War of Words

by McDonald, Hamish

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many people helped during the long search for Bavier’s story. The late Sebastian Fraubenius started the process, and my regret is that this book was not ready before he passed away. Hiroko Katayama, while my assistant in The Sydney Morning Herald bureau and later as her career in journalism developed, devoted much time and interest in helping me talk to Eddie Bavier, other family and friends, and his ex-Kempeitai colleagues. Georges Baumgartner, correspondent in Tokyo for the Tribune de Geneve and later Swiss radio and TV, was an enthusiastic supporter. Andrew Horvat provided exquisite translations and cultural insights throughout, and helped track down several locales. Robert Neff put me in touch with the family of Inagaki Riichi. Mary Corbett, a daughter of Yokohama, helped me explore her wonderful city and helped with interpretations. Chris Dunn, an Australian living in Yokohama, was another invaluable guide in the city and the Miura Peninsula. Kanako Nakayama, head librarian at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, helped find copies of obscure books connected with Bavier. One was a copy of Bavier’s Nihon no Shorai, kindly donated by Nosaki Takehide, whom I thank. Ishikawa Mikihiro searched the Kyoto Shimbun archive for Bavier’s writings. Koike Kazuko advised on female dress and emancipation in the 1920s. The Swiss Embassy in Tokyo put me in touch with the registry of births, deaths and marriages at Grisons, whose staff kindly undertook a search of the Bavier family records. Nobuko Inagaki, niece of Inagaki Riichi, sent photographs of her late uncle and provided details of his early life and postwar career.

  Peter Elphick, author of Far Eastern File, gave advice on records relating to pre-1942 Singapore intelligence. My daughter Catriona McDonald, undertook searches for me in the Cambridge University Library. Henry Tegner sent a copy of Karin Warming’s account of the 1923 earthquake and some photographs of her parents.

  The Australia Council provided a grant for a research trip to Japan in 1986 – they have waited a long time for acquittal and I thank them. The Asialink institute of the University of Melbourne gave my writing a big push by including me in their arts residency program in 2009, enabling me to spend four months in Yokohama, while the Asialink trio of Jenny McGregor, Julia Fraser and Alison Carroll were constantly supportive. Robert Dujarric and Jeff Kingston at Temple University Japan organised my acceptance at TUJ for the residency, and were stimulating interlocutors throughout.

  A special mention goes to Sakaguchi Harumi, a former official of the United Nations who became interested in the war in the South-West Pacific while stationed in Papua New Guinea, and who came across Bavier’s story while seeking out Japanese veterans in Japan. He has followed many of the same paths of research, and has displayed a generous and collegiate spirit as we shared knowledge and conjectures about this story.

  The family of Charles Bavier have been encouraging and helpful throughout. In Singapore, I met Eddie and Leonie Bavier and John Bavier while they were alive, and wish they were still with us to read this account. The late Sadaichi (‘Sam’) Sakai, Bavier’s stepson, was a sharp observer in 1986 and I wish I had known more at the time what to ask him. Elizabeth Koh, widow of John Bavier, also shared her knowledge of the family. John’s daughter Stella Bavier, in Vienna, sent her compilation of the family history. In Tokyo, Eddie’s daughters Naomi Ito and Philomena Bavier came to meet me on several occasions, provided some valuable memories, and entrusted me with some keepsakes from their father’s life. Daikichiro Otsubo, nephew of Suga Otsubo, came to meet me at the Ise shrine and reminisced about his life in the Bavier household in Kyoto. Charles de Bavier, of Geneva, and Matteo de Nora, of Monaco, both great-grandsons of Edouard de Bavier provided information and photographs, including the magnificent pictures of ‘Bavierville’ in old Yokohama.

  In Australia, Helen Ferber was a colleague of Bavier at the Shortwave Overseas Broadcasting Division in 1942 and recalled many incidents about him and the unit, as well as providing a copy of the Pix magazine article about the service. Emeritus professor Sydney Crawcour painted a word picture of Bavier in Melbourne and Brisbane during the war, and in Kyoto afterwards, and kindly read through the manuscript of this book. Chris Summers, niece of John Proud’s third wife Coral (nee Craig), shared her researches into Proud’s life before, during, and after FELO. Michelle Grattan kindly made me a guest of her Canberra home while I carried out archival research in 2010, and her cousin Ron Cerabona was a friend and interested audience about my work. Greg Pemberton broke away from his own research in the National Archives to help me track down files. The staff of the Australian Archives, the Australian War Memorial and the National Library of Australia were helpful without fail. Daryl Burge-Lopez provided a copy of the 23rd Battalion souvenir magazine. The Ryde District Historical Society told me about Glen Ayr, the house where Bavier stayed in 1912. The historian of Melbourne Archdiocese, Leonie Duncan, provided information about the Mission in Bourke St where Bavier found employment and lodging in 1912–15. John and Kaoru Slee looked over my manuscript and made many suggestions which vastly improved it. Walter and Shizue Hamilton shared their understanding of post-war Japan.

  Andrew Schuller heard me talk about this book during a chance encounter in Sydney, and from his immense publishing world experience and contacts steered me happily to the University of Queensland Press where the publisher, Madonna Duffy, and editor, Jacqueline Blanchard shaped this into a much better book.

  This book could not have happened without the love, exchange of thoughts and suggestions from my wife Penny. She and our children Alex and Laura put up with my long absences for research in Yokohama and Canberra, and my absence of mind when immersed in the various chapters of Bavier’s life. I owe them a great thanks, and dedicate this book to them.

  SOURCES

  Many of the details of Charles Bavier’s early life come from his 2700-page manuscript, titled Hachisaburo, a copy of which is in the Harold S. Williams Collection at the National Library of Australia, Canberra. A partial copy of this came my way in the box of documents given to me in Tokyo in 1983 by Dr Sebastian Fraubenius.

  Pictures of life in the foreign settlement of Yokohama and Meiji-era Tokyo were sourced from:

  •Barr P 1989, The Deer Cry Pavilion: A Story of Westerners in Japan 1868–1905, Penguin Books.

  •D’Anethan A (Baroness) 1912, Fourteen Years of Diplomatic Life in Japan, S. Paul & Co.

  •Hoare JE 1994, Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements: The Uninvited Guests 1858–1899, Japan Library.

  •Seidensticker E 1984, Low City, High City, Charles E. Tuttle Co.

  The radical circles of Japan in the late Meiji years are explored in the writings of:

  •Jansen MB 1954, The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, Harvard University Press.

  •Jansen MB 2009, The Making of Modern Japan, Harvard University Press.

  •Notehelfer FG 2011, Kotoku Shusui: Portrait of a Japanese Radical, Cambridge University Press.

  •Miyazaki T 1982, My Thirty-three Years’ Dream, Princeton University Press.

  The counterpoint of Japanese expansionism is illustrated in:

  •Dudden A 2006, Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power, University of Hawaii Press.

  The newspaper Japan Weekly Chronicle (Kobe) and other contemporary sources, held in the Yokohama Archive and Museum, include many vivid accounts of the 1923 earthquake disaster and its aftermath. A long letter by Karin Warming, written in 1995, gives some detail of the impact of the earthquake on Bavier. The earthquake is also portrayed in:

  •Ajioka C 1998, Modern boy, modern girl: modernity in Japanese art 1910-1935, Art Gallery of New South Wales.

  •Poole OM 1968, The Death of Old Yokohama in the Great Japanese Earthquake of 1923, Allen & Unwin.

  •Stanley TA 1982, Ōsugi Sakae, Anarchist in Taishō Japan: The Creativity of the Ego, Harvard University Asia Center.

  The subsequent slide into militarism and police control is ex
plored in:

  •Bush L 1962, The Road to Imamura, Robert Hale. This text gives a perceptive foreigner’s account of living in late 1930s Japan.

  •DeWitt Smith H 1972, Japan’s First Student Radicals, Harvard University Press.

  •Johnson CA 1977, An Instance of Treason: Ozaki Hotsumi and the Sorge Spy Ring, Charles E. Tuttle Co.

  •Mitchell R 1976, Thought Control in Prewar Japan, Cornell University Press.

  •Murray J 2004, Watching the Sun Rise: Australian Reporting of Japan, 1931 to the Fall of Singapore, Lexington Books. This text tells how official Japan manipulated Western observers to conceal its strategies.

  •Tipton E 1990, The Japanese Police State: The Tokko in Interwar Japan, University of Hawaii Press.

  The cult of the sword and violence is illustrated in:

  •Nakazato K 1929, Dai-bosatsu Tōge: Great Bodhisattva Pass, translated by C.S. Bavier, Shunjō Sha. A few copies can be found in various libraries.

  The Gallipoli campaign is narrated in:

  •Bean CEW, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, Australian War Memorial.

  •Volume I – The Story of Anzac: the first phase (1921)

  •Volume II – The Story of Anzac: from 4 May, 1915 to evacuation (1924)

  Charles Bavier’s brief service is noted in his record of service in the Australian War Memorial archives. The history of his unit can be found in:

  •Austin RJ 1998, Forward Undeterred: The History of the 23rd Battalion 1915–19, Slouch Hat Publications.

  •Ford HH (Corporal) 1918, The 23rd Battalion, AIF Souvenir Edition of ‘The Voice of the Battalion’. This has been digitised and is available online.

  Aubrey Herbert wrote of his experiences with the Anzacs in:

  •Herbert A 1919, Mons, Anzac & Kut: A British Intelligence Officer in Three Theatres of the First World War, 1914–18, Hutchinson & Co.

  Less formal anecdotes come in the letters and diaries of Pvt H.T.C. Alcock, Pvt Harold Hill, Lt Ted Gaynor and Capt Percy Parkes, all of which are held in the Australian War Memorial.

  For the intelligence war between Japan and the British in Southeast Asia, the fall of Singapore, and the Japanese occupation of Singapore, I drew upon the following works:

  •Cheah BK 2003, Red Star over Malaya: Resistance and Social Conflict During and After the Japanese Occupation of Malaya 1941–46, NUS Press.

  •Chen C 1995, Force 136: Story of a WWII Resistance Fighter, Asiapac Books.

  •Comber L 2008, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945–60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

  •Elphick P 1997, Far Eastern File: The Intelligence War in the Far East, 1930–1945, Hodder & Stoughton Educational.

  •Frei HP 2004, Guns of February: Ordinary Japanese Soldiers’ Views of the Malayan Campaign and the Fall of Singapore 1941–42, NUS Press.

  •Friend T 1988, The Blue-Eyed Enemy: Japan Against the West in Java and Luzon 1942–1945, Princeton University Press.

  •Fujiwara I 1983, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in Southeast Asia During World War II, Heinemann Asia.

  •Kratoska PH 1998, The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic History, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.

  •Lamont-Brown R 2001, Kempeitai: Japan’s Dreaded Military Police, Sutton Publishing.

  •Lockhart RHB 1936, Return to Malaya, Putnam.

  •Pfennigwerth I 2006, A Man of Intelligence: The Life of Captain Theodore Eric Nave, Australian Codebreaker Extraordinary, Rosenberg.

  •Robertson E 1979, The Japanese File: Pre-war Japanese Penetration in Southeast Asia, Heinemann Asia.

  •Shinozaki M 2011, Syonan My Story: The Japanese Occupation of Singapore, Marshall Cavendish Editions.

  •Tan L 1985, The Japanese Occupation: Singapore, 1942–1945, Singapore National Archives.

  •Tan LT 1946, Kempeitai Kindness, Malayan Law Journal.

  •Trenowden I 1983, Malayan Operations Most Secret: Force 136, Heinemann Educational.

  Regarding Bavier’s work in Australia 1942–45, a significant amount of background information and some mention of his role came from the FELO papers at the National Archives of Australia, including regular Information Bulletins, and Commander Jack Proud’s 1945 recapitulation, The Story of FELO. The Australian War Memorial Research Library had many FELO records, as well as the interrogation record on capture of Inagaki Riichi (AWM No. 54 PWJA 145379). The National Archives of Australia also holds an Immigration Department file on Bavier that includes correspondence regarding his attempts to retain and regain British citizenship, and security agency evaluations. For a Japanese appreciation of Bavier’s role, see an article by Suzuki Akira in Bungei Shunju, Oct 1977.

  FELO’s psywar campaign against Japan is analysed in:

  •Gilmore AB 2000, You Can’t Fight Tanks with Bayonets: Psychological Warfare Against the Japanese Army in the Southwest Pacific, University of Nebraska Press.

  •Powell A 1996, War by Stealth: Australians and the Allied Intelligence Bureau 1942–1945, Melbourne University Publishing.

  •Suzuki A & Yamamoto A 1977, Propaganda Leaflets of the Pacific War, Kodansha. This text compares Japanese and Allied propaganda and includes many illustrations.

  •Towle P, Kosuge M & Kibata Y (eds) 2000, Japanese Prisoners of War, Continuum. In particular, Chapter 4, ‘Understanding the Enemy: Military Intelligence, Political Warfare and Japanese Prisoners of War in Australia 1942–45’, by Kent Fedorowich.

  •Walker HN 1974, ‘Psychological Warfare in the South-West Pacific’, Army Journal (Australian), no. 298 (March 1974), pp 58–60.

  The atmosphere of wartime Australia is captured in:

  •Darian-Smith K 2009, On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939–45, Melbourne University Publishing.

  •Thompson PA & Macklin R 2000, The Battle of Brisbane: Australians and the Yanks at War, ABC Books.

  Occupation-era Japan is vividly portrayed in:

  •Aldous C 2002, The Police in Occupation Japan: Control, Corruption and Resistance to Reform, Routledge.

  •Dower JW 2000, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, W.W. Norton & Co.

  •Gayn M 1984, Japan Diary, C.E. Tuttle.

  •Gerster R 2008, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan, Scribe Publications.

  The haiku at the beginning of some chapters are translations by the late Australian poet, Harold Stuewart, who spent his later years in Kyoto, from his book A Net of Fireflies (1960) by kind permission of Charles E. Tuttle & Co.

  The quotation from Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima is reproduced here with the kind permission of Penguin Random House.

  The quotation from Low City, High City by Edward Seidensticker is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Estate of Edward G. Seidensticker.

  INDEX

  The page numbers in this index refer to the page numbers of the printed book and are reproduced here for reference only. Please use the search facility of your device to find the relevant entry.

  Adachi, Major, 206–12

  Amakasu, Masahiko, 164–5

  Arai, Captain, 171–2

  Asadori, Professor Kato, 178

  Asakusa panoramas, 25

  Australia, 119–27

  Australian Army

  Broadmeadows training, 126–7

  Cairo, 130–3

  Gallipoli, 135–41

  passage to Egypt, 127–9

  Baeltz, Dr Erwin, 29

  Ball, Professor William Macmahon, 226–7, 259

  banking crisis, 1927, 172

  Barclay, Renée, 252

  Baugouin, 75

  Bavier, Char
les Souza, 9–11, 311

  adolescence, 48–9

  Australia, 119–27, 143, 187, 226–40

  Australian Army, 6, 122–3, 126–43, 191

  Australian citizenship, 187–8

  British counter-intelligence, 194–201, 213–23

  Cairo, 130–2

  Cantonese army, 142

  childhood, 9–11, 13, 16–33

  Chinese ronin and revolution 89, 91, 99, 100, 108–17

  Christian instruction, 27

  discharge from Australian Army, 142

  English language teacher, 154, 156

  The Future of Japan, 305

  Hong Kong, 107, 190–4

  Japan, 304

  Japanese passport, 189

  kendo, 58, 66, 88, 118, 200

  Korea, 102–5

  marriage, 149–52

  Peking, 106

  Sakai Hachisaburo, 20

  school years, 44–53

  Shanghai, 95

  Singapore, 194–200, 302–3

  Thailand, 202–12

  Waseda University, 64–6, 72, 87, 99

  Yokohama Commercial School, 57

  Bavier, Edouard de see de Bavier, Edouard

  Bavier, Edward, 152, 161, 216, 222–3, 265, 278–86, 290–5, 296–9, 300–1, 305–7, 309–11

  Bavier, Eric, 307

  Bavier, John, 216, 222, 252, 265–74, 276, 296, 303, 310–11

  Bavier, Naomi, 301

  Bavier, Philomena, 293, 300–1

  Bavier & Co., 12, 15, 43, 56, 99, 116, 145, 150, 166

  Bavier, Naka see Yashiro, Naka

  Bavier’s Monthly, 154

  Becker, John, 199–200, 213

  Bell, Elizabeth, 197, 200

  Bell, Colonel Hayley, 192–4, 196–201, 206, 212–15