War Responsibility and the Family in Japan: Kurahashi Ayako's My Father's Dying Wish

This essay presents extracts from the autobiography of Kurahashi Ayako, My Father's Dying Wish (Paulownia Press 2009; original Japanese edition, Kempei datta chichi no nokoshita mono, Kobunken 2002). Kurahashi's father, who had been a military policeman during the war, made a dying wish in 1986 that an apology to the people of China be inscribed on his gravestone. The extracts of her testimony presented here clarify how the request forced her to confront the painful issue of taking individual responsibility for war actions, and how the decision by members of the war generation to testify must always be understood within the context of how that testimony will be received by family and friends.