By Fumie Yoshida

"Chieko, I want to see you and talk with you now." This sentence is written on the cover of a book given to me by my father. In February this year my parents visited the small town of Chiran in Kagoshima while on a tour of Kyushu. My father, who likes history, told me he was very pleased to visit the town, because during World War II there was a kamikaze special attack corps base in Chiran. When my father visited the peace memorial hall there he chose the book Letters from Chiran as a souvenir for me.

He handed me this book saying, "Read this and learn more about history." At first I thought this was just a story about the war and the kamikaze force which I learned about in history class, and I was not tempted to read the book, but the sentence on the cover attracted me.

This book is non-fiction and the people and the letters in it are real. Chieko Date, one of the two people whose letters are in this book, is 83 years of age and still alive. Ayano Mizuguchi made the book using the letters and interviews with Date, and it was published in 2007 by Shinchosha. Although it is non-fiction, it can be read as a beautiful fiction.

The story takes us back to 1941, and the protagonists are Toshio Anazawa and Chieko Date. They became acquainted with each other in a library in Tokyo. College student Anazawa, two years senior to Date, was working part-time in the same library where she was a probationary librarian. About a year after they met, Anazawa asked her to go out with him. Although she rejected his proposal, Anazawa never gave up. They exchanged many letters and gradually Date became attracted to him. They fell in love with each other, but during World War II even college students could not escape the draft, and he enlisted in the special attack corps in 1943, leaving a note saying, "Hope to command the air."

Date lost touch with him, and asked around the neighborhood where he lived, hoping to see him. She looked for him all over western Japan and finally came to Kyushu where she was able to meet him again. He was very busy training in the air force but they got engaged, although this was later cancelled because Anazawa's family could not understand the engagement in those circumstances. But the couple were tied together by a strong love which lived for a long time.

Anazawa's last letter, that was also his will, arrived at Date's home on April 16, 1945. In it he wrote what he wished to do in this world: 1. What I wish to read: Manyoshu, Anthology of Haiku by Basho, Dotei by Kotaro Takamura, Ittennsho by Tatsuji Miyoshi and Home by Minoru Oki. 2. Paintings I wish to appreciate: Holy Mother and Child by Raphael, Lamenting Mother Kannon by Hogai. 3. "Chieko, I wish to see you and talk with you now." In that same letter, he writes, "Don't live in the pastﾉHereafter you should live second by second in realityﾉAnazawa will not exist in the real world anymore."

The youths who dedicated themselves to defend their country may not have confided their true heart in their sayings and writings. They lived in a period when to oppose the spirit of the times would certainly have been considered unpatriotic. The youth in such a time, who did what seems inconceivable in present-day Japan, had a pure mind and a strong will. They were educated to live "for His Majesty the Emperor" and "for the country," and they fulfilled their duty in dedicating themselves to the war. No tragedy is so sad as this, not only for themselves, but for their mothers and fathers, and for their lovers. This is a book which ardently conveys the feeling that we must not repeat this tragedy again; we must not let Japan repeat this tragedy again.

I learned about World War II in social studies, and heard about the war from my grandparents, but nobody except those who experienced it can really understand the situation. There are various stories concerning the war and it is left for the Japanese of today to recognize the stories as important for them. Could the youth of today be put into the same situation as the wartime youth who determined to dedicate themselves to their country? Do today's youth consider it their own problem when they think about the ninth article of the Constitution, or the civil war in Iraq? Letters from Chiran seems to make us confront these issues.