Gyokusai

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Fallen Japanese soldiers on Attu after their attack on May 29, 1943.

Gyokusai ( Japanese 玉 砕 ; composed of the characters for jewel and broken ) was a term for a form of mass suicide that was popular in nationalist circles in the Japanese Empire during the Second World War.

origin

The term is borrowed from a Chinese tale in the Chronicle of the Dynasty of Northern Qi , which belongs to the 24 dynasty stories and in which a morally superior person prefers to smash his most precious jade before revealing his principles to the simple tiles on his house roof save.

Saigō Takamori (1828–1877) took up the picture in one of his poems , but the term initially remained largely unknown in Japan and did not find its way into everyday language.

use

The entrance gate to Yasukuni Shrine, with the temple in the background

The term Gyokusai reappeared in the Pacific War when the majority of the 1200 soldiers of the Japanese garrison still operational on the Aleutian island of Attu , led by their commander Yasuyo Yamasaki, in a mass attack (see Human Wave ) against the positions of in May 1943 around 11,000 US soldiers ran until all Japanese soldiers were either dead or incapacitated.

The events were positively glorified in the following official Japanese pronouncements and referred to as Gyokusai or Attu Gyokusai . This description quickly became popular, and while the American point of view saw the defenders of Attu suffer only one crushing defeat, many Japanese soldiers saw the death of their comrades on Attu as a moral victory that raised the fallen soldiers to a purer, spiritual level . The soldiers had given up their natural life in order to continue to live in the Kokutai , a kind of folk soul.

It is unclear whether the Japanese commander actually wanted to achieve this effect on Attu. He had occupied a tactically favorable position in high terrain and did not attack the Americans in the valley until his supplies were running low. His last radio message to headquarters shortly before the attack - "I plan to successfully wipe out the enemy" - could also have hinted at the hope of actually defeating the enemy or stealing new supplies.

The Japanese military manual ( 戦 陣 訓 , Senjinkun ) of 1941 forbade all soldiers from surrendering. The term Gyokusai then became a synonym for an honorable death in military parlance , and imperceptibly it also assumed the meaning of looking for death in battle . Even without weapons or the prospect of inflicting any kind of damage on the enemy, officers and men were expected to participate in Gyokusai attacks. The soldiers were usually convinced that such a death would guarantee them a place in the Yasukuni shrine , where they would live on and worshiped as kami forever.

Gyokusai was then used in official announcements as a name for similarly loss-making attacks by Japanese troops during the unsuccessful defense attempts of Kwajalein , Rota , Tarawa , Makin , Saipan , Tinian and Guam .

Gerald Groemer describes that in the Western perception the spiritual thought behind such actions was usually not perceived or understood, but the attacks only helped to cement the image of the irrational , inhuman enemy.

Further development

In the case of the Battle of Saipan , the war diary of the Imperial Headquarters in June 1944 is cited in the English-language literature with the entry:

"The Saipan defense force should carry out gyokusai. It is not possible to conduct the hoped-for direction of the battle. The only thing left is to wait for the enemy to abandon their will to fight because of the gyokusai of the one hundered million; "

“The defense forces on Saipan should perpetrate Gyokusai . It is not possible to turn the battle into the hoped-for direction. The only thing that remains is to wait for the opponent to lose his will to fight in the face of the Gyokusai of the One Hundred Million. "

During 1944 initially Ichioku Tokko , was used in the press concept (special assault unit of hundred million) which was to describe the unity of the Japanese people in the fight against the Allies, turning them with the special assault unit of the Air Force kamikaze in conjunction As an invasion of the Japanese home islands seemed more and more likely, Gyokusai was added by the military government to the catchphrase ichioku gyokusai ( 一 億 玉 砕 , "hundred million smashed jewels"), a term that became a synonym for the continuation of the actually lost war.

The idea behind it was summarized by Professor Nanbara Shigeru in such a way that, according to the proponents of this doctrine, only a fight to the death could be a (symbolic) legacy for the following generations on which they could build again.

Other names

Since the Japanese infantry soldiers have traditionally shouted cheers such as “Long live the emperor” or “Long live Japan” ( Tennō heika banzai ! Or Nippon banzai! ), Traditional storm and Gyokusai attacks by the Americans were mostly simple since the Middle Ages referred to as a banzai attack (banzai charge) . The course of the Gyokusai attack on Saipan on July 7, 1944 was described differently by Professor Benjamin Hazard. He states that the Japanese soldiers marched into the starting positions for their final attack while singing.

The Shimpū Tokkōtai or Kamikaze tactic of the Japanese Air Force, which was pursued by the general staff from 1944, is sometimes described as a systematic continuation of the Gyokusai attacks.

literature

  • Nicole A. Dombrowski: Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted with Or Without Consent. Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2004, ISBN 0-415-97256-6
  • Theodore L. Gatchel: At the water's edge: defending against the modern amphibious assault. 1996 ISBN 1-55750-308-7
  • Harold J. Goldberg: CD-Day in the Pacific: the battle of Saipan. Indiana University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-253-34869-2
  • Shū Kishida: A place for apology: war, guilt and US-Japan relations. Hamilton Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7618-2849-4
  • Ulrich Straus: The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II. University of Washington Press, 2005, ISBN 0-295-98508-9
  • Toshiyuki Tanaka: Hidden horrors: Japanese war crimes in World War II. Westview Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8133-2717-2
  • Michael Weiner: Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan: Race, ethnicity and culture. Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-20855-6
  • Samuel Hideo Yamashita: Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese. University of Hawai'i Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8248-2936-0 , 66

Footnotes

Remarks

  1. ↑ Alternatively: "Men of strength prefer to become gems to break into myriad fragments than to become roof tiles to live out their lives in idleness." (Strong people prefer to become a gemstone to break into myriad fragments instead of roof tiles and to end their lives in inactivity.) So in At the water's edge: defending against the modern amphibious assault. P. 154.
  2. ↑ so in Claus-M. Naske & Herman E. Slotnick: Alaska: A History of the 49th State. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8061-2573-X , p. 129.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John W. Dower: War without mercy: race and power in the Pacific war. Pantheon Books, 1986, ISBN 0-394-50030-X , p. 231.
  2. ^ Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted with Or Without Consent. P. 249.
  3. ^ Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan: Race, ethnicity and culture. P. 65.
  4. ↑ Suicide squads: Axis and Allied special attack weapons of World War II: their development and their mission. Ballantine Books, 1984, ISBN 0-345-30439-X page 262.
  5. ^ John Toland: The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936–1945. Pen & Sword Books, 2005, ISBN 1-84415-304-5 , p. 512.
  6. ^ At the water's edge: defending against the modern amphibious assault. P. 154.
  7. ↑ The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II. P. 51 ff.
  8. ↑ Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese. P. 66.
  9. ^ Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan: Race, ethnicity and culture. P. 65.
  10. ^ Women and War in the Twentieth Century: Enlisted with Or Without Consent. P. 250.
  11. ^ Race, Ethnicity and Migration in Modern Japan: Race, ethnicity and culture. P. 66.
  12. ^ Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa: Religion in Japanese history. Columbia University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-231-02838-5 , p. 269.
  13. ^ Andrew E. Barshay: State and intellectual in imperial Japan: the public man in crisis. University of California Press, 1992, ISBN 0-520-06017-2 , pp. 117 ff.
  14. ^ Robert S. Burrell: The ghosts of Iwo Jima. Texas A&M University Press, 2006, ISBN 1-58544-483-9 , p. 44.
  15. ↑ Bruce M. Petty: Saipan: Oral Histories of the Pacific War. Mcfarland & Co Inc, 2009, ISBN 0-7864-4244-1 , p. 138.
  16. ^ At the water's edge: defending against the modern amphibious assault , p. 154.