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Ryōji Uehara (right) on day before sortie from Chiran
Airfield. Next to him is Eiji Kyōtani, also a 56th Shinbu Squadron member.
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Last Writings: Hero, Dying in Vain, Reality That Cannot Be Expressed by
Dualism (Isho: Eiyū, inujini ni, nigenron de katarenu jissō)
Researched and written by Shūji Fukano and Fusako Kadota
Pages 358-362 of Tokkō kono chi yori: Kagoshima shutsugeki no kiroku
(Special attacks from this land: Record of Kagoshima sorties)
Minaminippon Shinbunsha, 2016, 438 pages
At Azumino in Nagano Prefecture where abundant fields spread out among the
heart of the mountain peaks of the Northern Alps, there is a monument to Ryōji
Uehara (age 22 at death), an Army Second Lieutenant who died in battle off
Okinawa as a member of the Army 56th Shinbu Special Attack Squadron, which took
off from Chiran Airfield in Chiran Town (now Minamikyūshū City)
on May 11, 1945.
Ryōji was born in Ikeda Town. On the monument, there is inscribed an
excerpt from Shokan (My Thoughts), his last writing that was written and left
behind at the request of news crew member Toshirō Takagi (now deceased) on the
night before the sortie of Ryōji who had joined the Army in December 1943
as part of the student mobilization while he was studying economics at Keiō
University.
"I think liberty's victory is evident." "Although authoritarian and
totalitarian countries may prosper temporarily, it is certainly a plain fact
that they will be defeated in the end."
Japan in those days was steeped in totalitarianism where it was natural for
citizens to give their lives for an "eternal cause" in support of the Emperor
and country. Uehara's distinctive last writing, where he proudly expressed his
opinion as a liberalist, criticized as a traitor or as unpatriotic, was
published at the beginning of the revised edition of Kike wadatsumi no koe
(Listen to the voices of the sea), a collection of writings of Japanese students
who died in war.
"As for me, who is a machine, there is no right to say anything. However, I
only wish that the Japanese people will make my beloved Japan great."
Ryōji, instead of accepting his own absurd death, called for citizens to
realize a new Japan that would preserve its various values. In 2006, the
monument to Ryōji was erected by local volunteers to tell future generations
forever about his thoughts.
Ryōji Uehara Monument on hill that
looks out on magnificent scenery of
snow-capped Northern Alps and Azumino
Next to Ikeda Town is Hotaka, where Ryōji spent his adolescence. Hiroaki
Nakajima (age 81), a local history researcher who lives in Azumino City, started
a new job as a teacher in 1983 at his alma mater Matsumoto Fukashi High
School in Matsumoto City. At that time he learned that Ryōji graduated from
this school's predecessor, Matsumoto Junior High School under the prewar
education system. He was shocked by Shokan (My Thoughts).
Although Ryōji was a Special Attack Corps member, in what way were such
independent thoughts fostered? From that question Nakajima analyzed in detail
three last writings, which Ryōji left behind by the time of his sortie,
and six types of diaries. He collected testimonies from his younger sisters and
friends, and he explored the process of formation of those thoughts. He put
together the results in 1985 in a book entitled Ā, sokoku yo koibito yo
(Ah, My Country, My Sweetheart).
Ryōji was born as the third son in a family with five children. He had two
older brothers and two younger sisters. His father Toratarō, who was a
practicing doctor, had the following educational principle, "Express your own
thoughts and what you want to say before anyone without hiding anything." He
grew up in a cultured family environment where all family members were fond of
music. Incidentally, his two older brothers who had become military doctors did
not return from the battlefront. The Uehara Family lost all of their three
male children.
Nakajima says, "His grandfather who had significant involvement in
Nagano's Freedom and People's Rights Movement and Ryōji's attendance at
Matsumoto Junior High School and Keiō University, which had independent academic
traditions, shaped his knowledge as a future liberalist."
When Ryōji entered the military, there still was
totalitarianism. In September 1943 when draft deferment was abolished, his first
farewell note that listed his favorite books had these words, "I believe firmly
that serving the country directly will repay indirectly my parents' kindness."
The tone is not that different than a typical soldier in those days.
In his second farewell note, which seems to have been written while
he was in flight school from February to June 1944, he made clear his spirit as
a liberalist, "Liberalism is needed in order for Japan really to continue on
eternally. In Shokan, his third farewell note, he reached the point of
urging the Japanese people to awaken to liberalism.
Nakajima points out, "What opened the bud of liberalism within Ryōji was
the military's absurdity where he was trained to be a 'machine' without feelings
that was robbed of human dignity. That can be seen by looking carefully at his
farewell notes and diaries."
Nakajima realized that in Shokan Ryōji properly used points of
view by precisely distinguishing between first person watakushi (私),
second person wareware (我々) and gojin (吾人), and third person
kare (彼) and liberalist. Gojin, which means watakushitachi
(we) (the same as wareware), was used when Ryōji makes his strongest
declarations in the following two places: "Liberty certainly will be
victorious." "I wish that the Japanese people will make Japan great." [1]
Nakajima comments, "Isn't it that gojin was used with the
understanding that he represented the Special Attack Corps members who could not
object. Ryōji's way of thinking certainly was not unusual, and he suggests
that this thinking was shared by many student soldiers.
Volunteered or coerced? Hero or dying in vain? Until now there has been a
tendency for special (suicide) attacks to be spoken about in terms of an
easy-to-understand dualism. Nakajima questions this, "Have we endeavored to make
our way through the inner thoughts of Corps members one by one and to read and
understand each one's thoughts through what is contained between the lines of
their last writings?" He says, "A uniform way of viewing their thoughts only
leads us further from the truth about special attacks. Even after Special Attack
Corps members' deaths, it has turned out that they are viewed together as
'machines' in the military."
Hiroaki Nakajima
Note
1. This paragraph has been translated literally,
but it appears that the author's use of second person point of view actually means first
person plural (i.e., wareware, gojin, and watakushitachi,
which mean "we").
Related Web Pages
Translated by Bill Gordon
November 2024
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Last Writings: Hero, Dying in Vain, Reality That Cannot Be Expressed by Dualism
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