ABSTRACT

Norman Longmate’s book How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War (1971) is a record of wartime Britain, which, as Liddell Hart has noted, for some time faced the possibility of defeat. In some ways the situation in Japan paralleled that of Britain. Both were highly industrialized islands, without an abundant supply of food to support a large population, and both suffered food shortages. But there were important differences.