Basil Archer, Interpreting Occupied Japan: The Diary of an Australian Soldier, 1945-1946.

McKay, Andrew

Basil Archer, Interpreting Occupied Japan: The Diary of an Australian Soldier, 1945-1946, edited and with an introduction by Sandra Wilson, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, WA, 2009. pp. xxxvi + 128. $25.00 paper.

What a curious book this is! Editor Sandra Wilson, Associate Professor of Japanese Studies at Murdoch University, claims four reasons for publication: the diary's unique immediacy, the only known daily diary of its kind, the only diary covering the earliest period of occupation, the only perspective not of a regular soldier but of a Japanese-speaking intelligence officer with a 'unique' insight into politics of the occupation.

These qualifications apparently are true but did they produce an illuminating record? One that combines keen observation with intelligent analysis to create a sympathetic (but not obsequious) picture of a defeated people and their conditions in the immediate post-war period? Try this:

   SUNDAY 14 APRIL, 1946: As it was a lovely afternoon we decided to
   go to Hiroshima and look over the bomb damage. The road to
   Hiroshima is good but in Hiroshima it is terrible--bomb damage, as
   many photos have shown, is terrible. It differs from Kure in as
   much as the ruins seem to have been pulverised and not just
   smashed. In all it was a pleasant afternoon's drive.

That's it, the Hiroshima excerpt in its entirety. Apparently not a Japanese in sight. Presumably all tootled off for a pleasant afternoon at a nearby hanami cherry blossom-viewing festival.

On an earlier Sunday, in February of the same year, Archer made a visit to Miyajima. 'The name means shrine island and it has one of the biggest Shinto shrines in Japan', he wrote after visiting during a Shinto ceremony. 'The weird music is accompanied by even more weird actions ... a lot of bowing and scraping and offering of various things to their gods. They include rice cakes turnips etc. each on a tray'. He devotes equal space to describing the speed and excellence of Japanese photography recording the event and to the speed and excellence of public transport to Miyajima.

In 1950 another Australian BCOF member, Allan Clifton, published Time of Falling Blossoms, unfortunately long out of print. He also visited Miyajima and noted aspects apparently invisible to Archer:

   the brilliant vermillion Shinto shrine. Rising out of the sea
   before this stood the famous torii, 'the most perfect gateway in
   the world'. Seen in the early morning wreathed with mist, it
   stirred deep-buried memories and visions of long forgotten fairy
   tales.

One of the most sensitive and important duties accorded the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) was to enforce non-fraternisation between troops and local civilians and the most explosive aspect of this was the rape of Japanese women. In his recently-published excellent BCOF overview, Travels in Atomic Sunshine, Robin Gerster records how Allan Clifton's unflinching reporting of rape earned him death threats, forcing him to go into hiding when his book was published. Basil Archer confined himself to rare, prudish and oblique allusions to 'crook ... very disgusting behaviour'.

Pressed by Sandra Wilson in an interview, he went so far as to say that if an Australian 'wanted a young lady they would take her wherever, and that was something that I had to deal with (as an interpreter, if disputes arose), which I found, you know, quite distressing'.

Why Archer became a Japanese linguist remains a mystery; he gives no hint of nascent enthusiasm for the culture or country itself. Trained as a scientist, he enlisted at the outbreak of World War II and some two years later responded to a Routine Order seeking volunteers to learn Japanese. Neither in his diary nor in interviews with Professor Wilson, which form an introduction to this book, does he reveal a motive other than that he 'learnt the language and served my country . a sense of satisfaction with the achievement I suppose'.

In his diary he reveals a strong interest in things, not people or ideas:

   To get the low down on town affairs (before the 1946 national Diet
   election that enfranchised women for the first time) we invited the
   local doctor and the town mayor to an evening meal and it was
   amazing to see them go for our tinned peaches.

One hopes that Archer learned about more than a Japanese passion for peaches; that the views of two small-town VIPs had some value. But his entry is typically costive--that of an Intelligence officer who typically winnows his harvest for the smallest grain of gold, leaving chaff that is very dull indeed. Archer, the spook, went so far as to completely obliterate one diary entry. On his 25th birthday in 1946 he wrote that not all events were recorded in his diary and would never be written by him or even mentioned in conversation--'some dangers that are experienced are best forgotten as they seem to get out of perspective when continually brought up and churned over'. As those pesky historians are wont to do.

ANDREW MCKAY

Monash University