Back to Contents, WW2 Stories | Back to WWII Stories
Japanese Medic's Journal
|
|
|
# June 14 -- "On this day the enemy landed and the time has come at last."
# June 17 -- "Today the enemy planes are in their glory strafing and bombing at will."
# June 18 -- "The patients are coming in ever increasing numbers. . . . Today the strafing by enemy planes was terrific."
# June 26 -- "Spent the night below the cliffs with the patients. . . . Some of the patients were committing suicide with hand grenades."
# June 27 -- "Slept good because of the saki we took last night. . . . Upon being awakened . . . departed for Donnay under terrific artillery fire. . . . Was ordered by hospital commander to be prepared to attack the enemy with rifles, hand grenades or bayonets attached to sticks."
# June 28 -- "I received a slight wound across the forehead. . . . We took to the forest. . . . Quenched our thirst with rain water."
# June 30 -- " . . . did my duty as a medic. . . . Felt like stamping the ground and tears came to my eyes. . . . I received a slight wound on the left thigh."
# July 2 -- "At dawn visited the place where my friend lay dead with a bayonet wound in his head. Covered him with grass and leaves. Upon returning ate a meal of hardtack and picked prunes for breakfast."
# July 5 -- "Two men committed pathetic suicide due to severe wounds."
# July 6 -- "I waited for the enemy to attack. Cpl. Yasuhiro also had wounds in both legs. Pathetically he was crying, 'please kill me.' So Lt. Matsumai beautifully cut his head off. The Cpl. pleaded before going out, to the Lt. to please cut skillfully, the Lt. with sweat pouring down his head, took one strike, two strokes, and on the third stroke, he cut his head off."
# July 7 -- "The enemy is surrounding us in all directions. . . . At last the end has come. . . . Our group consists of ten men . . . we have no weapons. . . . I am only 26 years old . . . my life is fluttering away like a flower petal to become a part of the soil. . . . I, with my sacrificed body, will become the white-caps of the Pacific . . . "
Kawachi ends his diary on July 7 with a simple goodbye and the belief that the "enemy will be annihilated."
Richard J. Sommers, the chief of patron services at the U.S. Army Military History Institution, part of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, theorized that Kawachi may have died in the banzai charge made by the Japanese that day of July 7. Sommers said the charge of 3,000 Japanese soldier, many without real weapons, was the largest banzai charge of World War II.
Sommers is grateful for the diary's donation because the institution has relatively little World War II material from the Japanese. Sommers also said the diary was insightful.
"There's no doubt he was the enemy, but there's also no doubt he was a human being experiencing the range of emotions from pride to fear to apprehension that all soldiers feel in battle. . . . That's what these personal accounts remind us of."
Robert Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C., who sold the typewritten translation to Beltrone for $10, said he had owned the diary for about seven or eight years. Wilson said he purchased it along with other boxes of material left in the attic of a house in Fayetteville.
"At one time or another a military family lived there," he said. "But I never could find the name of the family where it came from."
But Kawachi's diary will now be read as Beltrone believes the soldier had wished.
"He had the presence of mind to put his thoughts in a diary, so people would find it and read it and know what happened."
|
|