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For Memorial Exhibition of Tsukuba Naval Air Group
Nobuya Kinase
The Tsukuba Naval Air Station special exhibition was held thanks to the great efforts of the Tomobe Town Board of Education. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of you for your support.
It is true that some have criticized us for planning the establishment of the monument 55 years after the end of the war as being too late. However, even as the years go by, our memories do not become "those who leave are not as good as those who come before. I found the following two poems in the Asahi Utaban of September 10, 2000.
When I hear that you have gone from the heart, too, to the suicide mission Who will tell the story of the eighteen who died?
Four times more than the lives of my friends who died in battle . What is your sorrow now that you have lived so long?
Whenever we remember our comrades who died young, we go back to our twenties and think of the time when we endured a cruel fate with a pure heart. The big house called the country was burning with fire. Many young men and women lost their lives as they rushed into the fire to save their fellow countrymen. They were our friends as well. Many post-war critics were too eager to pursue the cause of the fires, whether it was arson or fire, and who was to blame, instead of giving proper credit to those who risked their lives to put out the fires. I have come to realize that if we do not preserve the truth of the war, we will not only feel sorry for our fallen comrades, but we will also have failed in our duty to future generations. If the pure hearts of young people in particular are forgotten, what will become of Japan in the 21st century? I don't think there are any major fundamental differences in the feelings of young people in the past and today. The only difference is that the historical environment was decidedly different. We would like the youth of today to understand the situation of those days, when we were increasingly isolated and trapped in the midst of the world's trends. None of us had any other choice but to join the war. And there is no one who has not suffered from the disasters of war. Naturally, there is no one who wants to see war come back. Perpetual peace is the desire of people. While efforts to seek this ideal must be respected, we must also realize that it is very difficult to expect its realization in the near future. It can be said that the history of human society is one of repeated war and peace. We must not lose sight of this reality. We are living in dependence on the concrete earth, and we are aiming for peaceful coexistence as a guideline for our life, but we are also aware of the difficulty of reaching it. It is hard to believe that holding up placards and shouting out loud is the only way to achieve lasting peace. We believe that those who seek peace need to know the truth about war. I don't need to mention the disasters of the war now, but I would like people to remember that many young people who were negative about the war took the initiative to die in the perilous situation at hand with hope for the future.
In the Tsukuba Unit, there was a second lieutenant named Makoto Yoshida, who was a graduate of the First High School and the University of Tokyo. I was shocked to see the only word "Hope" in his letter to me. It was a few days before the sortie.
If you look at the various artifacts and memorabilia on display at the Tsukuba Memorial Exhibition against the backdrop of the wartime situation at the time, you can hear the breath of the young men and feel their emotions. Even from the perspective of those of us who survived, we feel that we have lost a regrettable person. It is our hope that people will at least sympathize with the spirit of those who died and understand their way of life.