Kunitake Toriya was preparing to embark on a kamikaze suicide attack mission against Allied forces during the Battle of Okinawa when the fighting ended in June 1945, just weeks before Japan's surrender in World War II.
Spared from having to make the desperate attack, Toriya, then a corporal in the Imperial Japanese Army, was later detained in Siberia after the war.
"People died one after another, both in tokkō and in Siberia," said Toriya, a 98-year-old resident of the city of Saga, using the abbreviation for tokubetsu kōgekitai, or special attack corps. He recalled quietly sharing honest thoughts with fellow pilots who had received suicide attack orders: "We don't want to die."
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