The Last Himeyuri, ひめゆり — an introduction (of sorts)
There is a fantastic story here, but I am not telling it; the story I am going to tell is a work of fiction. My story comes third-hand, from my poor attempts at translating Japanese, from snippets I've seen in non-translated Japanese action adventure movies, from my own imagination.
It is hard for me to remember just when I stumbled upon the story of the Himeyuri; for the past two months I have thought of little else. I've put my poetry to one side, I've been bad at returning phone calls and email; I have been hurry-scurry trying to turn the still photos of the young Japanese girls who were sacrificed on the island of Okinawa during the last months of World War II into a story I could share with others. Even finding reliable information on them has been a problem. The English version of Wikipedia article simply states:
The Himeyuri … a group of female high school students formed into a nursing unit for the Imperial Japanese Army during the Battle of Okinawa. Two hundred and twenty two students and eighteen teachers … were mobilized on March 23, 1945 … During the nearly three month long battle, the Himeyuri were on the front lines performing surgery and other gruesome, back-breaking duties. Near the end of the battle of Okinawa as the Imperial Army fled inland, the nurse corps was suddenly dissolved … In the week following approximately 80% of the Himeyuri and their teachers perished.
That is a small part of the story. The Japanese version of the same Wikipedia article gives a much fuller account and goes into serious depth over the nurses' history, as well as providing an excellent bibliography (all in Japanese) for anyone wishing to read more.
The story of the Himeyuri nurses needs to be brought into the English world; very little has been written, though what there is comes mainly from first-hand military accounts by U.S. soldiers. I recommend George Kerr's Okinawa: The History of an Island People (1958), George Feifer's The Battle of Okinawa (1992) as well as Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook's magnificent collection of oral histories, Japan at War (2008).
However, the real story of the nurses come from the surviving members themselves. An extraordinary 133-minute documentary movie, simply titled Himeyuri, features the testimonies of the twenty-two surviving women, most in their eighties now. The project took 13 years to film, for the director, Shohei Shibata, felt it was important only to capture the stories when the survivors were ready to retell them.
The film (or any of the action adventure version made over the years) has yet to be translated into English, but even so the emotions of women retelling their accounts are universally gut-wrenching. A small collection of their narratives have been translated into English. Anyone interested can read the first hand accounts in the journal Manoa (13, no. 1, 2001).
Being neither skilled in translating Japanese, nor (as it turns out) creating coherent animation, the project I started back in February has taken on a more crude "frame work" approach; what I am going to present here is a rough-draft of a movie based on the experiences of the Himeyuri had I the time and talent to do the project some justice.
Still, I deeply believe there are many stories that need to be told, even if in other hands they might be told better. I think one of the role of the story teller is to remind us that these stories are universal, that they cross nations and race and gender and age, that while the Himeyuri might have occurred on Okinawa half a century ago it is a story that still resonates even today.
Thank you.