This is Jocco podcast number 178 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.

Honorable Mother and Father. The difficulty of the journey you made to see me was clearly evident in your disheveled hair and in the hollows under your eyes.

It made me want to bend my knees and worship before you.

In the wrinkles on your brows was vivid testimony of the pains you took to raise me.

Words could not express my feelings and what little I did say was superficial in the extreme.

Yet although acutely conscious of how little time we had, I saw in your eyes and in your gaze all you wanted to say but couldn't.

When you took my hand, I experienced a sense of profound peacefulness unlike anything I have experienced since joining up, like being a baby again and longing for the warmth of a mother's love.

It is because I bask in the beauty of your deep devotion that I can martyr myself for you.

For in death I will sleep in the world of your love. Honorable Mother.

Even if I was never able to fully accept the love you gave me, I received so much wisdom from you.

And Father, your silent words are carved deeply into my heart.

With this I will be able to fight together with both of you.

Even if I should die, it will be with a peaceful spirit.

I mean this with all my heart.

The war zone is where these beautiful emotions are put to the test.

If death means a return to this world of love, there is no need for me to fear.

There is nothing left to do but press on and fulfill my duty.

And that is the final letter written by a man named Captain Adachi Takoya.

He was written obviously to his parents.

And he was assigned to Kamikaze Special Attack Group number one.

And he did carry out his mission, a suicide attack on one of the U.S. Navy vessels in the vicinity of Okinawa on the 28th of April 1945.

He was 23 years old, which is actually pretty old for Kamikaze.

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