Kaname Harada woke up sweating. Increasingly, the middle-aged Japanese farmer was experiencing nightmares, horrific visions of the faces of terrified young airmen hurtling toward their doom in fiery crashes. Kaname (pronounced Kah-Nah-May) had killed every one of them in combat as a Zero fighter pilot during the Second World War.
Furthermore, he bore terrible memories of being on a hospital ship with horrifically wounded soldiers, none of whom were being treated. The ship's doctor ignored them as he treated Kaname's wounds, saying, “You just have to discard guns with a bent barrel.”
Kaname thought at the time, “We aren’t human beings. We’re like a weapon or ammunition...That’s the reality of being on the front line.”
Kaname Harada was among an elite group of Imperial Japanese pilots. Like his contemporary, Saburo Sakai, Kaname was an “ace”, having shot down an estimated 19 American airplanes up until he himself was shot down and badly injured in 1942. He had been involved in the attack on Pearl Harbour and in the Battle of Midway. After his injuries, he became a flying instructor, eventually even training kamikaze pilots, for the remainder of the war.
Although he became a successful dairy farmer afterwards, the nightmares stemming from his war experience haunted him, exhausting him spiritually and physically.
“I realized the war had turned me into a killer of men.” he said later. “And that was not the kind of person I wanted to be.” What was he to do? he wondered.
“If you want to atone for the lives you have taken, what better way is there than to nurture new lives?” his wife suggested. They opened a kindergarten in 1969. His nightmares vanished. Kaname worked as principal of the school until he retired in the late 1980s, though he maintained a presence in the facility afterwards.
“The first incarnation of my life was as a ruthless killer. I still live with a sense of sin over those I killed. I chased them and shot them down—such a horrible thing to do,” he said in a later interview. “Now, I go to the kindergarten every day and interact with the children. I want to nurture kind and considerate hearts in all of them.”
During those years, he also made it a point to visit former aerial foes in the UK and USA. All of these activities helped heal his psychological pain, but a rocking chair retirement was not to be. In his 70s, Kaname realized that Japan was experiencing an ominous evolution in its politics.
Kaname Harada had been like many veterans of war: he had chosen not to talk about his experiences for a long time. But one day, in 1991, he heard one of the children in his kindergarten speak of the televised images of the Gulf War, as “beautiful like fireworks”. Kaname realized that that child—perhaps many children—had no real idea of what they were seeing and could find the horror of actual war rendered as harmless and somehow “beautiful”.
There were more alarming signs of a change in outlook in Japan.
In recent years, especially under Prime Minster Kinzuo Abe, Japan has swung politically to the right. Abe is keenly interested in gutting Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which specifically forbids Japan from entering into any conflict for other than self-defense. To this end, Japan's military is limited to a defensive role, a fact which irks many Japanese conservatives. Japan itself has struggled with its role as an oppressive empire before and during the Second World War. As the realities of the war recede in memory, a number of younger Japanese want to see the country become militarily strong again. More than a few are agitating for a return of the Empire as a reflection of growing Japanese nationalism and the threat of North Korean militarism.
However, many Japanese wish to see Article 9 preserved and for Japan to remain as a peaceful power in the world. Among them was Kaname Harada.
He did not mince words about those who wanted to return to a militarily strong Japan: “these politicians were born after the war, and so they don’t understand it must be avoided at all costs. In this respect, they are like our prewar leaders."
The former fighter pilot took on a new mission: to speak up, tell the truth about war to younger generations. Despite his 70+ years of age, he spoke publicly at every venue he could. Kaname continued well into his '90s, despite the growing frailty of his aging.
His eloquent pleas to remind his people of the dangers of reawakening nationalistic militarism and of the horrors of war itself drew a wide audience in Japan. Despite his age, Kaname became a sought-after public speaker. He continued this practice for most of the rest of his life.
In his late 90s, unable to speak publicly any longer, Kaname retired from what had become his third vocation. At some point in 2011, he was approached by film maker Zero Mori in Nagano, his city of residence. Mori visited the elderly Kaname many times, then broached the idea of making a documentary about his war experiences, especially as so many of those who had lived through or participated in the war were now deceased. Kaname readily agreed.
The documentary, titled Each and Every Battlefield, premiered in 2015 and has had good audience numbers. Kaname lived to see himself on screen pleading with his country to remain a peaceful presence in the world.
He died in 2016, having completed his last mission to the best of his ability.
--copyright Peter Fergus-Moore 2017
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