Living Communication Tools: Military Labor and Structural Harm of Modern Japanese Pigeons

In recent years, the ecological destruction caused by modern warfare has inflicted severe harm on animals in conflict zones, often framed as a frequently overlooked form of secondary hazards. Historically, however, animals such as pigeons, horses, and dogs were deeply embedded within the technological and organizational infrastructures of military violence. This article focuses on the modern Japanese military between 1920 and 1945, examining—through empirical analysis of naval and army archives as well as management records—the structural violence endured by military pigeons as both communication technology and military infrastructure. The findings reveal that, beyond experimental manipulation of behavioral traits, the deterioration of pigeon welfare fundamentally stemmed from systemic deficiencies within the wartime Japanese military system: poor living conditions that facilitated endemic disease, lack of professional expertise among caretakers, negligent transportation practices, and inadequate feed rationing under wartime economic constraints. This institutional erosion reflects the Japanese military’s logic of instrumentalization and resourceization of nonhuman life, reducing biological beings to replaceable components in the pursuit of absolute efficiency. The military’s postwar mass drowning and suffocation of pigeons to destroy evidence further expose the technocratic system’s systematic devaluation of life. This study aims to reconstruct overlooked aspects of military communication history while providing a historical reference for critically interrogating the structural violence inherent in the metricization of life within contemporary regimes of technological governance.