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Teaching Tim O'Brien's Vietnam in Japan

By Koki Nomura

I teach English and American literature at colleges in Japan. A scholar of war and trauma in American literature, I earned my Ph.D. with a study of Vietnam veteran-novelist Tim O'Brien's work. In 2006, I began to teach a course on American war literature in which we appreciate O'Brien's On the Rainy River and The Man I Killed (both from The Things They Carried), James Jones' The Thin Red Line, Ernest Hemingway's Soldier's Home (In Our Time) and others.

I remember Vietnam War literature courses first arrived on American college campuses in the late 1980s when I was a 20-year-old, Japanese-born English major at a small state college in South Jersey. Unfortunately, my school didn't offer any such courses, but my interest in Vietnam never faded. I thought Vietnam vets deserved respect; the men had answered their nation's call and did what they had to do in Vietnam, period. Don't get me wrong: I'm neither a war lover nor a crazy patriot. It's just that, to me, war is a place where our courage gets measured, and if I were to get drafted today, I might not be able to say no to it. Yes, courage is one mysterious thing.

Twenty-some years after my wonderful days in America, I'm now teaching Vietnam War literature in Japan. When I first started this, I kept asking myself, "with no military experience, do I have the right to discuss Vietnam in my classroom?" I soon found myself writing this same question in the guest book of Tim O'Brien's official website. Months later he replied: "I'm delighted that you are teaching my work to students in Japan – that means the world to me – and I'm very grateful." This e-mail from my hero almost gave me a heart attack, but it surely convinced me I was doing something right, so I gave it a small green light.

One of the students' goals in this course is to feel what it is like to fight in a war, as well as to gain an understanding of history, trauma and literary techniques. I've received positive responses from students thus far, who all claim they're dragged into those war stories. Many, for instance, can identify with protagonist Tim's agony in On the Rainy River (1990), O'Brien's masterpiece on the reluctant draftee's prewar conflict and spiritual shutdown. One female student wrote in her essay, "I see my boyfriend in Tim, a man under extreme pressure." Her boyfriend, a 25-year-old Ground Self-Defense Force (Japan's army) member, was leaving Japan for Iraq to provide rear area support. This elite soldier believed the war in Iraq was wrong, but he also felt pressure from his company and enlisted with the troops going to Iraq, feeling both obligated and confused. The girlfriend was worried, not because he could be dead on his first day in the rear, but because she was carrying his burden. I asked her to share this story with our class, but she didn't like my idea. No, college courses aren't like Oprah.

Yes, the Japanese military was in Iraq too, and yes, we sent our troops overseas in contravention of our constitution which was written by the Americans in 1945. But let's put the historical ironies aside. The bottom line is that this fellow cast aside his personal beliefs in order to remain a man of action, and he came home highly decorated. All of us in the world call this "duty" and "sacrifice" (sure, he's in the military, isn't he?), and a country should be built on those values. O'Brien closes On the Rainy River with upside-down heroism: "...I came home, but it wasn't a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war." A country, he tells us, is also built on things like agony and sorrow.

My students' favorite, On the Rainy River, has something very universal: we hate war but we also feel obligated to our country, and our obligation stems not from our desire to kill but from the fear of being called chicken when our country really depends on us. So this story is perfect material for twenty-year-olds to ponder the mystery of courage. Asked what they would do if they got drafted, their minds, like Tim's, get jammed between two hells, becoming a shameful pacifist or becoming a courageous dead man. However, Tim O'Brien's latest stories tell us of the life of a survivor who can shoulder the burdens of the past and forge ahead with his life in company with the dead.

Koki Nomura, a Japanese national and graduate of Salem Community College in New Jersey, received his PhD from Hokkaido University (Japan) with a dissertation entitled "Vietnam, Psychoanalysis, and Aesthetics in Tim O'Brien's Works." He now teaches English and American war literature at several colleges in Japan.