A number of documentary films on the last war are broadcast in the month of August every year, as it is the month when we surrendered. Particularly so this year, it being the 70th anniversary. Here is one of them I saw recently. A hair-splitting one.
Suicide bombing is not the monopoly of the political Islamists. It was started by the Japanese naval air force(we had no independent air force at the time) during the war, particularly when the tide of the war had definitely turned against us, toward the end of 1944, and we were apparently fighting a losing battle. Mostly(as I understand) it was the fighter planes that tried to crush into the enemy warships armed with a bomb, something a fighter plane was not supposed to carry with it.
Certainly it was very much of a crazy act, and thousands of lives were lost in vain. But what about this? They(the navy) hit upon an idea of manufacturing a two-stage bomber, in the sense that the lower part of it, a kind of a one-seater plane, was to be attached to a usual plane, mostly a two-engine middle-range bomber, as it was too heavy for a fighter to carry. When the enemy ship came into sight, the lower part was to be cut off from the parent plane and to fly on its own toward the ship. The hair-splitting part of the project was that the lower part was mostly consisting of explosives, and had no wheels. The death of the pilot was certain.
One may wonder if such could have been practicable. But the film shows that several hundreds of them actually took off, and mostly got shot down into the sea. The parent planes also were the easy prey of the enemy, as they were flying with heavy loads.
How would we to describe the death of those hundreds, or thousands? We have a phrase 'inujini', dying like a dog, meaning to die for a useless purpose. Many nationalists deny that it was inujini. They say they dedicated their life to the country. As a matter of fact they are among those enshrined at the controversial Yasukuni War Shrine, and help give a reason to those like PM Abe to visit the shrine to offer their prayer.
I believe their death was inujini. I mean, as they stand now. But if we learn proper lessons from the war, we can turn it to something else, something more valuable. Can we? "Yes, we can."
Suicide bombing is not the monopoly of the political Islamists. It was started by the Japanese naval air force(we had no independent air force at the time) during the war, particularly when the tide of the war had definitely turned against us, toward the end of 1944, and we were apparently fighting a losing battle. Mostly(as I understand) it was the fighter planes that tried to crush into the enemy warships armed with a bomb, something a fighter plane was not supposed to carry with it.
Certainly it was very much of a crazy act, and thousands of lives were lost in vain. But what about this? They(the navy) hit upon an idea of manufacturing a two-stage bomber, in the sense that the lower part of it, a kind of a one-seater plane, was to be attached to a usual plane, mostly a two-engine middle-range bomber, as it was too heavy for a fighter to carry. When the enemy ship came into sight, the lower part was to be cut off from the parent plane and to fly on its own toward the ship. The hair-splitting part of the project was that the lower part was mostly consisting of explosives, and had no wheels. The death of the pilot was certain.
One may wonder if such could have been practicable. But the film shows that several hundreds of them actually took off, and mostly got shot down into the sea. The parent planes also were the easy prey of the enemy, as they were flying with heavy loads.
How would we to describe the death of those hundreds, or thousands? We have a phrase 'inujini', dying like a dog, meaning to die for a useless purpose. Many nationalists deny that it was inujini. They say they dedicated their life to the country. As a matter of fact they are among those enshrined at the controversial Yasukuni War Shrine, and help give a reason to those like PM Abe to visit the shrine to offer their prayer.
I believe their death was inujini. I mean, as they stand now. But if we learn proper lessons from the war, we can turn it to something else, something more valuable. Can we? "Yes, we can."
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