/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-JAPAN: New Documentary Revisits Costs of War

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Aug 12 2003 (IPS) - A new documentary on the horrifying experience of female high school students who were forced to work as nurses for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II is the latest reminder of the hopelessness of war.

Directed by Masayuki Hayashi, the two-hour film that was shown here on one day – Jul. 21 – features survivors of the Himeyuri Butai, or Star Lily Corps, that was organised on Mar. 23, 1945 in response to the U.S. invasion of Okinawa, an island that lies 1,500 kilometres south-west of the capital.

The unit, tasked to provide emergency medical help to Japanese troops, was composed of 223 field hospital nurses. Fifty-six of them were high school girls in their senior year at the Okinawa prefectural girls school when they were forced into the unit.

Twenty two of the girls died, bringing to 197 the total of war casualties that included teachers and other students.

”The film is a futile and tragic tale. These brave young girls worked in caves where they toiled desperately to save the lives hundreds of badly injured soldiers. But they were working against the clock,” explains Hayashi.

A single tombstone in Okinawa pays tribute to the female students corps today. But many Japanese remember the incident well, especially on Memorial Day that is marked in Okinawa on Jun. 23.

Okinawa – which as a legacy of World War II and Japan’s defeat hosts some 26,000 of the 48,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan today and about 25 percent of all U.S. military facilities in the country – was the only place where a ground battle was fought in the country.

Casualties from the battle that lasted 90 days and ended in June 1945 were estimated at 200,000 Japanese and Americans, including 120,000 Okinawan civilians – or one-third of the population on the island at that time.

Hayashi, an independent filmmaker whose other releases include a film on the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the former Soviet Union, says the purpose of his latest production is to show that war only kills and brings sadness and desperation to people.

He says the film takes on special meaning after the Sep. 11 terrorist bombings in New York and Washington, and the continued casualties in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion of that country.

Hayashi is also a critic of the new contentious law enacted earlier this month, which paves the way for Japan to send troops to Iraq as part of its cooperation with the U.S. government.

He points out that the law goes against the principles of Japan’s Peace Constitution, which has renounced war. ”Japan, which has experienced the horror of war, should renounce war. Through my film, I want to show that killing one another is not the solution to any problem,” he explains.

Sumi Matsumoto, head of the Shiraume alumni association, said after the first preview in Okinawa on Jun. 15, ”We should learn the blessings of peace and the preciousness of life and never repeat such a tragic war.”

The film, a gripping portrayal of the suffering of the women and the soldiers they looked after, is supported by scores of testimony by the aged survivors.

The skillfully crafted production follows several of the women to the site – now a pile of rubble, but at that time a dark cave that was turned into a hospital for the soldiers, as was the military practice.

There the survivors, who still suffer from nightmares, headaches and depression, recall having to work without lights, having grueling shifts, and having to survive in the squalid environment inside the cave.

The film made history also because, for the first time, the nurses revealed how they were forced by doctors to inject cyanide into injured soldiers to kill them.

”I refused at the beginning to do such a horrible thing to patients whose lives could have been saved. But I was beaten by the head doctor, who told me he was following orders from the military,” says Haru Fukuyama, 75.

Another woman testified she saw Japanese soldiers stab an old man to death, claiming he was a spy just because he spoke in an Okinawan dialect.

Survivor Tomoko Maeda described how she was assigned to hold a candle while doctors performed surgery on the wounded. Along with her friends, she also had to walk through the forest, often in the dark, to fetch fresh water from the river at the bottom of the hill.

Another part of their nursing duties many cannot forget was the picking of hundreds of maggots from the rotting wounds of the soldiers.

”I kept taking out the maggots for hours, but there was no relief. The young soldiers were in terrible pain and kept calling out for their parents. I do not know how I could have survived in that cave that was often flooded when it rained, and stank of blood and urine and did not have fresh air,” says Fukuyama in the film.

As the battle grew more ferocious in the last months and the Japanese forces began to weaken, U.S. soldiers, who had been patrolling the island, started calling on those hiding to surrender.

”U.S. servicemen were throwing firebombs into caves to force the Japanese come out. It was very scary and I longed to run away. But the doctors asked us to commit suicide with them,” says Hatsuyo Uehara, another survivor.