Raburetā (Love Letters)
by Kōji Seo
Kōdansha, 2007, 189 pages
This book by manga creator Kōji Seo has three stories involving love letters. The first one, which takes up about half of the book, depicts the love
story of Chieko Machida and Toshio Anazawa, who died as a 20th Shinbu Special
Attack Squadron member in a special (suicide) attack from Chiran Air Base on
April 12, 1945. The story gets told from Chieko's perspective, and much of the
time she wonders about their relationship since Toshio is a quiet type although
he expresses himself eloquently in letters to her. The basis for the book is a
2005 television documentary entitled Kon'yakusha kara no isho (Last
letters from my fiancé). Seo also met several times with Chieko for material to
be included in this historically-accurate manga version, although the characters
look like typical ones in manga rather than having a resemblance to the two main
historical characters.
Toshio and Chieko first meet in July 1941 when he is a 19-year-old student at
Chūō University in Tōkyō and she is a 17-year-old girl who has graduated from a
girls' school and is now working at a summer training session in a university
library in order to become a librarian. Chieko is surprised when Toshio, with no
preliminaries and in what might be considered by others to be somewhat rude,
directly asks her whether she would like to go together with him. In those days
such a question would have been similar to engagement for marriage. She
hesitantly responds that as friends she would like to see him. Toshio responds
in a letter that he understand her hesitancy and continues with the following
words: "No matter what, whatever happens, the feeling that I must love you only
becomes more and more firm." Chieko soon grows to love him as they exchange
letters, even though they live in the same city, and meet from time to time as
she admires his smile.
In October 1943, Toshio enters the 1st Class of the Army Special Cadet
Officer Pilot Training (Tokubetsu Sōjū Minarai Shikan) Program. They continue to
exchange letters while he is in the Army, although Toshio's parents are against
his marriage to Chieko with the circumstances that he faces in the Army. She
writes in one letter that she wants to be his muffler so that she will never
be apart from him. Later on a visit to an air base where Toshio is stationed, he
borrows Chieko's muffler and says "we are together," which she interprets as an
agreement to marry where they would always be together. In early 1945, Chieko
gets a letter where Toshio has written that "it was decided that I will serve in
a duty from which I will not return." She guesses that he has been assigned to
the Special Attack Corps to make a suicide attack, so she decides to go by train
in February 1945 to Kita Ise Airfield in Kameyama Town, Mie Prefecture, to try to see him. In an
awkward moment, Toshio's unit commander has arranged a room with only one set of
futon bedding at a local inn, but Chieko does not feel comfortable
sleeping together with him. He understands and respects her feelings, but he
says that he needs to sleep after a hard day of training, so she softly sings
lullabies by his side throughout the night as he sleeps.
About a month later Toshio suddenly appears at Chieko's home to say that his
parents in Fukushima Prefecture have given permission for them to be married. It
is decided that they will get married in two weeks, but she never sees him again
after he departs at the train station in order to return to base. She goes by
train to Miyakonojō Air Base in Miyazaki Prefecture to try to see him, but she
gets the message that his special attack squadron made a sortie to Tokunoshima
two days before. However, he at this time is actually at nearby Chiran Air Base
on stand-by due to weather. When his squadron prepares for the special attack
sortie, another squadron member questions him as to why he is wearing a muffler
in such hot weather. He makes his final sortie from there on April 12 with high
school girls waving cherry blossom branches at him when his plane passes before
them (see manga drawing below based on historical photograph). He is thinking
that he can take off smiling because he is going to protect an important person
and a women who he does not want to lose.
A final letter from Toshio is delivered to Chieko four days after he took off
from Chiran. The manga story's last eight pages have short excerpts from his
last letter. The letter can be read in its entirety at
Last Writings of Second
Lieutenant Toshio Anazawa.
High school girls waving cherry blossom branches when
Second Lieutenant Toshio Anazawa passes before
them
to make sortie from Chiran Air Base on April 12, 1945
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