NANJO, Okinawa Prefecture--Filled with guilt for his fallen comrades in arms, a former Imperial Japanese Army soldier started working as a doll craftsman following the end of World War II.

Katsuhiro Hibino visited Okinawa Prefecture, where he fought in the 1945 Battle of Okinawa against the U.S. military, at least 110 times before he died at age 85 in 2009.

A video shows him shouting words of apology in a quivering voice in his later years: “Hello! I am coming today, buddies. Please forgive me.”

A resident of what is currently Kita-Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, Hibino could not forget the bitter fighting throughout his life, though he came across many kind people in Okinawa at the same time.

The Hina dolls he made out of his mixed feelings about the island were donated to the local community in 1980, though the southernmost prefecture did not share the Japanese mainland’s practice of displaying Hina Matsuri (Doll Festival) dolls in March.

His dolls were exhibited at Hyakuna Elementary School to coincide with Okinawa Memorial Day on June 23 to remember the war dead.

Hibino had his right arm and other body parts injured around Ahacha (present-day Urasoe) in the middle of the main Okinawa island on May 2, 1945.

After visiting some field hospitals, Hibino was finally carried to the Itokazu underground shelter near Hyakuna Elementary School. About 1,000 individuals were put in the large, 270-meter-long cave.

The Japanese military shortly ordered its personnel to withdraw from the tunnel to help prolong the fighting in the southern part of the main Okinawa island.

Suffering from convulsive attacks associated with tetanus, Hibino, along with 150 severely injured servicemen, were left untreated there. Wounded soldiers began committing suicide in succession by ingesting potassium cyanide.

While struggling with hunger, thirst and terrible pain, Hibino ended up arriving at the entrance to the shelter and found a large amount of food stocked in preparation for fighting until the end. 

A military member watching over the supplies told Hibino “there is no rice for abandoned people.”

As 50 residents fled to the dugout for safety, those sympathetic to Hibino offered what little food they had to him, keeping him alive.

Hibino surrendered to U.S. forces on Aug. 22, 1945, after the war had ended. Only 10 or so wounded military personnel left the tunnel alive.

Even being officially demobilized in January 1946 did not bring him peace. Every time he informed the families of his comrades about their deaths,  bereaved relatives would ask him, “How did you survive?”

They blamed him for having survived a living hell, and he threw himself into work. He was unable to forget what happened to him on Okinawa.

In 1961, Hibino went to Okinawa under U.S. rule for the first time since the end of the war.

His family members were concerned about Okinawans’ strong sentiment against former Imperial Japanese Army service members. One in every four citizens in the prefecture was killed in the Battle of Okinawa.

Despite their worries, the situation in Itokazu was different than elsewhere in Okinawa. A local spoke to Hibino by calling him “the soldier patient” in the regional community and residents started gathering around.

Hibino could not share all the stories he had wanted to at a community hall, so a resident invited him home to talk more. To them, Hibino was their ally who secretly ate the same food during the fierce battle. 

Looking back on those days, Toshio Chinen, 86, one of the residents fleeing to the underground shelter at the time, said Hibino “appeared really happy” that he was welcomed so warmly.

Hibino began frequenting Okinawa so much that his fourth daughter, Keiko Nakamura, wondered why her father often traveled to the southern island prefecture.

Even when his family had household assets seized due to financial difficulties, Hibino continued traveling to Okinawa with his comrades every year.

Her father prioritized interactions with retired servicemen, and they accompanied Hibino even on a family trip. Seeing that, Nakamura said she suspected that “my father may have been a militarist.”

Nakamura, 69, who now lives in Inazawa, Aichi Prefecture, said she gradually became able to understand what had been on her father's mind half a century after the war ended. 

By around 2000, Hibino had lost many friends who had been in the Imperial Japanese Army, and his daughters began visiting Okinawa with their father in rotation given his deteriorating health. Hibino toured not only the Itokazu dugout, but also many of the war remnants that were personally significant to him.

Among such destinations was a hill where Hibino, as the head of a 15-people squad, led a series of his subordinates armed with anti-tank ordnances on their backs and made them crawl under enemy tanks. He sent out three personnel to a well, but only one returned.

Hibino told his daughters the “unforgettable” stories during the desperate conflict bit by bit at each of his destinations.

In his final years, Hibino would groan at night with nightmares. Hating darkness, Hibino always slept with the light on, and he lamented before his family that he “killed too many people with these fingers.”

When he passed away in 2009, his daughters took over from their father to pass down wartime experiences for posterity.

Nakamura heads a group of people telling visitors stories about warfare at the Peace Aichi museum in Nagoya.

Hibino’s fifth daughter, Tazue Yanagawa, 67, a resident of Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, spoke about her father’s experiences to students at a junior high school in Yokohama in May.

Asked by a student about what she “thinks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” following her lecture, Yanagawa explained what war is like for soldiers and their relatives.

“What I can say is that the people on both sides will experience a lot of suffering for decades from now,” she said. “That applies to their families, too.”