Guest Post: History is in the Hands of the One Who Writes It by Shirley Miller Kamada

Zachary Whitlock knows sheep. He knows farming and knows what it’s like to have his best friend forced into an internment camp for Japanese Americans. What he does not know much about is goats and traveling by sea on cargo ships, yet he makes a decision to go with a group of volunteers to Japan to help deliver a herd of more than two hundred goats, many of which are pregnant, to survivors of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 Black Rose Writing: https://www.blackrosewriting.com/historicaladventure/p/zachary

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Zachary-Seagoing-Shirley-Miller-Kamada/dp/1685136400/

Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/zachary-a-seagoing-cowboy/7abbf249813d25c0

GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/237980236-zachary

 

History is in the Hands of the One Who Writes It

Since writing Zachary: A Seagoing Cowboy, I’ve been asked why so few people know about the World War II firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities. I’ve found a number of opinions, but little verifiable fact. I did not know about the firebombing until I began work on the book.  The story begins with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Then comes the question: Why did Japan’s military bomb Pearl Harbor? The answer—empire building.

Japan was a small nation with big ambitions stymied by a lack of resources, especially oil. In their quest to procure such resources, their sea route was contested. The U.S. refused to allow Japanese ships to pass. By bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan’s military expected to both cripple the United States Navy and intimidate the country into negotiating a settlement. Japan’s military miscalculated. The U.S. declared war on December 8, 1941, a day President Franklin D. Roosevelt termed “a day which will live in infamy.”

While it does not excuse Japan’s methodology, one factor must be understood. At that time, Hawaii was not a state but a territory, and it was a key U.S. military outpost. Americans were in shock. Termed “war hysteria,” people felt a need to subjugate or eradicate Japan and everything it represented, unable in their minds to separate the military from civilians—even children. Many saw the whole of Japan as a war machine. This form of hate was misinterpreted as patriotism. Japanese forces were famously determined. At Iwo Jima, bombardment by U.S. troops had relatively little effect on the twenty-one thousand Japanese troops who were, quite literally, dug in. Their defense included eleven miles of tunnels and underground rooms for command and control and other functions. U.S. Marines sustained more than twenty-five thousand casualties. The prospect of further such battles steeled U.S. commanders to consider more severe weaponry. Hence, in 1942, napalm was developed in a secret laboratory at Harvard University.

Tokyo was a city built of wood. Streets were narrow. Small manufacturing enterprises were situated between houses. The mission on March 9 and 10, 1945, was to level broad swaths of urban areas, snuff out manufacturing, and terrorize and demoralize the populace. Japan’s Emperor was expected to surrender, which didn’t happen. Operation Meetinghouse, as it was called, wiped out only light industry. People were burned alive or grossly disfigured as napalm stuck to human skin. While it wasn’t hidden from the American public, it was not trumpeted. Still, it is estimated to have killed a hundred thousand and rendered more than a million homeless. Then, on August 6 and 9, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, overlaying all other news, and the napalm-laden air raids remained in the shadows. 

Katsumoto Saotome, remembered as “The Man Who Won’t Let Us Forget the Firebombing of Tokyo,” was a writer who, at twelve years of age, survived the firebombing. As an adult he formed a group to gather accounts of survivors and artifacts. Saotome is said to suspect that “people do not want to see or know.” He raised private donations and established a modest museum, known as The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage.

 For further reading:

Neer, Robert (2013). Napalm: An American Biography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press

Japanese Homeland: Firebombing · Narratives of World War II in the Pacific · Bell Library Exhibits

The Man Who Won’t Let the World Forget the Firebombing of Tokyo – ICMGLT

 

About the Author

 Shirley Miller Kamada grew up on a farm in northeastern Colorado. She has been an educator in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, a bookstore-espresso café owner in Centralia, Washington, and director of a learning center in Olympia, Washington. Her much-loved first novel, NO QUIET WATER, was a Kirkus recommended title and a finalist for several awards. When not writing, she enjoys casting a fly rod, particularly from the dock at her home on Moses Lake in Central Washington, which she shares with her husband and two spoiled pups.

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