| 題しらず ( @ 2004-09-25 00:27:00 |
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| BGM: | Otofuke - パルマ三世のテーマ '78 |
特攻と日本人－ある見事な青春群像 ・ 愛する者たちのために散った若き魂への鎮魂歌 英
Here we go: analysis to come later. Probably Sunday.
"Special Operations" and the Japanese: A Statue for Spectactular Youth
The young souls who fell for their loved ones: A Requiem
Shintaro Ishihara, Tokyo Governor.
Bungeishunju 2004.9. p. 94-101.
Translated by me! (with a little help here and there...)
Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, and with it comes a chance reconsider the past. Allow me to make a few comments on the tokkô special attacks and write about what will be a scene from a movie.
In Iraq and Palestine, Islamist suicide bombers continue to instigate terror. Americans often conflate this violence with "kamikaze attacks," and when I hear questions within this context I get bewildered. I recoil at the thought. Even amongst some Japanese, as if we could never understand the minds of the pilots who went to their deaths, there is the conclusion that their actions were fanatical and abnormal; they were nothing more than an abberation. But, the tokkô and suicide bombers are completely different.
I came to understand these attacks through an episode once told to me about a woman, Tome Torihama, called also tokkôtai no haha: the kamikaze mama.
This woman, the owner of a restaurant on the Chiran tokkôtai (kamikaze) airbase in Kagoshima-prefecture, poured love upon these young men waiting to be dispatched for combat, and was in turn cared for like a mother. In the waning years of her life she gave herself up to pilots' spirits, yet, even in this age of mass communication, her story has not been told. But, to my pleasant surprise, a pilot slated for a kamikaze attack kindly opened his heart to me, and each time I visited him, he recounted many tales of the pilots that he had never before shared with strangers. To me the image of this woman appears like that of a Bodhisattva, delaying her own ascension to Nirvana for the benefit of the unenlightened, forever listening to these men's stories. The scene I just described, with Tome Torihama, is set to become a film.
Tome-san died in 1992. I asked then-Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi, in his official residence, that, for the sake of those who died as kamikaze pilots, the government give Tome-san the National Medal of Honor. Miyazawa responded with: "No - If we did that, there'd be no limit. Everyone would get a medal." There is nothing that shocks me more than such stubbornness in the face of such plainly valuable act. I wondered if a curse would fall upon his house, well, and that's exactly what happened. (Trans. Note: Kiichi lost the Prime Ministership in the face of a vote of no confidence in 1993.)
Coming home as a firefly
Tokkô operations from Chiran began in March 1945 as Japan's prospects for victory worsened. There were soldiers as young as 17 and 18 years old whose missions fated them to leave without ever returning. The naïve pilots, despite not having considered death as a part of their own lives before, squarely faced it then.
Sergeant Saburo Miyagawa, on the evening before his mission, asked Tome-san, "Just what is death, I wonder... ." Miyagawa moaned, "Everyone will forget all about me." Tome-san comforted him: "That's not true." "Oh really? Only okasan will remember me," calling Tome-san for the first time okasan: mother. "When I become a firefly," a Japanese symbol of a deceased's spirit, "I will surely come back here. All the way from Okinawa to here, no matter how long it takes." And he left. The following evening in Kagoshima, where fireflies rarely fly, especially during that season, a firefly flew down into a garden in the back of Tome-san's restaurant. Upon hearing of the firefly, the other pilots lined up, saluted, and bade it farewell.
And then there were these words left for Tome-san, said by Second Lieutenant Katso Katsumata: "I will die at age 19, but since humans live for 50 years, I want to give my remaining 30 to you, okasan. Promise me you'll live a long life." After the war Tome-san was in her forties and suffered from peritonitis, coming close to death twice. But she survived both instances, she recalled, thanks to Katsumata's gift.
I wonder what hidden apprehension these pilots, whose lives were so shortened, must have carried around with them. The image of comrades communing during extreme situations such as war, compared even to those images of today, beautifully projects from the distant past a youth whose relations are enduring.
The sufferings of those who attended officer's school or college and entered the units, compared to those young boys who didn't, were surely of a different complexity.
There were those who had secretly made marriage vows. The fiancée of the 28 year old, "elderly" Second Lieutenant Wataru Kawasaki, after formally marrying, chased her husband all the way from Tokyo to Chiran in order to see him off. But, this woman who lost her husband did not consider remarriage, and Kawasaki's parents continued to oppose the marriage, saying "It would be an insult if your parents defiled our family by taking you in." Understanding what she needed to do, the fiancée went and pleaded with Tome-san. Tome-san understood the desires of the girl who wanted her marriage recognized, but she also couldn't ignore the concerns of the parents, and as such, stuck between a rock and a hard place as they were, one could only cry.
It is likely not well known that there was a Korean graduate of Hanjima was amongst the kamikaze pilots.
At that time, a souvenir photo album of the pilots was shown by Tome-san. After the war, the American occupation came all the way to Chiran and, should the photos have turned up, they would have been thought to be dangerous. Tome-san wrapped them up and him them under her kimono.
After the Americans withdrew, Tome-san rearranged the photos in the album but, before long, soldiers' families began to visit Tome-san and asked, "Why would you want that picture of my son?" And, after peeling the pictures from the album, they were carried to the families' homes; only the dried glue remained. But, of all these photos, "There was no one to come for this one," Tome-san said sadly. This photo was that of a Korean kamikaze.
Japanese pilots' families would come to exchange their final farewells the night before their flights, but there was no one for them to see off. One pilot, on the night before his mission and after the other pilots had left the restaurant, leaving just him, said to Tome-san, "There's a song that I want to hear from my mother." He sang it. It was the famous Korean farewell song, "Ariran."
To die for the beloved
The story of Tome-san is that of compassion, and that of those who unwillingly went on to survive the war.
One of these people was Second Lieutenant Katsuichi Nishimori who tried twice to execute his mission but encountered repeated machinery problems and ultimately, reluctantly, greeted the end of the war alive. The pilots usually used only low-quality planes for their missions.
Nishimori, before his deployment, had a friend to whom he promised that, should he be cursed with survival, he would enter into his comrade's girlfriend's household. The girl's father, afraid that Nishimori would attempt suicide, ordered that his pistol be hidden. The girl and Nishimori married, yet, for some reason, the household was not quite right. Nishmori became reclusive and his relationships with those in the house grew sour.
In 1955, at what was left of the old Chiran airbase, a statue of Kannon was erected to honor the spirits of the dead pilots. Tome-san, who was participating in rituals there, suddenly noticed someone sitting alone in the distance, not joining in in the proceedings, but starring instead up to the heavens. Tome-san suspected she knew who it was, but did not know what to say to him. Even facing him, starring at him, Tome-san failed to even try saying something to him.
One wonders if this poor survivor's evaluation of the kamikaze missions changed, or if he was jeered at by others, or if he at all criticized himself. Was there no one who could understand his suffering?
"What happened to him really is a shame..."
Tome-san religiously told their stories.
That she, along with those young men who died in their planes, explored the depths of their hearts is a beautiful sight. Before the creation of the the Kannon statue, Tome-san, taking along a maid from a ryokan on errands, passed the former airfield. It is said that any number of onibi suddenly burst in flames near the triangular barracks where the soldiers used to live, as if the soldiers had light fuel aflame in honor of the woman. "It was frightening, but the rays of light were also beautiful," said the old servant who had been carrying tea.
I have no intention to turn this movie into an anti- or pro-war film.
Many of the kamikaze planes were shot down in midair around Okinawa before they reached the American fleet, or they broke down and dropped from the sky. Ultimately, planes that reached their targets were quite rare. There are those who point to this and say that these men died in vain, like dogs.
However, the pilots themselves, while half-conscious of the futility of their endeavors, nonetheless accepted their fate and took on their responsibility to defend Japan.
Who can deny the purity of these young men? What I want to produce is an image of that purity.
They did not sacrifice themselves for an unseen emperor or for an conceptualization of "the nation." They went for those things that they sublimely loved: their family, their lovers, their comrades to whom they were connected, and for the mountains and rivers of their fatherland.
In the documents of the pilots that remain today, one sees expressions of "Long live the emperor!" and "Long live the great Empire of Japan!" but I suspect these were nothing more than fronts for the censors.
Chiran was an army tokkô base, but, in October of 1944 the leader of the navy's Shikishima unit in Leyte in the Philippines, at the time a 23 year old Captain named Yukio Seki, addressing his parents, wrote in documents that we have today, "The empire now stands at the crossroads of victory or defeat, and I am prepared to report before the Emperor. For the warrior there is nothing else." But, this same pilot who enjoys the highest reputation, expressed his true feelings to a good friend who was also a report, saying, "Pilots like me go to our deaths; they kill us. This country is finished."
Seki, who had just married, continued in his passion, "I'm not going out there for the Emperor or the Empire. I'm going for my beloved wife. It can't be helped that I'm so ordered. I will die to protect her. I will die for the person whom I love above all others. A glorious death!"
That the pilots volunteered to die is nothing more than a myth to hide the guilt of the superior officers who chased them to their deaths. The truth of Seki's mentality is far more beautiful than the made up fairy tale of their volunteering.
And it is with that thought that I gave the film the title of "It is for you, love, that I go to die (俺は、君のためにこそ死ににいく)."
These were not 'suicide bombers'
Although I've expressed this already, the kamikaze attacks and today's Islamist suicide bombers are all too easily and frequently confused.
The young Islamists believe that the principle of self-sacrifice, as a religious consideration in response to evil, is greater than even the value and meaning of their own lives. And that they fundamentally negate those on the receiving end of their attacks is inescapable.
But even during the Great East Asian War, Japan can be said to have fought a moralistic war as the sole representative of the colored races against white colonial rule. Those military officers who commanded their pilots to fly kamikaze missions had that holy justification as the nation's great mission hanging over their heads. But the pilots themselves had their own sense of duty more concerned with protecting those to whom they were close or whom they loved than an Emperor whose divinity they affirmed.
The strategy of throwing away young mens' lives - kamikaze tactics - was something that surpassed anything in the Americans' imaginations, and there was no mistaking that it frightened and warned them. In trying to defend their homeland, and seeing the Japanese pilots who defended their own with their lives as kamikaze, the Americans ended the war by dropping atomic weapons.
Islamic extremists teach that to fight a holy war for Allah is the highest praise, and to die in such a battle guarantees entry into heaven. To the young followers of this belief it is held that the pleasures of the next world are more plentiful than those of this world. It is said that the leaders of terror groups in the Middle East preach that to die for Allah promises being surrounded by copious wine and beautiful women.
Those who partake in suicide bombings do so without any hesitation, and in the throes of religious ecstasy. That flawed understanding of the terrorists is based on only one type of actor, or kamikaze, and is quite different from the truth of the matter. Tome-san's telling of the pilots doubts and worries give us an account of their real thoughts.
The real difference then is that extremist Islam targets innocent civilians. Kamikaze aimed exclusively at enemy battleships. Following the Imperial decree ending the war, Matome Ugaki, commander of the fifth navy fleet, boarded with Captain Tatsuo Naktsuru a special attack plane and saw a targeted enemy's base lighted up in celebration of its victory. Instead of crashing the plane into the base, Tatsuo aimed his aircraft at some nearby rocks.
Exploding US Military Secrets
At the end of the war I was 23. I received my education at Shonan Middle School, which was not all that unlike a prepatory course for the navy, and there is where I was told that I "would soon die for the Emperor." Had I been born two or three years later, I may have very well gone to a navy officer's training school.
Near my home in Zushi there were rented apartments for officers and a place for navy officers there happened to be a watering hole. Soldiers dispatched to the battlefield would stay there and slowly say their goodbyes. Sometimes when we were playing in that bar's yard they would lift us up to their faces and and on occasion give us candy. But after one or two months, absent even ashes, wooden boxes with a soldier's name would return home. I remember being there, forbiding myself from thinking any irrevernt thought, thinking while starring at widows dressed in black mourning clothes, "Ah, how beautiful."
In those days, death was all around.
Returning from school, sirens would sound and machine guns would pile up bullets. Unlike jet planes of today, old fighter craft, going both quickly and slowly, flew close to the ground. They flew so close that the American pilots could clearly see the faces of us children hiding in the wheat fields as they shot at us half in jest. A friend of mine had his leg shot at and ever since it has been useless.
The origin of my anti-American sentiment comes from that searing event.
_______
The shock of losing the war was that the adults who admonished us just yesterday to die for the Emperor had reversed themselves 180 degrees.
For the middle school teacher who once said, "I went to be a sailor and became a soldier," everything had now changed, and the highest honor had become "I went Tokyo University's law department and became a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance." A section chief of the finance ministry praises the Minister as he leads him to an auditorium: "You are the most respected from our school." To which the minister disappointedly responds, "What a lowly and vulgar school it must be."
Let's return to the watering hole I touched upon before. And there let's replace the image with that of American soldiers in a whorehouse. Whenever I walked along my route back and forth to school I became disgusted with the dirty image of a young Japanese girl, dressed in only a her underwear, flashing her breast while calling out in a flirtatious voice to American soliders.
One day, two year after the war in the still hot early autumn when I was trying to walk home from the Zushi train station, a pair of American soldiers while eating some ice candy came to me with their arms open wide.
Japanese customers were frightened, and cleared both sides of the path for the soldiers. But foolish I made as if I didn't know what was going on and continued walking straight down the path when, with the hand carrying the ice candy a soldier smacked me in the face, and left, laughing all the while.
The ice candy melted and I was not harmed in any way, but in my town of 15,000 people it quickly spread that "an American solider half-killed Ishihara," or worse that Ishihara "appears to have been murdered." When I returned to school some days later, I took the train, and people who recognized me worried outloud about me, asking, "Hey boy, you're okay? You weren't hurt?"
Later, as the story made its way to Shonan middle school, I was called to meet with teachers who had heard of the event. The head teacher and four other lower teachers all fretted together, asking " Why'd they do that? What should we do if this affects the school?" All this for me having just walked the street in a straight path.
Finally, a teacher said this to me: "Ishihara, such is the world. Everyone's afraid. Self-control, you! Don't say a word - stay silent!"
I was angry at the soldiers who hit me, but I remember being even more upset at the adults who actually witnessed the soldiers' expressions.
_______
There is a sequel to this. After I became a politician I had a panel discussion in Washington with an outspoken critic of Japan, Representative Dick Gephardt, and he asked why I was so interested in Japan-US affairs. We entered into a debate that went later than we had planned.
At last he said, "As a Japanese politician, you're ignorant. This is the first time I've met a Japanese politician like you." He continued: "What is your underlying feeling toward America?" To which I responded, "It's hostility." I explained to him of my experiences with the machine guns and being hit by the soldiers. Gephardt's face showed that he was disturbed and he shut up. But, that's war.
An Imperial visit to Yasukuni
There is nothing in common between the kamikaze pilots and those adults. How would those who walked straighted to their deaths view the Japan of today I wonder.
_______
The man who first started the tokkô corps was Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi. But in truth it was the army that originally used the tactic in desperation. Because they were needed under the noble goal of defending the national polity the lives of these young men were sacrificed, and the worsening condition Japan's conflict was covered up.
After the war, Vice Admiral Onishi committed suicide.
"To atone for those young men whom I murdered, I will myself die a cruel death. Don't call a doctor," he said to his witnesses as he, for eight hours, layed in a sea of his own blood before finally dying.
This death is a beautiful tale to tie everything together, but beyond Vice Admiral Onishi, many who sent the pilots to their deaths continued on in their lives after the war. It seems that it can even be said that that cowardice is the posturing of present day Japan.
For the kamikaze, even though they were ordered to force themselves to "fly that plane," and to "not return," that was something they could not readily consent to sacrifice themselves to but for their desire to protect their families and their lovers. The heart of the matter to these men was in determining just for what they would have their lives ended, and this is a uniquely Japanese consideration that appeared.
_______
It's impossible not to think of the pilots honored in Yasukuni Jinja whenever one visits the site. I don't simply want the Prime Minister to visit Yasukuni Jinja, but also the Emperor, as a person and not a symbol, to go. If that were to happen there would be no mistaking that, even if but for a moment, Japan would be a changed country.