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In Fukuoka City with Senri Nagasue
and classmates in 14th Class of
Kō Naval Flight Training Program
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2004 Japan Trip
As part of my research for this web site on Kamikaze Images,
I visited Japan for two months in 2004. The primary purposes of this trip were
to view artifacts at museums, to visit former air bases, and to talk with
former kamikaze pilots and others about their wartime experiences. These
activities greatly assisted in my exploration of Japanese portrayals and
perceptions of the young men who participated in suicide attacks near the end of
World War II. In the summer of 2003, I also visited four major Japanese museums
with exhibits related to kamikaze pilots in order to get ideas and gather
materials for this web site.
My trip itinerary included visits to eleven museums with exhibits
related to Special Attack Corps that carried out suicide attacks. I also
went to several former air bases with monuments related to the Kamikaze Corps,
such as Oita, Kushira, and Miyazaki. I had the opportunity to meet about forty
people who served in the former Japanese Imperial Navy or who were family
members of kamikaze pilots who died in the war. Most of the former Navy pilots
had joined kamikaze squadrons before the end of the war, and four had flown on
suicide missions to Okinawa but returned due to engine problems, weather, or
plane damage after attacks by American planes. Near the end of the war the Navy
and Army designated many entire units as special attack units intended to carry
out suicide attacks, so many men had trained in kamikaze units but did not
attempt actual attacks because the military lacked sufficient usable planes and
the end of the war occurred soon after the men had been assigned to kamikaze
units. Although most of Japan's Special Attack Corps consisted of pilots who tried
to crash planes into Allied ships, I also met one man who had been a member in an
ōka (rocket-power
glider bomb) squadron and another man who trained as a fukuryū (frogman in
shallow water to destroy the enemy's landing craft with explosives attached to
top of bamboo pole).
Senri Nagasue, a former kamikaze pilot who has one of the
largest Japanese web sites about kamikaze, arranged for me to meet many people
on my trip through Japan. Most of these people are his Navy classmates or others he
has met in performing research for the four books he has written on
the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps. Several people took me to out-of-the-way
monuments and small exhibitions that I did not have on my original itinerary.
Many men, in addition to telling me about their wartime experiences, provided
me with articles, books, photos, and other material that provided invaluable
resources for this web site on Kamikaze Images.
With Ryōhei Kawakaze, former kamikaze pilot,
in front of Miyazaki Special Attack Base Monument
During my trip to Japan, the places I visited and people I met
allowed me to make many interesting connections between information found in
books, films, museums, Internet, and other sources. For example, I discovered
many links to Shin'ichi Ishimaru, a professional baseball pitcher who joined the
Navy and died as a kamikaze pilot at the age of 22 in May 1945. During the
first half of my two-month stay in Japan, I attended Japanese classes at the
Okayama Institute of Languages. The mother of the family in whose home I stayed
in Okayama City came from Saga Prefecture, Shin'ichi Ishimaru's home prefecture,
and she had been a volunteer in the production of the film
Ningen no Tsubasa
(Wings of a Man) about Ishimaru's life. She let me watch this touching 1995 film,
so I wrote a review of the movie for this web site. When I visited the Special
Attack Corps War Dead Memorial Tower in Kanoya City, I saw Ishimaru's name on a
plaque with the names of 908 kamikaze corps members based at Kanoya who lost
their lives. During my talk with a former ōka squadron member in Nobeoka
City, he mentioned to me that he met Ishimaru at Kanoya Air Base and gave me a
copy of a newspaper article he had written about the film. I visited the
Yasukuni Jinja Yūshūkan near the end of the trip and saw Ishimaru's photo among the
several thousand photos of war dead displayed at the museum. On the
Internet, I read that Ishimaru's name is engraved on a
monument, located outside the Tōkyō
Giants' stadium, which honors professional baseball players who lost their lives
in the war. Finally, through the Internet I obtained a book about Ishimaru's
life, which includes several historical photos.
In another example of relating information from different
sources during my Japan trip, I found out more about Hichiro Naemura, who
served as an Army flight instructor in 1945 and spent much time at Bansei Air
Base in Kagoshima Prefecture. Before visiting Japan, I had read several
articles on the Internet about a former Japanese kamikaze pilot who in 1992
visited the War Museum in London dressed in the Army uniform he wore during the
war and who talked with reporters about the reasons for kamikaze attacks.
When I visited the Kaseda Peace Museum (now known as
Bansei Tokkō Peace Museum),
I found out that Naemura led the
efforts to open the museum in 1993 and to construct the
Bansei Special Attack
Monument in 1972. A curator at the museum gave me several pieces of information
about his visit to England, so then I figured out that the former kamikaze
pilot who visited the War Museum and the man supported for the Kaseda Peace
Museum are the same person. At the museum I also bought a large book by Naemura
published in 1993 about the history of Bansei Air Base, including last letters
and photographs of the men based there who died in kamikaze attacks.
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With Kiyoshi Iwamoto in front of
the Kokubu No. 2 Air Base
Special Attack Corps Monument
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Although I learned much from hearing the wartime experiences
of former kamikaze pilots, I also gained insights to Japan's special attack
corps by talking with other people. For example, I visited the former Kokubu
No. 2 Air Base with Kiyoshi Iwamoto, who wrote a book with a detailed history
of the base, the last letters of several kamikaze pilots, and reflections on
kamikaze operations by several local residents. Iwamoto served in the Japanese
Navy during the war, but he never was part of the Kamikaze Corps. During my
visit I learned that Iwamoto has written three other books, including a book of
poetry. He wrote the following poem (my translation to English) inscribed on
the plaque at the Special Attack Corps Monument, located on a hill that looks
down upon the former Kokubu No. 2 Air Base.
Repose of Souls
Riders of the white clouds
Come back to us
Cherry blossom breeze
Scent of chrysanthemums
Giving your blessing
Your hometown now filled
With peace
Another interesting talk was with Yuko Shirako, a woman
whose mother's fiancé made a sortie from Miyakonojō Air Base in Miyazaki Prefecture
and died in a kamikaze attack off Okinawa. Her mother has never said anything
to her father about this part of her life, but in her later years she has
shared with her daughter many of the details of her engagement and her fiancé's
death. However, even today she has never shown anyone the last letter her
fiancé wrote to her prior to his departure toward Okinawa. Shirako showed me
the sweater of her mother's fiancé, and she said that she sometimes wears it.
She has done much research to try to piece together the full story of her
mother's fiancé, and this web site has one page that tells the
story her
mother's fiancé based on the results of that research.
In Kagoshima City, I spent a couple of days with Shoji
Jikuya, a former Zero pilot who flew a kamikaze mission to Okinawa. He
managed to return to mainland Japan when his plane was damaged after a
skirmish with American planes. He commented that many men joined the Kamikaze
Corps before the end of the war, but only a few had real battle experience with
the enemy and managed to return. Jikuya, who grew up in Kagoshima City, remembers
in late 1941 when Navy planes destined for Pearl Harbor practiced dives and
bombing over Kagoshima Bay because of the physical similarity of the two
locations.
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Yasukuni Jinja
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Near the end of my time in Japan, I made my third visit to
the museum at Yasukuni Jinja, the place where many kamikaze pilots said they
would meet after their deaths since Yasukuni serves as the national shrine for
Japan's war dead. After talking with three former pilots while eating lunch, a
Shinto priest escorted us to the inner sanctuary at the shrine where the
general public can view from afar but not enter.
The topic most discussed with
former Imperial Japanese Navy airmen was modern-day terrorism. A Los Angeles
Times reporter planned to talk with some of the same people I did about the
relationship of kamikaze attacks to modern-day suicide bombings, so several
former kamikaze pilots eagerly wanted to tell me their views on this issue.
They strongly and unanimously disagreed with the insinuation that kamikaze
attacks during World War II were the same as today's terrorist attacks. When
some Japanese and foreign media in 2001 linked kamikazes with the terrorists who steered
planes into the World Trade Towers and Pentagon, these former Navy pilots
became especially angry. They argued, reasonably in my opinion, that the two
were completely different. The terrorists attacked innocent civilians using
highjacked civilian aircraft. In contrast, the Japanese kamikaze attacks took
place against military targets during war.
The former kamikaze pilots who
I met during my trip seemed little different than other Japanese people. They
seemed very happy to live now in a peaceful Japan, but they also all had pride
in their military service. Other than one man who wanted to emphasize
that the Kamikaze Corps had true samurai spirit, nobody displayed militaristic
and nationalistic opinions. In fact, I met several men who played leadership
roles in friendship associations with other countries such as Taiwan,
Philippines, and Australia. Since the militaristic wartime government
prohibited the study and use of English, many of the men who I met missed the
opportunity to study English in high school. During my visit no one could speak
English, and also nobody had ever visited the mainland U.S. Although many men
had served in the Kamikaze Corps, the men generally showed a much closer bond
over many decades with their classmates in the Yokaren (Naval Preparatory Flight Training
Program) rather than fellow pilots in the Kamikaze Corps.
My 2004 trip to Japan gave me numerous opportunities
to talk directly with former kamikaze pilots and others who lived during the
war, to examine letters and other artifacts in museums with exhibits related to
Special Attack Forces, and to view air bases and monuments. These experiences
provided many insights that I have tried to incorporate into this web site on
Kamikaze Images.
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