The Kamikaze Survivor.

My grandfather, who passed away ten years ago, loved canned food. Whenever I opened his closet, there were so many cans, and whenever I went to visit, he would always say, 'Take whatever you like,' and give me handfuls of them. I always went home with sweet things like mandarin oranges or pineapples.

Having worked as a barber his entire life since he was young, my grandfather stood in his shop until a week before he died. He was cheerful and gentle, called me 'Mori-Mori' (because my last name contains 'Mori'), and loved to make people laugh.
His daily pleasure was sipping cheap whiskey after dinner. When he had a bit to drink, he would sometimes talk about the war.

My grandfather was in the air corps and was a survivor of the Kamikaze special attack units.
Out of a unit of over 100 men, only six survived. My grandfather was one of them. He had always been incredibly lucky; he survived two plane crashes, and when he crossed into China, the war ended, though he couldn't return to Japan for another two years.

He didn't talk much about the war, but looking back, I think he probably couldn't. He told me that the Kamikaze pilots always ate chocolate before boarding their planes. When I was a child, I thought it was just delicious chocolate, but it seems that wasn't the case. For that one moment, my gentle and cheerful grandfather's expression suddenly turned dark.

My incredibly lucky grandfather never had a single illness, other than cutting his eyelid during a crash (which he had stitched up without anesthesia), and he passed away suddenly at 88 after a summer cold took a turn for the worse.

A few days before he passed, sensing his own death, he kept thanking everyone around him—his family, his customers, the hospital nurses—saying, 'Thank you for everything,' 'Thank you for visiting me,' 'Thank you,' 'Thank you.'

Then, while holding my grandmother's hand, he spoke slowly, thanking her for bearing him three beautiful daughters. He had prepared himself to die many times during the war, and while his comrades were dying one after another, he felt regret for being the only one to survive and was even told by others that it was a disgrace. But he said, 'I lived, got married, had children, had grandchildren, was able to work until the very end, and was seen off by everyone. I am so glad I lived.'

After speaking slowly, my grandfather slept for a while, and when he woke up, he said just one thing: 'I folded the towels well.' It seems that even in his dreams, he was folding the towels he used to take out of the dryer and fold at the shop every day after closing.

Just like that, he went back to sleep peacefully and never woke up again.

I believe that what I can do for the future is to convey the war—which was too painful to put into words and which he couldn't talk much about—to my son and those around me in my own words. And I believe it is to live every day to the fullest.