Fires on the Plain. Brief Thoughts.

Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka (translated from the Japanese by Ivan Morris, 1957 Alfred A. Knopf) 246 pages. Japan.

I hadn't heard anything of this book nor the writer, found it by accident while browsing library's WWII books. But I'm glad I picked it up.

For many years, WWII existed in my consciousness primarily as Europe's war, especially as the Eastern front. This is what we learned at school, this is what the movies were about which I saw... Only later I fully realized that it truely was a world war. Yet I think that Fires on the Plain is the first novel I've ever read about the war on the Pacific.

The story is set during the few months in the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945 in a Filippine island Leyte. The Japanese army in the island is completly disorganized under the heavy attack of the Americans. On this background we see the protagonist's, Private Tamura's - excluded from his unit as too sick, mostly aimless wandering on the tropical island. Devoid of hope and almost from the very beginning aware of his inevitable death, still trying to survive. Sometimes delusional from starvation and exaustion. Now and then his isolation is broken and he finds a motive to go on. There is no heroism here, only heroism of trying to remain human while there seems to be only two options - dying as a human-being or losing your humanity. What struck me, was the total lack of comradship - at this stage of being, everybody is for himself only- your former fellow soldier may be the enemy for you, even more dangerous than the ones you knew as enemy before - homo homini lupus.

There was no colourful writing yet the result was vivid and powerful. The impression of starving soldiers, the remains of the once powerful army, barely marching through the tropical forests, trying to reach the far-away last post which their army is supposed to still hold, knowing that even this may not mean a rescue for them; the impression of soldiers in rags dying quietly from starvation...

I think it's an honest account and certainly a universal one which may apply on any war:

I could see that he was dead tired. I looked him over carefully to make sure
that he had nothing which I might need, then continued on my way.

It was strange to look at the uniforms that wrapped these transformed bodies
and to see how successfully they had survived their former owners.

"What, are you still here? You poor fellow! When I'm dead, you may eat
this."

How then could these dead people have lost their buttocks? My mind had
dropped the habit of logical reasoning, and it was not until one day I happened
to notice a body that still retained some trace of living suppleness and
suddenly felt a desire to eat its flesh, that the answer dawned on me.

Evidently there is also a philosophical/religious (Christian mysticism if I may call it this way) level in the book which I didn't fully comprehend.

The brief summary of the impression the book gave me with the words of the author:

Why was I not overcome with nausea? At the time I had no such reactions. Perhaps
nausea is simply an unconscious device of the egoist, who, when hears of horrors
outside the course of his present serene existence, allows only his stomach to
respond.