The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  EIEN NO ZERO

  © Naoki Hyakuta 2006

  All rights reserved

  First published in Japan in 2006 by Ohta Publishing Co., Tokyo.

  Worldwide English translation rights arranged with Ohta Publishing Co. through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.

  Published by Vertical, an imprint of Kodansha USA Publishing LLC, 2015

  Ebook ISBN 9781647290467

  Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC

  451 Park Avenue South, 7th Floor

  New York, NY 10016

  www.readvertical.com

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  Prologue

  Chapter 1 A Ghost

  Chapter 2 The Coward

  Chapter 3 Pearl Harbor

  Chapter 4 Rabaul

  Chapter 5 Guadalcanal

  Chapter 6 The Nude Photo

  Chapter 7 Total Lunacy

  Chapter 8 Cherry Blossoms

  Chapter 9 Kamikaze Attack

  Chapter 10 Fighting Demon

  Chapter 11 Final Moments

  Chapter 12 Shooting Star

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  It was definitely right before the end of the war, but I don’t remember the exact date. That damn Zero, though, is something I’ll never forget. It was like the devil himself. I was a 5-inch artillery gunner on the USS Ticonderoga. My job was protecting the aircraft carrier from those crazy kamikazes that plunged right at us.

  The 5-inch shells had so-called proximity fuzes. The proximity fuze emitted radio waves in a radius of 50 feet of the shell and was designed to detonate the instant interference from an approaching aircraft was sensed. It was an awesome weapon. I fired hundreds of those shells. And shot down most of the kamikazes before they got close to the carrier.

  The first time I saw a kamikaze, I was seized by fear. I had deployed on the Ticonderoga in the beginning of 1945. I had heard rumors about the kamikazes, but when I first laid eyes on them, I thought, “They’re gonna drag me down to hell with them.” These suicide bombers were the height of madness. I wanted to think that it was a unique exception; however, their attacks came one after another. I thought they were not human. Far from not being afraid to die, they just threw themselves to death at us. Didn’t they have families, friends, lovers—anyone that would mourn their deaths? I was different. I had wonderful parents back in the Arizona countryside and a fiancée.

  Our Navy had magnificent artillery and the power of the proximity fuzes was astounding. Our ships could fire them all at once, the barrage darkening the sky. Rare was the kamikaze that could break through. Any that did were baptized with showers of bullets from 40-mm and 20-mm machine guns. And most of them exploded or fell into the ocean in flames.

  Before long, my fear faded, replaced by anger. Anger incited by deeds committed by those who did not fear God. Or perhaps it was a desire for revenge for the fear that they had given me. We gunners focused the energy of our anger into our artillery and machine guns, and pounded away at them. Once my initial fear passed, it became a game. We shot down kamikazes like we were shooting at clay pigeons.

  They usually approached from a shallow angle. By then, Japanese pilots were all rookies, and there were few that could come at us from steep dive angles. Our guns could move in almost any direction, but it was difficult to keep them in our sights if they dove at us from directly above the ship at close to 90 degrees. On the other hand, if they did come at us from such steep angles, it was extremely difficult for them to ram into the ship. A guy familiar with airplanes once told me that at high speeds an aircraft’s rudder becomes ineffective. I saw many such diving kamikazes lose sight of their target and crash into the ocean.

  However, shooting down kamikazes was also becoming increasingly painful. Heck, the target was not just a clay pigeon. It was a fellow human being.

  Darn you, kamikazes. Please stop coming! I lost count of how many times I thought such words.

  But if they came, I would shoot them. If I didn’t, we would die. More than a few warships sank after being rammed into. Warships had thousands of personnel on board. If one sank, hundreds would perish. We couldn’t allow hundreds of Americans to die because of one Japanese. Even if the ship hit by a kamikaze didn’t sink, dozens of us could still die.

  After the Battle of Okinawa in May, our defense against kamikaze attacks was nearly perfect. Radar picket ships positioned 100 miles ahead of the main flotilla picked up approaching kamikaze planes at a range of 200 miles, which allowed interceptors positioned far ahead of the warships to shoot down most of them.

  By then, the kamikazes didn’t have fighter escorts. They were like flocks of sheep with no dogs to guard them. Rendered sluggish with their heavy ordnance, the kamikaze planes were no match for our late-model fighters. That was why the majority of them never reached the flotilla.

  That summer, we high-angle anti-aircraft gunners were open for business but had no customers. As August came, it was widely speculated that the war would soon be over.

  That’s when I caught a glimpse of that damn devil of a Zero.

  Chapter 1

  A Ghost

  I was awakened by the Star Wars theme ringing on my cell phone. Glancing at the clock, it was past noon. It was my sister calling.

  “What’re you up to?”

  “Just takin’ a walk.”

  “You were sleeping, weren’t you?”

  “Am gonna hunt for a job this afternoon.”

  After a brief pause, she suddenly said, “You’re lying! Are you going to goof off forever, not working? They call people like you a NEET, Kentaro.”

  “Do you even know what NEET stands for?” I replied.

  She ignored the question. “If you’re not doing anything, I can get you a good part-time job.”

  Oh, here we go again, I thought.

  To be sure, even I thought myself rather pathetic—twenty-six and just hanging around without working. Waiting for another shot at the bar exam might sound good to some. But I hadn’t even bothered to take it this year. I had for four consecutive years since my senior year of college and failed every time. The first time stung the worst. While I passed the essay section, considered the toughest, I completely screwed up the oral exam. That thoroughly disappointed my advisor.

  Everyone thought I’d make it the next time, because those who passed the essay section were exempted from it the following year. However, I stumbled during the oral exam again. Being excused from the written portion, I’d taken it too easy. From there, I really bungled things. The next year I failed the essay exam, and the year after that I failed the short-answer test. I was in the worst possible mental state during that last exam, the girl I’d been dating since college having dumped me.

  After that, I lost my self-confidence and motivation and spent my days goofing around aimlessly. I had been told that amongst my class I was the most likely to pass the bar exam first. Yet here I was, counted amongst the dropouts. Occasionally I worked part-time as a cram-school instructor. And when in the mood, I did some manual-labor jobs. But whatever I did, it was just to kill time.

  I still felt confident that if I could get my engine going and studied in earnest, I could pass. But that essential motivation was missing, and more than a year had flown by as my law books gathered dust.

  “So what is this part-time gig?”

  “My assistant.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  My sister Keiko was four years older than me and worked as a freelance writer. Well, actually she was still just a fledgling reporter. After w
orking four years at a publisher of trend magazines, she’d gone freelance. The bulk of her work was interviews for her former employer. Even so, she was renting an apartment in Tokyo, so apparently she was earning enough to get by. She always said that one day she’d be a top-flight nonfiction writer. And while that was probably just a dream, she was pretty ambitious.

  “Well, to be honest, you wouldn’t be assisting me with my regular work. I want to research our grandfather.”

  “Research what about Grandpa?”

  “Not ‘Grandpa’…I mean Grandma’s first husband.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Grandma lost her first husband in the war. They say he died during a kamikaze mission. Their married life was apparently very short, but my mother was born then. Grandma remarried after the war, and that husband was “Grandpa” for us.

  I first learned all this six years ago when Grandma passed away. After the forty-ninth-day memorial service for her, Grandpa asked my sister and me to visit him, and then told us about our real grandfather. I was far more shocked that I had no blood ties to the man I had always thought of as my grandfather.

  Grandpa had doted on my sister and me since we were young. And he got along great with our mother, even though she wasn’t his biological daughter. After remarrying her second husband, my grandmother bore two sons (my uncles). And Mom and her stepbrothers got along well.

  Even after learning of the existence of my real grandfather, I didn’t especially feel anything towards him. He had died thirty years before I was born, and since there wasn’t a single photograph of him anywhere in the house it was impossible to even feel sorry for him. It’s not a nice comparison, but it was as though a ghost had suddenly appeared.

  Grandpa had apparently heard little from Grandma about her first husband. All he knew for certain was that her first husband had been a naval aviator who died as a kamikaze pilot. Mom had no recollection of him at all. She was three when he died, but he had been away at war well before then.

  “Why are you researching that man?”

  I purposely referred to him as “that man.” I had Grandpa for a grandfather. I resisted the idea of calling my biological grandfather “Grandpa.”

  “The other day out of nowhere Mom said, ‘I wonder what my late father was like. I don’t know anything about him.’ ”

  “Yeah,” I said, getting up from bed.

  “When I heard Mom say that, I found myself wanting to help her. I understand how she must feel. I mean, it’s her real father. Of course Grandpa is important to her, and she thinks of him as her father. But it’s like, those feelings aside, she’s curious about what kind of person her actual father was.”

  “But why now?”

  “Maybe ’cause she’s getting old?”

  “Doesn’t Grandpa know anything else about him?”

  “Apparently not. Seems Grandma didn’t tell him very much about her first husband.”

  “Hmm.”

  I loved Grandpa. It was because he’s a lawyer that I had decided to sit for the bar. A diligent man, he’d previously worked for Japan National Railway, but in his thirties he passed the bar and became a lawyer instead. Granted, he had the academic chops, having studied law at Waseda University. In practice, he ran around helping the needy. To use a worn-out phrase, he was a lawyer who lived in honorable poverty. Watching him inspired me to become a lawyer myself.

  No matter how many times I failed the bar or how long I drifted aimlessly, he never got angry. When my mother and my sister discussed their concerns with him, he told them, “One day that boy will land squarely on his feet. So don’t worry about him.” They were disappointed by this.

  “By the way, why do you need me to research our grandfather?” I asked her.

  “Because I’m busy and can’t let it take up all my time. And besides, it concerns you, too. But I don’t expect you to do this as a favor. I will pay you.”

  I smiled wryly but thought, Why not? It’s not like I had anything better to do. “But how can anyone do this research?”

  “Have you decided to help out?”

  “No, I just wondered if you had a clue to go on or something.”

  “Nothing at all. I don’t even know if he had any relatives. But I have his name, so it should be possible to find out what sort of unit he was with.”

  “You really expect me to hunt down people who were in the same unit and ask them what kind of man he was?”

  “You’re a sharp one, Kentaro.”

  “Oh, give me a break. First of all, this was sixty years ago. Even if someone who knew him then is still alive, I can’t imagine they’ll remember much if anything about him. Besides, most of them are dead by now.”

  “We’re discussing your biological grandfather, you know.”

  “Well, sure…But I don’t especially care to learn about him.”

  “But I do!” my sister said in a forceful tone. “He was my real grandfather, and I’m keen to learn what kind of man he was. Heck, he’s your roots, too.”

  I wasn’t particularly moved by her speech, but I didn’t feel like arguing with her.

  “So, will you or won’t you help?”

  “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  I wasn’t totally incurious about our grandfather, but the real reason I accepted her request was nothing more than a desire to escape my boredom. Plus, there was the money.

  The next day I met up with my sister in Shibuya, to talk about things over lunch. Of course, it was on her. We chose a chain restaurant that served Italian. Keiko had on very little makeup, as usual, and a worn-out pair of jeans.

  “Actually, I might be working on a pretty big gig. I’ve been recruited by a newspaper company for its project on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war,” she said with a hint of pride, naming the major newspaper.

  “Wow, that’s great. That’s quite the leap up from a crummy little magazine.”

  “Don’t call it crummy,” she pouted.

  I apologized.

  “And if everything goes smoothly, they might publish my book.”

  “Oh, really! What kind of book?”

  “A collection of war testimonials. I don’t know yet if it’ll really be published. I’ll probably need a co-author. But anyways, that’s on the table, too,” she said, eyes sparkling.

  I see. So that’s what’s up, I thought, finally comprehending. She was using the research on our grandfather as a dry-run. I was sure she genuinely wanted to learn more about him for her sake as well as Mom’s. But more so, her objective was to hone her skills as a writer through our investigation. After all, she’d never even brought up our dead grandfather before now.

  To be frank, I didn’t think my sister was cut out for journalism. Sure, she was strong-willed, but she was too considerate. She was the type who couldn’t ask tough or probing questions of her interviewees. Moreover, having a personality where your feelings showed right on your face had to be a disadvantage. She was likely already aware of these things even without me stating them. Perhaps she thought of the end-of-WWII anniversary project as a chance to peel off that skin and reinvent herself.

  “So, is it true that he died as a kamikaze pilot?” I asked.

  “Grandpa said as much,” reminded Keiko, twirling pasta onto her fork. “We have amazing family,” she added, sounding like she was discussing someone else’s.

  “Sure do,” I chimed back, echoing her distant tone.

  “But the kamikazes were terrorists.”

  “Terrorists?”

  “Someone at the newspaper whom I met called them that. He said, ‘From today’s perspective, kamikaze pilots were on par with the people who flew planes into the World Trade Center.’ ”

  “Hmm…I feel like it’s wrong to label the kamikazes as terrorists.”

  “I don’t really know, but some people see it that way.
According to that journalist, although the era and context seem totally different, they are structurally similar. He said both were fanatic patriots and martyrs.”

  It was an audacious opinion, but I found myself unable to dismiss it out of hand.

  “The person who told me this is quite brilliant. He used to be on the political beat for the newspaper. We were talking over lunch and I mentioned that my grandfather was a kamikaze pilot, so he lent me a book of last words by kamikazes. It brimmed with words like ‘submitting’ and ‘fealty.’ The most surprising thing was how the pilots were totally unafraid of death. Actually, some of the wills expressed joy over the prospect of dying a glorious death for the nation. When I read it I thought, ‘So there was a time when Japan had a hell of a lot of fanatic nationalists, too.’ ”

  “Huh. But my grandfather being a terrorist still doesn’t ring any bell.”

  “Sixty years from now the grandkids of Islamic suicide bombers might say the same thing,” Keiko argued, cheeks stuffed with pasta, before noisily chugging down some water. It was definitely not very feminine. My sister is fairly pretty, if you’d take her brother’s word for it, but she sure didn’t put much effort into personal grooming or matters of etiquette.

  “Did our grandfather leave a will or any last words?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “There’s not a trace of his life at all?”

  “That’s why we need to investigate it.”

  “So what is it exactly that I’m supposed to do?”

  “I want you to look up some of his war buddies. I’m super busy right now and just can’t get around to it myself. That’s why I’ve tasked you with that research. I’ll pay you an advance, so please do it,” she rattled off, retrieving an envelope from her handbag and handing it to me. “You’re not exactly busy, right? You’ll get somewhere with phone calls and faxes. If you can manage to find any of his comrades, I’ll go to interview them in person.”