Japanese women's wartime patriotic organizations and postwar memoirs: Reality and recollection

Abstract

Japanese women have often described themselves as passive "victims" of the Pacific War, and in their wartime memoirs (senso taikenki) they have related their suffering in the hope of preventing future wars. However, when we closely examine Japanese women' s activities and beliefs during the war, we find that women were not necessarily completely detached from wartime efforts. Many women actively and even enthusiastically cooperated with the state. Even if they did not actively fight on the battlefield and kill people on foreign soil, many women were part of the total war structure, helping to stir up the patriotism that drove Japanese to fight in the war. This thesis looks at how Japanese women, through patriotic women' s organizations, were involved in the Pacific War, and what they actually believed during the war, in contrast with their recollections of the war in their senso taikenki.