The story is simple. A pair of siblings found out from their mother that she was the step daughter of their grandfather and the real grandfather died in the Second World War as a Kamikaze pilot. She wanted to learn more about him and asked her children to see if they could find any about him. They tried and in the process managed to interview a few of their grandfather's old comrades who encountered him at different theatres and had diverse views of him. While they all agreed that he was an exceptionally skillful pilot, they were less consistent when talking about his courage.
The story is written following a rough chronological order with the siblings coincidentally first meeting people who came across their grandfather in the early stage of the Pacific War and then progressively finding people who knew him in the later stage of the war. Parallel to this is the narrative which started with accusations of him being a coward ending up with him looking more like a good husband and father who refused to die, only because he wanted to go back to his family. Yet he volunteered himself as a Kamikaze pilot, a vocation without hope of survival, and died just days before Japan surrendered. Why did he do this? His reason would be used by the author to try and draw the readers into the wider motivations of the people who became Kamikaze pilots.
While it is easy for people to fall under the spell of some 'isms', the Kamikaze concept takes things into the extreme. You are given a mission that guarantees death with or without success. It is impossible for any sensible person to imagine agreeing to such a mission, yet they did, so for a long time after the war, when historians consider the state of mind of these pilots, they could only conclude that they have been brain-washed and therefore volunteered for such a fanatical vocation. This book did not try to dispute that, but takes the reader through the experience of those who volunteered and the mental and emotional struggle they had to go through especially if their names appeared on the charts in the morning.
Almost everyone in the book, whether relating their own experiences or the experiences of others said that they would not volunteer for such a stupid vocation. But in many instances, they had to make the choice openly at the parade square when everyone else was there. Few would dare to say no for fear of immediate reprisals. Intriguingly, many of those who were given the chance to indicate their choices in a close ballot said yes. There appears to be a climate of fear that nothing was secret, their superiors would know their choice and the reprisals would be unendurable. However, it is certain death we are talking about, what could be worse?
This is where we gain some insights into the psyche of the pilots - volunteering does not imply certain call-up. Volunteering puts you in the 'eligible' list, if you were lucky, you might not be called up. Not-volunteering volunteers you for certain transfer to the most hopeless theatres as an infantry soldier where conditions were the worst, which was equivalent to certain death plus a period of suffering before the end comes. And so they took their chances. Those who did not find their names in the list in the morning heaved a sigh of relief and lived for one more day. Those who did tried to psyche themselves up by convincing themselves that their sacrifice would not be in vain, mostly without success. The pilots interviewed talked about to the letters written by the pilots before their missions (now kept in the Chiran Peace Museum) which convey a sense of loss, helplessness, frustration, and love for their families. This helps to humanise the Kamikaze pilots who would then go on to the most inhuman missions. There is always a contradiction in considering the plight of these pilots. In this book they appeared to understand the hopelessness of their cause and the uselessness of their death, yet many would have been documented to fanatically throw their lives away for their emperor. How should one reconcile the two contradictory sides of the Kamikazes?
I always think that the Japanese culture is a very nuanced and multi-layered one. It is easy to misinterpret them (although sometimes I suspect misrepresenting them serves some political purpose) and so as a nation they look really unrepentant, with the constant visits to pay their respects to Class A war criminals in the Yasukune Shrine and their irresponsible textbooks. Perhaps in trying to read their history, one should suspend our judgement for a while and then try and see if there are more shades than we know before we pass an overly simplistic judgement. The author himself displays some of this nuance in this book. As a one being called a right-winger, I was surprised that in the book he wrote (through one of the characters) that "A country that sends good people to their death like this might as well be destroyed."
This book serves the reader at different levels. One can take it as a simple historical fiction book, or a book that induces some reflection and contemplation, or even a book on the Pacific War from the Japanese perspective. Personally, I think the value of the latter should not be under-rated just because it is fiction. I believe that the author did his work in researching and interviewing when writing this book. I wish that it would be translated into English soon so that more readers can read it and make their own judgement.
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