Have you heard the word “kamikaze”?

In Japanese, this word means “the wind of god.” In older times, Japanese people believed that the wind of god would suddenly blow in and help us when we needed it. But kamikaze is more well-known as the name of a Japanese special-attack unit in the closing stages of World War II. The kamikaze pilots flew suicide attacks against the enemy’s naval vessels. My uncle, Misao, volunteered for this unit when he was just 16 years old.

I heard his story from my mum when I was very young. This is how the story goes:

Uncle Misao was ordered to go on a kamikaze mission. On the day before the attack, he wrote a letter to his family to say goodbye because he wouldn’t come home if his mission was successful, since he would attempt to crash his aircraft into enemy vessels. When Misao’s mother, my grandma, received his letter, she thought he had died. But one day, after the war was over, Misao suddenly came back home and said the war finished on the day he was supposed to fly off.

What a dramatic story! I admired his bravery and his fantastic luck, and he became my hero.

When my son was in junior high, he wanted to talk with Uncle Misao about the war. It was such a good opportunity for us to listen to his first-hand experience of World War II. He told us why he decided to volunteer for the kamikaze unit and how he felt being a pilot. My son was deeply impressed with Misao’s words and said that he could not imagine that boys of his age would volunteer for suicide missions. At the end of this conversation, I brought up the legendary family story about him.

And you know what? He said the story was not true!

I was shocked. Needless to say, my mum was, too. I had believed the story for about 30 years and as for my mum, more than 50 years! We don’t know how this story started and cannot ask my grandma about it anymore, since she passed away.

But the truth is that he was not ordered to fly and didn’t write a goodbye letter. At that time, Japan didn’t have enough fuel to fly many planes, so pilots just waited for fuel supplies. He said if there had been enough fuel, he would have flown earlier and died.

We found out that the heroic legend we had believed for a long time was not true. But we are so lucky that Uncle Misao survived and gave us a chance to listen to his stunning experience. He gave me two photos in which he was wearing the uniform of the Japanese army. Those pictures were taken 76 years ago, when he joined the army as a teenager. He looks babyish but very proud of himself in these photos.

Looking at these pictures reminds me that innocent children have had to fight and die in wars, and of the misery of those wars. We must always bear in mind that we have to keep the peace no matter what.

*
*

Makiko Murakami comes from Osaka, Japan. She has lived in Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, the U.K., and is now living in New York. She is the mother of three children. Since they moved out, she has worked with a nonprofit organization that introduces Japanese culture to students in New York City. At the New York Public Library’s Tompkins Square branch, her teacher is Kathryn Bonn.