Naked and Dead

My memory of Norman Mailer, recently deceased, is of him, drunk, asinine, and rude, on the Dick Cavett show with Gore Vidal. That was a long time ago. I don’t know much about the man or his work, and I have only read his book, The Naked and the Dead. That novel, published right after WW II when he was very young, made his name. It’s a long, uneven, and at times, powerful and shocking piece of fiction.

The passage the stands out in my recollection of The Naked and the Dead is a description of the aftermath of a vicious battle on one of the small islands where the U.S. fought it out with Japan as the war wound down to its inevitable conclusion. The American soldiers have gathered together a group of naked and scared Japanese prisoners – then they move them away and shoot them. Just like that. He describes the white, chubby flesh of one of the captured ‘Japs.’ I wonder if this scene caused a hub hub in 1948. The idea that American soldiers would shoot unarmed and docile prisoners was deeply shocking to me, and here it was in a fictional account of the Pacific War by someone who was there in the fighting (at least a little). I subsequently learned that it was quite common, although it is not well known. (see War Without Mercy)

The Japanese took no prisoners, and fought to the last man – the Americans reciprocated. Both were partially motivated by a murderous racial ideology. Of course, if the goal was to gain a quick victory, shooting Japanese prisoners was not the way to encourage the other side to drop its fanatical notions of bushido. In Europe, the US Army broadcast propaganda to the Germans demonstrating how well prisoners were treated to encourage them to surrender. That was not the way in the Pacific theater. So it went, until the final incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended it all.

Mailer focuses on the psychology of the men fighting, and recounts the horrors of battle in a deadpan way. Soldiers rushing up a beach remark on comrades with skulls blasted apart, brains dripping out. A man absently notices that he has lost control of his bowels, fouling his trousers. A new lieutenant – they were called 90-Day Wonders, I believe, and had a very high casualty rate – is all gung ho to carry on the fight. His men are more jaded and practical. They go out on a patrol, his first real action, and almost immediately he’s killed by a sniper shot. No comment – things like that just happen all the time. So much for romantic heroism in the world of industrialized warfare.