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Ensign Masanori Watanabe
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Last Letter of Ensign Masanori Watanabe to Parents
Sometime between 0630 and 0650 on April 16, 1945, Ensign Masanori Watanabe
took off from Kokubu No. 2 Air Base as radioman-gunner/observer in a Type 99
Carrier Dive Bomber (Allied code name of Val) carrying a 250-kg bomb and died in
a special (suicide) attack off Okinawa at the age of 21. He was a member of the
Kamikaze Special Attack Corps 3rd Hachiman Goō Squadron [1]
from Usa Air Group. He was from Ōita Prefecture, attended Kyūshū Technical
College (now Kyūshū International University) in Fukuoka Prefecture, and was a
member of the 13th Class of the Navy's Flight Reserve Students (Hikō Yobi
Gakusei).
He wrote the following final letter:
Dear Parents,
I will write a short letter to my dear parents and younger brother [2].
I will leave as a member of the Hachiman Goō Squadron Wake Unit. Of
course I will not return alive. When this letter arrives, I think that I
will be smiling from the heavens. The reason why is because I have no
regrets at all. When I look back, I realize that for 23 years [3] I gave you a
great deal of trouble. I appreciate your care. (portion omitted) Recently
there was a letter from Older Brother, and in it he wrote that I "will take care
of a wife," but this will end in dreams. (portion omitted) Dear Parents, I
pray that you please take good care of yourselves.
Postscript
Dear Parents, do not grieve at all even though I do not return.
For my country, I gladly lay down my life. I bravely go forward.
Please forgive my many acts of filial impiety up to now.
Translated by Bill Gordon
September 2026
The letter comes from Yasukuni Jinja (1994, 83-84). The biographical
information in the first paragraph comes from Yasukuni Jinja (1994, 83) and Osuo (2005, 218).
Notes
1. Hachiman is the Japanese god of military power.
Goō means "protecting the Emperor" in Japanese.
2. The letter does not specify the number of
younger brothers, so he may have had only one or more than one.
3. The traditional Japanese method of counting
age, as in much of East Asia, regards a child as age one at birth and adds an
additional year on each New Year's day thereafter. This explains why the letter
indicates his age as 23 whereas the current way of counting age based on his
birth date in Osuo (2005, 218) and Yasukuni Jinja (1994, 83) indicates that his
age was 21 at time of death.
Sources Cited
Osuo, Kazuhiko. 2005. Tokubetsu kōgekitai no kiroku (kaigun
hen) (Record of special attack corps (Navy)). Tōkyō: Kōjinsha.
Yasukuni Jinja, ed. 1994. Iza saraba ware wa mikuni no
yamazakura
(Farewell, we are our country's mountain cherry blossoms). Tōkyō:
Tentensha.
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