There is a Jesuit house in Nagatsuka, Asaminami Ward, Hiroshima City. It used to be a novitiate where young people hoping to join the Society of Jesus underwent two years of training. It was established in 1938 and continued as a novitiate until 2005. Those who joined the Society of Jesus in Japan spent their first two years here. I was one of them.
The novitiate also contains a Jesuit cemetery, along with the cemetery for Gion Catholic Church parishioners. As the novitiate was built on a small hill, I often took walks around the cemetery. There was a grave in the cemetery with the name of someone completely unknown to me.
Since it says “Novice,” he must have died as a novice. Why “August 1945”? Does it have something to do with the Pacific War?
“August” means he died in August, but is the date unknown? Even when people asked what kind of person he was, no one knew the details. “He probably died in battle,” was all they could guess. Where and how did he die? Where was he from? Why did he join the Society of Jesus? With these questions in mind, I finished my novitiate, pronounced my vows, and moved to Tokyo to study philosophy and theology.
More than 40 years later, I found out about “Novice Ōkuni Takeo” by chance. One day, I heard about a person from Hokkaidō who had joined the Society of Jesus. I heard that his family had made great efforts for the Catholic Church in Hokkaidō. I wondered if there might be some connection with that person in the Nagatsuka cemetery. When I told a priest in the Sapporo Diocese about the epitaph, he also became interested and did some research. About a year later, the priest handed me some copies of a 2008 newsletter from the Catholic Kita-Ichijō Church.
In it was the story of Ōkuni Tadashi and his two sons. Tadashi was baptised at Kita-Iichijō Church. He graduated from Sapporo Agricultural College. After the First Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese government, which had taken possession of Taiwan, sent Tadashi to Taiwan to develop agriculture. He went there with his family. After his two sons were educated at schools in Taiwan, the older brother joined the Franciscan Order and the younger brother went on to Sophia University and then joined the Society of Jesus. However, both brothers were called up after joining religious life. The older brother died of illness during the war, and the younger brother was killed in battle. This younger brother was Novice Ōkuni Takeo.
In The History of the Society of Jesus in Japan – After the Second Arrival compiled by Fr Paulo Pfister, there is a section about Novice Ōkuni Takeo. According to this account, as mentioned earlier, when Takeo’s father went to Taiwan to teach agriculture, Takeo accompanied him. After receiving his education there, he entered the Faculty of Economics at Sophia University. He lived in the Aloysius dormitory, where he got to know German Jesuits. After graduating, he joined the Society of Jesus. It was the spring of 1941 (Shōwa 16). After completing his first two weeks of novitiate, he was given his cassock but was soon drafted and sent to the Tsukisamu Drill Corps in Hokkaidō. Fr Pfister promised to say Mass for him on the 15th of every month. Novice Ōkuni Takeo then entered the Military Academy in Sendai, where he became a second lieutenant and was immediately sent to Karafuto (Sakhalin).
After the Russo-Japanese War, the area south of the 50th parallel north became Japanese territory, and many Japanese people moved there to develop the resources and fisheries of Sakhalin. The paper industry was particularly thriving, and coal was also mined. Not all the people were Japanese. Labourers were conscripted from the Korean Peninsula, which was under colonial rule, and were sent to work in Sakhalin. About 400,000 Japanese lived in Moka, the centre of Sakhalin. In 1945, the number of Koreans and their families was said to be no less than 40,000.
On 9 August 1945, the Soviet Union unilaterally abrogated the neutrality treaty with Japan and declared war. On the 11th, it suddenly began its invasion. At this time, Novice Ōkuni Takeo was at the forefront of the defence on the front line. He was killed in battle. The date and time remain unknown.
The report of his death in battle took a long time to reach his family and the Society of Jesus. Two years later, Fr Pfister received the news, but there were no remains or anything. When the Jesuit cemetery at Nagatsuka Novitiate was reorganised, his grave was also created. I don’t know what was placed inside. It was probably only some of his belongings. The epitaph, which has faded and is difficult to read, merely lists the year and month of his death, with a blank space between the month and the year.
Novice Ōkuni Takeo had the baptismal name Eustachio—a name that is not often heard in Japan, but he is a well-known saint in Europe. He is celebrated on 20 September, the day of Takeo’s birthday. When Takeo was baptised, he was named after this saint of that day. St Eustachio was a soldier who served under Emperor Trajan. One day, he saw Jesus crucified between the antlers of a deer, and he converted to Catholicism. He was immediately baptised along with his family. During the reign of Emperor Hadrian, he was forced to renounce his Catholic faith, but he stubbornly refused. He was imprisoned with his family inside a bronze bull and burnt at the stake, resulting in his martyrdom. The vision in which he saw Jesus on the cross between a deer’s antlers was painted by the Italian Renaissance painter Pisanello. St Eustachio is considered the patron saint of hunting.
Novice Ōkuni Takeo was a soldier who died in battle as a second lieutenant. St Eustachio was also a soldier. “Soldier” and “martyr” – I think it’s fair to say that both men share these titles.
By Lee Sung-il SJ