Enemies Unknown: Desertion in Japan's "Sacred War" in China

• In Event: Cowards, Criminals, and Scapegoats: The Forgotten History of Desertion in East Asia

Abstract

What does it mean to fight a war on a continent-sized battlefield for years on end? What becomes of morale and humanity in a conflict waged between extremes of total annihilation and surprising levels of collaboration? This paper examines how an entire 'military generation' of Japanese soldiers confronted the horrific challenges of the Japan-China War dealt with the phenomenon of "desertion," the Manchurian and Shanghai Incidents of 1931-1932 through the final days of Japan's defeat and the whirlwind of civil war in China. A serious crime in most armies, often punishable by death, what was often known in Japan as "fleeing in the face of the enemy," when it came to actually charging a soldier for the crime, commanders in China often masked it under other names or hid it among other categories of death or disappearance, so as to deflect blame from themselves for allowing it, just as they did so with many other transgressions of military discipline and regulations that earned the Imperial Army the reputation for savagery and brutality that still stalks discussion of this war. For the deserter, to flee in China meant to abandon all. Despite some claims that desertion occurred rarely, thousands may have 'gone missing.' Revision of the Senjinkun military codes in January 1941 that made surrender an official crime was in part due to the 'loss' of soldiers in the vastness of China, with terrible consequences for subsequent soldiers in in Southeast Asia and the Pacific theatres, where whole armies were condemned to die.

Author

• Theodore F. Cook, William Paterson University