No one would ever ask him to commit suicide for his country. Instead, he let out little cries and ran around the restaurant. The Americans, who spoke no Japanese, and the Japanese, who spoke no English, passed around the dead pilot's possessions, and looked at a book with pictures of the burning American ship from that day in May, 55 years ago.Īll the while, Yoko's 3-year-old boy, Rurito, talked away about child's things, paid no attention to talk about death and fires and war. He said he was willing to lay down his life. He said he had received a draft notice once and was prepared to go to serve his country as his grandfather had. He began to weep.īerg made a little speech later. Kunimine talked about what they were like when they were young men, a lifetime ago. Mickie Grace read aloud from Ogawa's last letter, and pictures of the pilot were passed around. The material from his suicide flight, she said, was "a national treasure." We are very proud of him, and I want to say to him, 'Thank you for your good work.' " "It is not something the younger generation can do. I know Kiyoshi-san died for his country and his people. "All I knew is that he died near Okinawa. "I know nothing of the war," said Yoko Ogawa. The gift, the small pieces of Kiyoshi Ogawa's life, were accepted with deep bows and tears. He would give the material back to the family. Before they left, they went to the family shrine and prayed to Kiyoshi's spirit.Īt the same time, an ocean away, Berg thought of what he would do. Yoko Ogawa, 41, the pilot's grandniece, her mother and Yoko's son all decided to come to California to get the material. Then, out of the blue, came the letter from America. Masao Kunimine, who is now 79, was an old college friend of Ogawa's and had spent 50 years trying to find out what happened to him. They said they felt his spirit around them. As it turned out, the family never knew what happened to Kiyoshi Ogawa, except he never returned from his last mission. With the help of the Japanese defense force and the efficient Japanese post office, they found Kiyoshi Ogawa's family in Takasaki, north of Tokyo. Now they had a name, a rank and a general area to search. Then Mickie Grace noticed that the letter Ogawa carried was from a noted poet in the Gumma prefecture. They decided to try to find the pilot's family.įirst they worked on the name tag and discovered the man's family name and his rank, ensign in the Imperial Navy. Something in that box from the dead past spoke to them both.
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He sent an e-mail to his new colleagues, hoping someone could translate the letter.Īs it happened, Paul Grace, Berg's boss, is married to a Japanese woman - Mickie, a professional translator. He kept thinking of that dead Japanese pilot, wondering. He moved to Los Gatos and took the box with him.
He was 27, ready to move on, and soon afterward he got a job with the 3DO Co. Schock died last November at the age of 72, and Berg delivered the eulogy. He kept the items, Berg said, in a cardboard box in the garage with his own Purple Heart medal. He did talk about the dead pilot but never showed his grandson the material he had taken. "We were very, very close," Berg said, "He was like a father to me." But the old man seldom talked about the war. He was a boxer, an aircraft engineer and the mayor of Haysville. When the war was over, he moved back to the little town of Haysville, Kan. He reached inside the man's flight jacket and took out photographs and the letter, picked up the other material and put it in his own pocket. He had never seen the enemy so close before. Schock climbed into the cockpit and looked at the dead pilot. He had volunteered to get down to the crashed Zero on a lower deck of the carrier. The material had been taken from Ogawa's body by Robert Schock, a Navy salvage diver on board the Bunker Hill. Some items were stained with the kamikaze pilot's blood. Included were the name tag from Ogawa's flight jacket, a letter he'd carried with him on his last mission, some photographs of his friends, the buckle from his parachute harness, a smashed pocket watch, a fair amount of money. "A gift," Berg said, "from the bottom of my heart. On Tuesday, at a restaurant in the San Francisco Hilton, nearly 56 years later, Ensign Ogawa's war finally ended.ĭax Berg, who develops computer games in Redwood City, returned all that is left of Ogawa's life to the Japanese man's family and friends. The Bunker Hill, badly damaged, was knocked out of the war. Four hundred and ninety-six Americans died with him.
The attack set off huge fires and explosions. He died instantly every bone in his body was broken. He dived straight down on the carrier Bunker Hill, dropped a single bomb, never pulled out of the dive, crashed into the ship.
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