Читать книгу Harp of Burma - Michio Takeyama - Страница 8

Our Japanese soldiers who came back from overseas were a pitiful sight. They looked thin, weak, and exhausted. And some of them were invalids, drained of color and borne on stretchers.

But among the returning soldiers there was one company of cheerful men. They were always singing, even difficult pieces in several parts, and sang very well. When they disembarked at Yokosuka the people who came to greet them were astonished. Everyone asked if they had received extra rations, since they seemed so happy.

These men had had no extra rations, but had practiced choral singing throughout the Burma campaign. Their captain, a young musician fresh from music school, had enthusiastically taught his soldiers how to sing. It was singing that kept up their morale through boredom or hardship, and that bound them together in friendship and discipline during the long war years. Without it, they would never have come home in remarkably high spirits.

One of these soldiers told me the following tale.