by
nick komiya
To be enshrined at the shrine, "war" had to be the cause and "death" the result, but if death followed after some time from a war wound or sickness, it had to be within 3 years of the event to be a war death.
There are actually former prisoners of the war that survived the war and are enshrined at Yasukuni. A navy Zero fighter ace, who was awarded the Golden Kite 6th Class in the China Incident had to ditch his plane on an island in 1943, where natives offered to guide him to the Japanese post, but actually handed him over to the British and into captivity.
Such cases got recorded as MIA by the Japanese, which eventually got automatically switched to KIA and he was enshrined at Yasukuni, posthumously promoted to Ensign and a Golden Kite 5th Class.
After the war, when he miraculously returned, his family was ecstatic with joy, but when he went to city hall to revive his family register, though his posthumous promotion and award got annulled, he was told that his enshrinement at Yasukuni could not be reversed and he remained enshrined there until his death in 2007.
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