98-Year-Old Former Kamikaze Pilot Testifies to War's Horrors
Hesitated to Speak Out, Fearing Disrespect to Survivors
"Everyone Said They Didn't Want to Die... It Was Foolish"
A rally condemning the Japanese government held in front of Tapgol Park in Seoul. Unrelated to the article content. Asia Economy DB
A 98-year-old former Japanese Kamikaze pilot, who has consistently testified to the horrors of war, is drawing attention for belatedly speaking out about the truth, recalling a comrade who said, "I don't want to die," just before his sortie and was later killed in action.
On September 1, the Mainichi Shimbun reported the story of 98-year-old Kunitake Toriya, who lives in Saga City. Toriya began publicly sharing his testimony around the age of 90. Until a fellow flight school classmate passed away in his 80s, Toriya found it difficult to reveal their true feelings, believing it would be disrespectful to the comrades who gave their lives under the Kamikaze banner.
In April 2025, marking 80 years since the end of the war, Toriya gave a lecture to 120 people at the Tachiarai Peace Memorial Museum in Fukuoka Prefecture. At age 16, he entered the Tachiarai Army Flight School and became a youth pilot. In the spring of 1945, he received orders to join the special attack unit "453rd Shinmu Unit" in Manchuria. While waiting for sortie orders, the war ended, and he was subsequently detained in Siberia for one year and seven months.
A close classmate of his, upon receiving the special attack sortie order in May 1945, repeatedly said, "I don't want to die." The reason they endured the harsh, life-threatening fighter pilot training was originally to achieve results in aerial combat against enemy planes. Toriya recalls conversations where they would say, "You never know if you'll succeed in a single attack, and it's foolish and wasteful to carry a bomb you don't even want to hold." However, his friend was killed in action near Okinawa after his sortie.
In an interview with a Mainichi reporter, Toriya explained that his long hesitation to testify stemmed from conflicts with a classmate from Saga Prefecture. This classmate survived two sorties from Chiran Airfield in Kagoshima Prefecture, both times due to aircraft damage and emergency landings. Toriya thought, "Not everyone volunteered willingly to give their lives. I want to leave the truth for future generations." However, his classmate firmly opposed this, saying, "That's wrong. To dig this up now and talk or write about it is the greatest disrespect to the special attack unit members." The two often argued about this.
Toriya said, "When I think about the pain of those who survived the special attack units, I felt I had no right to speak, since I never flew a sortie myself. As long as my classmate was alive, I couldn't bring myself to speak out." However, he adds, "There is an outward appearance and an inner reality to the special attack units." The resolve written in farewell letters to "protect the country" was, for the most part, a formality. He, too, sent his parents a blank sheet of paper with his fingernails and hair enclosed, but, conscious of censorship, he could not write his true feelings: "I don't want to die, I want to live." Toriya told Mainichi, "War forces people into horrific deaths. Both the enemy and our side had parents and siblings, yet we had to kill people we bore no grudge against. Those in positions of power must deeply recognize how great their responsibility is."
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