Update: Neretva river and Japan Probe helped solve the mystery of the Japanese Croats and Serbs (and UNPROFOR). Way to go! Click the links for even more pictures. Apparently the game was called “The Battle for Mostar”?
Everytime i see a historical reenactment i wonder who are all these people that find pleasure in recreating battles, troops, armys, dressing up in uniformes of soldiers from the past – but i do not get to see them often. Usually it’s in some American movie every now and then with the reenactment of some American civil war battle so i figure that is somehow connected with wackoes from the US with nothing better to do in their spare time.
But.
Here’s a couple of funny pics i got in my mail couple of days ago, and so did BezKomentara and probably thousands of others in Serbia and Croatia.
From what it says in the mail, the folks in the pictures are Japanese and they are playing paintball dressed up in uniformes of Serbian and Croatian army, respectively, as a part of team building activities.
Now, first thing that strikes the eye is that the fake guns are definetely not for paintball. After reading about the pictures in a couple of furums and blogs (for example here at Svakodnevnica), i also saw that several people suggested that Japanese apparently don’t do team building because, well, they don’t need to.
Don’t know if that’s true, but it all points out that this is not a paintball game, but – yes, you guessed it: another reenactment.
But, this one involves reenacting a war that happened recently in the region and that a lot of people from these areas were involved in, this way or the other, so i bet i am not the only one in the Balkans with the following questions in my mind:
What is the actual time needed for a war to become history? A decade, couple of years, one hundred years? What is the distance (time, cultural or geographical) needed so that we can “play war” without engaging too deeply into the actual context: who attacked first, were there any war crimes, how many people got killed, what happened after the war, etc.
And, of course, one last question is: who are the folks from the pictures? If you think you know the answer to any of these questions, please share.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
This is really interesting; thanks for sharing it. As far as your question, re: distance between the re-enactors and the actual event; I think that there certainly needs to be some degree of distance. I can’t really imagine people intimately involved with a conflict wanting to re-enact that confict again for entertainment and or “team building” purposes. Not to mention, there is such schism between people over “what actually happened” during the war or battle, that it would be hard to build a consensus to create a historically accurate battle.
BTW: is there any indication of why they particularly chose to recreate battles from the Balkanwars; as oppose to any other conflict?
Anyways, if there is one thing more puzzling than people re-enacting the Balkan wars for “team building” exercises; it is perhaps children re-enacting battles! In 7th grade my entire class had to re-enact the “Battle of Fredricksburg” it involved two weeks of “training” walking through the neighborhood surrounding the school in military formation, practicing shooting (obviously fake) guns (which I’m sure provided an odd site for the neighbors!). Then we had to spend the entire school day re-enacting the battle; in which as a Union soldier, my job was to “die” several dozen times.
I really didn’t gain any insight into the horror of wars; although consantly having to fall down and being convered with birs, and having to march for one hour straight up and down a hill; I did gain insight into the horror of being a civil war re-enactor ;
)This isn’t my school; but it is clip from another “Junior Civil War Reenactor” segment: http://www.youcanlivehistory.com/civilwarmov_wmv.html
And while I did learn something about the Battle of Fredricksberg; and more about the civil war in general; I can say with absolute certainty; that we gained absolutely no “team building” skills at all. ;)
And after the rash of school shootings that took place around the same time; my middle school put a halt of these civil war re-enactments.
Who knows, maybe some organization from the Balkans will get together to re-create the Battle of Iwo Jima ?
Shaina, Thanks for the excellent comment. I really don’t envy you on your role of a civil-war re-enactor:)
So far i have no info on why they decided to re-enact the Balkan conflict, the text in the mail that came with the pics was very short and said nothing about the people in pictures.
Note that both the Croatian and Serbian teams have soldiers from both the second world war and the recent conflicts, that’s why it makes it even crazier – they mixed several periods, maybe because it’s all the same for them?
In Serbian team you even have Draza San – the guy with the beard in the middle – together with partizans and modern army soldiers. In Croatian team i think i can see WWII ustasas and partizans side by side with, again, modern-day soldier uniforms. Maybe there were several re-enactments, who knows?
I can’t figure out who the guy in the track-suit on the Serbian team is supposed to represent?
Viktor,
I’m very curious about the origins of these photographs – I put a link to the story on an English language Japanese news blog to try and see if anyone there might happen to know the story behind these photographs (I hope you don’t mind!)
Anyway, I do know that amongst far right groups some people like to wear WWII-era Japanese uniforms, but I really don’t know what’s behind this mismatch of uniforms.. unless of course those photographed in Croatian regalia are trying to make a symbolic statement about Tuđman having once been a partisan…
Thanks for the info, neretva. I’ve managed to find a Japanese blogger who posted more pictures of just such a reenactment, and I wrote about it here:
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1367
Thanks James, I had a feeling Japan Probe could get to the bottom of this!
Neretva and James:
Great job on getting to the bottom of this! Thanks! I updated the post with the latest info.
Ma koji mrtvi paintball…..A I R S O F T se to zove…
Airsoft… Same thing as paintball, only more painful and the bruises are actually on skin, not on the uniform
DSAJKLJ (if that’s your real name) and Joe, thanks for shedding new light on this unusual event!
It’s not unusual at all. It’s a sport called “Airsoft” where they use extremely realistic looking replica guns shooting plastic pellets. It’s less about the setting or historic significance, it’s about finding different scenarios and to make the sport more interesting. If there is no particular “story”, it becomes simply team A vs team B shooting each other with plastic bbs, and it can get boring that way.