War on the Pacific Front: Mailer and Shohei Compared

Introduction

This paper focuses on the frontline battlefield experiences of both American and Japanese soldiers as depicted in the semi-biographical but fictional work The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer and the autobiographical account of World War II by Ooka Shohei in Fires on the Plain. Both of these books are war literature classics that have been highly regarded in their respective countries, and both provide insights from a unique perspective that places the reader directly on the front lines and into the horrors of war on the hot Pacific islands. Having read both works provides a new understanding of both sides of the conflict. The overriding conclusion is that there are no winners.

The United States ultimately emerged victorious in World War II and the Japanese were the eventual losers. Yet, as demonstrated by both authors, each side had to deal with the monotony, pressures, and horrors associated with war. Each novel provides detailed insights into the past while also foreshadowing future consequences. As the characters in each work struggle to contend with situations far beyond their own control and not of their own making, life on the frontlines continues to move relentlessly forward around them.

Story Lines

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer is a novel about human tragedy. Set during World War II on one of the many islands American armed forces had to battle for against the Imperial Japanese Army, the story depicts the island as an insignificant one within the broader scope of the Pacific theater. That insignificance does not diminish the characters' suffering — they still face isolation, death, loss, and the loneliness of being separated from their families and society. All of the characters do their fair share of suffering as the war unfolds around them. Victory only reveals that many of their comrades will never go home, and those lucky enough to return have been scarred — either mentally or physically — and will never be the same.

Fires on the Plain by Ooka Shohei was also set on one of those remote Pacific islands during World War II. The narrative is a retelling of the author's personal experiences as a prisoner of war held by American forces. Although the author looks inward throughout the book to examine how he has changed, his perspective conveys the sense that the war has ultimately led to his fellow man's degradation. The mounting pressure applied by the victorious Allied forces begins to dissolve the Japanese soldier's social order, eventually pushing the novel's protagonist to become an isolated outcast.

Shohei and Private Tamura's Isolation

War either pushes men together or it drives them apart. In Fires on the Plain, war isolated Ooka Shohei's protagonist, Private Tamura, to the point that he was literally ostracized from the rigidly structured Japanese social order. War forced Private Tamura to suffer the effects of the conflict through solitude while surrounded by utter chaos. On the island of Leyte, Private Tamura witnessed his army disintegrating before his eyes as American forces bombarded the island and swept over the Axis troops in successive waves. As the army crumbled, Private Tamura underwent his own individual breakdown, a collapse that mirrored that of the larger institution around him. Although he is both sensitive and intelligent, he can no longer maintain the bonds of a structured society.

When his society effectively rebels against him — abandoning him to his company — Private Tamura has no alternative but to wander the island alone. The frustration of war leaves him torn between the will to live and the pull toward death. The Code of Bushido would dictate that he take his own life if social order were as it should be. But in his isolation, he can no longer justify a reason to either live or die. He has no food or water, and his will and spirit are broken. Yet somehow he continues to struggle for survival.

Faced with this life-or-death dilemma, Private Tamura begins to analyze the horrors he has witnessed and the wrongs of war as he perceives them. By modern standards, Tamura would likely be considered to be suffering from shell shock — what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder — as he wanders through thick forests and rugged mountains, completely numb to life and existence. Like the interplay of yin and yang, life for Tamura is a series of beauty-and-the-beast scenarios. The natural beauty of the island stands in stark contrast to the death and destruction caused by war.

Eventually, this inner and outer hell — wrought by starvation and isolation — pushes the soldier to a point just short of accepting cannibalism as a viable solution to his immediate survival. There is no doubt that war has broken this once-proud man into something he will never fully understand or recover from.

Conclusion

Each of these books can be considered a war classic because they each provide insights into the individual lives of soldiers on the frontlines. But deeper than that, these works give voice to the reasons why war can be considered hell. Both are classics in their respective countries because they offer a unique perspective that delivers the reader directly onto the front lines of the Pacific theater. Reading them together provides a fuller understanding of both winning and losing a war, because they tell both sides of the story. The real truth of the story is that there is no winner. Both sides lose. Just because United States forces prevailed in this particular war, tragedy did not distinguish between Japanese and American soldiers — it claimed them all equally.