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Whose Story Is it? Part I : Wings of Defeat

Published on August 17, 2007

The young, now older, men who fought in World War II as Kamikaze pilots.

War has typically been a male-dominated domain. Women were often left behind to deal with the ravage, the death, the division, and the chaos of war. Women were left behind to hold the families together, to console children whose fathers were away fighting. So when it comes to painting a picture of what war means to us as a society, women have many stories to tell.

In this two-part series of Whose Story Is It? we explore two documentaries about war told by female directors from very different backgrounds. The first film, Wings of Defeat, is by American born and raised Japanese filmmaker Risa Morimoto and Japanese born and raised American producer Linda Hoaglund.

Wings of Defeat examines the men who were Kamikaze pilots during World War II. The filmmakers attempt to dispel the myth of Kamikaze pilots as fanatical, suicidal pilots and introduce them as young, idealistic nationalists, who at the ages of sixteen or seventeen went to fight for their government and its ideals. Through interviews and archival footage mixed with animation, Risa Morimoto and Linda Hoaglund create a tapestry of complex human existence, weaving and recreating the conditions in which these Kamikaze pilots were trained.

Who were these young men? Why would they die for a country, even if it were their own? How did they reconcile and justify their actions as Japan conducted atrocities throughout Asia during World War II? MediaRights.org sat down with Risa and Linda for an intimate interview to find more about the making of this film and what it meant for a American Japanese and a Japanese American to tell the stories of Japanese Kamikaze during World War II.

Propaganda that depicted the Kamikaze pilots in the US during and after WWII.

Risa Morimoto was born in New York City to Japanese immigrant parents. She grew up in a country where images of Japanese as bucktooth, slanty-eyed fanatical suicidal bombers out to destroy the beacon of democracy weren't the best way to learn about a country she claimed ancestry to. As a filmmaker, Risa has made films about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. She was also the executive director of Asian CineVision, a media arts organization dedicated to exhibiting media by makers of Asian descent and offering diverse representations of what it means to be Asian and Asian American.

Risa's journey to making Wings of Defeat, her first feature-length documentary, came about through the discovery that her own uncle was a Kamikaze pilot. She sat down with us to tell us more about this discovery.

"This film started actually with a casual conversion with my cousin (in Spring 2005), when I discovered that my uncle had trained to be a Kamikaze pilot. This is something I had no information about and no idea that it happened. So weeks later I was still thinking about this topic. I think I was most distraught with images of American propaganda about who these Kamikaze pilots were: they were these crazy, suicidal fanatics. And if I believed in that then there must a lot of other people who believed that. But it was so different from who I knew my uncle to be, and that kind of started the journey."

What started out as a desire to learn more about her uncle turned into a journey to gain insight into finding out who these young men were. Risa's journey took her to Japan where she interviewed the men who, now in their 70s and 80s, vividly remember the steps and the training that took them from regular teenage boys to grown men flying planes that were meant to destroy ships, places and people. Risa had to reconcile her American impressions of Kamikaze pilots as these fanatical, crazy soldiers with her uncle -- the gentle, caring and humorous man she knew and loved.

A young, proud Kamikaze pilot stands in front of the instrument used to protect his nation.

"My uncle passed away 20 years ago, and unfortunately I wasn't able to ask him direct questions. So I went to my family first. He actually never said anything to anybody. Then I got invited to a Kamikaze reunion in southern Japan, and it's there where the journey really began. Not everyone was willing to talk, but those who did actually were very honest and candid with me. I was very fortunate to bond with these men about something that happened 60 years ago, but was still vivid in their mind."

For Linda Hoaglund, the journey began in the suburbs of Japan where she was born and raised by missionary parents. Linda attended Japanese school and learned about the war in a very different way.

"Japan's educational system doesn't really acknowledge that it made war aggression against China, Korea, and Taiwan...they touched on the fact that Pearl Harbor happened, but they certainly didn't talk about Japan's war throughout Asia. So the way they teach Hiroshima is like, "out of a clear blue sky one day, a horrible, horrible bomb dropped." And of course, all the kids in the classroom turned around and looked at me and so, of course, it's my fault. I pretty much grew up thinking that Hiroshima was my fault, because I was unlucky enough to be born to a horrible country that did horrible things to people. In some ways, I haven't changed that opinion much over the years."

Risa and Linda had different upbringings but World War II and their understanding or impressions of it brought the two together to collaborate on Wings of Defeat.

"Linda and I met in New York. We were coincidently in Japan at the same time and met up at a cafe. We talked about what had happened in the past couple of months. At that point it was clear that Linda and I were on the same page -- it was something we were both very passionate about, and something we knew hadn't been told yet. By collaborating, I think we could tell the story in the best way possible, and we were the perfect people to actually do it. Me being Japanese American born and raised in the States, and Linda being American born and raised in Japan, and having these opposite but very similar experiences of growing up."

During World War II, the United States' anti-Japanese propaganda vilified the Japanese to the degree of dehumanization. Japanese soldiers were seen as evil savages without any human qualities.

Japanese-American U.S. citizens held at internment camps during WWII.

Japanese Americans who were born in the United States and were U.S. citizens were rounded up, sent to internment camps and stripped of their rights. But in Japan, the anti-imperialist/U.S. sentiments were strong and winning the hearts and minds of young men and women. Young idealistic men volunteered their lives for their country and were seen as being brave and valiant. Linda recalls her impression of the Kamikazes:

"I grew up in Japan with two symbols of world and they were both victims. One was the Hiroshimo Nakasake survivor, and in the way they weren't quite as good as Kamikaze because they had terrible scars and they weren't really pretty to look at. So they were the kind of victims we didn't need to talk about but could pray for. But there were the beautiful, selfless, heroic, wonderful people called Kamikaze, and they were the perfect victims, because they were pure and gave their lives."

For these two women, telling the story of these men meant putting aside their different upbringings but still allowing their understanding of the war and Japan's participation in it guide them through the journey. Linda explains their collaboration further:

"Risa brought to the table the American image of Kamikaze pilots, which I didn't grow up with, really didn't know about, and in any case probably considered ridiculous. But then I could bring to the table,"here is what they teach in Japan." So together we were intentionally trying to break down both stereotypes, and try to find a path in between all of that to what it might have been like -- to be a real human being, and experience what they went through."

When understanding our stories, our histories and our pasts, who holds the power to legitimize them? Risa wanted to tell the story of her country, but where is her country? The one she was born into or the one she claims ancestry to? What about Linda? As a Caucasian American born and raised in Japan, does she have more legitimacy to tell the story of the Kamikaze pilots than Risa?

Risa discusses her thoughts on deciding on how to tell the story and whom the story was meant for:

"When I started the project, my first intention was to create a film for an international audience. I thought that the Japanese wouldn't need to learn anything. It wasn't until I started to talk to Linda that I realized they too had these mental stereotypes, which were the complete opposite of ours. And when we were shooting in Japan in 2006, over and over again people would come up to us thanking us for making the film because a native Japanese could not have made it. So, yes, we feel fortunate to be in this position where we straddle both cultures and allow ourselves to be critical enough about what happened, and hopefully have the audience ask questions."

Wings of Defeat premiered at HotDocs to two sold-out shows. The audiences responded resoundingly well to the new information and the different perspectives that Risa and Linda provided on these Kamikaze pilots. For both of them, the audience reactions and the Q&A following the screenings were powerful testaments that these stories haven't been told or deeply explored enough.

The film will premiere in Japan on July 21st and for Risa "it'll be a lot hotter or colder. Either way, I don't know if people will be more critical but I think there'll be more discussion. And that's what I'm looking forward to, because I'm an American...But we do expect the controversy in Japan, so we'll see what happens, but we're hoping that it's going be a breath of fresh air that a lot of Japanese people have been waiting for, in terms of being able to honestly talk of this history, because they just haven't been able to up until now."

Linda, who subtitles Japanese films for a living, feels that telling these men's stories has been a long time coming. She feels Japan needs to finally be accountable for what it did during the war, and that people in the U.S. need to see what we're doing now in Iraq.

"[The film] could function as kind of a very, very belated truth commission. The parallels between what happened in Japan during World War II and what's happening now with the U.S. and its invasion of Iraq are so incredibly obvious that somehow we thought people would just stream out of the theater talking about Iraq."

And how will the men who were former Kamikaze pilots react to the film? How will they reconcile their past? Many of them have never talked about or been given the chance to talk about the war. Risa feels that "this movie couldn't come out at a better time." She hopes "people in Asia can openly discuss what happened. In a way it's about confrontation. The major problem with Japan is that they've been so defensive that they can't even go in to a room and have conversation about it."

Risa and Linda hope the film will act as a starting point for dialogue and reconciliation. They also hope that young people will see the film and realize how important it is to look at war and think about why we fight. Linda feels strongly about "how an 18-year-old will respond to this movie. We tried to make it historically compelling but also 'entertaining' enough and satisfying as a kind of movie experience for young people to get excited about it. That's because it's young people who get sent to war." The filmmakers want us to walk away thinking about what kind of a world we're living in, what kind of a world we're leaving behind for future generations and why we are using warfare as the solution to world disputes.

These men, these Kamikaze pilots who were sent off to die, finally had their chance to tell their story. Risa Morimoto and Linda Hoaglund provided them with the chance to speak their peace. They shed light on a generation of men who misunderstood and misrepresented. It's the men's stories as much as it is theirs.

Risa Morimoto is an American born and raised Japanese American filmmaker.

About Risa Morimoto

Risa Morimoto (producer/director) produced the feature film The LaMastas in 1998. Since then she has produced, written and directed for film and television. Risa produced the award-winning program Cinema AZN, a half-hour show on Asian film. President of Edgewood Pictures Inc., a motion picture production company, Risa graduated with a Masters in film and education from New York University in 1999. She served as Executive Director of Asian CineVision, a non-profit media arts organization, until Fall 2006. A second-generation Japanese American, Risa studied at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

Linda Hoaglund is Japanese born and raised American producer.

About Linda Hoaglund

Linda Hoaglund (producer/writer) is the film advisor for the Japan Society in New York. Born and raised in Japan as the daughter of American missionary parents, she attended Japanese public schools. A graduate of Yale University, after working as a bilingual news producer for Japanese television, she joined an independent American film production company as a producer. Since 1996, she has subtitled 150 Japanese films. She represents Japanese directors and artists and serves as an international liaison for producers. In 2004, she received a commendation from the Foreign Minister of Japan for her work promoting Japanese film abroad.