Word: tamura
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Running from the sound of the exploding grenade, Private Tamura felt a fragment rip his shoulder and saw the gouged chunk of his own flesh lying on the ground. He picked it up, wiped it clean and popped it into his mouth. He was that hungry and, besides, "There could certainly be nothing wrong in eating my own flesh...
Final Duty. The Japanese army on Leyte has been smashed, and now the survivors are starving and trying to reach the last escape port in small groups. Private Tamura is more expendable than most. He has tuberculosis. His squad leader tells him to go back to the hospital-which has kicked him out after three days-and if he is not readmitted he is to use his last grenade to commit suicide and carry out "your final duty to your country." Taking his final ration of six raw potatoes, Tamura sets off. Aware that the hospital will not take...
...Spoken. Close to madness, Tamura begins to think about God and to feel that he is now beyond the human pale. And when he meets up with a former buddy who feeds him with dried human flesh, he has committed another act that revolts him and leads directly to madness. By this time he is sure that God has spoken to him, but he has long since lacked the strength of mind to solve either the spiritual or moral problems that assail his failing brain...
Captured and sent home at war's end, Tamura is a madman and knows it. Six years later Tamura writes a book. Having committed himself to a madhouse, he asks his wife to divorce him, and she does. There Novelist Ooka leaves him, trying to figure out who or what he is. It seems unlikely that he will, though there are times when he thinks he might be an angel. "But if I am an angel of God, why am I so grieved? Why is this heart of mine, which should now be free of all earthly attachments...