Lest We Forget

The sacrifices made by our brave diggers, a moment of reflection, mateship, honour, a moment’s silence to remember those who served.....

As stories of heroism, dawn services and bugle calls dominate the Aussie news today, I reflect on the courage of another hero - Isamu Takeda. Yes, that’s a Japanese name. The enemy has heroes too.

While I never knew Isamu Takeda personally, his son, Yutaka, joined my English class in 1990 and became like my dad in Japan. For 25 years, he was always there, modelling tolerance and gratitude, while speaking out against the dangers of nationalism. Yutaka watched the mushroom cloud engulf Hiroshima on the 6th August 1945 and fossicked for food in the radioactive ashes. His hopes of following in his father’s giant footsteps were dashed as Japan surrendered.

So who was this enemy hero, apart from being the dad of my “Japanese dad”?

After graduating from the illustrious Japanese Naval Academy on Etajima, Isamu’s first assignment was supporting the allies in the Mediterranean in World War I. Over the next few years, Japan became increasingly militaristic and switched from being our allay to an enemy. Isamu Takeda moved up the naval ranks and eventually became a rear admiral.

In 1943, Isamu Takeda took command of the Japanese Naval Forces on the island of Bougainville, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea. In the romanticised words of his son, Isamu Takeda and the thousands of men under his command “lived like Robinson Crusoe” on Bougainville - growing food, building huts and fishing while waiting for the inevitable announcement of defeat.

But the thing that really raises Isamu to heroic status is that he dared to change the way people dealt with defeat. Isamu Takeda reinvented the very definitions of honour, bravery, mateship and sacrifice when he forbade his men to commit suicide and demanded they stay alive. When Isamu’s troops were finally picked up and returned to Japan almost a year after Japan had surrendered, thousands of relieved families hailed Isamu as a hero.

While visiting the Australian War Memorial in Canberra this month, I learned that Isamu’s heroism had a deeper flow on effect. His son had always glossed over the fact that my countrymen had been less than heroic in Bougainville. The Aussie heroes who we venerate today, took over from the US forces in Bougainville in late 1944. While the US troops had left the Japanese much to themselves as they posed no real threat, General Blamey decided the Aussie troops would ‘clear out’ the island of Japanese.

In a senseless, merciless show of bravado, the Australian soldiers, who we venerate today, massacred 18,000 Japanese men. So today, as we march and reflect, I pray that we will never be blinkered with nationalism, or blinded by propaganda. I pray that we will all see the humanity that is in all of us.