Ishikawa Bunyo: Young Generation Should Learn About War To Appreciate Peace

Talking to Vietnamese students, Ishikawa Bunyo expressed, “Young people in Vietnam and Japan should learn about what war is and when it happened so that they can appreciate the peace we have today.”

Former war correspondent Ishikawa Bunyo (second, from right) at the exchange. Photo: KT

At the age of 86, despite having to walk with a cane, former war correspondent Ishikawa Bunyo still vividly remembers the years he lived and worked in Vietnam since the mid-1960s as a photojournalist. He went to the most brutal places of the war and recorded many moments of people during the war.

He talked about a special moment when American soldiers were laughing at the deaths of Vietnamese guerrillas, and he took a photo. "The guerrilla soldiers who were killed also had their own families and lives. But on the battlefield, people do not think about the lives of their opponents,” he said.

Ishikawa Bunyo is one of the rare war reporters who were able to come and work in both North and South Vietnam during the war. Being injured and nearly dying seven times on the battlefields of South Vietnam did not make him falter in his mission to vividly capture the war. The photos taken during that time helped him set foot in Northern Vietnam, taking pictures of the destructive war caused by the American soldiers.

Huynh Ngoc Van, former Director of the War Remnants Museum and a close friend of Ishikawa Bunyo said, “Although Mrs. Kei, his wife, has tried her best to digitize many of the photos he took and store them on disc, he still cherishes the films that have accompanied him for the past 50 years, especially about Vietnam. In addition to war scenes and military operations of American and Korean soldiers in South Vietnam, he also recorded the pain and suffering of the Vietnamese people losing their loved ones, and being arrested and tortured. After many years passed, he went on a journey to find the old people he had met during the war and captured their lives today, with bright smiles on their faces. The simple, innocent smiles of Vietnamese people became a great topic for him later. ”

Thinking about the war in the past and peace today, Ishikawa Bunyo said, “For me, peace is when people can live a normal life, going to work, farming, and children can go to school…”

According to Huynh Ngoc Van, Ishikawa Bunyo was born in Okinawa (Japan). He had a difficult childhood, started working as a photographer, then became a war correspondent with a Nikon camera. He likes Vietnamese New Rice wine, stir-fried water spinach with garlic dipped in raw fish sauce, and Vietnamese coffee.

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