Photo/Illutration Toshio Asakawa holds his uncle Matayuki’s diary in Azumino, Nagano Prefecture, on Oct. 14. (Kayoko Sekiguchi)

Eighty years after the first kamikaze attacks were launched on Oct. 25, 1944, the thoughts left behind by those young pilots offer insights into their commitment and lives.

“I will die doing my duty, which will honor my parents,” Matayuki Asakawa wrote in a letter to his family. 

Toshio Asakawa, 84, a farmer in Azumino, Nagano Prefecture, has an old diary, photos and letters in his home from his deceased uncle Matayuki, who served as a pilot in the Imperial Japanese Army.

“I’m ready to go on the mission. I believe that simply carrying out the mission at the location is all that matters,” Matayuki wrote in his diary entry dated Oct. 27, 1944.

On Oct. 25, 1944, the Kamikaze Special Attack Corps were sent into action to attack U.S. warships during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. 

The attacks of the kamikaze squadron were reported extensively in Japan on Oct. 29, 1944, but it seemed that Matayuki learned about them two days before along with his team members.

Matayuki sent the diary to his family with the note saying, “Do not lose this diary and keep it.”

Matayuki was born the youngest of six siblings in what was then Horigane village, the current city of Azumino in Nagano Prefecture.

He attended college in Tokyo at what is now the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

However, he graduated from the college in September 1942 earlier than scheduled because the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, triggering the start of the Pacific War.

Matayuki entered the Imperial Japanese Army the next month after graduation. He started his diary before then in 1942 and continued writing in it during the war.

He mainly wrote about the daily training he received while the entries offer glimpses of his daily life.

On Oct. 5, 1944, when he visited an onsen hot spring with his friends, he wrote, “It reminds me of my childhood spent in the Japan Alps.”

Meanwhile, after learning about the attacks of kamikaze pilots, he wrote that he would also be embarking on the same mission.

“I have to resist my instinct to survive. I need to train myself to eliminate this instinct, which is necessary for our country,” Matayuki wrote on Oct. 27, 1944.

“Using our body in attacking requires mental strength,” he noted on Nov. 1, 1944.

On Nov. 5, 1944, his close friend was dispatched on a suicide mission.

It seemed that Matayuki was also aware of his pending fate, as he sent his will to his family at the end of the month along with a letter pledging to do his duty to honor his parents.

Since the spring of 1945 when the U.S. military invasion of Okinawa started, desperate kamikaze attacks were further hurled against the enemy. 

Matayuki took off from an airfield in Chiran, Kagoshima Prefecture, bound for Okinawa on a kamikaze mission on April 6, 1945. He died that afternoon at age 23.

Matayuki’s nephew Toshio was 4 when his uncle perished. 

So he barely remembers him. 

The only thing Toshio vividly recalls is Matayuki’s mother, Toshio’s grandmother, always lamenting her son’s death.

“My son died in that infuriating war. ...” she said. 

Matayuki excelled at everything from sports to his studies.

Toshio always thinks whenever he reads Matayuki’s diary that, “I believe that he tried to suppress his feelings with brave words and to stir up his courage.”

Related News