![]() He volunteered to go back into the cave and bring out the civilians. Gesturing excitedly, he explained that the burning gasoline would kill not only the Japanese soldiers in the higher lateral but the civilians in the lower level as well. Marines embraced them, rubbed cheeks with them, and then began bringing cans of gasoline to the cave mouth. ![]() Americans, smiling broadly, pressed K rations, water and cigarettes on them. They could scarcely believe what was happening. Instead of being killed the Miyagis were hauled swiftly to the top. Ropes tumbled down, followed by a dozen Marines hand over hand. Above them a circle of rifles rimmed its lips. They emerged from the cave and found themselves in a cul-de-sac, twenty feet deep. “We’ve come to save you,” someone shouted back. Betty shouted “Hello!” and said that she was from Hawaii and that her older brother was with her. At the entrance they heard American voices. The ordeal left them with one conviction: they would rather die on the surface in the sunlight than smother in the dark. It was the candle in the center of half a dozen civilians. Then they noticed a cold breeze - there had to be an entrance nearby - and saw a light ahead. Together the Miyagis pulled themselves onto a bank. The nightmare seemed endless - he had no idea how long - until his feet touched solid ground and he could relieve his tortured muscles. Every few yards he lowered his feet to rest but they sank into gummy mud and he flailed frantically to keep head above water. The water revived Betty, and when Miyagi could no longer touch bottom he gave her the glowing candle that was guiding them and swam through the water with the collar of her dress in his teeth. The mud became a stream and soon water was up to Miyagi’s shoulders. Now the smoke became so suffocating that Miyagi - one of the most celebrated karate experts in Okinawa, the home of karate - toted his unconscious wife piggyback deep into the cave through hip-high mud. Petty Officer Shikichi Miyagi had escaped from Oroku Peninsula after Admiral Ota’s death to find his wife Betty, a Hawaiian, and had succeeded. At least three hundred soldiers and eight hundred civilians were bottled inside. ![]() Incredibly, Shikichi Miyagi doesn’t seem to have been written about much since, but here’s the passage in question (emphasis mine):Ī mile to the northwest the Americans had been trying to clear a multilevel labyrinthian cave with smoke bombs for more than a week. He negotiated their surrender and convinced the American soldiers above not to try to clear the caves with fire like they’d been planning while the gasoline was already in the water.Īuthor John Toland recounts the entire story in his 1970 book, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. Miyagi in Karate Kid was an Okinawan karate master whose pregnant wife died in an internment camp (she had previously emigrated to Hawaii to work in the sugar cane fields), Shikichi Miyagi was a Japanese Petty Office who helped first drag his unconscious Hawaiian wife out of the Todoroki Trench complex in Okinawa and then helped save the lives of 800 Japanese soldiers and Okinawan civilians who were holed up in the cave system. Miyagi, was named Miyagi, a karate master, an Okinawan, and a World War II hero. What both of those films fail to mention is that there was a real person who, like the fictional character of Mr. In 2015, there was the lesser known The Real Miyagi, about a similarly interesting Yokohoman karate master namd Fumio Demura, who did Morita’s stunt work in the same films. Miyagi in all those The Karate Kid movies. This month sees the release of More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story, an intimate portrait of Japanese-American comedian-turned-actor Pat Morita, who had an interesting life beyond playing Mr.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |