Bringing them back

Ran across this story quite by chance -- the subject of the article is not, to my knowledge, a relative:

The lone survivor of a Japanese infantry unit in World War 2, Nishimura Kokichi promised his comrades he would bring their bodies back to Japan. Sixty years later, he is still trying to fulfill his pledge . . .

Nishimura Yukiko listened to her husband, Kokichi, in shock. After thirty-five years of marriage and four children, the 59-year-old was leaving. He would hand the keys to the family business, one of Tokyo's most successful engineering works, to his eldest son then board a plane for Papua New Guinea where he would start a new life. The object of his attentions was not another woman but the bones of men killed over three decades before. "I'll be gone for a long time, probably years," he said.

It was 1979 and the Nishimura family was about to be split asunder. Only daughter Sachiko sided with her father as he reminded his wife of a pledge made before they married: to find the bodies of his dead friends. Nishimura Kokichi would spend 26 years fulfilling that promise, at the cost of his business, his life in Japan, and his relationship with his sons and wife, whom he never saw again.

In its own way, as amazing a story as those soldiers holding out on remote islands for decades after the war ended.

Posted by David on January 27, 2009 10:09 PM