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Kamikaze pilot says goodbye to Chii-chan with Mount
Kaimon in background
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Nijūroku ya mairi (A Moon Twenty-six Days Old)
Written by
Tetsuya Takeda
TBS, 1998, 92 min.
Mizuki Kaieda, a young elementary schoolteacher in Yokohama,
wants to find out about her grandmother's secret past after her death. Mizuki's family
opens a box kept by her grandmother and finds many postcards written over the
years, with the oldest one dating back to the late 1940s. All the postcards come
from a woman named Chizuko Mutsumiso (with maiden name of Maezono) living in
Kagoshima Prefecture, who ends each postcard with the perplexing words, "I
am waiting for you at Mount Kaimon." Mizuki decides to travel alone to
Kagoshima to discover the mystery of her grandmother's past. She gradually
unravels the romantic tragedy surrounding her grandmother as she talks to
various people in Kaimon, a small town located at the southernmost point of mainland
Japan, and in Chiran, where the Japanese Army had a base in 1945 for kamikaze
pilots to attack American ships off Okinawa.
Popular actress Emi Wakui plays both principal characters in
this television movie broadcast in Japan by TBS on August 17, 1998. Wakui plays
not only Mizuki Kaieda but also Mizuki's grandmother, Kimiyo Maezono, who
operated a small inn near Mount Kaimon until 1947. The movie highlights Mount
Kaimon in the background of several scenes, both in 1945 and 1998. When
kamikaze pilots flew missions from Kagoshima to Okinawa, the last thing they
saw of Japan was Mount Kaimon. The film also features the Chiran Peace Museum
for Kamikaze Pilots, located only about 20 km from Kaimon. Mizuki visits there
to find out about the history of Army pilots who flew kamikaze missions to
Okinawa. Although kamikaze pilots actually flew from Chiran over Mount Kaimon, the
film's plot and characters are fictional.
After Mizuki arrives in Kagoshima, she goes to a small inn
that Chizuko and her husband operate near Mount Kaimon. Chizuko's husband tells
Mizuki that her grandmother Kimiyo used to operate the inn until 51 years ago
in 1947. He then tells the story of the love affair that led to her departure
from Kaimon to Yokohama. One day three young kamikaze pilots from Chiran came
to stay at the inn on the night before flying to Okinawa. Kimiyo and her young
daughter, Chizuko (or Chii-chan, the term of endearment used by the pilots),
warmly welcomed the pilots. They ran the inn alone since Kimiyo's husband went
to war, and she had heard that he had died
in battle in the Philippines. The three young men enjoyed a bath in an outdoor onsen
(hot spring) and a delicious meal prepared by Kimiyo from food she bought from nearby farms. When Kimiyo went out in the evening to get food for the next
morning's breakfast, Chii-chan enjoyed playing games and singing songs with the
three pilots.
Three kamikaze pilots say goodbye
to Kimiyo and Chii-chan at inn
Kimiyo and Chii-chan went to pick yellow flowers the next
morning to give the three young pilots before they left the inn. An Army truck
came to take them to Chiran Air Base, where they had to immediately depart to
Okinawa on their suicide missions. Chii-chan went outside the inn and asked one
pilot, Hirakazu Kaieda, to return to see her and her mother. Kaieda promised to
do so as Kimiyo cried inside the inn. After the truck left, later in the day Kimiyo and
Chii-chan heard planes in the sky. They ran outside to see the
three pilots fly over their home, and then Kaieda flew his plane close to the
ground and saluted to Kimiyo and Chii-chan. As the three planes flew next to
Mount Kaimon, the pilots threw the yellow flowers out of their planes to the ground
so that at least the flowers with their seeds might survive.
After hearing this story, Mizuki then joins Chizuko and her husband in an annual
procession of the townspeople to a point near the ocean where many yellow
flowers now grow. As Chizuko and Mizuki slowly walk together in the procession,
Chizuko tells her what happened to her grandmother after the kamikaze pilots
left. Kimiyo gave birth to the son of Hirakazu Kaieda, the pilot with whom she
had a secret love affair during his one-night visit. Although Kimiyo thought
her husband died in battle in the Philippines, he suddenly returned one day
long after the end of the war. The situation soon become unbearable for Kimiyo
with a son from the affair while her husband was away, so she decided to leave
her daughter Chizuko with her husband and to move to Yokohama. Her daughter
continued to write her each year, "I am waiting for you at Mount
Kaimon." However, Chizuko never saw her mother again.
The movie's scriptwriter, Tetsuya Takeda, wrote a children's
book in 1999 with the same story. However, the book only tells the
story that happened in 1945 from the point of view of Chii-chan, with no
mention of her mother's affair with one of the pilots. The yellow flowers given
by Kimiyo and Chii-chan to the three pilots have the popular name of tokkōbana
(kamikaze flowers). However, the true origin of these flowers remains a
mystery, although most people think that this non-native flower did not come to
Japan until after the war.
This fictional story portrays kamikaze pilots as kind, loving individuals.
Although the three pilots outwardly seem to face death without showing fear, one
pilot cries out loudly in grief as he lies down to sleep. Even though Kimiyo
moves away because of the shame of having a child with another man, no character
in the film other than her husband speaks negatively of her love affair with the pilot.
Kimiyo (left) and Chii-chan (right)
say goodbye to
kamikaze pilots
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