The Last Himeyuri, ひめゆり — Mud & Grace
A Couple of Notes:
Throughout this movie I have been trying to use only Okinawan phrases and concepts in the dialog. Thus, using the Okinawan term for mother, “Okkaa,” instead of the Japanese,“Okasan,” makes perfect sense to me. However, because 99% of my research comes from books, there are certain phrases I will remain ignorant about until I finally make an Okinawan friend who can correct my mistakes. For example, what would the wounded soldiers call the nurses? I am not sure what the Okinawan word for “Nurse” actually is; plus there are so many other factors to think about. Most of the soldiers are grown men (many Japanese, not Okinawan) all hurt or maimed in some terrible way or other and all requiring deeply personal assistance that they probably have never asked a fourteen year old girl to do before (as a nurse aide myself I have seen the struggle my residents go through just to ask me to do something as personal as wipe them after using the bathroom; never mind if there are social boundaries like age and gender involved).
Finally, I settled on “Wunai” as a good term to use. Its definition is “A sister, either elder or younger, from her brother's point of view” (Sakihaea, 221). If I was slowly rotting from gangrene in a humid cave without pain killers or anyway to keep clean I think I'd consider anyone helping me to be family. However, there is another term closely linked to “Wunai,” which is “Wunai-gami” — which is, “a sister deity, referring to a sister when she is acting in accordance to the traditional belief that she has spiritual powers to protect her brother” (ibid.) Perhaps the closest thing we have in the West is the concept of a Guardian Angel but regardless, since the line is spoken to Kohitsuji by a young man dying of brain fever (a horrific way to die by all accounts; unchecked fevers that literally stripping away one's humanity as the brain rots from within), since she herself was in training to be an onarigami before the war started, his begging to her to play out her role as his divine sister seemed appropriate.
At the end of the film I try to make a point about something I came across in an excellent book by George Feifer, who quotes Shigemi Furukawa as saying: The way of bushido is to die – but in this battle where we and the enemy stand on different dimensions of metal and supplies, it completely loses its meaning. Something is now beginning that has had no precedent in Japanese military: death without meaning.
Ask any Westerner with a professed love of all things Japanese and they might not be able to tell you who the current Prime Minister is but they'll know all about Bushido (since all samurai movies feature at least one Mifune Toshiro wannabe "finding the right place to die" by simply gutting himself like a bluefish on the field of battle). I know the explanations are very complex as to why many Japanese choose to rewrite the Battle of Okinawa in order to cast the Imperial Army in a favorable light (and by doing so negate the atrocities committed against the Okinawans) but I wonder to what extent seeing the defense of Okinawa as a "death without meaning" has been a motivation in this rewriting; especially for people trying to honor ancestors who might not have been very honorable right before they died?
“Amazing Grace” — Let's just say singing in Okinawan is not as easy as I hoped; anyone with a better voice is welcome to submit their version and I will gratefully use it in the film (hint, hint).
Coming up with music for these films has been interesting; sometimes I have been forced to improvise as I went along (that is me mumbling a lullaby in the second film simply because I couldn't find anyone else willing to try to sing in Okinawan … not that I'd call what I am doing “singing” in its pure sense). Still, once in a while I come across a rendition of a song I am so blown away with I think “that's it! If I ever get a budget for this project I want this person to perform on it!” I was blown away by a performance by Natsukawa Rimi singing Amazing Grace in Okinawan! Even though after seeing the Japanese TV version of the Himeyuri, which uses the traditional American Gospel song sung in English, I had decided against using it (after all, I don't want to simply cut and paste somebody else's work and call it my own) … but after listening to Rimi's version I can't but want her to sing an Okinawan version of Amazing Grace in my movie too.
Natsukawa Rimi you are my new hero!
[cut to: the endless rain, mud, night. An Imperial Army hospital truck bringing wounded to the 3rd Surgery Unit. Cut to: nurses unloading countless bodies.]
Tira: How many came in this time?
Ashitomi: Eleven, I think.
Higa: I counted thirteen, but one is dead, I think. He lost his face.
Katsuko: Please, I need a stretcher!
[cut to: stretchers, Himeyuri hauling bodies into the caves]
[f/x: water dripping from cave walls. Ashitomi hurrying from body to body, checking bandages. The wounded are grouped depending on the type of treatment they need to receive, almost all are amputations. In one corner untreated gangrene cases toss about in agony; their limbs swelled dark and grotesquely]
Wounded Soldier #1: Wunai … please, wunai …
Ashitomi: Yes? What is the matter?
Wounded Soldier #1: I am … so ashamed. Please, I need to go to the bathroom … I can't move, it's been two days … please.
[cut to: Ashitomi bends down to pick up a bed pan only to find it is half-full with urine. She undoes the wounded man's trousers and helps slide them down. As the man urinates Ashitomi tries not to vomit. They are both highly embarrassed]
Wounded Soldier #2: Wuani-gami, it hurts! Please kill me!
Kohitsuji: Brain fever … gangrene … tetanus … he will die soon … he is not even human now.
[cut to: A small antechamber set off from the cave. Kohitsuji helps hold down the leg of a screaming boy. There is no pain killer. A doctor takes an old saw and begins to slice the leg off. The boy twists and screams in pain. Suddenly his eyes go blank and the screaming stops but the doctor keeps cutting into the boy as if so exhausted he can do nothing else]
Wounded Soldier #3 [sitting up in bed and shouting]: Hey! You bastard!
[jumps up and grabs a small, wounded officer, begins choking him]
Wounded Soldier #3: You bastard! You ordered us to attack yesterday! You! You killed everyone! You ordered us to attack knowing we would all die! I will kill you!
Ashitomi [rushing over]: Please, sir! Please let go!
Wounded Soldier #3 [slowly turning around in disbelief] : Idiot! What do you know? You are a child! Why are you even here? [strikes Ashitomi]
[Ashitomi lands in mud and urine and feces. Kohitsuji and Katsuko rush over to help her up]
Ashitomi: Me? Me? I'm the idiot? We are in hell and I'm the idiot? [screams]
[f/x: moans and screams all around cave]
Wounded Boy: We are forsaken … Forsaken! Where is my honor? Don't let me die this way … give my death meaning … my death … my death!!
Works Cited
Feifer, George. The Battle of Okinawa. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press (1992)
Sakihara, Mitsugu. Okinawan-English Wordbook. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press (2006)