Amid growing controversy over moves by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration toward allowing Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, an 88-year-old man wants people to know the story of his younger brother, who he says is the only Japanese man killed serving his country in a war since 1945.

After attending a memorial service for members of the Maritime Self-Defense Force at the Konpira Shinto shrine in Kagawa Prefecture in late May, Toichi Nakatani talked about his brother, Sakataro, who died while engaged in a secret mission to remove underwater mines off Wonsan, in today's North Korea, during the Korean War (1950-1953).

The war began three years after Japan's war-renouncing Constitution came into force.