He survived when his plane crashed upside down in the jungle, but his arm was so badly mangled that he never fought again. Four months later, he was shot down over the island of Guadalcanal. He said he had to ditch his plane in the sea after Japan lost all four aircraft carriers it sent to Midway, the battle that turned the tide of the war in favor of the United States. He described how he was able to throw off the aim of the American tail gunners by tilting his aircraft to make it drift almost imperceptibly to one side as he closed in for the kill. During the Battle of Midway in 1942, he said, he shot down five United States torpedo planes in a single morning while defending the Japanese fleet. Harada’s talk was filled with vivid descriptions of an era when Imperial Japan briefly ruled the skies over the Pacific. Warnings about the passing of the war generation have been voiced all the way up to Crown Prince Naruhito, 55, who in February urged his nation to “correctly pass down tragic experiences and history to the generations who have no direct knowledge of the war, at a time memories of the war are about to fade.” Similar concerns are shared by many Japanese, as the nation approaches the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. “In this respect, they are like our prewar leaders.” He sat on a tatami mat in his living room, which is decorated with pictures of aircraft and an aluminum fragment from the Zero in which he was shot down in 1942. “These politicians were born after the war, and so they don’t understand it must be avoided at all costs,” he said. While he tries to avoid wading into politics, he let slip a jab at Japan’s current leaders, who he said seem a bit too eager to discard Japan’s renunciation of war, and too forgetful of what an accomplishment its long postwar period of peace really has been. He said it was his generation’s bitter experiences, and resulting aversion to war, that have kept Japan firmly on a pacifist path since 1945. Harada said that as he and other aging veterans pass from the scene, Japan will lose more than just their war stories. “That is how war robs you of your humanity,” he added, “by putting you in a situation where you must either kill perfect strangers or be killed by them.”
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