Every Sunday evening finds Masamichi Shida among a group of antiwar protesters outside the train station in Kamakura, south of Tokyo, singing songs opposing Japan's participation in the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq.
Shida, 78, deplores war because he knows war, having served as a World War II Imperial Japanese Navy kamikaze pilot. He only escaped death because Japan surrendered just days before he was to carry out his suicide mission.
In an interview with The Japan Times, Shida -- a quirky smile playing on his lips, while tears simultaneously well in his eyes -- recounted how he joined the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army tokko-tai (the "special-attack corps," or kamikaze suicide pilots) whose missions began in October 1944 in desperate resistance to U.S. forces in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
The more than 2,000 kamikaze aircraft deployed in World War II -- usually laden with bombs and extra gasoline tanks -- are recorded as having sunk 34 ships and damaged hundreds of others.
With six children and four grandchildren, Shida -- who was a pilot with Japan Airlines for some three decades after the war -- also explains why he today urges Japan's younger generations to think long and hard before ever setting what he calls their "hostile" and "dangerous" nation again on the path to war.
The following are Shida's reflections on his wartime experience.
'I took the Naval Academy exam in the summer break of my second-to-last year of middle school, in August 1942. I only took the test to judge my academic skills, not to become a professional soldier. But once they accepted me, I couldn't back out.
Japan had already been routed in June at the Battle of Midway. However, the Japanese people weren't told that; we had no thoughts of defeat, and when I signed up, I didn't know about Midway.
The academy was in Hiroshima, in a place called Edajima. On Dec. 1 we, a group of young boys, entered the academy and were divided into squads of 50. Mine was Squad No. 31. We were issued our short swords and work clothes.
Boy, was I in for a shock. An upperclassman ordered me to state my name and, without a second thought, I simply said, "Masamichi Shida!" This guy growled, "You got a pipsqueak voice! Talk from the gut!"
You see, my name isn't that easy to bark out the way he wanted. You can shout my family name "Shida" pretty easily. "Shida-a-a-a!" But my given name "Masamichi"? I tried an alternative pronunciation of a different reading of the kanji of my given name, "Shodo," which has longer vowels. But when I did that the guy bellowed, "You stupid fleabag! Use the name your parents gave you!"
After hearing me mess around like that, he told me to spread my legs apart. I did it. "Clamp your jaw shut!" he said. Then, that guy clobbered me in the jaw with his fist like you wouldn't believe. Twice. "Stand up straight, would ya?" he said when I reeled. Granted, it was tough. But a man needs this kind of wake-up call. After two years of that, I matured.
All the while the classes above me were graduating and the war was being completely lost. Those fellows above me went out in waves, getting killed. Everywhere where there were naval battles, my classmates died there. And the guys who became pilots, they died in droves.
When it came to late March 1945, I too graduated from the naval academy. There were 1,000 guys in our class. Two hundred were pilots; 800 were sailors. In July 1945, we became commissioned naval officers. Professionals.
A week before becoming ensigns, the 200 pilots had been handed a questionnaire asking: "Do you strongly desire to become a kamikaze? Or only moderately? Or not at all?"
I'd worked hard up to that point, and wasn't about to back out; plus we were about to become officers in days. I answered: "strongly."
The kamikaze first saw action about 10 months earlier, in the Philippines. One of my senior classmen was in that group. The Americans didn't expect the kamikaze. They'd be looking up in the sky and think, "Ah, something's flying around." Then suddenly the plane would drop from its flight path and crush them.
On July 25, 1945, a commander named Wada assembled us. "We have received 200 questionnaires, and are happy to announce that all of you reported you 'strongly' desire to become kamikaze," he said. Then a commander named Komoto read aloud the 200 names. Of those, 36 became tokko-tai, probably based on their performance scores. I was among them.
In reality, we didn't want to offer up our lives. The biggest factor behind saying we "strongly" desired to become kamikaze was pride. Not the Emperor. We were elite naval ensigns. Could we buckle? I didn't want people pointing fingers at me and saying, "Shida refused the call to duty." That's why I signed up.
Actually, rumor had it that one of us did refuse. One evening after dinner I was about to step out for a night shift, and there was a guy in a white uniform in the dormitory room. He was about to leave the base. We were all in our flight suits, but he was dressed for off-base excursions. I thought, "That must be the guy."
He said he was off to learn weapon technology. I mean, you go to a naval academy to be the captain of a battleship, not to learn how to oil a gun. That's the bottom of the heap. I thought, "poor guy." The time came for him to go, and we wished him good luck. He looked dejected, so we told him to cheer up.
But think how silly that was. We were kamikaze, and we're telling him to cheer up? It should have been the other way around! He had escaped.
At first I thought, "What a bastard!" Then I felt sorry for him. Then, hearing he'd be going to a place near my hometown, I grew envious.
Finally, though, I came to respect the guy. He was courageous! We didn't want to go! But he had the courage to decide against becoming a kamikaze when the whole world was consumed by the flames of militarism. What a giant of a human being! Who should be telling whom to cheer up? We should have been the despondent ones.
Just after being tapped as a kamikaze, we got some time off for recreation. At that point we were stationed at Chitose, in Hokkaido, and as it happened, my parents had just come to visit me and were staying at a nearby inn. My father said to me, "Masamichi, how are you?"
"Good, Dad. I joined the tokko-tai yesterday."
"Oh yeah?" he said, not comprehending fully what the term meant. People were using it quite loosely in those days, and he didn't catch on at first. My mother, though, was listening and was the first to understand after I explained the ceremony we'd undergone.
She began to wail. "Can't you refuse?" she cried -- twice. But I told her there was no way. I was supposed to be a model soldier. We only had 30 minutes together.
When I left, my dad saw me off at the door and said, "We've lost this war." You weren't allowed to say that back then; being heard saying it could get you locked up by the thought police.
My father was holding back tears. In his own way, he was trying to convince me of the futility of what I was about to do, without saying it in as many words.
We had a few more weeks of training. On Aug. 6, a second lieutenant told us that a bomb had fallen on Hiroshima. An atomic bomb, a bomb they told me was the size of a match box but could take out Mount Fuji.
Then, on the 9th, the U.S. dropped the second bomb. That day, we heard the Soviets had invaded Manchuria and declared war against Japan. I thought, "Japan is finished. The Soviets are Reds. They'll shoot the Emperor -- bam!''
For some reason, I wasn't so afraid about the news of the atomic bomb. But the news of the Soviets, that scared the hell out of us.
Either way, there was nothing to do but eat our dinner and get back to our kamikaze training. So until Aug. 12, the day training ended, we did just that. And around the 13th, we were told to get our affairs in order -- fold our clothes neatly, send home what needed to be sent home. It was time to write a will. I wrote one. But at a time like that, can you write what you're really thinking? I don't know about the other fellows, but my mom had begged me not to be a kamikaze. So I just wrote some rubbish starting off with, "Dearest Father, Dearest Mother, Thank you for all that you have done for me. At this time I have been distinguished with the honor of serving the Emperor as a kamikaze . . . . "
I couldn't write what I really thought; if I did, I'd hear my mother's cries.
We'd only had 80 hours of training, mainly night flying and navigation. On the evening of the 13th we said our goodbyes and boarded a train for a base in Ibaraki Prefecture, on the Pacific, from where we planned to attack U.S. aircraft carriers.
At about noon on the 15th, we pulled into Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture, further south. The city had been completely annihilated. There wasn't even a platform or any roof when we pulled in at Sendai Station. Thirty-six of us tokko-tai got off. That's when we heard an announcement, something about "Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek" and "President Roosevelt" -- something or other. And "Commander Stalin." And I'm thinking, "What? They're calling that old Red Soviet 'Commander'?"
Eventually one of the other boys told me, "It looks like we lost."
His eyes bored holes through me when he said it, and his face couldn't hide what he was thinking: We're saved! We don't have to go off to our kamikaze deaths!
We got back on the train and headed off for Ibaraki. The train was pitch dark, and all the civilians sitting around us were dead quiet.
We were soldiers, weren't we? It wouldn't do to gloat about losing. You'd have gotten locked up for that by the authorities.
In the morning we arrived in Ibaraki Prefecture, on Aug. 16, and we were able to confirm that we'd lost the war. There were extra editions on the street talking about the Potsdam Declaration. We went to the air base in Ibaraki and waited. Some people were sent home, but not us. We thought we were going to be dragged off and castrated by the U.S. military. We'd heard rumors that women would be raped and men castrated.
But we were relieved just to have our lives, and not to have to go off to die as kamikaze. So what if we got castrated? We'd already given up on it all. After a month of idle waiting at the base, during which we subsisted on scavenged food and sake, we were dismissed.
Rotten-tasting food
I returned home to Yokohama, and, looking around me on the 10-minute walk home from the station, I saw that everything had been burned to the ground. For some mysterious reason, though, my family's house had been spared.
I approached the house, ashamed of defeat, dressed in my rags. I stepped inside, peered around, and saw my mother. She spotted me and came running out, barefoot and screaming, "You're alive! You're alive! Masamichi! You're alive!" She wrapped her arms around me and wouldn't let go. And do you know what I said? "I'm sorry I lost the war."
It was my soldier's vanity. Just like that time she'd pleaded with me to turn down the kamikaze duty and I'd haughtily told her a soldier couldn't do that. "I'm sorry I lost the war."
That night five of us -- my father, mother, older sister, younger brother and I -- grimly sat down to a dinner of rotten-tasting food, and my younger brother said, "What a stupid war that was." Now, who was he telling?
I knew it was a stupid war if anybody did. I mean, there I had been, flying a plane without weapons -- this was no Zero! Many kamikaze took off in old training aircraft. You could pierce the planes' bodies with a ball-point pen! That's how stupid my war was. But being told that by somebody else, now that pissed me off.
"You little *#!@!" I shouted at my brother, and bopped him. He bit me on the hand. Seeing that, my mother lost her senses and shouted at us to stop fighting. In the one house in the neighborhood left over after the bombing, I went into my room and cried and cried.
A soldier isn't supposed to cry, but I felt an enormous void within me. There was no more talk of war in my family after that."
