While reading Aaron Moore's Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire, I was reminded of what the late Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain scribbled in his diary: “[P]lease read my diary. Look through my things, and figure me out.” We often see the diary as a window into a person's most private and unfiltered thoughts. But it is, in fact, a stage upon which the writer performs a particular persona for an imagined audience invited to literally look through his things and figure him out. If diaries are compromised versions of the “truth,” then what can they tell us about a past as fraught and heavily disputed as World War II? Moore argues that by looking at the diaries left behind by Japanese, Chinese, and American soldiers during World War II in Asia (1937–45), we can help answer some of the most profound questions surrounding that conflict: Why did some soldiers commit atrocities while others did not? Why did some fight to the death while others quickly surrendered? And what made the Second World War a truly global conflict?

All modern societies, Moore points out, seek to refashion subjects into citizens through institutional tools of self-discipline. State-sanctioned diary writing was one such method through which governments imposed a new subjectivity of civic-mindedness among the general populace, particularly among soldiers. Moore traces the origins of military diary writing to the late nineteenth century when Japanese and Chinese militaries encouraged their soldiers to record battlefield experiences in officer-reviewed diaries in order to inculcate the virtue of militarized discipline. The state “invaded” into “private” diaries through periodic officer reviews and the ubiquitous patriotic discourse circulating in mass media to influence how soldiers saw themselves and the world. During the 1937 Shanghai-Nanjing campaign, Chinese and Japanese soldiers alike initially used their diaries to demonize each other and generate emotional readiness for killing. Nevertheless, the unexpectedly chaotic violence of battle disillusioned soldiers’ faith in the adequacy of field diaries for capturing the raw, visceral realities of total war. Instead, soldiers began resorting to literary experimentation that betrayed reportage-like influences, popular in the 1930s, to get at what they felt was a more “truthful” account of war using rhetorical journalistic flourishes, sketches, and poems. Chinese and Japanese state authorities later reasserted their ideological hold on soldiers, leading some fighting men to regurgitate nationalist rhetoric in their journals. Others, too traumatized by their battlefield experience, continued to write entries that veered toward the subversive and even seditious. Accordingly, Moore sees the real value of soldier diaries not as the source for the “truth,” but rather as a prism for understanding how individuals forged a new sense of self within the extraordinary situation of total war.

The most riveting section of Writing War looks at diary writing practiced by American and Japanese soldiers during the Pacific phase of the war. Swatting aside cultural stereotypes about fanatical Japanese and freedom-loving Americans, Moore demonstrates how the American military also encouraged diary writing among soldiers to instill self-discipline, hatred of the enemy, and total obedience. Indeed, the book recounts chilling diary excerpts in which American GIs psychologically readied themselves to kill the enemy, much as Japanese and Chinese soldiers had been doing for years. One American soldier wrote approvingly of the decapitation of a Japanese prisoner while adding, “War is war and the Geneva Red Cross Convention … is a long, long way from the front line. There is but one law, KILL, KILL, KILL!” (p. 214). In an intriguing aside, Moore suggests that societies with a stronger faith in the sanctity of the private sphere may be especially susceptible to state indoctrination.

Moore finds that irrespective of their experience as victors or losers, Japanese, Chinese, and American veterans continued to speak out about their experiences after the war in order to “set the record straight” in postwar public memories. However, veterans found a civilian audience only partially receptive to their stories; many faced isolation and ostracism from a postwar society preferring to commemorate a quite different history of World War II.

The juxtaposition in chapter 2 of diary entries from Japanese and Chinese soldiers fighting the same battle is quite evocative. Chapters 5 and 6 enrich John Dower's vivid portrayal of American and Japanese racism during the Pacific War by demonstrating how wartime propaganda filtered down to the ordinary soldier.Footnote ¹ Despite the vast web of propaganda, censorship, and coercion in the military, soldiers did not robotically reproduce state ideology in their writings but exercised some degree of choice in what they wrote about and, by extension, how they constructed a new identity that would influence their subsequent wartime conduct. Consequently, they bear not a little responsibility for their own actions. The genre of diary writing was a tool used by military institutions to discipline soldiers and yet, as Moore writes, “genre was bent, twisted, and broken for purposes of ‘truth telling’” (p. 289). In this respect, the book is a sophisticated and welcome departure from previous studies on soldier diaries.Footnote ²

Errors are sparse and forgivable. Moore suggests that Prince Konoe Fumimaro announced the “New Order for East Asia” (tōa shinchitsujo) in 1940 but it was actually in 1938 (p. 3). Konoe did lead a “New Order Movement” (shintaisei undō) in 1940, but this had quite a different vision altogether. I do not fully agree with Moore's depiction of the ideological messages produced by state and mass media institutions as being so unified in content. Perhaps it was precisely because of the occasional incoherence of wartime ideologies that soldiers could experiment with literary techniques and subversive writings. Some attention to the diversity of warfronts would have further expanded our knowledge of multiple soldier subjectivities. For instance, we know that military campaigns, levels of violence, and Japanese occupation policies in South China and North China differed considerably.

This splendid and highly original book richly captures the literary inventiveness, shocking brutalities, and human frailties shared by all soldiers during World War II in Asia. It makes an important contribution toward our understanding of the war as a global experience that transformed the very worldviews and identities of all participants, regardless of country of origin, in strikingly similar ways. The research is impeccable and based on an impressive array of Japanese-, Chinese-, and English-language archival sources, which Moore weaves together with great skill. Finally, the book provides an insightful study of the intersection between state propaganda and individual choice during wartime. Through diary writing, soldiers conformed with and revolted against the norms of field diaries and journalistic reportage. They became more effective fighters but also uncontrollable malcontents; cogs in a total war machine but still masters of who they were and how they derived meaning from the war. I highly recommend this book to anyone searching for a fresh and thoughtful transnational history of World War II through the eyes of ordinary soldiers. Here is a scholar who has read their diaries, looked through their things, and figured them out.