A 12-year-old girl attended the government-sponsored national memorial service for the war dead at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo on Saturday, offering consolation for the soul of her great-grandfather, who died in waters near the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific immediately before the end of the war.
"Families of soldiers who went to war suffered grief. I'd like to sincerely pray that peace continues," said Yukika Ida, 12, who lives in Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture.
She was the youngest person attending the ceremony.
Yukika's great-grandfather Masao Ida was born 100 years before she was. Masao's daughter Shizuko Ida, 84, is Yukika's grandmother. She remembers her father as a man with a gentle heart.
Masao was born in the Meiji era (1868-1912). He was a police officer in the prefecture and he had a friendly attitude toward others, such as playing the violin and lending his beloved gramophone to people living nearby.
In 1943, Masao joined the Imperial Japanese Navy and was deployed to areas south of Japan. Before entering the navy, he told Shizuko, then 7, to keep healthy and do her best. These were the final direct words she heard from her father.
Shizuko was Masao's only child. Shizuko and her daughter Kimiko Ida, now 54, were both born in the Showa era (1926-1989). Yukika, Kimiko's daughter, was born in the Heisei era (1989-2019).
Initially, they were scheduled to attend the ceremony together as a three-generation group. But Shizuko bowed out due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, entrusting Masao's commemoration to her daughter and granddaughter, who both were born after the war.
According to the family, Masao sent a letter home before he died in the war. The letter recounted his recent life and included a poem.
Kimiko said: "I think that my grandfather was prepared to die as he went to the Solomon Islands. [The poem] carried his thought that he would die, but that his soul would return to Japan, becoming a flower and watching over his family."
The poem was engraved into a stone monument that stands at Masao's grave site.
Yukika, who had visited the stone monument, said Saturday: "My great-grandfather was a family-minded person. I want to tell him, 'I've grown up this much.'" She has a photo of him in her smartphone.
On Saturday, Shizuko put her hands together in prayer for her deceased father.
"Dad, I wonder if you watched Yukika and Kimiko doing well at the memorial service. I'm also healthy, not being infected with the coronavirus," Shizuko said.
Shizuko is sure that her father gently watches over the three generations.
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