October 14, 2022: The Gods at War: Religion and the Pacific Theater, 1937-1945 with Dr. Dayna Barnes
Religion played an underappreciated role in Asia during the Second World War. Governments used faith and religious organizations to garner support in colonies, pacify occupied areas, and court global allies. Faith leaders participated on the home fronts by building morale and used religious teachings to provide justifications for violence. Allied and Axis powers embedded monks and chaplains into military units as part of the war effort.
This is a complicated history. Three of the major combatants, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, were empires influenced by religious nationalism. Each also governed over populations which did not adhere to the majority religion. Another major combatant, China, was home to diverse religious communities with transnational ties and a large anti-religious political element represented by the Chinese Communist Party.
This short paper provides a overview of the interplay of Buddhism, Christianity, Shinto, and Islam in the conflict.
Shinto
State Shinto was a modern reinterpretation of Japan’s indigenous religion. It supported nationalism and the legitimacy of the Japanese state by highlighting the divine origin of the Emperor. Domestically, this interpretation brought religious fervor to ultra-nationalism. Religion, nationalism, and militarism were fused by glorifying a citizen’s duty to sacrifice for Emperor and country.
Because State Shinto was tied to the nation state of Japan, it was not exported to occupied territories or puppet states through missionary activity. However, the people of colonized nations (Korea and Taiwan) were legal subjects of the Japanese empire and as such were required engage in emperor worship at Shinto shrines using Shinto religious practices. By 1945, more than a thousand Shinto shrines had been built in Korea for that purpose.[1]
Buddhism was the majority religion in both of Japan’s colonies, and was also widely practiced in Japan (Japanese Buddhism in the war effort will be discussed below). Buddhism and Shinto are non-exclusive religions, so it was possible for individuals to practice both simultaneously. However, mandated State Shinto practices presented a problem for the significant number of Christian Koreans. A monotheistic religion, Christianity prohibits the practice of other religions amongst its followers. This sparked a debate within the Korean Christian community. Is participating in Shinto services at a shrine a religious or secular nationalist act? In the 1930s, Christian school groups refused to attend mandatory trips to shrines, arguing that they could not bow to Shinto gods. The state considered refusal to be subversive, because it challenged an underpinning of Japanese nationalism. During the war period Japan cracked down on such objectors, who were subjected to state violence and imprisonment.[2] Chinese Muslims in territories occupied by Japan also refused to engage in such practices as saluting the Japanese flag or bowing in the direction of the imperial palace on similar religious grounds, but because the support of this minority group was an important part of Japan’s ongoing pacification strategy, exemptions were allowed in their case.[3]
Christianity
Christianity was the majority religion in the United States and was significant in the American war effort. As with State Shinto, the conviction of faith was tied to wartime nationalism. American missionaries had been among the most active Americans in Asia since the 19th century. They and their children drew on their experience abroad to work as Asia experts within government, think tanks, and media. Exporting American values, like free speech and democracy, was not dissimilar to their work exporting religious doctrine. Because of the small number of Asia experts in America at the time, members of this group had outsized influence on American policy and public opinion.
Former American missionaries had special sympathy for their co-religionists in Asia, and worked to drum up public and official support for Christian allies. China’s nationalist government was headed by Chiang Kai-shek, a converted Christian. Chiang and his wife Soong Mei-ling, known in America as Madame Chiang, became popular figures in the U.S. A sense of shared religious values contributed to sympathy and support for China even before Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into the war. In 1943 Madame Chiang embarked on a famous goodwill tour which impressed congressmen and swayed public support for China’s war effort.[4]
Christian ministers also participated in the war directly. They increased morale with sermons, provided prayers for victory, comforted soldiers, and administered burials as chaplains embedded with troop units in the field. Using military-issued chaplain kits equipped with crosses, alter cloths, candlesticks, and communion cups, they lead services from alters set up on the hoods of jeeps and held mass prayers on aircraft carrier decks. Such spiritual aid, organized by the state, kept up troop’s resolution to fight.
By contrast, the religious beliefs of some Christian individuals and churches called for pacifism and non-violence even in the face of war. Approximately 70,000 young American men of draft age received Conscientious Objector (CO) status for alternative service, while other applicants had their requests denied and either enlisted or were imprisoned. COs worked as medics, provided other non-military support functions within the armed services, or worked domestically in specially-created Civilian Public Service labor camps.[5] Thus, while not directly engaged in combat, this small group of young Christians none the less contributed to their nation’s war effort.
Buddhism
Buddhism was practiced by the majority of the population in warring Japan and China both. Leaders of this universalist religion, which holds non-harm as a core value, grappled with doctrine in order to support chauvinistic nationalism and violence. Monks took the view that participating in wartime violence was permissible, and supported the war effort through fundraising and providing medical treatment. Like Christian chaplains, monks also served in military units by performing funeral rites and offering soldiers spiritual guidance to raise morale. Some even picked up weapons themselves.[6]
During the war, violence was widely condoned under a Buddhist principle allowing for “compassionate killing.” Acting to save the nation (interpreted as either Japan or China depending on the monk’s own nationality) was an act of compassion to save the population from external violence. Likewise, if the enemy soldiers were acting as “devils” wreaking devastation, compassion required destroying them to protect the innocent.[7] In Japan, where the Zen school of Buddhism had long been tied to Bushido warrior philosophy, lectures and distributed poetry taught conscripted soldiers equanimity in the face of death.
Pacifism and anti-war sentiment were almost unheard of amongst Japanese Buddhist teachers. A single case of resistance demonstrates the broader absence. In 1937 a monk in central Honshu opined in a public lecture that “war is never a benefit to a nation, rather it is a terrible loss” and called for his country to pull out of China, which it had invaded. In response, he was arrested by the state for “fabrications and wild rumors” and stripped by his religious sect of qualifications to propagate Buddhist teachings. His qualifications were posthumously reinstated by his order in 2007 after the case was re-discovered, and an inscription of his words now stands outside his temple.[8] However, the punishment he received from both government and religious institutions serves to demonstrate how out of step monk Takenaka Shōgen was with the thinking of his time.
Japan also used shared practices of Buddhism to secure cooperation in Buddhist majority areas it occupied. Under the auspices of a Japan-led pan Asianism, Chinese Buddhist organizations in occupied territories were forced to become part of a Japanese-sponsored Buddhist network directed by Japanese Buddhists, in order to continue operations. Similar oversight was instituted in colonial Korea, although in both cases local resistance and non-compliance limited the impact of Japanese control.[9]
Islam
In Muslim-majority colonies and in sub-national regions, religion created a common identity for resistance and nationalist aspirations. In Indonesia, Malaya, and parts of the Philippines, nationalists from Muslim communities resisted Dutch, British, and American imperialism. This undermined the Allied war effort and created an opening for Japanese imperialists to exploit.
Japan presented its war as a struggle to create a Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which would unite the diverse peoples of Asia to fight western imperialism and achieve modern development under Japanese leadership. Japan’s first political experience courting Muslim groups followed its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and creation of the puppet state Manchukuo. Chinese Muslims in this area were a largely urban group descended from foreign traders whom had remained in China and intermixed with the local population while retaining Muslim faith. The cooperation of leaders from this community helped facilitate Japan’s ambition to indirectly control the area, and in turn Japan provided political and financial support, helping build Muslim schools and mosques, and funding Hajj trips to Mecca. Similar programs were initiated as Japan pressed further into China during the late 1930s. In 1938 Japan established the All China Muslim League to sponsor education, employment, and cultural activities. Although this initiative met with mixed success and low participation, it was similarly aimed at gaining minority local support for Japanese presence.[10]
Building on experience in China, Imperial Japan sought to make its capitol a site of transnational Islamic discourse. It built a grand mosque in Tokyo in 1938 and hosted conferences for Muslim elites from China, South East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Japan also provided scholarships for young Muslim students to study in Tokyo, with the hope of creating a new generation of Japanese-speaking Muslim leaders across Asia with warm ties to Tokyo.[11] Each of these activities initially ingratiated populations in the Western-colonized territories which Japan conquered and made nominally independent during the war.
Japanese occupiers pointed to both the western powers which had colonized these areas, and to domestic communists who opposed religion, as common enemies in order to rally support for its Greater East Asia project. When pushing into Indonesia in 1942, occupiers worked with Muslim nationalist leaders and gave them a platform to write and speak in the Japanese-sponsored press and on the radio.[12] While later in the war many of these leaders became disillusioned with Japan’s delayed promises of independence and extraction of resources, in the initial phases of wartime expansion, Imperial Japan was often able to successfully court Muslim communities as an anti-communist, anti-Western friend of Islam.
Conclusion
Although often neglected in modern retellings, religion was a part of wartime experience and the war effort on all sides of the conflict. These complex strands deserve to be woven back into the history of the Pacific War.
Referenced Works
Dayna L. Barnes, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan, (Cornell University Press), 2017.
Kelly A. Hammond, “Managing Muslims: Imperial Japan, Islamic Policy, and Axis Connections during the Second World War,” Journal of Global History, 12:2 (2017).
Kelly A. Hammond, China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II, (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Ethan Mark, Japan’s Occupation of Java in the Second World War: A Transnational History (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Dae Young Ryu, “Missionaries and Imperial Cult: Politics of the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea,” Diplomatic History, 40:4 (September, 2016).
Kue-jin Song, “The Real Face of Korean Buddhism under Japanese Colonial Rule,” Journal of Korean Religions, 10:2 (2019).
Fumihiko Sueki, “Chinese Buddhism and the Anti-Japan War.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 37:1 (2010).
Brian Victoria and Narusawa Muneo, “’War is a Crime’: Takenaka Shōgen and Buddhist Resistance in the Asia-Pacific War and Today,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus,
12:37:4 (2014).
Dong Zhao, ” Buddhism, Nationalism and War: A Comparative Evaluation of Chinese and Japanese Buddhists‘ Reactions to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945),” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 4:5 (2014).
[1] Dae Young Ryu, “Missionaries and Imperial Cult: Politics of the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea,” Diplomatic History, 40:4 (September, 2016), 609.
[2] Dae Young Ryu, “Missionaries and Imperial Cult: Politics of the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea,” Diplomatic History, 40:4 (September, 2016), 612.
[3] Atsuko Shimbo, “Ethnic Minorities in China under Japanese Occupation: the Muslim Campaign and Education during the Second Sino-Japanese War,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, 10:1 (2021), 126-128.
[4] Dayna L. Barnes, Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan, (Cornell University Press, 2017), chapter 5.
[5] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/conscientious-objectors-civilian-public-service
[6] Dong Zhao, “Buddhism, Nationalism and War: A Comparative Evaluation of Chinese and Japanese Buddhists‘ Reactions to the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945),” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 4:5 (2014).
[7] Fumihiko Sueki, “Chinese Buddhism and the Anti-Japan War,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 37:1 (2010), 17.
[8] Brian Victoria and Narusawa Muneo, “’War is a Crime’: Takenaka Shōgen and Buddhist Resistance in the Asia-Pacific War and Today,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 12:37:4 (2014).
[9] Kue-jin Song, “The Real Face of Korean Buddhism under Japanese Colonial Rule,” Journal of Korean Religions, 10:2 (2019).
[10] Atsuko Shimbo, “Ethnic Minorities in China under Japanese Occupation: The Muslim Campaign and Education during the Second Sino-Japanese War,” Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies, 10:1 (2021), 130.
[11] Kelly A. Hammond, China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II, (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 82.
[12] Kelly A. Hammond, “Managing Muslims: Imperial Japan, Islamic Policy, and Axis Connections during the Second World War,” Journal of Global History, 12:2 (2017).
