“80 Years Later: The Testimony of Wounded Bodies”

Record of Dialogue, June 2025

A Dialogue between Yamashiro (97), Higa (91), Miyazato (102), Kinjo (94)

The Characters

• Yamashiro (97, Male): A former member of A Gakutotai (student mobilization unit). Forced into desperate suicidal missions. Post-war, he struggled with severe physical and psychological trauma, moving between jobs. He remains deeply invested in social justice, never without a newspaper.
• Higa (91, Male): Lost his entire family in the battle. Survived the brutal post-war years as a war orphan. A man of few words, yet his presence commands a heavy, quiet respect.
• Miyazato (102, Female): The matriarch of the group. She was in her 20s during the war; widowed, she raised her infant alone amidst the ruins. She embodies both the warmth and the unyielding strength of an Okinawan Obā (grandmother).
• Kinjo (94, Female): 14 years old at the time of the battle. She carries a physical scar from a through-and-through gunshot wound. She is haunted by the agonizing memory of being forced to abandon a severely burned child during their flight for survival.

Scene 1: The Newspaper and the Old Wounds

Yamashiro:

(Unfolding a newspaper with trembling hands, tapping the table) Again. Here it is again. Another article treating the Battle of Okinawa as if it were a fiction. They dare to call our peace education “biased”…

Miyazato:

(Closing her eyes slowly) Yamashiro-san, mind your blood pressure. But you are right… it feels particularly cruel this year. Eighty years since the end, yet the world has become a place where hollow lies are allowed to masquerade as truth.

Yamashiro:

I cannot forgive it! I was beaten every day and told to “die for the country.” After the war, my body collapsed; I couldn’t hold a job, and my family suffered for it. All because the terror of that time was seared into the very marrow of my bones. And now they try to wrap it in “noble sacrifice”? I want to shout: “Enough is enough!”

Scene 2: The Weight of Abandoning a Life

Kinjo:

(As if pulled by Yamashiro’s anger, she rubs her side) …Ever since I read that article, the scar here—where the bullet tore through me—it has started to throb as if it were on fire. Even after eighty years, the body remembers.

Higa:

Kinjo-san, you don’t have to force the words out.

Kinjo:

No, please… listen. I see it again: the houses engulfed in flames as we ran. I was carrying a child on my back—so badly burned I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child was crying against my skin, “It’s hot, it’s hot…” but the pursuit was relentless, and I was bleeding myself. In the end, I had no choice but to lay that child by the roadside and keep running.

Miyazato:

…The heart breaks just to hear it.

Kinjo:

Whenever I see news of wars happening today, that child’s face returns to me. “Sister, why are you leaving me?” Those “important people” who write the articles… they understand nothing. Real hell cannot be hidden behind pretty words. They don’t know the smell of charred flesh, nor the crushing guilt of leaving a life behind. They know nothing at all.

Scene 3: The Sanctuary of 20 Years

Higa:

(Staring into his teacup, voice low) My whole family, gone. I was eleven. I survived on scraps, passed from one relative to the next. Not once did I think, “I’m glad the war is over.” For me, the peace was just a different kind of hell.

Yamashiro:

You’re right, Higa-san. For us, the war didn’t end in 1945.

Higa:

I couldn’t tell my wife, or my children. I couldn’t explain the pitch-black void in my heart. But twenty years ago, we formed this circle. Listening to Yamashiro-san’s anger, seeing Miyazato-san’s face, and Kinjo-san’s tears… for the first time, I knew I wasn’t alone. This might be the only place on earth where I truly belong.

Scene 4: The Testament of a Centenarian

Yamashiro:

(Folding the newspaper, exhaling deeply) But the world forgets. Our voices might soon be drowned out completely.

Miyazato:

(Straightening her back, her voice clear and dignified) Our voices will not be drowned out. Yamashiro-san, your anger is the proof that you are alive. Kinjo-san, your scars and your heartache are the proof that that child existed. Higa-san, the fact that you survived to pass on the flame of life is the ultimate form of resistance.

Kinjo:

Miyazato-san…

Miyazato:

We are not grand “historical witnesses.” We are just wounded human beings. But listen—these wounds are the truth. They can rewrite the textbooks all they want, but the pain in our bodies does not lie. We have reached the 80th year. Let us keep gathering. Let us keep talking until our last breath. That is our duty to those who didn’t make it.

Yamashiro:

…You’re right. To be silent is to give them exactly what they want. I’ll bring the newspaper again next month, no matter what it says.

Kinjo:

I’ll be here too. I have to live—for that child’s sake.

Higa:

Yes. As long as I come here, everyone is here.

(Miyazato nods quietly and begins refilling the tea. Outside, the rhythmic hum of cicadas fills the air—the same sound that echoed eighty years ago.)

Return to List