H199 Changing Lives Ch. 1 Okabe Itsuko

Yuigon no tsumori de - Intended as My Last Will and Testament -

End of the War August 15, 1945, Noon, Imperial "Jeweled" Broadcast

Tears. Her Mother cries....for her son Hiroshi?

Feels she wants to see the ocean - the ocean connects everything with everything else. She longs for connectedness.

Walks to a breakwater with other children where a number of Japanese people have gathered....and they are just sitting quietly, silently, staring at the ocean, wondering about their loved ones. No one says a word. It is an eerie scene. ut peaceful, placid, though worry is etched on people's faces.

Kunio--whom she believes is still alive-- Where are you? Are you safe? Are you coming home?

She looks up to see the full moon rising - an unforgettable moment. She will always remember it. It sinks in: the war is over.

Walking back home as darkness falls, she is struck. People are turning on their lights! Blackouts had prevented that. They weren't used to seeing the warm, welcoming glow of lights.

"Ah the war is really over. We can turn on the lights."

It helps the young people find their way home.

But what of her older brother Hiroshi? His plane had gone missing. She recalls Nov. 10. 1941, when his ship left Kobe, how the whole family went to see him off.

Then Match 15, 1942, the phone call from the Nighborhood Association. She was the only one home to receive it.

"Lt. Okabe Hiroshi has not returnerd."

Hiroshi's plane was missing. It probably means he is dead. What was she supposed to do or feel?

All her education had taught her was that they were expected to die for the sake of the Emperor. And this was something to be celebrated, not mourned!

But after the Neighborhood Association came by with their formal, empty, stlited Congratulatory mutterings, a neighbor comes over and expresses her true feelings.

"Your Hiroshi was great! I am so sorry he had to die. Forgive us. He died for all of us." She was being genuine, speaking true feelings from her heart.

Because this was no time to be congratulating anyone for anything! Empty, meaningless phrases. But people were acting like this all the time, just like idiots. It was almost comical.

This little vignette is a poignat critique of the entire prewar system of education, of fake loyalties, of stupid Neighborhood Associations going through their meaningless motions with their empty rituals and their false rhetoric about loyalty and patriotism and the glory of dying for the emperor. People were not permitted to express their grief, their deep sense of loss. This was the unnatural stoicism and resolve that the emperor system and its ideology required. It became nothing more than a ritualized social dance, an idiotic public display put on to fool nobody. A comedic farce.

And then there was Kunio's story.

They were engaged--not really formally, but both families understood. In those days, there was no way for young, unamrried couples to get together, to become intimate. And when Kunio confessed to Itsuko the first time they were alone in her room, that he thought the war was wrong, that he did not wish to die for the emperor, all she could come up with was what had been ingrained in her:

"If it were me, I would die willingly for the emeperor."

Kunio had been honest, straightforward.

"I am opposed to this war. I think this war is a mistake. I do not want to die in this war. I do not want to die for the sake of the emperor or anything like that."

And all she could manage was an empty, formulaic response learned at school.

He was speaking openly, honestly, straight from his heart, saying things you just were not allowed think, much less to utter. Okabe was not prepared for this. Unwavering loyalty had been drummed into her and there was no room in her mind for Kunio's words.

And she is also tortured by the memories of seeing him off at Osaka Station, waving their little rising sun flags, another mindless ritual that pains her to recall now.

Kunio was the brave one. He risked everything saying what he did. If reported he could be arrested on the spot. It is almost as though in the absence of being able to be physically intimate--to have sex--he chose to reveal his true heart to her...and in that moment, she could not reciprocate.

It is one thing to take a stand against war after it is over, after the nation's defeat. But to do it then? In the midst of the high-pitched war fever? That took real courage!

She found out only later from his younger brother--after she received word of his death in the Battle of Okinawa--that in his room he kept a hidden stash of books, leftist critiques of imperialism and war. Perhaps he was a part of some underground cell, maybe not unlike Noge whose precise affiliations, we never quite learn. Just that he wanted to prevent a war if possible, to stop Japan's military expansionism.

So, Kunio's legacy to Okabe were his words, "This war is a mistake" and now she has to live up to them. She refers to her memoir as her intended Yuigon, her last words.

"Because you left me with those words, I have my today."

They now must have meaning for her every day of her life!

Yukie in No Regrets for Our Youth also had Noge's words which she continues to hear, that voice whispering over and over, "No Regrets for My Life."

Learning to live a life without regrets becomes her personal mantra moving forward in the postwar years. They enable her to have her today. And her tomorrow. She will stand with the women in the villages, be their "shining light."

So it is with Okabe.

All she can do is to write Kunio's words down in her Memoir for all to see, to keep repeating them, to keep them alive because now more than ever, we need those kinds of words in our world.