Speech at a Ceremony Offering Flowers to the Statue of General Sudirman
August 17, 2020
KATSURAGI Nami, Chairperson of the Executive Committee for the Ceremony ofOffering Flowers to the Statue of General Sudirman
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for gathering here today in this heatwave and despite the Wuhan virus calamity.
In the presence of Indonesian Acting Ambassador Tri Purnajaya, and Mr. Watanabe
Koichi, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Defense, the flower offering ceremony has been
performed with solemnity today and I am sincerely grateful. I would like to also offermy appreciation to Diet members Mr. Yamada Hiroshi and Ms. Sugita Mio, who havemade an appearance despite their busy schedules.
Until last year, I presided over this flower offering ceremony. Starting this year, I
serve as the representative of the Executive Committee for the ceremony and now I
would like to share some of my thoughts with you.
Regarding my involvement with the Ministry of Defense’s Self-Defense Forces, I
was “anti-Self-Defense Forces” for a long time as a consequence of the postwar
education I was given. However, thanks to engagement with environmental issues,
which is my lifework, and the influence of martial arts that I took up in my university
days, I was awakened to the importance of national defense in the latter half of my 20s,
though a little too late. I wished to become a bridge between people like myself of thepast and the Self-Defense Forces. My first involvement with the Ministry of Defense’s
Self-Defense Forces was to serve as an Ichigayadai Tour guide, which was conducted
every weekday, including the Ichigaya Memorial Hall, which is right before us. I was aguide for three years, starting in 2001.
A little after I started as a guide, I found out that open recruitment would begin for
the Self-Defense Force Reserve and the Self-Defense Force Reserve Candidates. I
became one of the first to join and completed the 50-day training that stretched overthree years in Camp Takeyama, Yokosuka City. Sixteen years have passed since I wascommissioned as a Self-Defense Force Reservist in 2004. Beginning around five years
ago, I have also served as the President of an association, Sakimori to Ayumu Kai,
literally the Association to Walk Together with Soldiers, which was established with the1aim of becoming a bridge between the people and the Self-Defense Forces.
Representative of my involvement with Indonesia is a visit to places including
Madura Island, which is among the neediest regions of Indonesia, three years ago as anAssessment Committee member of the Green Fund. At that time, I was assisted by theOrganization for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement-International, orOISCA, a representative from which is here today. On my own, I visited Kalibata
Heroes Cemetery and PETA Pembela Tanah Air Museum. There, as I learned aboutGeneral Sudirman’s achievements, to whom we offered flowers today, a newspaper
article caught my attention. It said that the Statue of General Sudirman was sent fromthe Indonesian Ministry of Defense to Japan and displayed on the premises of theJapanese Ministry of Defense. I never knew that and was very surprised.
According to what was subsequently revealed, the Statue was initially displayed in
the Memorial Zone but became a nuisance due to the deployment of the PAC-3 missiles
and was put in a warehouse. At the strong request from a nongovernmental group (thatis, Mr. Kase and other people here), the statue came to see the light of day again andwas placed next to Ichigaya Memorial Hall.
Since 2018, the year after I found the newspaper article in Indonesia, I have been
involved with this flower offering ceremony. I can never forget the impact I felt when I
saw this statue for the first time. I felt as if General Sudirman was standing there,
scowling at the Memorial Hall, which was a part of the former Imperial Japanese Army
Academy auditorium where the Tokyo Trial took place, the root cause of themasochistic view of history that tamed the postwar Japanese people.
Let me go back into time a little. I was totally steeped in the masochistic view ofhistory. Then I was enlightened by several things--one of which was a movie released in2001 called “Merdeka 17805.” In fact, I did not know until long after that the movie
was made by Mr. Kase Hideaki, who is here, but merdeka means independence in theIndonesian language and “17805” indicates the date on which the first Indonesianpresident Sukarno declared independence: 17 for the 17th day, 8 for August and 05 for
2,605th year of the Japanese Imperial reign. Until then, I had simply assumed that theJapanese Imperial Army did cruel things to the people of Asia. On the contrary, I foundout that as many as 2,000 Japanese soldiers chose to stay in Indonesia rather than returnto Japan after the war to shed their blood with Indonesians to gain independence from2

350 continuous years of Dutch colonial rule. I was deeply moved and for the first time
proud of the history of my country.
That is exactly why I wish to make known the existence of these Japanese and PETA,or Defenders of the Homeland, including General Sudirman, which was trained by theImperial Japanese Army--and historical facts such as this. At first, the Statue of General
Sudirman was not included during the Ichigayadai Tour, although it is located on theside of Ichigaya Memorial Hall. I found it very regrettable and wrote in the serial
column Chokkyu & Kyokkyu of the Sankei Shimbun and elsewhere that “the Statue ofGeneral Sudirman should be part of the Ichigayadai Tour” and asked Upper House
member Yamada Hiroshi, who was then a parliamentary official, to have the statue
included in the tour. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Yamada and other people concerned,
this statue is now for tour participants to view. (For that matter, I intend to makeinquires so that the Memorial Hall, the venue of the Tokyo Trial, which marked a major
turning point in the history of Japan, will be made separate from the Ministry ofDefense so that it is open to visitors on weekends. This will make the Memorial Hall
available not only for tour participants but also for visitors in general. This is sure to bea long story and I will refrain until another time.)
At any rate, I am vigorously encouraged by General Sudirman when I stand here.
“People of Japan, how much longer do you need to stay under the spell of the Tokyo
Trial? People of Japan, merdeka!”
I would like all of you who are present here to learn about the deep ties between
Indonesia and Japan, bound by the blood of our forefathers. I would be grateful if you
could also share the awareness that we must restore Japan, which is still unable to wakeup from the GHQ’s WGIP (war guilt information program for implanting a masochistic
sense in the Japanese mind) after 75 long postwar years, as a country of merdeka, orindependence, in a true sense.
Thank you very much.

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