125 Years Memory · Story
In 1890, Dr. Tamura (Seiyo Uchino)'s kindness in caring for his patients is winning him the trust of Kashino,
a poor village on Kushimoto's Kii Oshima island in Wakayama prefecture.
Assisting him is Haru (Shioli Kutsuna), who the shock of losing her fiancé to drowning has left mute.
In the night of 16 September of that year the Turkish frigate Ertuğrul, on its way home from Yokohama to Istanbul,
is driven aground in a typhoon and wrecked in the Pacific Ocean off Cape Kashino.
Hearing the alarm bell that warns of a vessel in distress, the villagers rush to the shore.
They are confronted with the grisly spectacle of vast numbers of dead and dying.
With more than 500 crew members dead, it is one of the largest sea accidents in history at that time.
Risking their own lives, the villagers rescue who they can, while Tamura and Haru go to work treating the injured.
The next morning, there are 69 survivors.
In the wake of her life rescuing efforts Haru builds a special bond with Mustafa (Kenan Ece), 2nd engineering officer on the Ertuğrul frigate.
Although being very poor and having hardly to eat, the locals share what little they have with strangers from a country 9,000 kilometres away and give them shelter in their small village of only 60 households.
[Led by Torajiro Yamada, a businessman and tea master from Gunma, donation campaigns for the Turkish crew start all over Japan.
Yamada, who is also to be known as Abdülhalil Pasha, is to lay the foundation of Japanese-Turkish relations.]
95 years later, in 1985 during the Iran-Iraq war, Turkish embassy official Murat (Kenan Ece) encounters Harumi (Shioli Kutsuna),
a teacher at the Tehran Japanese School, during a bombing raid in Tehran.
On 17 March Iraq announces that in 48 hours it will start an indiscriminate attack and shoot down any aircraft over Iranian air space.
Japanese Ambassador Yutaka Nomura (Toshiyuki Nagashima) requests rescue flights from Japan, but is told that a quick response is not possible.
Meanwhile rescue flights from other nations are arriving, leaving only the Japanese stranded.
Harumi wants to save her students and prevails upon Nomura to ask the Turkish embassy for help.
Out of gratitude for the rescue of Turkish sailors in 1890, Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Özal (Deniz Oral) decides to evacuate the over 300 Japanese.
In the morning of 19 March a Turkish Airlines aircraft takes off for Tehran.
But not only is Tehran already under heavy rocket fire.
By now Tehran Mehrabad Airport is full of Turks trying to find a flight to safety.
They still need to be convinced that they won't be able to board their own country's evacuation flight.
Kimura (Takayuki Takuma), an automotive engineer posted to Tehran, and the other Japanese have all but given up hope of getting onto the last flight.
That's when Murat starts speaking out to his fellow citizens about the compassion and sacrifice Japanese villagers had shown to Turkish sailors shipwrecked far away a long time ago.
![Tetsuo Nagata [125 Years Memory] cinematographer](/index.cgi/contrast/http://www.125yearsmemory.com/sub/kainan1890_nagata.jpg){kind=link}
![Ramazan Kubat singing [125 Years Memory] theme song Ertugrul Turkusu with Takahisa Suda and Can Akalin](/index.cgi/contrast/http://www.125yearsmemory.com/media/ertugrulturkusu_kubat.jpg){kind=link}
![Sato Higashi [125 Years Memory] dialect consultant and biwa artist](/index.cgi/contrast/http://www.125yearsmemory.com/sub/kainan1890_higasi.jpg){kind=link}
