Flying in the face of reason

Japan's attempt to glorify its kamikaze pilots of World War II is a brazen violation of universal human values

One tragedy of World War II was Japan's fascist fanatics driving young pilots into suicidal attacks on US warships. These kamikaze attacks have become synonymous with crazy, reckless behavior.

But for today's Japanese nationalists, the kamikaze pilots, officially named Special Attack Forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy, embody Japan's samurai warrior spirit of devotion and revenge and therefore should be idolized. Pilot documents are exhibited at the Yasukuni Museum in Tokyo and more are displayed at the Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots in Kagoshima Prefecture, Kyushu.

The Minami-Kyushu municipal government, which manages the museum, submitted an application on Feb 4 for 333 items, including pilots' wills, letters and diaries, to be included on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register under "Letters from Chiran". The aim is to have those items honored worldwide and remembered side by side with the Diaries of Anne Frank and other documentary heritage inscribed to the Memory of the World Register and related to the victims of the Holocaust.

Curator of the Chiran museum Satoshi Yamaki says the pilots' "letters are symbolic of Japan's commitment to peace", while Mayor Kanpei Shimoide claims the special attack pilots were "victims of the national war policy".

In fact, the curator and mayor know well that the letters and documents are real in handwriting but hardly in thinking. Due to the Imperial Army codes of behavior and peer pressure, those young pilots who did their "noble duty to die", a duty shunned by the experienced naval officers, could never express their agony, doubts and concerns in words as it would threaten the lives of their immediate families and other relatives. Akihisa Torihama, grandson of Tore Torihama, a woman who cooked many pilots' last meals in her restaurant in Chiran, told Mark Litke from ABC News that the pilots confided in her "all the things they could not say in their heavily censored letters home".

The kamikaze pilots may have been victims of the war, but once they took off, they were committed to turning others into victims. Their writings should not be part of the Memory of the World.