The Memoir
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Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze – A Memoir by Shigeo Imamura Publisher: American Literary Press (2001) (2009, second printing) Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze – A Memoir by Shigeo Imamura Translated into Japanese by Ken Ohshima Publisher: Soshisha (2003)
In the last years of his life, at the urging of those closest to him Professor Imamura (Shig) wrote his memoir. He spent his first 10 years in San Francisco and then moved with his family to Japan as an adolescent in 1932. |
Family portrait – Keijiro, Hisako, and Shigeo (10) Imamura shortly before the family's return to Japan in 1932. |
His memoir tells the story of how a young American citizen was caught up in the atmosphere of pre-war Japan , became "110% Japanese" and volunteered as a kamikaze. In his memoir, Shig set out to explain how this could happen. His story, however, does not describe a crisis of conscience, and while Shig recounts dramatic events, it is not his style to dramatize them. His memoir is a seemingly ordinary story, filled with quotidian detail. It is an account of Shig's adjustment to Japan after living the first ten years of his life in San Francisco . It describes the progression through local schools of a bright young man who wants to fit in, to win the approval of his teachers, his peers and his community, and who succeeds all too well in doing so. It traces Shig's military career, starting from the point where he eagerly seizes an opportunity as a reserve naval aviator. It describes his training, his growing expertise, his promotions and his work as a flight instructor. It tells how he survived the war only through the indifferent caprice of fate. It is only with the accumulation of detail and the occasional toss-away comment about what he was told to think about the epic struggle between his two countries, that the reader realizes that Shig's story delivers a powerful anti-war message. It celebrates the independent critical thinking essential for rejection of the absolutes tyranny and totalitarianism.
Shig described best his goal in writing his memoir:
It is my hope that my story might help people realize that what they strongly believe in at one point in life, even to the extent of wanting to sacrifice their lives for the cause, may not be so believable in later life. . . . If only more . . . people would come to realize that no arguments, no differences of opinions - - political, economic, social, religious or otherwise - - are worthy of the sacrifice of human lives, including one's own, the purpose of this writing would be accomplished.
- Shigeo Imamura
Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze, Shigeo Imamura, Memoir, World War II, Kamikaze pilots