Volunteer Soldier

Prologue

  If I had to say when this all began, the earliest possible catalyst..... I guess it was during the battle of Okinawa. He was there, you know. Only 17 at the time. The war had been going on for six years. It engulfed his adolescence. "A lot of young men were mobilized by the army, some as young as 14. Military authorities ordered schools to force their students to... 'volunteer.'" He was one of the only boys who actually would have signed up voluntarily. He was fiercely patriotic. Nationalistic, in fact. 

 He wanted to be on the frontlines, but he was assigned to kitchen detail. He tried to sneak out, find a weapon, fight the enemy - never succeeded. One day, a bomb hit his dormitory. Dozens of his classmates died in an instant. He spent hours buried under rubble, surrounded by the corpses of his friends, before help arrived. The army rescued him from the rubble and took him with them as they followed orders to retreat further into the island. He bit and clawed at them, called them cowards for falling back. 

 In an underground bunker with little light, he had nothing to eat but salted cabbage, nothing to drink but dirty water, and nowhere comfortable to sleep. Bombs dropped at almost every hour of the day. Constant noise, constant fear. Getting sleep was almost impossible, and the threat of death never, ever went away. Eventually, enemy soldiers discovered the bunker. Surrounded, he pulled the pin on a grenade - tried to sacrifice himself to kill his enemies. The grenade was a dud. He was captured. It's been over 7 decades, but his mind is still back there in Okinawa. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees images of his dead classmates on the backs of his eyelids.