At age 101, Eisaku Yamamoto continues to share his story about the devastation of war from Kusatsu, Shiga Prefecture, where he lives. He was on the battlefields during World War II fighting for Japan in its campaign in Burma, the Southeast Asian country now officially called Myanmar. He was among the many student-age Japanese who were deployed to the front lines during wartime.
Yamamoto graduated early from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in September 1942 when he was 21. He was sent to war in March 1944 as a private first class in the 119th infantry division. He and his fellow soldiers were on a mission to support a Japanese garrison that was deployed in China's southern Yunnan Province to cut off U.S. and British supplies to China.
