Itatsu Tadamasa is 20 years old in 1945 when he volunteers to become a Tokkotaï. These suicidal 'special attacks' were launched by the Japanese air force against the American landings at Okinawa.
Itatsu would prepare himself for an inevitable end three times to ultimately survive. Stuck in this world he decided to dedicate his life to the memory of his fallen comrades until his death in early April 2015.

What pushed you to become a pilot? Do you descend from a family with a martial tradition?
No, my father was a simple employee in Nagoya. I was the third child in a family of 5 children. I have 3 brothers (one older) and one sister. Only the eldest brother served in the army as an infantryman based in Rabaul. One day when I was 3 or 4 years old, I went to my mother's home region near the great Shinto temple of Ise in Akeno. There is a garrison there and a lot of airplanes circeled around the base back then. I knew from there on what I wanted to become.

But you still chose a civilian career?
I'm too small. I want to join the army, but you have to be at least 1m60. I'm missing 3cm. But I'm very sporty, run fast and I'm able to join the Yonago civil flight school while being the shortest of all 86 students. I don't like it. I dream to fight in the skies, I don't want something calm and easy. In fact I don't even have time to become a civilian pilot. When I get out of Yonago flight school, I have to complete 6 months of obligatory military service in Yame near Fukuoka. It is war and I'm quickly drafted into the army. I leave Japan to train on Formosa (Taïwan) and choose to fly a Hayabusa fighter aircraft (Nakajima Ki-43).

What's training like?
It is centered around combat. There's only a few theoretical teachings and a lot of mecanics and actual flying. A plane puls a target with a cable of aproximatively 300 metres long and while spiralling downwards we have to hit the target with live ammo. It's a system of points. If the bullet penetrates the target you get 2 points. If it bounces you only get one. The target only measures 5 metres, it's moving and so are we, which makes it very difficult to actually hit the target. I'm one of the best. On the 25th of October 1944 the Tokkotaï (abreviation for 'special assault unit' or 'Tokubetsu Kogekitaï') launch their first attacks on the Phillipines. I never imagined back then, not even in my dreams, that I would one day become one of them. I just spent my time trying to hit targets, I was just trying to progress.

You talk a lot about 'Tokkotaï'. In the West we usually use the term 'Kamikaze' to refer to these pilots.
From a historical standpoint, at least that's what I learned at school, the Kamikaze refers to the Typhoons that destroyed the Mongol invasion fleets and saved Japan in the XIIIth century. The Imperial Navy used another reading of these characters pronounced as 'Shimpu' to designate these suicide units. We army pilots never employed this term and were just Tokkotaï

How did you enter these units?
On Taïwan and later in Kakogawa, I was formed for aerial combat. Before I could leave for the front, I was asked if I wanted to become a Tokkotaï. The American ships had arrived at Okinawa in early April and from there they could launch aircraft, bomb the main Islands of Honshu and Kyushu and cause even more havoc. The situation was so that it was impossible to fight in the air. Our last chance was to destroy the American boats in the hope they wouldn't approach the islands too much. That was clearly the goal so we did Taiatari (litt. 'assault with the body) or in other words a suicide attack. Everybody knows what it means to become a Tokkotaï. You have to crash yourself on an enemy vessel and die at the same time. If you release the bomb above the ship in a conventional way, the ship could move and evade the bomb. We control our trajectory untill the end and thus were more accurate. We didn't have another choice. "We have to stop the American advance" we thought at the time. So when they asked us "Who wants to become a Tokkotaï?" we all raised our hand. All of us.

You volunteered for your own death!
I train. It's the only thing I do. I want to fight. From the moment I became a pilot onwards, I left my life behind me. My only goal is to leave for the front lines. Furthermore I am designated as one of the best even though I'm very small. Could you understand that in these circumstances I really wanted to go?

Wouldn't it be wise to just say "We lost the war, so let's stop fighting"?
No, that was unthinkable. We were getting bombed, the cities were burning and people were dying. We never even had this idea in our head. It was impossible. When you're a man and someone is looking to beat you up you want to fight him and I specially trained to learn how to fight.

What happens after you've accepted to become a Tokkotaï?
The 25th of May I arrive at the base of Chiran (Near Kagoshima on the southern end of Kyushu) and three days later, the 28th, I recieve the order to go.

What was your state of mind?
I'm proud as I'm a part of the elite now. Everybody says goodbye and encourages the Tokkotaï, even the schoolgirls. I just go, it's my mission. When I give lectures everybody, even Japanese people, think that we were forced to do it. When I explain them it was the complete opposite they are often surprised. You must not forget the context of the period. Young people wanted to become a Tokkotaï, it was an ideal. There was nothing better than to give up your own life for your country. Some of them even wrote letters written with their own blood to express their will to go though it wasn't enough as only the smartest, the ones with the best marks were picked. On a picture I contributed to make famous you can see 5 young pilots smiling, holding a sad-looking pup. People say it is impossible to smile in such circumstances, they refuse to believe it and say it's just a piece of propaganda. But that was our state of mind back then. I think it's very hard for foreigners to understand this, just like Bushido. The two are intricately bound together.

Once picked for a suicide mission, did you follow a special ceremony?
No, nothing special. I wrote a letter to my parents and another for my elementary school teacher. We, Japanese hold the people who helped us learn and grow in high regard. We believe we owe them a lot. These letters have never been sent as I'm not dead and I completely ignore where they are now.

Did you receive any special treatment the day before you left?
No, all the pilots sleep together. I wake up very early in the morning. It is a solid memory. It is three in the morning, I look to the skies. There are some large trees, a beautiful sun. The weather was excellent. At 5:30 in the morning I walk the 500 metres to the base where the engines were already gruntling. I didn't count the number of aircaft. Maybe there were around twenty. Some days there could be even thirty planes. I present myself to my superior and repeat my mission. Afterwards we grasp the glass in front of us. People often ask me if it was sake or water. I don't know as I didn't drank it. I have never drank alcohol as it's not my thing. I didn't need to drink. I take off from Chiran. In front of the airstrip lies Mount Kaimon which resembles the Fuji. I start to fly, look at the mountain and the beautiful landscape of Japan. I feel the mountain behind me saying "Go ahead, fulfill your mission". It's the last image I can think of.

What happened next?
Together with my comrades we had promised each other we would meet at the Torii of the Yasukuni-Jinja. We had to wait there for each other and we would enter all together. Even now I didn't fulfill that mission. It's a promise I broke and didn't fulfill to this day. I suffered my whole life from it.

You seem to have trouble to tell us about the mission that failed...
We left all together on the 28th of May and split a bit later. As a pilot you were truly alone in your attack. But suddenly the motor of my airplane, a Nakajima Ki-27, starts to show signs of weakness and makes some strange noises. I can't go back to base and am forced to make an emergency landing on a beach on the island of Tokunoshima (500 km south of Chiran and 100km North of Okinawa). The landing gear gets stuck in the sand and because of the speed the aircraft flips over. My head landed some 30 centimeters from the ground, but I am not wounded. Two locals approach to help. I say "leave me alone, I can take care of myself!" They started to shout "He's alive, he's alive!".

Are you glad to still be alive?
Back then I really thought I had to be the most unlucky guy on earth. There's nothing worse than seeing everybody leave and staying alone. I am one of the few surivors. Nobody else can tell the same tale so no-one believes me.

How did you return to Chiran?
I got back by boat. I'm not wounded and rather in form. Once at the base I receive a new mission, but it rains too much that morning and the mission is canceled. My third mission as well -I can't remember the date- gets cancelled because of the rain.

Some pictures show young girls saluting the pilots with cherry branches in their hand.
They are second grade schoolgirls who came to say goodbye to the Tokkotaï. They practically came all the time. But some of them tried to hide in the planes in order to accompany the pilots. It was really serious, we couldn't let it happen. They were forbidden to come back again so when it was my turn to go they were no longer present.

Did you go salute your friends at the starting point?
Not at all. Everything went really fast. The pilots came from Manchuria where they had already been prepared and after a few days they were gone. They only stayed a night or two in Chiran. Some of them originated from the region of Kagoshima and were able to call their parents in order to see them one last time. But when they arrived it was already too late: their son had already left. It is only after the war, when I talked with the families that I discovered these kind of stories.

How did your war ended?
On the 15th of June it is announced that we have to attack Okinawa, but in the end the mission gets canceled. During three days we are left in Chiran without a clue of what's happening and the 18th they tell us to go home. That's how the war ended, suddenly at once. I couldn't believe it. All these long months I longed to go fight the enemy and I suddenly learn I won't be able to fight. "Wait for orders" they told me. I always hoped they would call me back. Once the island of Okinawa has fallen on the 23th of June, they didn't need the Tokkotaï anymore, we had become useless.

What do you do after the war?
I became a very employee in the city administration of Nagoya. In fact I concentrate on my job in order to forget the fact I had been a Tokkotaï. It is unbearable to think of all the people who left for the other side and you're still here. On multiple occasions the prospect of suicide dangled in my mind. A lot of surviving took their own life after the war.

What made you change your state of mind?
One day I realise I was left behind in order to tell the story of my comrades. From 1973 onwards I started to collect information concerning the Tokkotaï including their last letters sent to their relatives. The army had burned their own archives: there was no-one left to tell about the Tokkotaï, no more documents, no trace of deceased. It is very hard to find these relatives and close ones who knew pilots that disappeared. I left with my small Toyota for three years. I travelled 100.000km across Japan and interogate the people I met. "Don't you know someone who was a pilot during the war?" I am all alone and don't talk a lot about my research I financed. The hardest was to find the traces of the first Tokkotaï. Most of the time I come across people who lost an old schoolmate in the war. Then communication started working and one family would point me to another one and so on. It took 23 years to collect the information of the 1036 pilots presented in the Chiran peace museum.

What do you say when you knock on the doors of these families?
I hide nothing. I present myself as an old Tokkotaï while excusing myself of still being alive. It gets easier afterwards. The families welcome me whole-heartedly and accept to trust me the letters and personal belongings of their lost relative. I don't think they would tell me as much if I didn't told them the truth. One has to understand them. They are usualy grief-struck parents whose son crashed on some ship without leaving anything behind. During thirty years the state tells them nothing and suddenly I come along and ask documents and some belongings in order to comemorate their lost relative. Naturaly they are glad and cooperative. Furthermore they need to talk about it. It was their very own son after all, whatever he may have done.

How many families did you meet?
Around seven or eight hundred. This way I collected a few thousands letters, pictures and documents. I left the originals in the museum in Chiran and held copies at home. I truly think that if I hadn't stood up, they could have disappeared and the story of the Tokkotaï would never have been left for the following generations. In 1984 I became the museum's chief and decided to leave my wife at home, near Nagoya. I wanted to continue my research, I hoped someone would come and help me, but no-one did. A lot of Ex-tokkotaï didn't acknowledge the fact they had survived and didn't came to honour their comrades. Not even the people of Chiran came to honour the memory of the ones who disappeared. It was a shame. Back then the subject was taboo. Nobody called me to give lectures and there were no schools who visited the museum.

Have you ever told your story to your relatives?
I once took my son and little girl to Chiran. They know I gave lectures and knew very quickly I had some link with the Tokkotaï, but they never really Interogated me on the subject.

In the West the word kamikaze which refers to the Tokkotaï, is also used to designate the authors of suicide attacks like terrorist attacks.
I didn't knew that. It's really awful, even for the Shimpu pilots. It's a bit desecrating their memory as it is absolutely not the same.

When the Chiran peace museum asked Unesco to classify 333 letters of pilots you collected as world heritage, they proposed the term 'Tokkotaï', but it was refused as we use the word 'kamikaze'.
Kamikaze, eh? You may look through all the documents I collected, but you won't even find it once. It's a word that actually scares me a bit. We started to use it only several years after the war. The Tokkotaï were not Kamikazes.

How do you feel today?
I'm nearly ninety years old (June 2014), but don't dare to compare me to these veterans who have back pain and can't move an inch! I'm very fit. I play tennis thrice a week and win all the championships to which I participated. If I didn't train, I would'nt be able to give lectures or answer the journalist's interviews. I have had a very rough and sad life until today. For years I couldn't accept that the Tokkotaï on the picture is me. It is only now because I managed to set up a museum with all these pictures and documents that has hosted over 17 million people and because people come to interogate me from the whole world that I realised I had done something good. I started to smile again. It was my mission to start the whole thing in Chiran, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to go on; I just suffered too much. Instead of commiting suicide I have built my life around it. I hope all people who left for the other side forgive while looking with content on what I built.



source: Science et Vie G&H nr. 28, éditions Mondadori (France)

I would like to thank you for reading the whole story (please do, it's worth your time). If you enjoyed it please leave a comment as I have some other stories like this just waiting to get translated or if you want to criticize something, go ahead. Please note this is my own translation of an interview found in french a magazine which deals with military history. In other words this is JUST an adaptation of material which is not my own. All due credits belong to the authors.