Japanese War Diary

The stock picture of the Japanese soldier in China is a uniformed fanatic who is taught from birth that dying for his Emperor automatically gives him a ticket into the Shinto heaven. At home, his relatives are pictured as accepting with happy little Japanese smiles the news of his death at the front.

That war morale among the Children of the Rising Sun may not be quite that bright is strongly hinted in a Japanese war diary, not yet published in English, called Wheat and Soldiers, written by Sergeant Ashibei Hino. In it Japanese readers got their first realistic, human picture of fighting in China--a day-to-day account of thirst, hunger, homesickness; of no heroes, but plain men fighting desperately for their lives. And between the lines was something that looked suspiciously like anti-war sentiment:

"We feel," wrote Hino, "that the enemy soldiers whom we are killing look so much like us that we could be neighbors." When his company narrowly missed annihilation, he confessed: "I was seized with violent rage that precious life could be damaged so easily. . . . We soldiers are not only sons of men, but also husbands and fathers. We are human beings. . . . This is not the first time for me to have this sort of feeling. It is one of the most commonplace thoughts on the field of battle."

Six months after publication Wheat and Soldiers had become Japan's most spectacular best-seller (almost 5,000,000 copies).

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