My husband and I could not believe that he would come to sing in public on such a cold night.
It was a Sunday, 25th of February just before 7pm and we were shivering with cold near JR Kamakura station.There he appeared as the 1st among the volunteers. Actually, they had started this Peace Candle demonstration 10 years ago before the US army launched its attack on Iraq in March 2003. Mr.Masamichi Shida (86) was spared as the war came to an end when he was on board on the train travelling towards the Kamikaze camp around noon on the 15th of August, 1945.
About 67 years ago , when he reached Sendai station, Miyagi prefecture, in the north east of
Japan, he saw that almost the whole of Sendai city was destroyed by bombing and fires. Hundreds of people stood, like absent minded patients, in front of the loud speaker at the station Somebody said Japan might lose....
During the war, he did not believe that Japan would win but the same time he trusted it would not lose..he could not think anything else. Most Japanese people felt the same way at that time, as they were controlled by the government and influenced by the the media which were both under the Japanese army.He emphasized that militaristic education influenced the children the most. Due to the reckless Kamikaze attacks, he just hoped that the US army would abandon the fight. Since he was confused, it took a little while before he realised he was indeed saved .
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Actually, becoming a pilot was just a result of his achievement when he was 15 years old. In his summer holidays , as a normal patriotic boy, he just wanted to try the entrance exam for Naval academy, as it was the most difficult one in Japan at that time.Unfortunately he passed the test and so he couldn't back out. .2000 young capable pilots were lost by Kamikaze attacks during the war.
Just a few days after he entered the Naval academy, he realised it was a big mistake for him as he was beaten whenever he had a small mistake.His face swelled and puffed up .. He counted the number of the fists punishment, surprisingly, he still remembers it was 423 times in 3 years but it mostly happened in his first year. When he became a senior, he did the same thing to his juniors.
On 26 July, 1945 the mission of Kamikaze attack was ordered to him. After that he had a same terrible dream repeatedly :his makeshift Zero fighter was dashed against a US warship and big columns of water rose up from the sea but, strangely,he was still alive.He jumped up with joy but it was only a dream.Surprisingly, he has the same dream even now. His parents came to see him in Hokkaido and his mother cried and asked him to refuse to fly Kamikaze mission. But he couldn't.
A month later, when he came back home, he hesitated to go in because he felt ashamed that Japan had lost. But his mother found him, shot out of the house with barefoot and clung to his body screaming 'You are alive!!Alive!'.He just said 'I am so sorry..' But of course, his mother didn't
feel any shame, she was so happy he was alive.
After the war, he graduated from Kyoto University and worked at the Japan Coast Guard and Air Force for 7 years then became a JAL pilot and worked there for nearly 30 years till his retirement. One day he met an American pilot who knew he was a former Kamikaze pilot .The American told him that in the army,any dangerous mission can be ordered, there is a chance of survival albeit very small. But Kamikaze pilots were expected to die. It meant the commander was in fact a murder..The American pilot's words finally awakened him to the fact that the Kamikaze pilots actually did not have any human rights and were killed by the army.
In 1967, he met a US Navy priest called Chris who just moved to Zushi in Kanagawa prefecture Later Chris became an adviser of the late American President Ronald Reagan .
Chris had heard in a local barber that Masamichi was the only Japanese who could speak English in the neighborhood. So the 2 families became very close, shared their respective cultures and taught each other many things. At the end of 1968, Chris's family moved back to the US and Masamichi was transferred to Washington for training .The farewell party was held at Masamichi's place. Chris gave him a very big framed black and white painting of the Crucifixion as a memento which his parents had bought in the 1930s in China. In return Masamichi gave him an old Japanese sword, his family heirloom, which was kept in the alcove in the tatami room. At first Chris declined the offer as he knew that it symbolized Samurai spirit. Masamichi said 'I thought I was going to die with the sword in the plane when I was a Kamikaze pilot. But the war ended, so now I do not have to keep it any more. It 's true that the sword expresses Japanese spirit just like the picture of the Crucifixion expresses your spirituality.' Finally Chris smiled and asked him how to polish and maintain it.
Actually Masamichi's grandmother was born and grew up in Korea, so when the war ended, she and her family came back to Japan and he found out how Japan had controlled Korea too.
Now Masamichi thinks that we have a responsibility to respecting the western way of thinking and being guided by their own conscience.He also feels ashamed for the victims in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia .He insisted that war will not break up without the enthusiasm of the people. We no longer can be the rats and children dancing under the influence of the Pied Piper in Hamelin once again. He strongly believes that the Article 5 might be a seawall against war.
He smiled at me and said 'That's why I am still alive here, to tell the truth to the youth
who don't know the real story of the war so that we never ever repeat it again.'
25 February 2013 in Kamakura
They were singing ''We shall overcome' 'The Imjin River''Peace Peace Peace".....
12 Dec. 2012 in Zushi
I interviewed him 3 times, luckily he was willing to talk to me
though he couldn't talk his real experience for 50 years after the war.
His book titled [The last Kamikaze Pilot] published in 1998.The subtitle is
My second will(Just after the order of Kamikaze attack, he had to write a will but he couldn't express his real feeling, so this is real one)
He was 16 years old.
17-18 years old
The top photo with the university uniform was taken
when he was 20 years old.
At the Air Force he was trained by the teachers of US army .
From this time, he started to read the Bible.
He became a teacher of the training school for pilots
and headed an acrobatic jet plane team in his 40s.
He was going to retire in 1986.
