This article was originally published by Avvenire, an Italian daily newspaper, on August 7 and was translated and abridged by TheO.Japan's Unresolved MemoryBetween the pain of Hiroshima and the epic of the kamikaze
Piergiorgio Pescali
Our visit to the Chiran museum, 300 kilometers from Nagasaki and dedicated to attack-unit pilots, raises important questions. While the memory of the atomic bomb encourages a rejection of war, honoring the sacrifices of these young men does not always have the same impact.Japan will soon commemorate its two most significant wartime tragedies. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ceremonies include bells, moments of silence, and speeches condemning the bomb while advocating for a world without nuclear weapons. In contrast, the lesser-known Chiran museum in Kyushu, 300 kilometers south of Nagasaki, presents a different perspective. Dedicated to the tokkô pilots, known in the West as kamikaze, the site marks the departure of over a thousand young pilots between 1944 and 1945, none of whom returned.
Visiting from Kagoshima, I expected a narrative similar to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, focused on grief and warning. Instead, I encountered a more nuanced portrayal. While the museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrate the devastation a bomb can inflict on a city, Chiran reveals the demands war places on a twenty-year-old and how, decades later, a nation still struggles to articulate this. In the adjacent temple, those who fell in wars against the Qing and Russia are commemorated alongside the tokkô, as are samurai who died fighting the Meiji government, former enemies of the state that would later send their descendants to war.
Heroes and rebels are remembered together, united by the only merit nationalism recognizes: dying in battle. Here, history repeats itself: yesterday's vanquished become today's heroes, provided they died with a sword or the rudder of an airplane in hand. The museum states, with unexpected solemnity, that those boys "died for nothing." This is a courageous statement, almost a promise of truth. Yet the captions under the photographs tell a different story: twenty-year-olds smiling before their final flights, letters to mothers and girlfriends. The tone shifts from reverent to epic, then proud; the words condemn, but the images celebrate. The Statue of the Mother, dressed in a war kimono, silently gazes at the pilot who will never return.
Behind her, an inscription promises that mother and son will be together forever. This may be the most honest point on the itinerary, yet even here the question remains: is this a monument of mourning or of approval?
I do not believe this reflects bad faith. Rather, Chiran demonstrates how public memory is shaped through negotiation, and how the line between commemoration and nationalism is rarely clear, in Japan or elsewhere. Remembering is inherently political, and nationalism often thrives in places of mourning.
While Hiroshima and Nagasaki emphasize that "this must never happen again," Chiran preserves uniforms and farewell letters with ceremonial care, turning them into relics. These represent two facets of national memory: one condemns war, the other quietly honors its participants. Chiran ultimately raises a critical question for all memorials: do we remember to prevent repetition, or do we risk repeating history through remembrance itself?
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