This page is a synopsis in progress of the book "Boku Wa Nihon-Hei Datta" (Japanese title: ぼくは日本兵だった, a translation of an unpublished English original, entitled "I was a soldier of the emperor"). The book describes how James B. Harris, born a British citizen, came to serve in the Japanese army in World War II.
James Bernard Harris (1916-2004) was a well-known broadcaster and author on the English language in Japan, authoring such books as "The Wonder Book of English Grammar", and appearing on the radio in "Hyakuman-Nin No Eigo" (English for a million people).
Harris was born to an English father and Japanese mother in Kobe on 4 September 1916. His father was a Far East correspondant for the Times. Shortly after he was born, his family moved to Yokohama, where he was brought up. Following the great Kanto earthquake of 1923, his family moved to America, and he then came back to Japan at the age of twelve.
His father suddenly died of pneumonia in 1933, when he was sixteen, and he then took Japanese citizenship under the name Hideo Hirayanagi (平柳秀夫, Hirayanagi Hideo in Japanese). He was brought up as an English speaker and attended an English-language school. His father hoped that he would be a journalist. Although he could speak Japanese, he had never learnt to read or write the language.
After he graduated from Saint Joseph's College in Yokohama, he followed his father into journalism, working for the "Japan Advertiser" and subsequently the "Japan Times" newspapers. He was mentored at the Japan Advertiser by Jewish journalist Burton Crane from the USA, who would at first simply tear his articles into pieces without commenting further. Eventually Harris won Crane's recognition and was even recommended by Crane to carry on his work as Japan correspondent for the entertainment newspaper Variety when Crane left Japan.
In the period before the war, as tensions increased between America and Japan, Harris was repeatedly interned by the "kenpeitai", the Japanese security police, as a suspected spy. Harris describes how a fellow journalist died in custody. The security police alleged he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window. His body contained over a hundred needle marks. The security police said these needle marks occurred when he was receiving treatment after he had jumped out of the window.
After Japan started the war with America and the UK, Harris was first imprisoned with criminals, then detained in a kind of internment camp. He was due to be sent to the UK as part of an exchange of people, including the Japanese ambassador from the USA. However, after his father's death, Harris had changed to Japanese citizenship so that he could stay with his mother in Japan. His Japanese name was Hideo Hirayanagi. After the mistake was realised, he was then released back into society, but then faced conscription. He passed the medical exam for the Japanese military and was then conscripted, despite looking to the Japanese like a foreigner.
Harris imagined that, because he was a native English speaker but could only speak, and not read, Japanese, that he would be used as an interpreter or for some other language-related task, but instead he was conscripted into the army as an ordinary soldier, where he was trained for one year. The training of the army was especially difficult since Harris could not read Japanese. Adding to the difficulty, the Japanese military had banned all foreign loanwords so every Japanese military item, such as trousers, had a special "military" name which was not in common use.
Harris completed his military training in China. During his military training, the commanding officer of his base invited him to discuss the war and told him that he thought Japan had no chance of winning against the United States, because of its more productive industry.
During Harris's training he was involved in a number of incidents. Once he accidentally urinated on a non-commissioned officer in the dark and was then beaten with a pistol.
He gives a whole section to one Lieutenant Maeda, an apparently honourable soldier who refused to steal food from the Chinese. He then describes a scene in which Maeda executed a Chinese prisoner by decapitating him with a sword. Harris had never seen anybody kill another person before this and was horribly shocked and frightened of Lieutenant Maeda after this. Shortly after this execution, another soldier called Sasaki, who had also been present, ran away from the camp and committed suicide with his army rifle. The army did not acknowledge Sasaki's death as suicide but said that he had been killed in action and gave him a full military funeral. At the funeral, Harris was surprised to see Lieutenant Maeda crying.
In the section "Baptism of Fire", Harris describes the first time he was in an attack of the enemy. His battalion was ambushed by the Chinese. A man standing just behind him was shot in the leg. Harris was astonished to see the seargeant standing up, pulling out a packet of cigarettes, and smoking one, in full view of the enemy. Harris panicked and used his shovel to dig a hole, and then stuck his head into the hole, rather than firing back at the Chinese. After this, he was widely insulted as a coward.
He includes a description of fighting off an attack of poorly-armed Chinese soldiers from a fort. The Chinese timed their attack to coincide with the Japanese new year celebrations when the soldiers would be drunk and their guard would be lowered. Harris stood on the top of a wall of the fort bayoneting the Chinese as they tried to scale the fort with ladders. Eventually Harris's force was able to beat off the Chinese.
After the war, Harris was lucky enough to be returned to Japan and was glad the war was over. As he returned home, he was surprised how much the Chinese hated him and the other Japanese.
To be continuedBlog article reviewing Harris's autobiography.