Diasporic Dilemma

Undoubtedly many Imperial Japanese Army soldiers experienced a sense of dislocation when sent during the 1930s to the battlefields of the Asian continent with, for example, the relentless summer heat, suffocating dust, and bitter winter taking their toll on both the enlisted men and conscripts who fought on the Chinese mainland. However, even more than China, the profound extremes of New Guinea presented an unsettling contrast to the topography of Japan and bombarded the senses of the newcomer troops with such an array of unfamiliar sights, sounds, fragrances, tastes, and textures that the experience was paradoxically tantamount to sensory overload. The rigours of this alien environment caused hardship, hunger, and disease for soldiers. Furthermore, the sensory distress experienced was exacerbated by the isolation and disconnection from the home community represented by family and friends. Tamura's apathetic response to his environment is apparent when he wrote on April 2 (1943) ‘Here in this Southern land everything we see and hear is new to us but for some reason we’re listless and uninterested’. Rather than interest and excitement, the overwhelming ‘newness’ of their surroundings produced an indolent, indifferent response from Tamura and the men in his unit. Tamura could not have found himself in a place more remote from his previous lived experiences. For Tamura:

New Guinea offered nothing to which he could relate. Dislocation is difficult for all displaced persons. There is loss of the familiar, loss of accustomed landscape, loss of family, loss of friends, loss of usual occupation, and loss of what is the everyday structure of life. Dislocation to a warzone is even more challenging for soldiers. American soldier diarist Sy Kahn related that ‘during the war years in the South Pacific the primitive living conditions, tropical heat, and hard work sometimes generated among us a general malaise and aching sense of isolation and loneliness’. Japanese soldier and author Ogawa Masatsugu, who had been sent directly from the China mainland where he was serving to the warzone of New Guinea from January 1943, wrote: