| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Paul H. Kratoska, editor. Asian Labor in the Wartime Japanese Empire: Unknown Histories. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe. 2005. Pp. xx, 433. Cloth $84.95, paper $32.95.

As Paul H. Kratoska notes somewhat understatedly in his introduction, "the sufferings of European prisoners of war forced to work for the Japanese [during World War II] ... have been well chronicled, but the experiences of Asian laborers remain unstudied" (p. xvi). This is so despite the fact that the number of the latter clearly exceeded the former by an order of magnitude, as the various estimates in the various chapters of the volume make clear. (Unfortunately, given the lack of reliable records and the complexities and ambiguities of the Japanese labor mobilization system, it is virtually impossible to come up with definitive totals.) Possible ethnocentrism aside, a major stumbling block in researching Japanese mobilization of Asian labor during World War II has been the lack of written sources (numerous records were deliberately destroyed at end of the war, for instance) and the fact that even those that do exist (including oral histories) are often available only in local languages that are not widely used outside of the region itself. The self-proclaimed purpose of the volume, then, is to begin to fill this gap by "examin[ing] labor in different parts of Japan's wartime empire" and through this to provide a "representative sampling of Japan's labor policies," as well as to "offer a harrowing look at the experiences of those recruited to work on Japanese projects" (p. xvii). In this reviewers mind, both goals were achieved, although more in terms of the former than the latter.

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