International: The Willow & the Snow

A few things in Japan would remind many U.S. soldiers of home. One is the climate—hot, muggy summers and bright, cold winters. Bars have chromium furniture, neon lights and Japanese-made “scotch.” There are (or were) U.S.-style dance bands. In unbombed neighborhoods, the conquerors will see familiar trade names (sometimes slightly confused in pirating and copying, as “Interwomen” for Interwoven Socks). And, just as North America has its Indians, Japan has its aboriginal Ainus, a lightskinned, hairy people whose women tattoo blue mustaches on their lips.

In some ways occupied Japan will resemble the Japan that Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry opened to the world in 1853. No longer an empire, sprawled over the western Pacific and the Asiatic mainland, the land left to the Japanese is a tight cluster of some 500 islands, mostly little ones bunched around and between the four “home islands” (see map). G.I. pronunciation of the strange, sibilant place names will produce a fascinating argot (Commodore Perry’s men called Hokkaido “Hack-yer-daddy”).

Calamity Unlimited. U.S. soldiers will soon learn why the phrase “Nothing happens” is a social pleasantry rather than an expression of boredom in Japan. Almost everything that happens in Japan is a calamity.

The vast Tuscarora Deep, lying off the Pacific shore, sends out earthquake shocks which regularly rock the country. During the first 13 years of scientific recording, Japan averaged three and a half seismic shocks a day. The eastern shores of the main islands are slowly rising out of the Pacific; the western shores are slowly sinking into the Sea of Japan. There are 200 volcanoes, 50 of them still active. Storms constantly sweep the islands’ 5,500 miles of shoreline.

War Wreckage. Japan is a nation of small things, small men (who before the war outnumbered the small women), tiny trees, narrow roads, minuscule farms, large cruelties and small, delicate graces. Small animals are popular. The bear is regarded with disinterest, but to the fox and the badger the Japanese attribute supernatural powers.

How much of this country is left to occupy? The U.S. cannot know for certain until long after the occupation has begun. How many of the home islands’ normal 73,000,000 population survived combat, bombing, fire and atomic explosion may not be known for years. According to air reconnaissance:

Tokyo, the country’s geographical, political and industrial center is 51% gone.

Hiroshima, first target of atomic bombing, was once Japan’s moral cesspool, famed for its teeming whore houses and blackmailing newspapers. Now it is 60% destroyed. Said a U.S. official who knew Hiroshima before the war: “If ever a place needed to be wiped off the face of the map, that place was Hiroshima.”

All of the jampacked industrial cities are wrecked: Kobe 56%, Nagasaki 30%, Nagoya 31%, Osaka 26%, Yokohama 44%. Of Japan’s important cities only one was untouched: Kyoto, the shrine city, apparently spared for psychological reasons.

The railroad system is heavily damaged. Port facilities for the most part are ready for use. once the mines are removed. The oil and chemical industries are pretty well smashed. So are public utilities—electricity, telephone and telegraph, water supplies, streetcar and bus systems. Steel mills and shipyards are damaged, but probably in better shape than most Americans think. The bombing program never called for complete destruction of the steel industry; the Japs were deliberatelv allowed to waste manpower on ships which were sunk as soon as they took to the seas. Long accustomed to disaster, the Japs themselves may well be repeating an old saying: “The branches of the willow never break beneath the snow.”