I suppose the Japanese army knew they would be defeated. Otherwise I can’t explain this drastic decision. When the day came and Allied ships began to be glimpsed from the coasts, the people of Okinawa watched intently, well aware of what they had to do. Perhaps some thought about disobeying the emperor’s orders and turning themselves over to the Allies, but they had been warned that the enemy were cruel devils who would behead them, rape their women, burn down their houses, and crush their bodies with tanks.
When the moment came to commit suicide, the grenades didn’t work. Or at least not for the civilian population, who had never used grenades before. Bewildered, frantic, afraid, the people of Okinawa didn’t know what to do. The enemy was upon them and they had no way to save their families, their wives, their daughters, their elderly parents, no way to grant them the saving grace of death. Kinjo describes how he watched one of his desperate neighbors take up heavy tree branches and beat his wife and children. The man wept as he did so, but he was convinced that it was an act of salvation. The screams of his family did nothing to soften the harsh blows. Each stroke was followed by an even more brutal one. One, two, twenty, thirty blows. Or maybe more, until his wife and children lay dead on the ground.
A dark silence fell over that corner of the island.
All who had witnessed the scene were left stunned and speechless.
For a moment the collective hysteria was stilled by the sight of the bloodied bodies.
Young Kinjo was there, neither man nor child. He stared in fear. Maybe he heard a flock of birds cross the sky. Maybe he heard the sound of the waves in the distance, crashing against some cliff. Or maybe somebody screamed again, reactivating minds and bodies, and then it was the beginning of the end. Without much thought, Kinjo and other desperate Japanese took other big branches from other big trees and with them they began to beat the other wives, the other sisters, the other elders. Kinjo struck his mother on the head. Then he struck his younger siblings. He wept as he did so, or so he said on camera, but he was convinced that it was an act of salvation. His family’s cries did nothing to soften the harsh blows. Each stroke was followed by an even more brutal one. One, two, twenty, thirty. Or maybe more, until his mother and his siblings were dead, bloody and broken, along with the rest of that big island family of Okinawa.
Japanese history tried to erase the episode from its textbooks.
Japanese history tried to erase the episode from its past.
Young Kinjo, who is now an old man, tried to kill himself after he had killed his family, but he couldn’t do it. Now he’s ashamed when he speaks on camera. He says he acted against nature, thinking that he was in the right, that he was doing something heroic by following the emperor’s orders. His actions were as cruel as an enemy’s would have been. And in fact, young Kinjo, who is an old man now, says that without realizing it he turned into his worst enemy.
I think about Carol Flores and the strange closeness he developed with the man who arrested him: El Pelao Lito. I think about the fine line he crossed in order to draw near to his adversary, to invite him into his home, to no longer fear El Pelao Lito when his captor came in search of him.
When young Boris heard about this relationship, he asked his brother Carol about it, but Carol didn’t answer. When Lincoyán heard about it, he asked too. And so did Fabio and their parents, but Carol never answered.
The man who tortured people says that he knew El Pelao Lito well. His real name was Guillermo Bratti, a fellow air force soldier. He came from El Bosque Air Base and also passed through the Air War Academy. Later they crossed paths at Cerrillos Air Base, where they were transferred, and they began to work together in the same antisubversive shock group. Everybody was there: El Chirola, El Lalo, El Fifo, El Yerko, El Lutti, El Patán. Their objective was to break up the Communist Party and that was why El Pelao Lito was selected to work with a party informer. That informer was Carol Flores, alias El Juanca.
Each day, Carol Flores, or El Juanca, began to do what the man who tortured people is doing right now. El Pelao Lito would pick Carol up and drive him to the office to sort through information. Carol Flores, or El Juanca, sat at a table like the one in this parish hall, interpreting statements gathered in the interrogations of detainees. He, too, was confronted with a thousand photographed faces and he, too, had to identify them. This is Arsenio Lea; this is Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Gallardo, El Quila Leo; this is Francisco Manzor; this is Alonso Gahona, I imagine he said. The man who tortured people says that Carol Flores, or El Juanca, became one of them. He carried his own gun and he started to participate in the detentions and interrogations of his former comrades.
Did young Boris know this? Did Lincoyán? Did Fabio?
One day Carol’s father received a visit from his son. Carol asked his father to come outside
