Picture book teaching next generation about wartime mass suicides

By Mie Sakamoto

HAEBARU —

An English teacher in Okinawa Prefecture, Chie Miyagi, has published an English-language picture book to teach her students about the mass suicides involving local civilians during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

‘‘A Letter from Okinawa’’ depicts a girl whose parents killed themselves under orders from the Japanese military in Tokashiki, one of the Kerama Islands west of Okinawa, when she lived separately from them on Okinawa’s main island, where she had been drafted into the nurses’ corps.

The girl Sachiko sent a letter to her parents after surviving the war, but never received a reply. She later found that her parents had died in March 1945 in a mass suicide.

At the end of the story it is revealed that Sachiko is Miyagi’s mother and that the story is based on Sachiko’s life.

Earlier this month in her class at Haebaru High School in Haebaru, Okinawa, Miyagi, 49, read the book to her 35 students and had them draw pictures of wars and write a letter to their parents, imagining they were Sachiko. She also told them to learn about the war from their grandparents because their stories would not be available in the future.

One of the students, Daiki Shiroma, 17, said, ‘‘It is hard to imagine the mass suicides as there is no way I can see them in pictures or other means. It is important to convey what happened in the past.’’

Okinawa was the only inhabited part of Japan where ground fighting took place during World War II, claiming the lives of a quarter of its civilian population. More than 200,000 Japanese and Americans died in the bloody battle.

Many survivors say that as Japan neared the brink of defeat, Japanese soldiers told them to kill themselves, though some military-related people deny the claim. Although there are no specific figures, about 600 people are said to have died in mass suicides.

The issue drew public attention again last year after the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s school textbook authorization council instructed history textbook publishers to play down the Japanese military’s role in mass suicides by civilians.

Following a major protest rally in September in Okinawa, the council approved requests by history textbook publishers to effectively reinstate references to the Japanese military’s role.

But the council did not retract its opinion that the textbook references to the forcible mass suicides could cause misunderstanding.

‘‘The number of deaths (in mass suicides) may not as big as other war dead’’ such as casualties from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the Holocaust, Miyagi said. ‘‘But it is very cruel that families killed themselves to end their lives. I’d like people to know that the war caused such tragedies.’’

Miyagi first knew the truth about the deaths of her grandparents, Jitsui Makiya and Nae, when she saw a monument with their named engraved on it in Tokashiki Island about 20 years ago.

Until then, she did not exactly know how her grandparents had died because her mother Sachiko, 80, was reluctant to talk about her wartime experiences, as are many survivors.

‘‘My grandfather served as a school principal and later a village mayor in Tokashiki. He must have loved Tokashiki and wanted to live,’’ Miyagi said. ‘‘My mother must have been very shocked because her parents were telling her to come back to the island, saying it was safe there.’’

Sachiko said she herself was taught by a Japanese soldier how to die using a grenade—to make sure she exploded it next to her heart so she would die instantly.

Sachiko said she appreciates the fact that her daughter has written the book.

‘‘If Chie had not written about my parents, no one would know how they ended their lives and they would have died in vain,’’ Sachiko said. ‘‘But if there had been no war at all, they would not have died in such a way.’’

Peter Simpson, 43, an associate professor at Okinawa International University who helped Miyagi in creating the book, said he was ‘‘really moved’’ when he heard the story of her grandparents in May 2005.

‘‘My knowledge of Okinawa was quite limited’’ before coming to Okinawa in 1998, Simpson said. He said his image of the mass suicides was that only a small number of people decided to commit suicide as they believed it was better to die than being captured by the Americans, or that Japanese soldiers would commit suicide rather than civilians.

‘‘It’s not something that many people know about outside Japan. People know more about the Nanjing Massacre and about the comfort women issue, but most people don’t know about these forced suicides,’’ Simpson said.

‘‘In Okinawa, the memory of the war, especially among young people, is fading. Even the anti-war kind of culture is under threat...So this story is an important one to tell,’’ he added.

The idea for the picture book dates back to 2002-2004, when Miyagi visited Northern Ireland and Hungary to study English teaching. In the two countries, she showed students a picture-story show about the mass suicides in Okinawa.

‘‘When I told the story about mass suicides and revealed that Sachiko is my mother, the students were shocked,’’ Miyagi said. ‘‘And they simply felt lost after knowing that family members had killed each other.’’

It is beyond her imagination that people were driven to kill their loved ones, Miyagi said, and she still questions why this had happened.

On the other hand, she thinks it is miracle that she came into the world at all and is living now.

‘‘It is miraculous that my mother, who lost her parents and many of her friends, met my father, who also survived war, and had me,’’ Miyagi said. ‘‘I want everyone to realize that life is the product of a miracle.’’

‘‘A Letter from Okinawa,’’ published in November, has an accompanying Japanese translation and is available at 700 yen including tax. For further information, contact Okinawa Jiji Publishing Co, 098-854-1622.

12 Comments

rjd_jr at 08:13 AM JST - 26th June

Fascinating profile and story.
RMGTTF at 10:31 AM JST - 26th June

Could that (removing part of the text book) be a hard and escalating try to reinstate ultra-nationalism?

Good for the English teacher, I just hope the book is illustrative more than morbid.
dammit at 02:52 PM JST - 26th June

Why do I suspect that this book is only "permitted" because it's not in Japanese? It seems a bit stupid to have an English language book for Japanese students to learn about their own country's history. Yes I know she's an English teacher, but I hope they publish a translation. It would probably fall foul of the text book laws, so maybe she could have it published in Japanese as a biographical picture book, so that people can buy it or get it from the library and understand it's meaning without it actually being taught from in schools.

Frankly I'm surprised it's even allowed in English. Maybe the powers that be don't yet know about it? If so, JT may have changed that.
Rio at 03:18 PM JST - 26th June

I'm not surprised it's eigo only. As odd as it may seem, a covert government objective of EFL ed in Japan has been to nurture Japanese-ness. It's what they call 'internationalisation', but it's basically 'Japanisation'.

Nevertheless, I hope this text makes plain the absurdity of suicide. From it a distance it looks as though a book like this could be used to glorify killing oneself when facing hardship, and that isn't what teenagers need to hear. Hopefully the teacher ain't a black-bus nut.
Ah_so at 04:43 PM JST - 26th June

It is in English - who will actually read it? Schools will not buy it and nor will ordinary Japanese.
niku at 06:02 PM JST - 26th June

They were taught, in those days, that they would be tortured if captured. So suicide was the only way out.
def at 01:38 AM JST - 27th June

This book is for sale at the peace park in Okinawa. I saw it on Monday, and read it in the store. For some reason, I recall it being in English and Japanese The University professor assisted in the translation, I think.

I read through it at the store, a quick read, but it was quite gut wrenching, without being graphic. But simply describing that one's parents were made to commit suicide has an effect.

They were taught, in those days, that they would be tortured if captured. So suicide was the only way out.

They were taught that, but it was utterly untrue, so it wasn't the only way out, and that is why Okinawans protest the Japanese white washing of history to this day.
dw at 02:09 AM JST - 27th June

Whitewashing history, or denying the past, is a bit like a criminal denying that they've done anything wrong.
Rudd at 02:28 PM JST - 27th June

MEXT only gets to regulate content of official text books which require their endorsement. These kinds of books can be published mostly free of restriction.
rajakumar at 02:38 PM JST - 27th June

Good that next generation being taught about WW2 time, mass suicides.
Pukey2 at 02:32 PM JST - 28th June

It's in English? Do the 2channel bloggers know about this?
zanza123 at 02:20 PM JST - 30th June

Rio, well put, I totally see that wherever I work. I've only been here for a bit of time, so still working in junior high schools.

As for the article: "The number of deaths (in mass suicides) may not as big as other war dead," 1. major typo, 2. Duh! Captain obvious, the number of suicide greater than wars would mean a ridiculous amount of people, and Japan is a very very small country.

"Sachiko said she herself was taught by a Japanese soldier how to die using a grenade—to make sure she exploded it next to her heart so she would die instantly." And we are only learning about this NOW? In 2007?? Anybody else see anything wrong with how Japanese conduct their military training sessions?

"People know more about the Nanjing Massacre and about the comfort women issue," uh... not really, still many people don't know squat about the Nanjing Massacre, they know OF it, but we can't know the EXACT details because the Japanese army erased evidences and did not allow media coverage. To add onto that their not wanting to look like the bad guy infront of international countries so they rewrite history, leading to Japanese youths never learning about the true history, the dirty side of Japan. I am not blaming Japanese people as a whole, I am blaming the Japanese government, it's a whole new form of corruption aside from monetary gain or keeping power. It's doing what is needed so that your country gets the most out of it and then hiding the truth.

"she thinks it is miracle that she came into the world at all and is living now" I can really agree with this quote, because when my parents told me that they had a abortion before they had me, you can imagine how I felt, almost the same as Chie (They told me this when I was like 20 years old), the miracle that is the human life, eh?