The Enemy - Why Dr. Sadao couldn't kill him?

  (A young Russian girl with a gun during WW2)

THE ENEMY

  Why Dr. Sadao couldn't kill his 'enemy'?

By- Sudarshan Das

                                    

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Table of Contents:

1. About this Project
2. About the Author's message
3. An un-necessary conversation. Or was it?
4. Why did Sadao risk his job and life to save the unknown man?
5. The beauty of the gift that Sadao received.
6. Bibliography

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About this Project

   (Doctors operating in makeshift surgery chamber during WW2)

It's a shame that how a brilliantly emotional story like "The Enemy" also can become plain and boring without proper visual context. As an ardent fan of both the World Wars and the devastations that they caused, this story, dealing with the themes of war prisoners and war doctors has always been a food of my utmost interest. 

In this project I will not give you a summary of the story nor will I tickle you with funny memes, but what I will present to you is a new PERSPECTIVE to look at the story with a bunch of visual aids. 

So let us begin.

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About the Author's message

(Pearl S. Buck)

In war, humanity and patriotism are often a question. It's easy to read novels about it from the winner's perspective or to watch films about the heroism of the brave soldiers as they charge the enemy in slow motion with a piece of heavy background music playing. But to actually live in a war, to face the food scarcity, to see the gut spilled out of somebody's stomach, to see women raped, children molested and men turn into slaves, to live in constant fear of a bomb dropping, that's more like what war actually is.

Nobel Prize (1938) and Pulitzer Prize (1932) winner, Mrs. Pearl S. Buck before turning to a full-time writer had spent most of her life in the Chinese provinces during the Chinese civil war. Having seen the horrors of war, she decided to focus her literary talents on the life of war-stricken and war-refugees. This short story is among one of her many attempts to pen down how humanity blooms even at the tip of gunpowder and how we all can learn a thing or two from it. 

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An Un-necessary Conversation. Or was it?

I always had wondered why this random conversation between Sadao and his father was plugged in fore-front of the story -  

"Those islands yonder(you wonder), they are the stepping stones to the future for Japan"

"Where shall we step from them?" Sadao had asked seriously.

"Who knows?" his father had answered. "Who can limit our future? It depends on what we make it?"

When I first read this line I was like, why do we need this conversation? Japan is itself basically a cluster of islands, then what made Sadao's father think that his son needs an extra explanation about some off-shore unimportant islands? Later I assumed that this might have been an indication to give us a glimpse of how the father-son dynamics between Sadao and his dad worked; but this theory too didn't satisfy me for long, because just in the next paragraph we get a detailed description of how the father-son relationship between them actually was. 

His dad was hard working and Sadao was not bitter about it, he went abroad to study medicine in America because 'education was his father's chief concern', he waited to marry till his father approved of his girlfriend, his father was proud of his medical and scientific achievements. All these were sketched out in the paragraph just next to the conversation. If the aim was not to point out the father-son relationship then why did the author put it just in the opening pages of the story. Why 'islands', why call them 'stepping stones for japan' and what it had got to do with the 'future for Japan'?

I mostly had discarded that conversation while I wrote notes on that story until recently I discovered it's importance. What was the importance you ask? I have save that for the last, and trust me

if point it out right now, you won't comprehend it properly.

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Why couldn't Sadao kill his 'enemy'?

(12 years old white WW2 soldier)

The next time you question why Sadao couldn't leave his 'enemy' at the sea to bleed to death or why did he take the pain to operate on his 'enemy', remember this picture of this young soldier and then put yourself in the shoes of Dr. Sadao Hoki. Possibly you will find the answer pretty quick. 

But still here are the following 3 reasons why I think, Dr. Sadao Hoki couldn't kill his 'enemy'.

Reasons No.1 - He had a superiority complex

 

(Dr. Shuntaro Hida. Only Hiroshima doctor to have lived the atomic explosion and later serve Hiroshima patients)

At first glance, Dr. Sadao had very few reasons to choose to save Tom's life, and one of them surely was his superiority complex of being an excellent doctor. Certainly, his excellent career in medicinal science and his privilege of attending the general personally might have caused this inflation in his ego but for this instance, his god-like capabilities became his own hubris. Dr. Sadao had no reason to operate on him after he had brought wounded Tom home, but he did operate, he did operate because he was sure he could save him; to put it in the words of the cook, "That young master is so proud of his skill to save a life that he saves any life"; and to put it in the words of the General, "Evidently you can save anyone, you are so skilled."

So its no beating around the bush that he was a doctor of extreme capabilities, and thus we can safely assume that this arrogance of being able to save anyone's life was one of the primary reasons why he couldn't kill Tom and decided to save him instead.

 

Reason No.2 - He chose to be a doctor not to be a war doctor.

  (An American soldier attending a German soldier, France, 6th September 1944 )

Patriotism is often a tricky subject, if you are born in a country you have to be patriotic towards it, you have to pledge towards its safety, security, and prosperity. So, was Aldof Hitler, Winston Churchill, Stalin, and every modern fascist government patriotic? Of-course they are patriotic, but now comes the more tricky question, how much should one sacrifice humanity to establish patriotism? 

Dr. Sadao was faced with this same question when he was contemplating whether to operate on the dying soldier and save him for the sake of humanity or let him bleed to death in the name of patriotism.

"But I have been trained not to let a man die if I can help it." Certainly few professions allow us to see the broader picture of humanity and one of them for sure is the profession of a doctor. Sadao was Japanese but he was trained as a surgeon by an American professor. He had learned the trade of saving a life not the trade of saving only selective lives. He knew human suffering transcended ethnic identities. During the operation on Tom he even addressed him as "My friend" clearly showing us that when he was holding the blade with the responsibility of a surgeon, he forgot all geographical boundaries and only saw a wounded man that he was going to heal. 

This was also the reason, this formation of a doctor-patient relationship was the reason why he had to leave his unfinished report behind his secret drawer and why he had to spend sleepless nights later. He couldn't simply let his patient die, at least not after he himself nursed Tom back to health. Surely his superiority complex might have pushed him to save Tom, but his greater sense of humanity was stopping him from killing Tom.  

Reason No.3 - He was not a frog of the well. 

(A Japanese-American soldier serving the American army with his mother before going to war)

Hana in the middle of all this peril asks an important question to Sadao, "Even the servants see more clearly than we do. Why are we different from other Japanese?" What she meant was, were they patriotic enough or were their servants more patriotic than them?

The answer to Hana's uncertainty is that they are different from other Japanese not because they are less patriotic but because they have seen and lived their "enemies" culture. They have been trained in America. have met in an American's house and have fallen in love with each other while staying in America. For them "Americans" were not a vague concept of pure evil as comprehended by other Japanese like their cook or their gardener. Hana and Sadao knew Tom meant no harm to them, it was Tom's country or more correctly Tom's country's politicians and army generals who meant harm to Japan. 

Thus this was the third reason why Dr. Sadao couldn't kill Tom. 

  

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The Beauty of the gift that Sadao received.

Remember in the beginning the conversation I talked about? That one in which Sadao's dad said to him that the islands are the stepping stones for Japan's future? Well now's the time to reveal that conversation's importance. For that, we need to take a look at one of the ending paragraphs of this story.

"You are a good man," the General murmured and closed his eyes, "You will be rewarded."

But Sadao searching for the spot of black light in the twillighted sea that night, had his reward.

Sadao's dad had told him that those islands were the stepping stones for the future of Japan, and also told that no one can limit their future, it depends on them what they make of it. Sadao's actions literally used the islands to help Tom escape. That night when Sadao saw no light from the islands, he knew Tom had escaped safely. Sadao finally used the islands to shape the future of Japan in the shade of kindness and humanity in the heart of his "enemy". That satisfaction of having done work for the sake of kindness was his greatest reward and perhaps his greatest homage to the teachings of his father. That piece of retrospective conversation was not "just a conversation" between a father and a son. It single handily the zest of the chapter:

To shape the future of one's country with acts of selfless kindness.  

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Bibliography

1. The Enemy, Vistas (CBSE Class XII prescribed English book).
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck (For information on the author)
3. https://www.instagram.com/_world_war_2_pictures/ (For pictures used)
4. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-33675622 (For information and picture of Dr. Shuntaro Hida)
5. My own brain. (I have it!)

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 Thank You for Reading