Soldier who stayed on tells filmmaker how 'We had to kill, kill, kill'

The most astounding moment in "Flowers and Troops," a documentary film by Yojyu Matsubayashi, is when the young director leans close to one of his subjects — an 87-year-old former corporal in the Imperial Japanese Army — and says, "I've heard that some Japanese soldiers ate human flesh."

The former corporal, named Yaichiro Nakano, averts his eyes and, after a long pause, replies: "There are some things that I just can't talk about."

Nakano is one of six former soldiers interviewed in the film. What makes Matsubayashi's question so poignant is that Nakano, like the five other interviewees, lives in Thailand — where they stayed at the end of the war to avoid being sent back to Japan after escaping from their defeated units or prisoner-of-war camps.