80 Years On: Suicide Pilots Shared True Feelings of Not Wanting to Die

   Saga, Aug. 17 (Jiji Press)--Kunitake Toriya was preparing to embark on a kamikaze suicide attack mission against Allied forces during the Battle of Okinawa when the fighting ended in June 1945, just weeks before Japan's surrender in World War II.
   Spared from having to make the desperate attack, Toriya, then a corporal in the Imperial Japanese Army, was later detained in Siberia after the war.
   "People died one after another, both in 'tokko' and in Siberia," said Toriya, a 98-year-old resident of the southwestern city of Saga, using the abbreviation for "tokubetsu kogekitai," or special attack corps. He recalled quietly sharing honest thoughts with fellow pilots who had received suicide attack orders: "We don't want to die."
   In April 1943, at 16, Toriya entered the Tachiarai army flight school in neighboring Fukuoka Prefecture. After rigorous training on the Korean Peninsula and in Manchuria, now northeastern China, he spent the summer of 1944 preparing for anti-ship missions as a pilot of the Army Type 97 fighter.
   By the spring of 1945, as the Battle of Okinawa intensified, he was stationed in Siping, Manchuria, and assigned to a unit designated for suicide attacks in Okinawa. The memories of those days still visit him like a nightmare. Day after day he drilled, tormented by the same question: "Will I be ordered to depart tomorrow?"

(2025/08/17-10:30)