Even 75 years later, Yoneko Uehara can still hear her classmate disobeying an official's order to kill herself while facing enemy forces near the end of World War II.

The student, whom she remembers only as Tomiko, snatched a hand grenade away from the medical team head and shouted, “If you really want to die, you should do so alone. I do not want to die.”

During the Pacific War, which started 79 years ago on Dec. 8, citizens were told to commit suicide rather than be taken prisoner. This code of conduct resulted in a huge death toll from communal suicides and kamikaze attacks, since surrender was not allowed.

Whereas the rule was thoroughly abided by in general, some people ignored orders from their superior officers in the military and elsewhere due to their natural desire to live.

BATHED IN DIFFERENT CULTURE

Uehara, who was in the fourth year at Okinawa Prefecture’s No. 3 girls’ high school in Nago, was fleeing from U.S. forces in Mount Yaedake in April 1945, when she was wounded in her right leg by fragments of a trench mortar shell. 

When the head of the nearby medical team took out a hand grenade and said, “We cannot get away, so we should die,” Uehara could not bring herself to say anything. 

Uehara entered the girls’ school in spring 1941, before the war broke out. Her sailor-like school uniform was replaced with a wartime civilian uniform, and students were forced to memorize the Imperial Rescript on Education.

As Uehara hoped to work at a field hospital, she was brainwashed by the military propaganda of the time. It was only natural for her to think of “devoting myself to the military” and it was literally impossible to raise her voice against a higher personnel’s order.

Uehara, now 94, still sometimes wonders why Tomiko could resist. Uehara and Tomiko survived the Battle of Okinawa together, but Uehara does not know what became of her classmate. 

Among the few things Uehara can recall about Tomiko’s identity is that she “could speak a foreign language.”

Tomiko was a second-generation Japanese immigrant born and raised in Argentina. She apparently came to Okinawa for a Japanese-style education before the outbreak of the war. 

According to Fuko Tsukino, a lecturer of Okinawan immigration studies at Okinawa International University, Japanese emigrants in Argentina, unlike in Brazil, did not inhabit the same areas and were scattered about in cities to assimilate with local residents.

They are not thought to have been exposed to the “loyal and patriotic” sentiment owing to the country’s “abundant ambience typical of Western nations as well as respect for individualism.”

“The young woman named Tomiko seemingly well understood the education and culture of the two different countries,” said Tsukino.

The Battle of Okinawa claimed the lives of one in four civilians in Okinawa and the death toll in the conflict is estimated to exceed 200,000.

Masaie Ishihara, a professor emeritus of peace research at the university, who has interviewed thousands of people about the battle, said citizens could avoid death in most cases when they failed to escape and were reluctantly captured.

Some people voluntarily exited the natural caves and elsewhere while waving a white flag. But those citizens could surrender mainly because no military service member or government official were with them.

In a case involving a cavern with no military personnel, a person who had just returned to Okinawa from Hawaii called for surrendering. Ishihara said he heard from a man who was in his 30s or so at the time of the conflict that he urged surrendering

Citizens believed once they were captured, men would be killed and women sexually abused, but the man, according to Ishihara, said he thought “the U.S. servicemen would not kill us because they are well acquainted with international law.”

Ishihara described what Tomiko did as “extremely rare.”

“She (Tomiko) could voice her opposition in part because she and the superior officer had spent a certain amount of time together,” he said. “Despite that, she still might have been killed because of her behavior.”

Ishihara continued, “People who had returned from their immigrated countries were not indoctrinated in the militarist atmosphere. They may have had a viewpoint to compare the life and culture of foreign states and Japan.”

OFFICER DENYING CODE

The wartime code of conduct, released by Hideki Tojo, then the army minister, in January 1941, demands one should die rather than be taken prisoner, and is said to have led many people to commit suicide.

At least one military officer, however, rejected the standard outright: Kiyofumi Kojima, who later spoke of his wartime stories and called for peace.

Kojima helped found the Veterans Against War group, following the end of the war before his death at age 82.

As a cipher officer aboard the mighty battleship Yamato, Kojima fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He then moved to Luzon island in the Philippines, one of the bloodiest combat zones in the war, and raised the white flag in April 1945 along with several lower-ranking officers to surrender to the U.S. forces.

Kojima detailed the story in his book published in 1979 under the title “Toko” (Surrender) under his real name.

While “Toko” includes little explanation for the reasons behind his decision, a booklet developed by Kojima more than 10 years later shows his love for the United States as his father traveled to the United States, Europe and China as a journalist.

Hisako Yamaguchi, 73, an adopted daughter of Kojima, said her adoptive father learned about the U.S. auto industry in college, explaining why Kojima states in the booklet “the slogan of ‘Kichiku Bei-Ei' (American and British devils) did not sound plausible” to him.

Toward the end of the war, many Japanese service members were content to be taken prisoner due to their wounds and disease. But few willingly stopped resisting and even fewer have admitted their voluntary surrender such as Kojima.

Looking back on his life, Kojima offered an important lesson.

“I would like readers to remember … how gravely education supports people’s life or decides their life and death,” he writes.