I've always wished, though, that the history of Japan had contained a chapter such as this:
***** The contribution of Italian anti-Fascist partisans to the campaign in Italy in World War II has long been neglected. These patriots kept as many as seven German divisions out of the line. They also obtained the surrender of two full German divisions, which led directly to the collapse of the German forces in and around Genoa, Turin, and Milan.
These actions pinned down the German armies and led to their complete destruction. Throughout northern Italy, partisan brigades in the mountains and clandestine action groups in the cities liberated every major city before the arrival of combat units of Fifteenth Army Group, a mixture of American, British, French, and Commonwealth divisions, to which was added a smattering of Royalist Italians.
<http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/spring98/OSS.html> *****
In contrast:
***** Janice Matsumura. More than a Momentary Nightmare: The Yokohama Incident and Wartime Japan. (Cornell East Asia Series, number 92.) Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program. 1998. Pp. vi, 172. Cloth $22.00, paper $14.00.
How vigorously did ordinary Japanese resist their government's policies at the height of World War II? And how effective were the Japanese state's techniques of controlling thought and expression on the home front? In both cases, the answer is less than one might expect, according to Janice Matsumura. Her well-researched, clearly written monograph addresses these questions by focusing on the arrest and eventual prosecution of several dozen journalists and policy researchers, starting in September 1942, for allegedly violating the revised Peace Preservation Law of 1941 or conspiring to revive the outlawed Japan Communist Party.
Matsumura argues persuasively that this episode, known since the war as the Yokohama Incident, was not a simple case of press censorship by an all-powerful thought police. Instead, the targets were not only journalists but also certain well-connected researchers who had recently renounced leftist positions and now professed to support the wartime imperial government. The researchers, some of whom were linked to the elite Showa Research Association that advised the first Konoe cabinet in 1937-1939, suffered especially harsh treatment, although two years later the police renewed the pressure on journalists by shutting down several hard-hitting monthlies and harassing major publishers....
Cf. Janice Matsumura: <http://www.sfu.ca/history/matsumura.htm>. -- Yoshie
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