LOS ANGELES (Kyodo) 2006 saw the completion of two projects that challenge perceptions about Japanese soldiers and World War II.
With the June publication of cultural anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney’s book “Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers” and the premiere of Clint Eastwood’s film “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the image of Japanese soldiers created in the milieu of World War II propaganda will receive a long-overdue makeover.
Recent works focusing on the personal writings of the Japanese who died for their country provide Americans a chance to learn, perhaps for the first time, who these soldiers actually were.
Ohnuki-Tierney, a Japanese native and a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, came across the letters of Japanese “tokkotai” (special attack corps) pilots — men assigned to suicide missions — while doing research for a book about the use of symbolism and nationalism in Japanese military history.