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Heroic Kamikaze Special
Attack Corps (1983 cover)
(originally published as
Ah, Kamikaze Special
Attack Corps in 1970)
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Last Letter of Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Kazuhide Araki to His Mother
At 0627 on May 14, 1945, Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class Kazuhide Araki took
off from Kanoya Air Base as pilot in a Zero fighter carrying a 500-kg bomb and
died in a special (suicide) attack east of Tanegashima at the age of 19. He was
a member of the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps 8th Shichishō [1] Squadron from
Genzan Naval Air Group in Korea. He was from Niigata Prefecture and was a member
of the 3rd Toku Otsu Class of the Navy's Yokaren (Preparatory Flight Training
Program).
He wrote the following final letter with a poem in the middle:
Dear Mother,
Thank you for what you have done for a long time. I have no regrets.
There are only the words of "thank you."
Takashige Itō, be strong forever.
If I go away to sea I will be a corpse coloring the clouds
I will go forth as the Emperor's humble shield
I am determined that my way of dying will not dishonor our family's name.
Aunt, I thank you for your great kindness for a long time. Finally it is
the final time, and I remember fondly the past, the faces of Uncle and you
when we strolled along the country path when I was young. I will go smiling
until the end.
Letter translated by Bill Gordon
April 2018
The letter comes from Kitagawa
(1970, 210). The biographical information in the first paragraph comes from
Kitagawa
(1970, 210) and Osuo (2005, 201).
Yasukuni Jinja (2000, 37-8) also has Araki's letter with the following
significant differences:
- Yasukuni Jinja's letter is to both his father and mother, not just the
mother as shown above in Kitagawa's letter.
- "Aunt" in Kitagawa's letter is shown as "Uncle and Aunt" in Yasukuni
Jinja's letter.
- Yasukuni Jinja's letter does not contain the poem in the middle and the
sentence that begins with "Takashige Itō."
The reasons for the differences between the two versions of the letter could
not be determined.
Note
1. Shichishō means "seven lives."
Sources Cited
Kitagawa, Mamoru, ed. 1970. Ā kamikaze tokkōtai: Kaerazaru seishun no isho
shū (Ah, Kamikaze Special Attack Corps:
Collected last letters of youth that would not return). Tōkyō: Nihon Bungeisha.
Osuo, Kazuhiko. 2005. Tokubetsu kōgekitai no kiroku (kaigun
hen) (Record of special attack corps (Navy)). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.
Yasukuni Jinja, ed. 2000. Eirei
no koto no ha (6) (Words of the spirits of war heroes, Volume 6).
Tōkyō: Yasukuni Jinja Shamusho.
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