Reviews

Shig's parents were issei, first geeration immigrants from Matsuyama , a city on the northwest corner of Shikoku, smallest of the four major isaldns of Japan . He spent the first ten years of his life in San Francisco, growing up like so many second-generation kids, speaking English effortlessly, playing American games and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to begin each school day while his parents tried to keep him in touch with Japanese language and culture.

In 1932 he returned with his parents to Japan to begin an entirely different experience, beginning each day with a deep, reverent bow to portraits of the Emperor and Empress. Shig's account of life in those years is remarkable for he matter-of-fact way in which his education became increasingly dominated by patriotic mythology and military training. By the time he was fifteen he was “110% Japanese,” ready to fight the Emperor's enemies. Three years later he was able to get into the Naval Air Reserve. At that stage of the war, he recalls, “ . . . most people knew that going into the military meant almost certain death . . . But the password of the day then was ‘the glory of death for the Emperor and the country.' “

As the Japanese empire weakened Shig's training became desperately brief. In less than a year he had qualified on several fighter planes and was training “yokaren” boys sixteen and younger who would be sent quickly into combat, many of them on suicide missions. Early in February 1945 all instructors and cadets at Shig's airbase were asked to volunteer for one of the “Special Attack Units.” These were the Kamikaze, the “Divine Wind that would finally defeat Japan 's enemies like the typhoon that sunk the invading Mongol fleet in 1274.” At the Commanding Officer's question, everyone, without exception, volunteered. “My body,” Shig recalls, “moved forward automatically.”

At the end of July the Kamikaze unit was ordered into combat. Shig walked to his plane and to his certain death. He saw a five hundred pound bomb fixed to the fuselage of his plane and knew the gas tank would be only half full; there would be no return flight. Then, without explanation, the mission was cancelled and within days the entire squadron was moved to Hokkaido , out of reach of the daily B29 raids on Honshu . When he arrived at his new assignment on August 14, however, Lieutenant Imamura learned that the war was over, and that the Emperor himself had announced Japan 's surrender in a radio address to a nation that had never before heard his voice. Only later would he learn of the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki .

Shig returned through a ruined and demoralized Japan to his family home in Matsuyama . There he quickly found work as a translator and Japanese instructor for the Occupation Army – valuable service which would eventually help him win back the U.S. citizenship he'd lost. In 1951 he earned a scholarship to study in Ann Arbor , and in 1961 faculty from MSU persuaded him to become Director of the English Language Center where he spent the next twenty ears of his career.

When Sue and I met Shigeo Imamura twenty-five years ago he had lived half his life in Japan and half in the U.S. and felt equally at home in either country. He remained in Japan until his death but asked that his ashes be scattered in San Francisco Bay . His wartime experience, he told us, had made him wonder whether that conflict, or any other, was worth its horrible cost in human suffering. He was especially harsh in his judgment of those in any country who would use religion and patriotism to manipulate young men into sacrificing their lives in dubious battle.

Back To Review Page

Shig: The True Story of an American Kamikaze, Shigeo Imamura, Memoir, World War II, Kamikaze pilots