SAGA ¨C Kunitake Toriya was preparing to embark on a kamikaze suicide attack mission against Allied forces during the Battle of Okinawa when the fighting ended in June 1945, just weeks before Japan¡¯s surrender in World War II.
Spared from having to make the desperate attack, Toriya, then a corporal in the Imperial Japanese Army, was later detained in Siberia after the war.
¡°People died one after another, both in ³Ù´Ç°ì°ì¨ and in Siberia,¡± said Toriya, a 98-year-old resident of the city of Saga, using the abbreviation for tokubetsu k¨gekitai, or special attack corps. He recalled quietly sharing honest thoughts with fellow pilots who had received suicide attack orders: ¡°We don¡¯t want to die.¡±
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