Kabei: Our Mother – Film Review

 

Directed by Yoji Yamada, 2008 

The story of a Japanese family that endured persecution because of the father’s opposition to the second world war.

There have been many books and films about the second world war.  Few of these works available in the United States have looked at the everyday lives of Japanese civilians during the war.  Yoji Yamada’s film, Kabei: Our Mother not only looks at civilian life at this time, but gives us a picture of a Japanese family that endured persecution because of their opposition to the war.

This film is based on Teruyo Nogami’s autobiography and she is one of the two daughters portrayed in the film.  Shigeru Nogami, portrayed by Mitsugoro Bando is the father and former college professor who looses his job and then is arrested for his opposition to the Japanese war drive.   Kayo, portrayed by Sayuri Yoshinaga is the main character and the mother who diligently works to hold her family together after her husband is arrested.

During the film we see how the only crime of Shigeru was the fact that he opposed the war.  A police officer said openly that had Shigeru merely renounced his views he would be released from prison.  Yet Shigeru, as well as many other Japanese civilians, chose to remain in prison rather than support an unjust war.

This film also showed how Shigeru’s wife Kayo was ostracized by members of her family and community because of the fact that she shared her husband’s views against the war.  Kayo endured this ostracism while she held down a job and supported her children on a meager income.

In the United States, there are many people who continue to argue that this country needed to go to war against Japan.  The repression we see in the film Kabei was only one aspect of the repression of those days.  After all, the Japanese military forces murdered tens of millions of people in their occupations of China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines.  On the other hand, the United States is portrayed as a nation with “liberty and justice for all.”

Therefore, it might come as a surprise that people were sent to prison in the United States of America for merely opposing the first and second world wars.  

Eugene V. Debs spent three years in prison for giving a speech in Canton, Ohio against US participation in the first world war.  Debs was a labor leader and ran for President of the United States five times.  The last time he ran for president was while he was in prison on charges of opposing the first world war.

Eighteen members of the Socialist Workers Party spent between 12 and 18 months in prison for their opposition to the second world war.  Among those sentenced were leaders of the Teamsters Union in Minneapolis Minnesota.  This teamsters local won union recognition after a bitter yearlong strike.  The strike happened to be one of the battles that transformed the labor movement in the United States.

We can also point to the facts that the United States government also committed war crimes aimed at civilians during the second world war.  One of the relatives in the film Kabei lived in the city of Hiroshima.  This relative died as a result of the US atomic bombing of that city.  Before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the United States destroyed large parts of the 67 largest cities in Japan with firebombing. 

Most people have a sense of the horrors of war.  These wars are even more horrendous when they in no way benefit the masses of humanity.  These must be some of the reasons why conscious people from the United States and Japan chose to go to prison rather than support horrendous wars that would only lead to more wars.

Since the second world war we have seen demonstrations that supported labor rights, civil rights, immigrant workers, and in opposition to US engineered wars.  I believe we need to understand that these demonstrations were, in part made possible by people in Japan, the United States, and the rest of the world,  who chose to go to prison rather than support unjust wars. 

Today anyone who lives in the United States has a better chance of going to prison than citizens in any other nation in the world.  Since the second world war the US has carried out wars all over the world that cost the lives of millions.  

Understanding these facts we might ask the question of what was accomplished by the slaughter of the second world war?  In other words, the real heroes of World War II were not the generals who caused massive destruction, but those who served time in prison rather than support and unjust war.