Ryōji Uehara (上原良司, Uehara Ryōji; 27 September 1922 – 11 May 1945) was a flight captain of the Imperial Japanese Army and was killed in action as a kamikaze pilot. Uehara was born in what is now the town of Ikeda, Nagano. He entered the Department of Economics at Keio University in 1942 and joined the IJA 50th Regiment in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, later that same year. He was a member of the 56th Shinmu squadron (第56振武隊) of the IJA Air Corps when he carried out his final mission against the US carrier fleet near Kadena, Okinawa Prefecture on 11 May 1945. He was 22 years old. His letter, written to his parents the night before his final mission, was published after the war and it is still regarded as a masterpiece of wartime literary works in Japan.
Source: “Ryōji Uehara”, English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), excerpt