Film confronts Japan on wartime past

But Okumura's commander, General Raishiro Sumita, came home even as his soldiers remained. A secret deal existed between Mr. Sumita and Nationalist Army Gen. Yan Xishan, according to testimony from survivors of both sides in the film.

General Yan asked Mr. Sumita to leave Japanese troops to help fight Mao. According to the film and studies of the subject, Yan promised to protect the Japanese military commander, who was a Class-A war criminal.

Okumura, coming home nine years after World War II ended, was shocked to learn that he had been locally discharged from the military during his fight in China. Their military pension denied, Okumura and others waged a legal battle against the government. The Supreme Court rejected the plaintiffs' final appeal last September.

"They completely ignored it," Okumura says angrily. "Otherwise, they would have to admit Japan's breach of the Potsdam Declaration."

"Mr. Okumura looks like an ordinary grandpa, doesn't he? But when it comes to the issue of those left behind in China, he vents his extreme anger," says Kaoru Ikeya, an award-winning director who still recalls the old man's deep bow at their first meeting two years ago.

During filming, Okumura and Mr. Ikeya covered more than 2,000 miles during a 22-day trip. While painstakingly looking for evidence, Okumura says he had to come to terms with his past and the Imperial Army's brutal deeds. He revisited Ningwu County, the site of his first killing. Like other newly recruited soldiers, he was forced to stab an innocent Chinese with a bayonet since superior officers wanted "to test his courage." The film shows Okumura praying for the dead at the site.

"We were turned into a so-called killing machine," he recalls. "I want to reveal how the military deprived us of our rational nature."

He also reveals how he acted as a lookout while fellow soldiers committed rape.

When asked in the film if Okumura also raped a woman, he promptly responded that he did not. But he emphasized the issue is "not who did or who didn't, but the problem of the whole military."

In one of the most compelling scenes in the film, a Chinese woman tells Okumura how at the age of 16 she was kidnapped, confined, and gang-raped by seven Japanese soldiers and later by a Chinese officer. But she forgives Okumura, who killed innocent Chinese.

These days, more politicians and opinion leaders talk about changing Japan's pacifist constitution and defend political leaders' visits to the war memorial.

More people talk about such issues "without discussing what the Imperial Japanese Army was all about in the war." Ikeya asserts. And also more people use the words patriotism and nationalism "without knowing what is actually happening on battlefields."

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