Senso: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War--Letters to the Editor of Asahi Shimbun

SENSO: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War - Letters to the Editor of Asahi Shimbun. Edited by Frank B. Gibney. Translated by Beth Carey and Frank B. Gibney. Armonk. (New York): M. E. Sharpe. 1995. xii, 328 pp. US$59.95, cloth, ISBN 1-56324588-4; US$19. 95, paper ISBN 1-56324589-2.

THIS BOOK consists of translations of three hundred out of over four thousand letters on the theme of World War Two sent in 1986 and 1987 to the editor of the Asahi Shimbun, a leading Japanese daily newspaper. It is a powerful depiction of the harsh reality of war.

The letters have been arranged in this volume in ten thematic chapters, nine of which cover material in roughly chronological order, from the first on "The Road to War" through to the ninth on `Japan Under Occupation." A number of common threads recur throughout the book: the fear which paralyzed conscience under the repressive domestic regime of the 1930s; the brutal treatment of both their...