Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo

"I hear babies cry  

I watch them grow
they'll learn much more
than I'll ever know
and I think to myself
what a wonderful world" ( Louis Armstrong),

modern England,
Amma, a socialist play write, living her life as she  deemed fit since the age of 16, when she came out,
Yazz, her daughter, challenging the feminism of her mum,
Dominique, Amma's life long friend and once, business partner, who has since moved to LA.
Shirley, another life long friend of Amma's, who's discontent with what she always wanted in life,
Carol, her student, a go getter, who hasn't looked back, in her single minded ambition, which makes her not realise, the contribution of others, and stays grounded, only because of her husband
...
and the list goes on,
twelve  characters in all,
connected across time, their social interactions, relations, tragedies, successes,
a collage of sorts, which makes London , ( And United Kingom to a lesser extent),
a multi-ethnic vibrancy of life today, where thinking change, acceptance is newly defined, wokeness itself is given new meaning, we meet Morgan, who was formerly Megan, and when life was explained to her,  by her friend,

"being trans wasn’t about playacting an identity on a whim, it’s about becoming your true self in spite of society’s pressures to be otherwise, most people on the trans spectrum felt different from childhood,”

not all whom we meet are positively woke, we come across Dominique's lover,  Nzinga,
who's version of possessiveness, and the physical and emotional torture can put to shame  any "not so awoke" wife abusing man of the former times,
while feminism itself sounds dated, as Amma is told by her daughter, Yazz, elaborating on the impending irrelevance of a binary gender, thus,

nor is the child she raised to be a feminist calling herself one lately
feminism is ho herd-like, Yazz told her, to be honest, even being a woman is passé these days, we had a non-binary activist at uni called Morgan Malenga who opened my eyes, I reckon we’re all going to be non-binary in the future, neither male or female, which are gendered performances anyway, which means your women’s politics, Mumsy, will become redundant, and by the way, I’m humanitarian, which is on a much higher plane than feminism
do you even know what it is?

in form, Bernardine, uses, one, a prose like structure, (which yours truly had tried to copy within his modest skill), and two,
narrates her tale of a hundred years or more, between the opening night of Amma's latest play,
and it's after party, coming a full circle, to show the connections, adding an epilogue,
to illustrate the irrationality of racism,via the only white character ( or so she  believed ),
of the twelve characters....

the beauty of Man Booker award winners is, the reader is continually challenged,
in structure, style and content, where I now took the ride that Bernardine Evaristo,
wanted the reader, myself, to take part,
similar to how George Saunders achieved a similar feat, with "Lincoln in the Bardo"...

Genre : Fiction
Published in: 2019
Man Booker Award Winner: 2020 ( tied with "The Testaments")
My Rating: ****1/2

 

Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel

Book Two of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy; Man Booker Award 2012

  Written, focusing from the end of Summer, or early Autumn of 1535 to the Summer of 1536, the period of Anne Bolyn's fall, her execution and the marriage of Henry Tudor to Jane Seymour. This historical novel exemplifies the role of Thomas Cromwell, in his services to the king, even better than the previous work, Wolf Hall. If Wolf Hall, discussed about the rise of Cromwell, and other notable historical figures like Thomas More and Wolsey, in this book Thomas Cromwell assumes the center stage even more so - depicting in doing so, his perseverance, his subtle revenge and the art of hypocrisy, which to be fair by him is what the monarchy expects of him. A modern man cannot fail to appreciate that for all the failings we have with our current set of world rulers, the laughable but yet fatal premises that were deemed sacred with respect to then monarchs, need to be deplored.

I will, but quote one extract from a dialogue between Cromwell, and his son Gregory, of how things were usually "formed", so that the king was never at fault, and his whims, and fancies are achieved irrespective of the price that was paid;

‘Are they really guilty?’ he (Gregory) asks, the moment they are alone. ‘Why so many
men? Would it not have stood better with the king’s honour if he named only one?’
He (Thomas Cromwell) says wryly, ‘That would distinguish him too much, the gentleman in question.’
‘Oh, you mean that people would say, Harry Norris has a bigger cock than the king, and he knows what to do with it?’
‘What a way with words you have indeed. The king is inclined to take it patiently, and where another man would strive to be secret, he knows he cannot be, because he is not a private man. He believes, or at least he wishes to show, that the queen has been indiscriminate, that she is impulsive, that her nature is bad and she cannot control it. And now that so many men are found to have erred with her, any possible defence is stripped away, do you see? That is why they have been tried first. As they are guilty, she must be.’

Yet, it is clear that Henry VIII had by that time become a laughing stock, in neighbouring France, and elsewhere - a cuckolded king, who advertised it across Europe.

From Cromwell's side too, he was almost always in an unenviable position, and it is his fine negotiation skills that made him succeed and survive. Below are the words he shares with a friend of his, the friend too finding himself in a not so comfortable position, due to his previous dealings with royalty.

"‘You know I am not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king’s servant.'"

 And he, Cromwell, was fully aware of the nature of his trade, the distance he's traveled and the progress he's made.

His whole career has been an education in hypocrisy. Eyes that once skewered him now kindle with simulated regard. Hands that would like to knock his hat off now reach out to take his hand, sometimes in a crushing grip. He has spun his enemies to face him, to join him: as in a dance. He means to spin them away again, so they look down the long cold vista of their years: so they feel the wind, the wind of exposed places, that cuts to the bone: so they bed down in ruins, and wake up cold.

 These 432 pages offer a close look at  what politics under a monarch was, what diplomacy was, and those who lived then lived through years until grievances could be set right; and how reports of certain actions were twisted to suit the purpose of the King. The main task set to Cromwell was to prove Anne's adultery. Certain careless words passed  and were overheard, and slightest, remotest suggestions were nurtured to impersonate what passed for proof. And what a mockery the whole court of law was ? What mockery justice was, as the main actors and scripts, acted out a play to achieve a few sacrificial deaths, so that the King achieved his ends.

"'We are lawyers. We want the truth little and only those parts of it we can use'",

Cromwell confesses to Wriothesey.

The novel captured the times, the mood and thin line that those who dealt with the king could tread.

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”

A fine work of literature by a fine author. Highly readable, and equally recommended. I am looking forward to read part three, which was published last February.

Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel

Thomas Cromwell : Abused son of a brutal blacksmith, political genius, master strategist, a briber, a persuasive talker, charmer and a bully. History has largely been unkind to him, and when pitted against the more intellectual, his name sake opponent, Thomas More - the Catholics have a 500 year old grudge against him. My troubles to find out more about Cromwell revealed, that only historian Elton has pointed out the important role that Cromwell played to carry England, from the middle ages to the modern era, with reformation being the leading article. Interestingly this reformation, and Catholicism, is of personal importance to Mantel given her own family Catholic background and "protestant changes" in it, as it were ( read "The Devil and Hilary Mantel".)

This book, despite its subtle wit and sarcasm, ( which suggest the author's Shakespearean influence,) is a challenging read at 650 pages. Employing modern English, the whole narration is from the point of view of Cromwell, although not in the first person. It is challenging, firstly, due to its size, and secondly due to the many characters that take the field. I have to reluctantly admit, that a kindle read of this book would've been a tad more tedious given  the numerous instances that I had to turn back the pages which listed out the characters.

I will not try to review the book, per se, much. It is a thoroughly rewarding read, and honestly given the difficult days we are going through at present, a book like this, which warrants a strict daily routine to read, is a good choice in my honest opinion. I was just lucky that a reader's club picked this as a read, these days. From here on, I will dwell a bit on the times that were, why change was inevitable, the hypocrisy that prevailed back then, and why in my opinion Cromwell did England, a much needed service. But these were difficult times, and reformists who are now revered upon, would be hounded out of civilised society in modern times, if some of these are not the author's imagination.

"Women reading the Bible, there's another point of contention. Does she know what Brother Martin thinks is a woman's place? We shouldn't mourn, he says, if our wife or daughter dies in childbirth – she's only doing what God made her for. Very harsh, Brother Martin, very intractable." ( page 124 - Wosley to Cromwell, aside, while discussing Anne Boleyn's virtues, which he has in epistles to the pope in Rome )

The matter that made the most impact to me was the facade, the show, the hypocrisy, which the  ruling class upheld as a collective inferred reverence. Anne Boleyn's and Katherine of Aragon's chastity ( or its lack); Thomas More's fight to save his soul, irrespective of all the cruelties and tortures that he personally ensured took place;  the continued sacrifice of able and capable men for the whims and beliefs of royalty. I do comprehend that the passage of 500 years has given new meaning to many things, since. But the worrying factor is, even today, in a climate of a global pandemic as we are in now, cultural practices and deep rooted beliefs still question the studied decisions of the experts in the respective fields. 

It is in this light that I cannot help, but nurture a respect for Thomas Cromwell. Mantel's Cromwell, is nothing but a practical man, who changed and interpreted rules to suit the ends he was serving, ( like Wolsey before him - but more effectively, ruthlessly.)  While his own beliefs are not presented clearly in the book, it is safe to assume that he was a modernist far beyond the age that he lived in - a pragmatist.

"It is time to say what England is, her scope and boundaries: not to count and measure her harbour defences and border walls, but to estimate her capacity for self-rule. It is time to say what a king is, and what trust and guardianship he owes his people: what protection from foreign incursions moral or physical, what freedom from the pretensions of those who would like to tell an Englishman how to speak to his God. Parliament meets mid-January. The business of the early spring is breaking the resistance of the bishops to Henry's new order, putting in place legislation that – though for now it is held in suspension – will cut revenues to Rome, make his supremacy in the church no mere form of words." ( pages 338-339)

But, yet, the skill in our authoress is such that, the respect for ideologue, Thomas More,  which I felt blooming in me, couldn't be denied either ( although he ends up in the losing side).

‘You cannot compel me to put myself in hazard. For if I had an opinion against your Act of Supremacy, which I do not concede, then your oath would be a two-edged sword. I must put my body in peril if I say no to it, my soul if I say yes to it. Therefore I say nothing.’ ( page 628 - More to Cromwell , when the latter tries to talk his way through for More's oath.)

 Such strong belief !

After a hefty 650 page read, tired as I am, I may possibly venture to its sequel, "Bringing up the Bodies", given that Ms. Mantel has managed to convince me that I must continue to read on, and live through the life and times of that master strategist, Thomas Cromwell - even if that means resorting to a kindle version, for a book better served in its printed format.

The Royalty served but more for their selfish gain. The results are a product of the blood and sweat of the officials.

"‘Do I retain you for what is easy? Jesus pity my simplicity, I have promoted you to a place in this kingdom that no one, no one of your breeding has ever held in the whole of the history of this realm.’ He  drops his voice. ‘Do you think it is for your personal beauty? The charm of your presence? I keep you, Master Cromwell, because you are as cunning as a bag of serpents. But do not be a viper in my bosom. You know my decision. Execute it.’ (page 631 - Henry to Cromwell)

It appears that Cromwell may have gone on to become the 2nd most powerful person of then, England. But there sure wasn't a day his humble beginnings were not reminded him. England, sure has come a long long way!

A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James

"There's a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
If you listen carefully now you will hear
This could be the first trumpet
Might as well be the last
Many more will have to suffer
Many more will have to die
Don't ask me why
Things are not the way they used to be
I won't tell no lie
One and all got to face reality no"
                    ( Natural Mystic - Bob Marley and the Wailers)

 "Many more will have to suffer. Many more will have to die" - This could be an apt summation of this book, given the innumerable violent deaths, that unfold over its' 680-plus pages. ( The two sentences appear verbatim in four places ).

"Kill for food. Kill for money. sometimes a man get kill because he look at another man in a way that he didn't like. And killing don't need no reason. This is ghetto." This quote which the reader comes across quite early in the book, is a truism throughout the book. Yet, it is the killings carried out for reasons, that make this book, roughly spread across a period of fifteen years ( 1976-1991 ), a page turner, suspense generator, until the last page. There is no main character, yet there are many main characters. The book narrated from the point of views of many of these characters, one at atime, takes the reader through  life in the ghetto in Jamaica, with it's gangster violence - the main item in the menu -  spiced up by real life detail of the Late Bob Marley, including his cancer related death, the CIA's involvement, inter-party political warfare (literally ), the drug syndicate involving Jamaica and Colombia, explicit sex with Gay being the main flavour, and Posse life in the Bronx (NY) with its own drugs, violence and sex. I do not recall reading such a violence infused novel, outside a conventional war background. At times the narration becomes a little challenging to follow, when patois is combined with the intoxicated mind of the narrator, and calls upon patience and perseverance from the reader -these are but a few pages, and can be overcome by slow reading. Yet, even when some of the narrators are of sound mind, the narration is largely in patois - i.e. "chat bad" - as it were. But these to me comprise the necessary ingredients which build the novel, nurturing it to near perfection.

In order to give an insight of the deep impression that this book leaves on the reader, without introducing any spoilers,  I will dwell on few examples of narration:

 - Ugly Jamaica: Jamaica is shown in detail, in all its ugliness, with nothing concealed. Take for instance the following quote from the Rolling Stone journalist - "It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about how ugly it really is"
 - There is a depressing narration detailing Bob Marley's cancer; of how it first made an appearance, how Marley's then religious belief refrained him from carrying out the doctor's recommendations, his gradual decline of health till death."You collapse in Pittsburgh. It's never a good thing hearing doctors talk using a word that ends with oma. The oma has hopped, skipped and jumped from your foot to your liver, lungs and brain. In Manhattan they blast you with radium and your locks drop and scatter."
 - The violence on which the book ride on, are mostly so detailed that it is grotesque. One description should suffice - and mind you, this is not the most gory, by any stretch of imagination "They walk right inside, grab the bus driver, and walk right out. Not a single cop even gets up. The man must have shat himself and bawled like a fucking girl when he saw the policemen looking the other way in their own fucking station. Right outside, with cops and people watching, those with guns shoot the bus driver, those without guns stab him. Was like crows upon fresh carcass"
       ...and I will leave alone, the multiple narrations of explicit sex, most of them of the queer variety, for the potential readers to discover.

At one level it could be looked upon as a portrayal of  how the Dons of the Gangsters grew and  matured,  how they held the areas under their rule in Jamaica. As an extension it could be seen how these gangs crossed over to the U.S. main land, over a period of fifteen years, becoming the leaders of the drug distribution channels. Across this period, we see how certain gang leaders mature, tire of the unending violence, how others take their place with subtlety , the unimaginable levels that they will go to retain their hold, how gangsters initially acting as supporters of politicians with firearms given them, become leaders of drug syndicate, and how it is an unending vicious cycle, as each succeeding leader becomes more ruthless, but  precise in their planning and execution.At an early stage of the book, we are shown how a studious boy is left with no choice but to become a gangster, by the doings of  law enforcement authorities. On another stream of reading we could comprehend the feeling of being forced to flee  one's country to survive and starting out a fresh as a fugitive in another land. Yet the ghosts of one's old life will never stop haunting, until one accepts them, or more precisely the conditions develop, that such acceptance become an option.

In essence, it is a disturbing read, yet an important one.

There are certain terms, mostly swearing lingo of the Jamaican dialect, which one may have to "google" to glean the most from the book.

Finally
,  I couldn't help but compile a listing of what is  possibly a "soundtrack" for the book - if such things happen - out of the references to songs that a reader comes across these pages. ( I may have missed a track or two )

The harder they come -Jimmy Cliff   

Vietnam- Jimmy Cliff
And I love her - Bob Marley 
Natural Mystic - Bob Marley
three little birds - Bob Marley
Buffalo soldier - Bob Marley
Midnight ravers- Bob Marley
Ma baker - Boney M
let's go crazy - Prince
take me with u - Prince
I shot the sheriff - Eric Clapton
Dancing Queen - Abba
ob-la-di, ob-la-da - The Beatles
Black money - Culture Club

"A Happy Man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else"

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

==========================================

****1/2

(Man Booker Award Winning novel 2013 )

"A Happy Man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else" (From " The Narrow Road to the Deep North")

Writing an essay called "Freeing My father", for  the Sydney Morning Herald, Flanagan says that his father totally forgot  about his time as a Prisoner of War (PoW), upon his son's account of meeting and conversing with some of the men of the Japanese Imperial Army, under whom his father was a PoW, back in 1942-43, in then Siam. Flanagan Snr. was 98 at the time that his son spoke to his father's former Prison officials, and soon after, passed away towards the tail end of completion of this book. I read this essay, as is my wont, two days after reading the booking - a time during which I randomly read sections of the book, read reviews, write sentiments about the book, in a notebook I keep especially for that purpose, and meander in and out of the world of the tale. And I thought that this is a book, worthy of a meandering.

The author says that he wanted his book to be based on a romance, ever though although very much a war tale. The Romance is there for all to see - the protagonist's  affair with his uncles' young wife. It is a tale of interest and has significance within the novel - yet, the romance  ended up in the periphery of the novel. It is in the periphery, along with most of Dorrigo Evans' (the protagonist) pre-war life, and his post-war life. True that his war time experience made him the man he was, a war hero, a famous surgeon, a public figure and an uninterested, cheating husband and an almost a passive father - ( until a moment arises in which, he is to prove himself in the face of a life threatening incident to  his family. And for a second time, cometh the hour, and rises the man! ) This then, this rising to be a man beyond his own expectations is the part that  captured my interest most about this novel, most. The Protagonist is a man with many failings, but all throughout, "the big fella",  the leader  to a thousand Australian prisoners of war slaving in the "death railway" in Siam, he rises above his usual self, just as the men around him expect it of  him. This then, is a leader born at the moment. In everyday life he had no place for virtue. "Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause", believed Evans. "... Dorrigo Evans understood himself as a weak man who was entitled to nothing, a weak man whom the thousand were forming into the shape of their expectations of him as a strong man. It defied sense. They were captives of the Japanese and he was the prisoner of their hope."(excerpt)  It is this expectation, which he tried to fulfill during that period, from April 1942 to September 1943, in a stretch building the Burmese death Railway under the Japanese Imperial Army. They had to do this under minimum tools, no medication, torrential rains, starvation and all sorts of diseases - malaria, dengue, dysentery, topical ulcers and the dreaded cholera. The horror that this combination brings about is absolutely harrowing.

"The Horror! The Horror!" - this is the weak whisper that Marlow hears as Kurtz dies, in Conrad's seminal work, "heart of darkness". However much a great read "heart of darkness" was, I always felt that Conrad did not sufficiently capture this horror, that he hinted of. In contrast, it is  horror that defines this novel. Hence my argument that the romance is just in the borders.

Following is an excerpt of Dorrigo Evans operating on Jack Rainbow, whose leg has already been amputated twice.

"There was noise from the general hospital huts but it was almost immediately drowned out by jack's screaming as Dorrigo Evans began cutting away his leg stump. The stench of the dead flesh was so powerful it was all he could do not to vomit......

 But there was really no leg left to get, only a weirdly moving and bloody thing that seemed just want to be left alone. The tiny piece of thigh that remained was now so slippery with blood that it was very difficult to work on....

With each galvanic jolt blood was spewing out in a small fountain. It was as if Jack Rainbow's body were willingly pumping itself dry. Dorrigo Evans was trying to stitch as far up the artery as he could go, the blood was still galloping out, Squizzy Taylor was unable to staunch the flow, blood was everywhere, he was desperately trying to think of something that might buy some time but there was nothing. He was stitching, the blood was pumping, there was no light, the stitches kept ripping, nothing held.

Push harder, he was yelling to Squizzy Taylor. Stop the f...ing flow.

But no matter how hard Squizzy Taylor pushed, still the blood kept surging, spilling over Dorrigo Evans' hand and arm, running down into the Asian mud and the Asian morass that they could not escape, that Asian hell that was dragging them all ever closer to itself."

This, in a makeshift thatched hut functioning as  the operating theater, with a kitchen saw as the cutting tool, and a soup ladle forced upon the femoral artery to stop the blood flow!

Then there was the Benjo! "... the benjo was a trench twenty yards long and two and a half yards deep, over which the men precariously squatted on slimy bamboo planking to relieve themselves. The bobbing excrement below was covered with writhing maggots-like desiccated coconut on lamingtons, as Chum Fahey said. It was a vile horror. When the prisoners competed in devising ways of doing in their most hated guard, they joked of one day drowning the Goanna in the benjo. Even for them, a more terrible death was hard to conceive." It is in this hell that Darky Gardiner, hinted as the illegitimate son of Dorrigo's brother, Tom (he gets to know of it only upon his return  drowns in, trying to relieve himself after a beating that lasted for many  hours. (He is beaten because some of the men  in his work group had  absconded work, and he was in charge of the work group that day.)

" THEY FOUND HIM late that night. He was floating head-down in the benjo, the long, deep trench of rain-churned shit that served as the communal toilet. Somehow he had dragged himself there from the hospital, where they had carried his broken body when the beating had finally ended. It was presumed that, on squatting, he had lost his balance and toppled in. With no strength to pull himself out, he had drowned....

Oh, you f...ing stupid bastard, Darky. Couldn't you just have shat yourself on the bunk like every other dopey bugger? Couldn't you just have folded their f...ing blanket the right way out?

As they raised Darky Gardiner's body, Jimmy Bigelow glimpsed it by the light of the kerosene lantern. Coated in maggots, it was something so oddly bruised, crushed, filthy, so dirty and broken, that for a moment he thought it could not be him."

By the way, relieving themselves where they were was acceptable, in this dysentery infested, cholera weakened prisoner camp, as can be understood by Jimmy's lamentations against his deceased colleague. This then is a glimpse to the unfathomable horror enclosed within these pages. But then, it is not my objective to portray the Japanese as evil, in a literal sense. Thus I continue.

Major Nakamura is the commanding officer from JIA, and this is what he has to say in one of his exchanges with Dorrigo, via a translator. Further it can be easily understood that it is this Nakamura, albeit with a different name that the author met in his trip to Japan, in the essay which I referred to, at the beginning.

"It is true this war is cruel, Lieutenant Fukuhara translated. What war is not? But war is human beings. War what we are. War what we do. Railway might kill human beings, but I do not make human beings. I make railway. Progress does not demand freedom. Progress has no need of freedom. Major Nakamura, he say progress can arise for other reasons. You, doctor, call it non-freedom. We call it spirit, nation, Emperor. You, doctor, call it cruelty. We call it destiny."

It is clear that the JIA had an embodiment of the concept of Japan, the Emperor, and the Japanese spirit and even their own death against this belief is not too great a price. So much so they literally treat prisoners of war as being less than human, since they surrendered (against killing themselves). In Nakamura's own mind he is a good man, for he felt the pain as Darky Gardiner was beaten out of sense, as a result of his order for  punishment,  but  he sees no alternative . Either he has to deliver the railway, or kill himself in shame. This is the same man, who abstains from even killing a mosquito, later in life, now settled with a wife and kids. I felt that war is unfathomable. The horror of war is something that arises out of the conditions, circumstances and higher orders that make the "men in the field" act in a particular manner.  For those who are involved in the very midst of it, at that precise moment, they believe that they are doing the best they could. Nakamura firmly believed in it, in his circumstances. Dorrigo Evans firmly believed it given his circumstances. And I honestly feel that people who decide and judge these men who were made to war, a war fed, groomed and declared by those who are never on the battle field, are much worse than those men who had the heat of the war in their hands, which largely forced them act in the way they did.  For it is these men, who are miles away from the horror and the filth of war, but are the very ones to declare the next war. Then how much credibility can their judgment on who is a war criminal and who is not, carry ?  I can't help, but be reminded of Bob Dylan's words....

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'

In this novel, we have a Korean guard of the prisoners, who had joined the Japanese army solely due to the stipend of 50 yen, and whatever actions he carried out were are under the orders of his superior, Maj. Nakamura. He is given the death sentence by an Australian Court after Japanese surrender, and until his death he cannot think of anything else, but the 50 yen, the promised stipend which he is yet to receive. It is at the trial that he understands the Geneva convention, the chain of command and the military structure of the Japanese - this then is a so called "war criminal" who pays the ultimate price for his "atrocities", undoubtedly in which he part took in. Yet, Maj, Nakamura, having gone to the Japanese mainland, forges a new identity and lies low until the anti-Japanese mood changes sufficiently. When it does change, the Americans are now friends with Japanese, and have adopted the philosophy of "let bygones be bygones" and that of "forgiving and forgetting", for most diabolical of reasons. In an exchange many years after the war, between Nakamura and another doctor who part took in the war, Sato, we are told that: " Mr. Naito was one of the leaders of our very best scientists in similar work there. Vivisection. And many other things. Testing biological weapons on prisoners. Anthrax. Bubonic plague, too, I am told. Testing flamethrowers and grenades on prisoners. It was a large operation with support at the highest levels. Today Mr. Naito is a well-respected figure. And why? Because neither our government nor the Americans want to dig up the past. The Americans are interested in our biological warfare work; it helps them prepare for war against the Soviets. We tested these weapons on the Chinese; they want to use them on the Koreans. I mean, you got hanged if you were unlucky or unimportant. Or Korean. But the Americans want to do business now."

Here we see, what a farce the whole thing is, and it is the misguided, the gullible, those with their own political objectives and of course those out with a vendetta who seek redress through trials, in a post war environment. For almost always, the true guilty can never be judged, in a post war environment. For one thing the question remains as to who the true guilty is, and for another the judges try to judge the happenings on a battlefield that is almost beyond comprehension, for those who took no part in it. In this respect, other than attempting to avoid war by all possible means, seeking justice in a post-war environment appears largely, to do a second wrong in a futile effort to put right what could've been an initial wrong.