【Kunihiko Hisa's Manga Anything Theater (Special Edition)】Ukraine, War, and...

2023/09/14

It has been about a year and a half since Russia invaded Ukraine, and news of the war situation arrives almost every day. In this day and age, it comes with vivid footage of the battlefield. Even so, I cannot help but see the battlefield footage overlapping with World War II. Ukraine was indeed one of the main battlegrounds of the German-Soviet War, so perhaps it cannot be helped, but we are talking about a war from 80 years ago. At that time, Ukraine fought fiercely against the invading Nazi German forces as a member of the Soviet Union. The place names currently being reported from all over Ukraine are all names of fierce battlegrounds from that time. The Dnipro River, where Russia and Ukraine are now facing off, was once a base for the German army to invade Russian territory, and it was also a base where important defensive battles were fought during the German retreat. I wonder if strategic strongholds remain the same now as they were in the past.

Even so, what has surprised me since the beginning of the war is the attacks on civilian facilities by the Russian military. They are launching relentless shelling and missile attacks on civilian apartments, schools, hospitals, and commercial facilities. The footage of the ruins of streets dyed entirely in gray also reminds me of the streets of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. The world was shocked because a permanent member of the UN Security Council—countries that were supposed to have pledged to never let such tragedies happen again after the last great war—started a war. Moreover, it is such an indiscriminate attack on citizens.

There are people who say with a knowing look that once a war starts, it's inevitable that things turn out this way, because that's what war is. They go on to say that's why war is wrong, and we must create a world without war. Even so, just because it's a war doesn't mean there aren't things that are acceptable and things that are not. That was supposed to be what international rules were for. Weren't Japan and Nazi Germany judged for such crimes after their defeat?

I was one and a half years old when World War II ended. The scenery of the town when I was a child was full of burn scars—not ruins like in Ukraine, but a landscape of burnt fields under a piercing blue sky, with burnt-out buildings and warehouses here and there. Jeeps of the occupation forces drove around, and the Isezakicho and Kannai areas of Yokohama were filled with U.S. military Quonset huts and even runways where liaison planes were taking off and landing.

Yes, the whole of Japan became a burnt field due to indiscriminate air raids by the U.S. military.

Initially, the air raids targeted munitions factories such as Nakajima Aircraft from high altitudes, but because they could not achieve the desired results, they changed their policy. This led to the Great Tokyo Air Raid on the downtown (shitamachi) area in March 1945. They built a town of Japanese houses on the U.S. mainland, studied the records of the Great Kanto Earthquake fires, and used a new type of oil-based incendiary bomb that had been thoroughly researched. It was a bomb designed solely to burn down Japanese houses. Naturally, there are people living in the town. On a cold night with a north wind blowing, a large formation of over 300 B-29s suddenly entered from a low altitude. They dropped bombs to surround the downtown area, encircling it with a wall of fire, and continued to drop bombs one after another, resulting in over 100,000 people burning to death.

Oil-based incendiary bombs ignite jelly-like oil near the ground, and if it gets on your body, you cannot knock it off. Cloth air-raid hoods would instead catch fire. Everyone from babies to the elderly was burned to death in a single night. LeMay, who directed the operation, reportedly said that if the United States lost, they would be executed as war criminals. He carried it out knowing it was a cruel operation. Because it's war, it can't be helped; because Japan won't surrender, it can't be helped—I wonder what the more than 3,000 crew members aboard the 300 B-29s were thinking. It is even said that the inside of the B-29s flying at low altitudes was filled with the smell of burning human bodies.

If you gave each individual American soldier a flamethrower, brought a mother holding a baby in front of them, and told them to burn them to death, would they be able to do it? Could they pour gasoline on a girl standing sleepily while doing her homework and burn her to death? Just because it's war, because it's an order, because Japan won't surrender, because it's a war Japan started... could they burn to death an old person in front of them for those reasons alone? I don't think a human being could endure it. Yes, they could do it because the victims were not right in front of them. Looking down from inside a plane flying high above, you can't tell. You can't see the figures struggling in the flames. That is likely why they could carry it out proudly as a mission.

And then there was the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A single bomb carried by a single plane instantly burned 100,000 people to death and caused long-term suffering through radiation. Burning 100,000 innocent people to death one by one would be a horrific ordeal, but the terror lies in doing it all at once with a single bombing from a high altitude where no hesitation is felt. Mass indiscriminate murder in a place where the reality of humans killing humans has been lost. Mass murder in a place where there is no room for humanity or human sensitivity. The indiscriminate killing by drones and missiles taking place in Ukraine, while not using nuclear weapons, is truly a ghastly lack of humanity. In front of drones and missiles, there are no prisoners or surrenders; there is only being killed.

LeMay, who directed the Great Tokyo Air Raid, never became a war criminal and even received a decoration from the Japanese government after the war. The reason given was his contribution to the establishment of the Air Self-Defense Force. After the air raid on the downtown area, the Yamanote area also suffered a major air raid. I, who lived in Okubo at the time, was nearly burned to death at the age of one year and three months. My home, of course, was completely destroyed. I was told many times while my mother was alive that she wrapped me in a blanket and fled through the flames. We escaped the fire while having water from fire prevention cisterns splashed on us. The scene of burning sleepers falling from the Okubo railway bridge comes back vividly. Thanks to running around in the smoke, my eyes as a baby reportedly did not open for three days afterward.

It could be said that the timeline of world history is mostly a memory of wars. Changes in borders on world history maps are the results of wars. Colonial rule by the West was also terrible. It was thought that we had overcome a terrible history and created an era where human rights are now globally recognized, but the monster known as the will of the state does not give up on war. I wonder if the daily reports from Ukraine are asking everyone to think once again about war and peace.