Old pilots face up to the past

SENDAI, Japan -- There was a brief buzz about it last summer when the latest version from Hollywood hit the theaters. Then came the terrorist attacks on the United States, and it was once again on Japanese minds.

For Americans, Sept. 11, 2001, has joined Dec. 7, 1941 as a date after which their world would never be the same. But in Japan, as the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor nears, there is silence.

The silence has many layers. Young people know little of the air raid that killed 2,390 Americans, devastated the U.S. fleet in the Pacific and propelled the United States into World War II. Many of those who lived through the war years are dead. The few still alive would rather forget.

Still, Japan is constantly confronted with the past.

Cases are before the courts seeking redress for everything from the enslavement of women as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers to the prime minister's official patronage of a war shrine. Japan's neighbors are clamoring for an official Japanese apology.

The whole topic of World War II remains one that society here would rather avoid.

But two pilots who flew in the attack on Pearl Harbor offer an example for their countrymen.

They have faced the past. And they have conquered it.

Conspiracy theories

Any discussion of Pearl Harbor in Japan is complicated and rife with conspiracy theories.

Older people are apt to believe Japan was lured into the attack by a United States looking for an excuse to get into the war. They tend to agonize over whether it was a sneak attack, launched without a prior declaration of war. The declaration was made, they insist; it just got delayed in the bureaucracy.

Shinsaku Yamakawa wasn't in the know. He expects that he probably never will be.

Even so, he was there, and he wants others to know what that meant. Several years ago, he wrote a book about it. He gives lectures and is working on an autobiography.

But now, at 81, time is working against him.

"It happened a long, long time ago," he said at the headquarters of a small airline in Sendai, the city where he works as an adviser. "People forget. That's natural. And young people have other things on their minds."

Today, anyway.

When Yamakawa was 17, he was training to become a pilot. Four years later, on Dec. 7, 1941, he was airborne, carrying a 500-pound bomb and looking out over Diamond Head.

"The roofs were red, yellow and green," he said. "It was beautiful."

Up ahead, it was windy and there were heavy clouds. Smoke billowed up from bombs already dropped.

Yamakawa searched for his target. The first ship he considered had already been hit, so he went for the one next to it, the USS Maryland. He entered his dive, and released his bomb.

"I saw it make contact," he said. "Everything seemed to be in slow motion. I saw the explosion and the smoke. When I returned to my aircraft carrier after it was all over, I reported to my captain that I had successfully hit a ship. That was it. We headed home."

Decades later, he would meet another person who saw his bomb hit. But from much closer.

'There is no comparison'

Dec. 7 and Sept. 11.

Both were surprise attacks. Neither was preceded by an official declaration of war. Both shattered American illusions of invulnerability. It didn't take long after the terrorists attacked the United States for comparisons to be made with the other "date which will live in infamy."

Zenji Abe, 85, bristles at the thought.

"There is no comparison," he said. "Pearl Harbor was a military target. The terrorism in the United States was an attack on humanity itself."

Abe, a small, quiet man who lives with his wife in a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo, admits he has long lived with doubts -- guilt, perhaps -- over the bombing.

At age 25, Abe was on the deck of the aircraft carrier Akagi when the first, pre-dawn wave of planes took off.

"It took about 15 minutes for the planes to get into formation," he said. "You could see the green lights on the tips of their wings, but that was about all. I remember that it looked like fireflies were gathering in the sky."

He was proud to be part of something so big and so bold.

"We were the elite," he said.

Like Yamakawa, Abe flew a dive bomber. His initial orders were to attack whatever aircraft carrier he could find -- but there were none.

He hit the Arizona instead.

Abe assumed if he was ordered to fly, talks between Washington and Tokyo had failed. He didn't know he was to become part of the most famous -- or infamous -- sneak attack in history.

"Years later I found out that the declaration of war was delivered after the attack," he said. "I was mortified."

'I will never forget that'

Just before the 50th anniversary, Yamakawa, the man who bombed the USS Maryland, went back to Hawaii with some other pilots and met some American survivors.

"One of them asked each one of us which ship we bombed," he said. "When I told him the Maryland, he became very emotional. He said two bombs hit the Maryland, one in front and one in back. He asked me which one was mine. When I told him mine hit the back, he said my bomb killed all of his friends."

Yamakawa said he was dumbfounded.

"But he still shook my hand," Yamakawa said. "It was a warm, strong handshake. I will never forget that."

Then he added:

"If he were to ask me today to go to fight for the United States in Afghanistan, I'd do it. For him. That's how much things have changed."

Indeed they have. Today Japan is an American ally, sending warships to the Indian Ocean to back up the war on terrorism.

Abe stayed in the military after Japan's surrender in 1945, and in 1953 underwent six months of infantry training on an exchange program at Fort Benning, Ga.

"I was a prisoner of war for a year and a half on the island of Guam, and my American guards always showed respect for me as a pilot," he said. "In the South, when I was at Fort Benning, I had to deal with segregation, the colored seats in the buses, colored drinking fountains. But no one ever held it against me that I flew in the attack on Pearl Harbor."

Not openly at least. Not until 10 years ago.

Abe had planned to join in the Hawaii memorial to mark the 50th anniversary. But he said that plan -- and any official Japanese participation -- was scuttled at the last minute.

Sought reconciliation

He went anyway, to the spot where the battleship Arizona lies just below the water surface, still a tomb for 1,102 men, still sending up ghostly ripples from escaping oil.

"I didn't realize until then how deep the anger and mistrust was," he said. "I went to the site and when I saw the bubbles coming up from the water I thought about all the dead and how our attack had been made before war was declared. I felt as though my heart was being ripped from my chest."

Abe decided to seek a reconciliation. He contacted survivors, and joined them in placing flowers at the site. As he talks, he wears a lapel pin from the USS Missouri, the battleship on which Japan signed the surrender on Sept. 2, 1945.

For the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, he will be in Honolulu as a guest speaker at a symposium sponsored by the USS Arizona Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service.

He knows what he wants to say.

"Pearl Harbor was well-executed. It was bold. But strategically, it was a huge mistake. And politically, attacking before the declaration was delivered, and never apologizing, even through a third country, was inexcusable. It ruined our honor."

Lost contact with sailor

Yamakawa's eyes aren't as good as they used to be, so whenever he takes guests up in his Cessna four-seater, he flies with a co-pilot.

But as he steers the plane into the air, he smiles broadly. He is in his element, and he is grateful.

He says he won't be able to go back to Hawaii for the 60th anniversary. And he's sorry he has lost contact with the American who survived his bomb on the Maryland.

"I wrote him once after our meeting," he said. "But my English isn't very good."