Hayashi’s tale is
recounted in a remarkable book,
Kamikaze Diaries by Professor Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney of the University
of Wisconsin-Madison.
It tells the stories
of seven young men who were compelled to become kamikaze pilots –
essentially airborne suicide bombers, flying into Allied warships (the
Wikipedia entry on kamikaze is
here) – by the Japanese
military. Most of the seven had been students at elite universities, and
they kept diaries, which form the basis of the book.
It’s an invaluable
study. It makes clear that high levels of coercion were used to compel the
students to “volunteer” for their assignments. And it shows that these were
no grinning fanatics – the image that many in the West have of the kamikaze
pilots. (An image I vaguely held myself, despite having lived in Japan. It’s
not a topic that the Japanese discuss much with Westerners.)
These were highly
intelligent, highly thoughtful young men, and though they were very
patriotic, they didn’t necessarily want to die. They struggled to accept
their fates. They were not blind supporters of their country’s great
military adventure.
In fact, another
lesson of the book is that many in the military despised the students. We in
Australia are familiar with stories of the brutality meted out to our World
War II prisoners of war by Japanese soldiers. It seems the soldiers were
just as brutal to the students who joined their ranks.
Ichizo Hayashi was
from a devoutly-Christian academic family. He read the Bible every day. At
that time, family members used to send soldiers a Japanese flag with
messages on it. Hayashi’s mother and sister both wrote passages from the
Bible on the flag they sent him.
He started his diary
after being drafted into the military, and he titled it “A Sun and Shield,”
from Psalm 84:11, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield.”
Seven weeks before his
death he wrote:
How fortunate I am
that I believe in God, whom my mother believes in. My mind is at ease when I
think that God takes care of everything. God would not make my mother or
myself sad. I am sure God will bestow happiness upon us. Even [though] I
will die I dream of our lives together…I know my country is beautiful…My
earnest hope is that our country will overcome this crisis and prosper. I
can’t bear the thought of our nation being stampeded by the dirty enemy. I
must avenge [it] with my own life.
How do we reconcile
his Christianity with his willingness to slam his aeroplane – possibly
loaded with bombs - into an Allied warship? I’m not sure. The book gives
only brief excerpts from his writings. We don’t learn such a lot about his
faith. In any case, it seems the original Japanese version of his diary was
edited by his sister to emphasise his close relationship with his mother.
But we should note that the diary covers a period in 1945 when the Allies
were bombing Japanese cities relentlessly. He had reasons for hating them,
and for wanting revenge.
Though the book does give a
partial answer:
Ichizo Hayashi
relied on his Christian faith as he embarked on his final mission. Yet his
Christianity was inextricably mixed with doubt. Kierkegaard’s theology was
central to the anguished soliloquy in which he questioned the meaning of
life and death.
He carried
Kierkegaard’s “Sickness and Death” as well as the Bible onto the plane,
along with a photograph of his mother. As his last day approached, he filled
his diary and letters with cries for her. Singing hymns and reading the
Bible became his way of feeling close to his beloved and faraway mother,
herself a devout Christian.
Other Christian
pilots also struggled to sustain their faith as they faced death. On the
night before his last flight, Tsuneo Kumai urged his comrades to sing hymns
together. They chose hymn number 405, whose words ask God to give them
strength “until they meet again.”
Kotaro Hagihara,
one of those who joined Kumai in the singing, survived and later recalled
that singing hymns carried a risk of punishment: “Although we were not
explicitly fighting Christianity and thus it was nominally permitted to sing
hymns, we could have been in real trouble.”
Amid the severe
censorship that prevailed on the bases and the hostile attitudes of some
career soldiers toward student soldiers, this final act was a last
celebration of the beauty of humanity in the most inhuman of circumstances,
a protest against the military aggression, and even a dirge for themselves.
Is there a parallel
with suicide bombers in the Middle East? I don’t think so. Hayashi was not a
fanatic. He was not a true volunteer. He saw little glory in martyrdom.
But the book shows
us how easy it is for even a sincere and hugely-intelligent Christian like
Hayashi to fall victim to poisonous nationalistic ideologies. The lesson
surely is that Christians should always question the dominant political
culture of the day.
