Pacific War and Japanese - 6

If my father were alive and read this story, I know what he would have said.  It is impossible to live like lieutenant Miyabe in Japanese Navy that time.  I understood that "Tokko" was voluntary in its surface, it was almost mandatory for the Navy Pilots .  If a Japanese Fighter Pilot would have tried to act or say like Miyabe in this book, he was put on martial court and sent back for punishment almost immediately.  He would have been lucky if he was jailed.  He could be sentenced to death that time.

So, Kyuzo Miyabe is a person living only in the author's creativity.  He is not historical at all.  However, I feel that Miyabe represent all the Tokko pilots real feeling and truth in their mind when they "volunteered" for suicide bombing.  They wanted to live for sure.  They wanted to go back to their wife, their children, their parents.

Survivors in Tokko once told in Japanese TV Program on war that when they suicide attack enemy battle ship, what they usually come to mind was about their mother, their family, not Emperor at all.  Japanese Tokko frightened US navy in its history.  But the soldiers and pilots are also same human beings, somebody's husbands, fathers, sons who hoped to have more peaceful lives and livings with their family.

I am sure there was no Lieutenant Miyabe in Japanese Navy, but I am also sure that he was the one every and all the Japanese pilots and soldiers that time hoped to be and wanted to be.

Retired business person in this book who was saved and respected Lieutenant Miyabe told his grandson "Japanese Tokko could be called "Suicide Attack".  And it was.  But it was never exercised against civilian people".


Related Posts:
http://zheninternational.blogspot.com/2009/10/pacific-war-and-japanese-1.html
http://zheninternational.blogspot.com/2009/10/pacific-war-and-japanese-2.html
http://zheninternational.blogspot.com/2009/10/pacific-war-and-japanese-3.html
http://zheninternational.blogspot.com/2009/10/pacific-war-and-japanese-4.html
http://zheninternational.blogspot.com/2009/10/pacific-war-and-japanese-5.html 

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