Attack Sliced Ichiyamas Into Two Families

The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 50 years ago ripped a gash in the family of Edward Ichiyama that was not fully repaired until this year.

Ichiyama, the 18-year-old son of a Japanese immigrant, was going to fly model planes that day when he caught sight of the real thing.

“I saw the Japanese planes flying toward Pearl Harbor, and I saw smoke coming out of the harbor,” he said Saturday. “I was totally outraged. These were our ancestors coming to attack us. I considered it a personal affront.”

Not only were they of the same ancestry, but Japan’s military forces had claimed Ichiyama’s oldest brother as one of their own. Born in Hawaii but sent to Japan for schooling, Katsuji Ichiyama had been drafted into the Imperial Navy earlier that year.

Pearl Harbor sliced the family in two, and the horrors and heroics that followed left no family member untouched. Katsuji Ichiyama did not participate in the Dec. 7 attack, but fought for Japan in Southeast Asia and was wounded.

On the other side of the world, Ed Ichiyama and another brother earned Purple Hearts, serving in Europe with the largely Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history.

Nor were the women spared the wounds of war. Ed’s wife-to-be, Connie, was sent with her family to a U.S. internment camp for Japanese-Americans. And Katsuji’s wife, Mitsue, suffered through the U.S. atomic attack on Hiroshima. She is still monitored for radiation.

“Our experience is really a microcosm of the Japanese-American experience during the war,” Ichiyama said Saturday.

It was not until this year that Ed Ichiyama finally felt that the gulf created by the war was bridged. His brother, Katsuji, came to visit from Japan, and Ichiyama took him to the Punchbowl cemetery.

“I never had the guts to talk to him about the war before,” Ichiyama said. “I thought it was like adding salt to his wounds.”

But as the two men looked up at the maps tracing the routes of different campaigns in the Pacific, they began to trade war stories. Then, silently, they grasped each other and shook hands.

“I’m the younger brother and I’m the victor, and he’s the older brother and vanquished,” Ed Ichiyama said. “I felt for him. . . . But in war, nobody wins. Everybody suffers. Our family can see the utter futility of it all.”