My Great-Grandad was a sailor in the Navy in World War 2.
He was on the HMAS Australia.
One day he was called up to man the anti-aircraft guns because all the ‘gunners’ had been shot or injured in a kamikaze attack.
When he got to the deck, he saw the wreck of the kamikaze airplane and he said that he could see the Japanese pilot inside the plane.He said that he was still alive but ‘every bone in his body was clearly broken’.
Great-Grandad talked about the pilot’s eyes looking so terrified as they went about making sure the ship was safe and how sad he felt for this man, because he was a person just like him.
After the war Great-Grandad went to Japan.
Later he often talked about this visit. He talked about shaking hands with a Heroshima survivor and that we are all just the same in the end.