The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [239]
THE JAPANESE
COLONEL HIROMICHI YAHARA
General Ushijima’s confidant and the primary tactical planner for the Japanese defense of Okinawa escapes the collapse of the Japanese command. Shedding his uniform, he makes every effort to blend in with a group of soldiers attempting to pass themselves off as Okinawan refugees, intending to find a boat that will carry them away from Okinawa. After several days in hiding with groups of terrified Okinawans, the inevitable occurs, and American soldiers discover them hiding in a cave. Yahara, who speaks English, beseeches the Americans to do no harm, and the entire group is captured. Passing through the refugee camps, along with thousands of others, both Japanese and Okinawans, he is recognized by several Japanese soldiers, though his secret is not revealed to his captors for several weeks. Finally he is interrogated by Japanese prisoners working in service to American intelligence, where his identity is finally revealed. He continues to be questioned by various American intelligence officials, all the while seeking the means to escape his captors. But the atomic bomb changes his mind. On August 15, he is shown a transcript of Emperor Hirohito’s official surrender order, and Yahara realizes his war is over. He is repatriated to Japan at the end of 1945, and reaches Tokyo Bay on January 7, 1946, on board the American transport USS Gable. He sees for the first time the utter devastation of the Japanese capital, few details of which had ever been communicated to his command on Okinawa. Still considered a high-ranking officer in the Thirty-second Army, Yahara is assigned to deal with the organizational paperwork that remains in repatriating those few soldiers who have survived. He reports to what remains of Imperial General Headquarters, which of course is completely dominated by the occupation forces of the Americans. Nonetheless, he makes his full report on the outcome of the battle for Okinawa to the highest-ranking general he can find, thus fulfilling his last assignment. By the end of 1946, he completes his wrapping up of the final paperwork for the Thirty-second Army.
Yahara is acutely aware of the disgrace that comes from being a prisoner of war, and never admits to any such status, convincing others, and himself, that the war ended with him still in the service of the emperor, and still trying to find a way to aid his country’s cause. He agonizes frequently about his own survival, suffers frequent bouts of depression and guilt that his beloved commanding general took the more honorable way out.
As Japan organizes a national police force, Yahara is called upon to serve as instructor for new recruits, but his taste for uniforms has soured, and he refuses. Instead he writes his memoir, careful to define his role in such a way that there will be no shame in his capture, an awareness he carries even decades after the war’s conclusion. The memoir is published in 1972, and surprises him by becoming a commercial success. He writes:
A nation should never be sacrificed for the sake of its leaders. Japan’s leaders got us involved in the China incident out of a sense of self-preservation. They started that war to preserve their own power, status and honor. Who would not despair knowing that soldiers were dying in the interests of such leaders?
He dies in 1981, at age seventy-eight.
DR. OKIRO HAMISHITA
Though grief-stricken over the death of his wife, he recovers sufficiently from the injuries received during the blast of the atomic bomb to fulfill his primary duty of caring for patients, and spends several days tending to the horrific injuries of those who survive the blast. But he cannot escape the unknown illness that afflicts so many of the bomb’s immediate survivors, and succumbs to what we now know to be radiation