Zero 1999
Installation comprising colour photographs, adhesive tape, cloth tape, sound
114 x 1006 x 1310cm (approx.)
Collection: The artist

I was a boy who loved making plastic models.

My first priority after buying a plastic model with money from my savings was to build it, no matter what happened I could not eat or sleep until it was finished. After having assembled a zero zero fighter plane and the battleship Yamato I made Grumman and B-29 fighters which fought with the zero zero and Yamato reinforcing an air troop of German Messerschimtts. This was still not enough so I launched a V-2 rocket from Berlin... Naturally I became a Kamikaze pilot and rammed a B-29 killing myself.

During the time of the Pacific War my father was based at Omura fleet air arm in Nagasaki Prefecture and there he saw the atomic mushroom-shaped cloud. He was a maintenance mechanic servicing zero zero fighter planes and undoubtedly watched Kamikaze pilots flying many sorties. My father saluted those planes as they took off carrying their teenage pilots, such boys would fly flags painted with Buddhist texts "Namumyohorengekkyo " (Hail to the Lotus Sutra) or "Namuamidabutsu" (Hail to the Buddha Amida) from their cockpits as they were about to fly.

It is somehow strange to look back and realise that my father did not say a word when he saw me ramming the Enola Gay, on the contrary he sometimes helped me finish those very plastic models. It was however my mother who expressed her emotions towards the war. In 1972 when the disarmed former Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi returned to Japan after 28 years of hiding in the Guam Island jungle and announced "I'm ashamed," my mother who was normally quiet banged our tatami mat with her fist many times sitting up straight saying, "For the sake of the country... ? What does the country mean...!," while watching the T.V. report with tears in her eyes. Surprised at the depth of my mother's emotional reaction I concentrated on watching the jet-black infantry man's gun of Sgt.Yokoi with bated breath. Two years later in 1974 Lieut. Hiroo Onoda was rescued from Lubang Island in the Philippines after exchanging fire . His "sacred country" had indoctrinated him to polishing a gun for 30 years.

Today I have two children who are far removed from understanding the idea of committing suicide or extreme endurance for the sake of the Emperor - the "sacred country," but are only interested in chasing after their own pleasures. I am sometimes at a loss for words as to how to explain the Pacific War as my memories come only from my father who does not speak much about it, my tearful mother and a zero zero plastic model.

Translated by Madoka Moriguchi