarded and prize winning novels but "The Colorless Paintings" appear to be her only works in print in English.   Her longer works have never been translated.    Sata has a great affinity for the beautiful.   "The Colorless Paintings" has kind of a lonely feel to it.

In researching background information on the bombings, I came upon an article Mr Tsutomu Yamaguchi.   He is one of 165 people who were exposed to both atomic bomb blasts.   He wrote a book about his experiences but it is available only in Japanese.   In 2006 the United Nations invited him to take part in a documentary about double A Bomb Victims.   As of this writing he still lives, fighting cancer caused by the blasts. 

"The Empty Can" by Kyoto Hayashi

Welcome to our Guests from U C L A
Please share your thoughts on
This story with us

Other Stories of the Atomic Age edited and introduced by

Kenzaburo Oe. I have already posted on two stories from this
collection, “The Crazy Iris” by Masuji Ibuse and “Summer Flowers” by
Tamiki Flowers. After reading “Summer Flowers”, about the first few
days after the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima, I said to myself this is
the saddest story I have ever read. Now I think “The Empty Can”, a
gentle and beautiful tale of memory by a woman who was in Nagasaki when the second atom bomb exploded may well be a sadder tale.

Hayashi was a young woman in her late teens that had been moblized by the government along with a number of her classmates in an exclusive girl’s school in Nagasaki to work in a munitions factory. She and her classmates were at work August 9, 1945 when the bomb exploded.   They all survived.   Thirty years later she and four of her classmates meet for a reunion at the old school.   "The Empty Can" tells us what happen to the women in the thirty years since the bomb exploded.    The reunion conjures up memories of the day the A Bomb exploded.




The school the girls attended had been turned into a munitions factory. At first the women recall how the blast broke all the window panes and bent the frames. After the war the building went back to being a school

but in the remaining two years of Kyoko’s schooling there were no window panes in the school. The replaced windows are the first thing they talk about. (The women have not seen each other for many years.)


As they enter the school auditorium old memories come to the fore. On October 1, 1945 the school held a memorial service for the students who died in the blast.


They had both survived but many others had died on the floor under the watchful eye of teachers and friends.   Out of a student body of nearly 1300 300 had died  between that day and October 1, 1945. Some had been recruited to work in the munitions factory, some had died in their own homes a few days later.   As the names of each student was read, there was a stirring among the students who survived….The parents of the students who had survived...The parents of the students who had died sat along the three walls.  The parents were in tears before the service began.  The tears turned to sobs and the sobs drifted toward the center of the room.


During the memorial service Oki’s name had been read as one of the dead. She had in fact survived.   She had been terribly hurt in he blast and her parents came to get her and no one heard from her after that so it was assumed she was dead.   She has never been well since that day and is now scheduled thirty years later to have fragments of glass that were embedded in her back that day removed.    There is a huge waiting list for public hospitals at the time to treat bomb survivors.    All of the women live on in fear of radiation sickness which can occur many years after exposure.    Of the three women in "The Empty Can" three have  never married and seemingly have never had a relationship.   (Atomic bomb survivors were very unwanted as spouses as it was felt they could not produce healthy children.)


There are several heart breaking stories relayed by the women as they recall old friends.

They all suddenly recall Kimuko and the empty can she always had with her.



“Remember Kimuko’s empty can? …she put her father and mother’s bones in an empty can and brought it her every day…I remember the girl who came to school every day with the bones of her parents in her school bag.   The girl kept the bones in  lidless can that had been searedred by the flames.   To keep the bones from falling out, she had covered the top with newspaper, and she tied it with red string.  When the girl arrived at her seat she took the empty can, picking it up carefully with both hands, and placed it on the right side of her desk.   At first none of us had known what was in the empty can. And the girl did not show any sign of wanting to tell us, either.   No one questioned her about it.   The love  that could be  seen in the girl's fingertips when she handled the can made us feel all the more reluctant to ask.  One day their new calligraphy teacher, recently discharged from the military and returned to his prewar job, asked her what was in the can she always put on her desk.


“The girl hung her head and held the can on the knees of her work pants. The she began to cry. The teacher
asked her why. “It is my parents. Then she began to cry. The teacher took the can from the girl's hands, and placed it in the center of the desk on the platform.  May your parents rest in peace. Let us have a moment of
silent prayer in their memory”, he said and closed his eyes. After a long silence, the teacher handed the can back to the girl and said, "After this leave it at home.   Your parents will be there waiting for you when.   It is better that way."


“The Empty Can” is only seventeen pages long.   It has more power to move than many works 30 times longer.   We feel we know the people in the story and in some small way can feel how the bomb stole the lives of the living as well as the dead.    "The Empty Can (first published in 1978) is not a bitter work.   It is sadder and wiser for that.

Mel u

"Summer Flower" by Tamiki Hara

"Summer Flower" by Tamiki Hara is the second story included in The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath (edited and introduced by Kenzaburo Oe).

I have already talked a bit about why I was so happy to acquire The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic  Aftermath in my post on the lead story, "The Crazy Iris". 

Tamiki Hora was in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was exploded at Hiroshima August 6, 1945.

He survived because he was far enough away from ground zero in the bathroom of a very well constructed house built by his father.  "Summer Flowers" is an account of that day and the days right after the blast.

A lot of us have probably seen movies about apocalyptic seeming events.   Many book bloggers have enjoyed books about life after and during times in which all seems destroyed.   "Summer Flowers" is an eye witness account.  

The  story is set in Hiroshima in August  of 1945.   August 3 was the one year anniversary of the death of the narrator's wife.   He wanted to put some incense sticks on her grave but somehow he feared the whole city would soon be destroyed soon in bombing raids.  

After burning the incense sticks that I had brought I made a bow, I drank out of the well beside the grave..It was on third day after my visit to the grave that the bomb was dropped...My life was saved because I was in the bathroom.

When the bomb explodes he is knocked to the ground by the blast (we do not know how far away he narrator was from ground zero).   At first he loses his sight due to the fall.   His sister finds him and tells him his eyes are bleeding.   He and his family begin to see their first survivors.

Someone rushed in with a bewildered gesture.   His face was smeared in blood. .. K of the factory office appeared on the veranda of the drawing room.   Seeing me, he cried in a sad voice. "I'm hurt! Help me" and dropped down in a heap where he stood.   Blood was oozing from his forehead, and his eyes were glistening with tears.

Here is the first corpse he sees

Even as I looked something infectious seemed to emanate from her lifeless face.    It was the first such face I had seen.   But  I was to see many, many more that were more grotesque.

At first people did not realize what had happened that day.   People felt they they had just had bad luck in a normal bombing raid.   Slowly they began to realize a weapon of a new order of magnitude had been used that day by the Americans.

Everyone had at first thought that just his own house had been hit by a bomb.   But then they went outside and saw it was the same everywhere, they were dumbfounded.   They were also greatly puzzled by the fact that, although the houses and other buildings had all been damaged or destroyed, there didn't seem to be any holes where the bombs had fallen...It was all like some kind of magical trick, my sister said, trembling with terror.

The narrator begins to walk the necropolis where he was born, where his beloved wife is buried.  He observes a common effect of the blast.   Those closer to the blast than him but  enough far away not to die instantly have swollen heads and deformed faces    People with this mark of death upon them have only a few days to suffer.   He comes upon a dispensary set up near a temple to help victims.   The screaming are everywhere but the doctors have no idea how to really help them.   The legs and arms of the victims begin to swell up.

A few yards away from us, two schoolgirls lay groaning for water under a cherry tree, faces burned black...a woman whose face was smoked dried joined them...she stretched out her legs listlessly, oblivious to the dying girls.

The narrator's older brother got a wagon and was rounding up the extended family to leave town.   On the way to pick up a sister they come on the dead body of the brother's son.  

Here is a beautiful passage (I know it may seem jarring to some to find beauty in these descriptions but it is there) describing the narrator's reactions as they leave Hiroshima

Amid the vast silvery expanse of nothingness that lay under the glaring sun, there were the roads, the river, the bridges, and the stark naked, swollen bodies.   The limbs of the corpses, which seem to have become rigid after struggling in their last agony, had a kind of haunting rhythm.  In the scattered electric wires and countless wrecks there was embodied a spasmodic design in nothingness.   The burnt and toppled streetcar and the horse with its huge belly on the ground gave one an impression of a world described by a Dali surrealist painting.

People continue to die long after the blast from its effects.   There is a heart breaking rendition  of the efforts of the narrator to help his good friend find his wife or her body.  

"Summer Flower" is as sad a story as I have ever read.    The beauty of the fashion in which the story is told somehow seems almost wrong.   Tamiki Hara is described  by Oe as the most  outstanding of the writers who survived the bomb blast.      Tamiki felt compelled to wrte about his experience  of the bomb blast as a kind of memorial to his wife.   There was censorship for several years of any writing by Japanese about the war (managed by the occupying forces and their Japanese employees) and his first writings were published in deviance of law.   He studied English literature in college and had a life time fondness for the great 19th century Russians.   "Summer Flowers" was first published in 1947.    In 1951, in protest and horror at the start of the Korean War, he threw himself into the path of a train.     Sadly it appears that "Summer Flowers"  and one other story by Hara are the only part of his work in print in English. Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath is worth obtaining just for these two stories.

Mel u

"Crazy Iris" by Masuji Ibuse

"Crazy Iris" by Masuji Ibuse is  the lead story in The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Age which was edited and introduced by Kenzaburo Oe.  (1985, Grove Press)    All of the short stories in the book were selected by Oe and deal with the effects of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb experience on August 6, 2009 on those who lived through it.   Several of the authors whose stories are included in the collection were in Hiroshima or near it that day.   Oe also provides an  introduction to the book in which he tells us a little about each writer and their personal background and life history.   I was so excited when I found this book in a mall book store last week.   It really is a perfect book for someone like me who wants to learn about Japanese literature.   The book contains stories by eight different authors considered very talented by Mr Oe.   In most cases he knows them.

The author of "Crazy Iris" Masuji Ibuse was born in Hiroshimi and, like Oe studied French literature and also had a deep interest in the work of Tolstoy.    He was born 1898 and died 1993.   During WWII he served in Singapore in the Japanese Army.   His primary duty as writer for the Singapore newspaper The Straights Times.   He wrote articles in which he  depicted the occupation of the city by the Japanese as very preferable for the people to British rule via a diary he published.   As time went on he stopped publishing his diary as he saw no point to doing it under military supervision.   He also gave lectures on Japanese culture at a Singapore University.    He was an unwilling inductee into the Japanese army and he showed his distaste for military life in his  writings  after the war.   He did not directly experience the blast as he was in Singapore on August 6, 1845.   He never was in combat.

There is a codified language of flowers made use of in Japanese literature and art (and even in tattoos).

Different flowers mean different things.   These meanings would be part of the assumed cultural background of the original readers of "Crazy Iris".    It is common cultural knowledge among Japanese readers and the authors of  the works in this collection would all assume their readers understood it.    This knowledge is not, at least in my case, something I learned as a child in early schooling, so I did a bit of research to discover the possible symbolic meaning of the Iris in Japanese literature.   In the symbolic language of flowers, hanakotoba, the iris stands for strength, vitality, boldness and power.   In rural Japan, where "Crazy Iris" is set, it was considered protection from typhoons and storms and was often planted on roof tops.   It is also considered a symbol of royal warriors.   Like Oe, Masuji Ibuse evokes echos from Western mythology and history in his use of floral images, super imposing two traditions into one or in some cases using the western traditiion as a haunted mirror image of the Japanese.    In ancient Greece Iris was, among other things the goddess of the rainbow and the messenger of the gods.   In ancient Egypt and much of India the iris symbolized resurrection.   In post war Japan the old faiths were destroyed.    In these circumstances in many cultures people seek out roots and myths that predate those that  let them down.    I think the same thing happened to Oe and Ibuse and other Japanese writers.   If we look deep enough into their stories we will see roots in ancient cults and animism.   It is no accident that Yeats and Blake are Oe's English poets.

"Crazy Iris" begin on the morning of August 6, 1945, the day of the first atomic bomb blast.   It is set in a rural town about 100 miles from Hiroshima.    The people of the town had been advised the day before to evacuate as a heavy fire bomb raid from the Americans was expected soon.    The Americans even dropped leaflets telling people to move.   As the story begins our narrator is at a store owned by a friend of his.   Everything but food is very cheap.   The shop keeper tells him might as well sell everything before his store is burned by the bombs.   The people of the town had all been told to take the train to Hiroshima where it was felt they would be safer.   The people are frustrated to hear that all trains going to Hiroshima have been stopped.   At first they do not know what has happened to cause this.   Our narrator goes to visit a dental clinic owned by an old friend of his.

Just a few days before, his only son, who had volunteered as a junior pilot, was killed and the news seemed to have taken the life out of him.   I felt if the air raid siren were to sound this very moment, he would not take shelter but continue to stand there leaning on the table.

Here is how he first heard of the bomb blast:

In fact I did not hear of the destruction of Hiroshima until thirty or forty hours after the event.   We in our village first learned what had happened indirectly from one of the victims who had fled to a neighboring village.  He reported some strange weapon had been exploded  and that from one moment to the next Hiroshima had ceased to exist.

Survivors of the blast began to spread out to neighboring towns.    Many of the people who lived and worked in Hiroshima were from the smaller towns near it and he wanted to return home to look for help and face death among those they knew.

Kobayashi had no idea where he was going...He was aware of  a peculiar pain throughout his body.   Something told him he was going to die.   Whatever happened he must make his way back to his home village and his family!  He managed to get a ride on a truck to Fukuyama and from there he took an army truck hom.  He returned covered with blood.   He immediately visited Dr. Tawa, the village doctor, but the latter had no idea how to treat him.

The residents of Fukuyama do not really understand yet what has happened.   The biggest topic of conversation is "where will it happen next".   Soon they hear of  the surrender.   Our narrator begins to develop stomach problems he will never get rid of right after hears the news.   Many others flood the doctor's office with complaints that seem to have no cause the doctor can find.   Many will have them the rest of their lives.

Life goes on.   Ten months after the surrender our narrator goes to visit Hiroshima to see it for himself.

I remember how impressed I was to find that of all the trees in Hiroshima, the palms alone, though charred and twisted, had withstood the tremendous temperature of a year before and were now putting forth buds.

We see some interesting events unfold that can tell us a lot about life in the immediate post war period.   It was very interesting, for example, to see how Japanese policemen are now treated by the people.   They once were regarded as agents of the Imperial God of Japan and  were greatly feared.   Our narrator was from Tokyo had had moved out when the war started.   (We never learn much about him.  We do not know if he had a family or a role in the war efforts.   I guess he is in his 60s.  We never learn his occupation or economic status.)  

A week after the blast he decides it is time to go back to Tokyo.   He stays with an old friend who lives next to a pond.   One morning he gets up early and sees a body floating in the pond.   The iris are all clustered at one end of the pond.      They all call the police.   Then they notice one of the iris is in bloom.

"Did you know there is an iris in bloom", the old man's voice voice came up.  "It's amazing!   Think of an iris blooming at this time of year!"

We learn the body in the pond was that of just another person driven mad by the blast.   

"I gather she was a half-crazy girl.   Her parents had sent her to work in Hiroshima to work in a factory and she was there the day the atomic bomb exploded"

What is more interesting to our narrator and his friend is what has happened to the iris in the pond

At the mouth of the gulley grew the angular leaves from whose recess emerged the twisted stem with its belated purple flowers.  The petals looked  hard and crinkly..."Do you think they were frightened into bloom?..I have never heard of an Iris flowering this late.   It must have gone crazy! ..When I told Mr Kiuchi this incident he turned to me and said "The iris blooming is crazy and it belongs to a crazy age"

The crazy iris evokes a world in which warrior traditions are destroyed and old folk beliefs about the protective power of flowers are turned into a  graveyard joke.   The atomic bomb somehow seems an inverted iris.   A messenger from long ago and far ahead that will have to be reread into the language of flowers.

There are a lot of interesting details in this twenty page short story.   We get a real feel for how it must have felt to be 100 miles from the blast in a small town in rural Japan.   "Crazy Iris" was first published in 1951.  Masuji Ibuse lived a very long time and became a revered figure in Japanese literary circles.   His best known work was a novel about the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Black Rain.   I will read it soon I hope.     There are other thematic veins that could be mined in this story.   For example, there are clear symbolic meanings in the reference to palm trees as the only surviving trees  These references are very interesting in that they suggest that Ibuse is evoking ancient themes from traditions other than his own.   Maybe the story is in part, as are the stories of Oe I have read, about the recreation of life supporting faiths and myths after the accepted ones are made hollow.   These matters all tie directly into Reading Life questions.

U C L A students are reading, as of September 2014, this post in large numbers.  I hope they will share theirs reaction to this and related stories with us

"Barefoot in Fire: A WW II Childhood"-by Barbara-Ann Gamboa- Lewis Manila during WWII

Barefoot in Fire: A WW II Childhood-by Barbara-Ann Gamboa Lewis is a story  of the World War II
years in Manila.    It tells of the life of the author and her family in the Manila area during the period of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and the period when the Americans come back and drive the Japanese out.     As the narrative begins, Barbara Ann is about eight.

It is not a story of war atrocities or family tragedy so much as a tale of hope and the strength of the human .
spirit.  The family is an unusual one for the times.   Barbara-Ann's parents met in the 1930 when the father was attending the University of California.    When he and her American mother fell in love,  married and then moved to the Philippines her family broke all ties with her.   Both of her parents are atheists, something very rare in the Philippines then and now for that matter.    Her father had a bit of a temper, spent most of his free time reading.    He had an office job of some kind but like a lot of kids Barbara Ann does not know what he
did.  Her mother was a teacher.   She had a  younger brother and  younger sister.

As the bombs begin to fall, Barbara Ann's father digs a long trench and covers it with tin.   The family retreats to it when ever the bombs fall.  Soon Japanese soldiers are marching through the streets.   They hear that
General MacArthur has left the Philippines and the Americans have surrendered.   They begin to see Japanese everywhere and they fear them.   Barbara Ann reminds us that the Japanese also brought with them a lot of Korean soldiers (Korea became a Japanese Colony in 1910 with western agreement).    The Korean troops were given the worse assignments by the Japanese and were considered  even crueler than the Japanese.

The times comes when conditions are so bad for the family that the parents decide they will move out of their house in Manila to a house in the countryside where they can stay for free (it is owned by a friend out of the country and he wants somebody to stay in it).     It is too far for Barbara Ann and her siblings to go to a school so the parents begin to home school them.    The father seems almost like an old school Marxist and her parents love to endlessly debate ideas with each other.    Great efforts are made to protect the father's book collection.

One day a Japanese officer enters their house.     Barbara Ann and her siblings were home alone.    She acts like it is just a routine social call from a neighbor even though she is petrified.   The Japanese officer had been drawn to come inside by the sound of Barbara Ann practicing the violin.    The Japanese soldiers almost begins to cry as he pulls from his rucksack a photograph of a young boy playing the violin.   The boy is his son.   He tells Barbara Ann to keep practicing and that he will be back to see her.   He never returns.

Things begin to get worse.   The Japanese and Korean troops have taken nearly all the life stock and are using most of the good farmland to grow food for them.   The family gets by on some near rotten rice and found vegetables (weeds) and some eggs from two ducks they are able to keep.    One day far in  the distance they see a huge fire and great clouds of black smoke.     When the USA surrendered they declared Manila an open city so the Japanese would not burn it down.    The Japanese Navy decided they would burn it and kill as many people as they could before they lose Manila.    The book does not talk directly about this but it happens and we know it.

One wonderful day they see American troops in front of their house and find out the Japanese are gone.
Of course Barbara Ann and all the other kids are in awe of the Americans (they all seem huge to them).   Americans begin to stop by the house.    The father has gone back to work and the mother teaches kids at home.    Barbara Ann is tested by the school authorities  as she has not been in school for a while and placed as a second year HS student (right where she would have been had she never left school).     American soldiers begin to drop by the homes of locals to say hello.   They are welcomed freely by all.   Barbara Ann's parents invite a lot of them to dinner.   She fixes fried chicken and they bring canned goods.   The soldiers have not had a home cooked meal in years.   We can feel the happiness of everyone now that this terrible chapter has closed.     Remember Barbara Ann's Mother and her parents stopped speaking when she moved to the Philippines.   By the luckiest of coincidences one of the soldiers is the step grandchild of  Barbara Ann's Mother.   The mother learns this as it was common for soldiers to show off pictures of their families and the mother is amazed to see her own mother's picture.   The soldier takes a picture of everyone and mails it back to Barbara Ann's grandmother who had not heard any news on the family in about ten years.    The grandmother starts a correspondence.    The two younger siblings were very sick.   The mother was very weak also.   I will compress events a bit.    The grandmother brings the entire family to the USA.   Barbara Ann, following her father, becomes a great reader.   Her favorites are William Faulkner and the Russians.   In 1971 she got a PhD in soil science at the University of California at Berkeley and as of the writing of this book was a professor at Northwestern University.    Her younger sister joined the Philippine Repertory Theater and began a life on the stage.   She still organizes childran's musicals and shows in Manila.   (As a personal note, my two youngest daughters have attended classes at the same theater for two summers programs and loved it.)   She graduated from the University of the Philippines and married one of her professors.    Her brother had some rough times as a rebellious teenager but now has a good job as an area manager for a building supply company.

Bare Foot in Fire: A WWII Childhood reads just like a young adult novel.   It is beautifully illustrated by Barbara Pollak.    The production values of  the book are very high.   It was published by Tahanan Books for Young Readers, in Manila.    Here is the publisher's description of the book:

"Read the Powerful True Story of a Young Girl Growing Up In Manila in the early 1940's Pooh hunched over the dictionary looking for the perfect name to call herself. She founded it under -Barbara, meaning foreign, strange. It was the right name for a feisty, smart, fiercely independent girl growing up bi-racial and poor in war torn Manila. Join Pooh in her adventures, whether it's chasing after wild ducks, foiling a chicken thief, playing withher own makeshift airplane, or having the pluck to play violin for a very sad Japanese officer. Barbara Ann Gamboa-Lewis gives an unflinching, candid portrayal of her pre-teen years set against the backdrop of a war that tested to the edge the wills of men, women and children alike. Barbara Pollacks charming drawings perfectly capture the highs and lows of Lewis's unforgettable childhood. Although World War II happened a long time ago, today's readers will identify with Pooh as she struggles between right and wrong, joy and sadness, obedience and rebellion."

 I doubt if you will have much luck finding this book outside of the Philippines.    I just checked Amazon.com and their is one copy there for $15.95.    (I paid 295 pesos for it-about $6.00      It is a very good read and it was fun to find out what happened to everybody.    It for sure is worth reading if  you can get a library copy or can buy it in Manila.

This is the third book I have posted on concerning WWII in Manila.    All of the books are for sale at National Book Store Branches in the Manila area for under 250 pesos.   Every day there are fewer people among us with living memories of this period.   There will soon be almost no one left to pass this history along to young people in the Philippines.    This history is little taught in schools.    I hope people who can buy these books will do so and then pass them along  to others to read.  

Mel u