The army of our country is strict in discipline and yet harmonious through its higher and lower ranks. The soldiers vie with each other in offering themselves on the altar of their country, the spirit of self-sacrifice prevails to a marked degree. This is the true characteristic of the race of Yamato. And in the siege of Port Arthur this sublime national spirit showed itself especially vigorous. Materially calculated, the loss and damage to our besieging army was enormous. If, however, the spiritual activity this great struggle entailed is taken into consideration, our gain was also immense,—it has added one great glory to the history of our race. Even the lowest of soldiers fought in battle-fields with unflinching courage, and faced death as if it were going home,[2] and yet the bravest were also the tenderest. Many a time they must have shed secret tears, overwhelmed with emotion, while standing in the rainfall of bullets. They respected and obeyed the dictates at once of honor and duty in all their service, and shouted Banzai to His Imperial Majesty at the moment of death. Their display of the true spirit of the Japanese Samurai is radically different from the behavior of men who appear on the fighting line with only the prospect of decorations and money before their eyes.
Lieutenant Sakurai is the younger brother of my friend Mr. Hikoichiro Sakurai. He had a personal share in the tragedy of Port Arthur and is a brave soldier with no little literary talent. I had read with interest the lieutenant’s letters written while at the front, giving an inside view as well as an outside one of the war and describing the delicate workings of the human heart at such a time. Later I was very sorry to hear that he had been seriously wounded in the first general assault. He has written out the facts of the siege, with the left hand spared him by the enemy’s shot. He tells us grand stories and sad stories, portrays the pathetic human nature in which fortitude and tears are woven together, and depicts to us the great living drama of Port Arthur, with his sympathetic pen. I must congratulate him on his success. To make clear the true cause of the unbroken series of successes vouchsafed to our Imperial Army, to make known to the public the loyalty and bravery of many a nameless hero, and thus to comfort the spirits of those countless patriots whose bones lie bleaching in the wilderness of Liaotung, is a kind of work for which we must largely depend upon such men as Lieutenant Sakurai, who have fought and who can write. He has blazed the way with marked success in this most interesting field of war literature.
Shigenobu Okuma.
April, 1906.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
THE Russo-Japanese War! This tremendous struggle is now happily at an end, and the hundreds of thousands of brave and loyal officers and men have come back from the fields with laurels on their heads, and welcomed by a grateful nation. What a triumphant air! How happy they look! But in their hearts is something behind the joy. At the back of their smiles lie hid the deep sorrow and the often forced-back tears for the multitudes of their comrades who, for the cause of their country and of His Majesty, have turned their bodies into the earth of lone Manchuria and cannot share in the delight of the triumphal return.
Toward the end of the Sinico-Japanese War, a certain detachment was ordered home, and before sailing paid a final visit to the graves of their dead comrades. One private stepped out of the ranks and stroked the tombstone of his special chum, saying with falling tears:—
“Dear Kato! I am going back to Japan. We have faced wind and rain together and fought in the hail-storm of bullets together, and you died instead of me, and I am going home in safety. I feel as if I were not doing right. I am very sad to leave you here alone—but be happy, dear Kato, Liaotung Peninsula is now ours! Your bones are buried in the Japanese soil. Be at ease. Understand, Kato?—I have to go.”