The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  Takayama’s argument was logically consistent, but I wasn’t able to readily accept everything he said, probably because I wasn’t willing to concede that my grandfather was a terrorist.

  “You said your grandfather was a kamikaze attack pilot?” Takayama asked Keiko, to which she nodded. “Well, it gives me great pain to say this regarding your late grandfather…”

  “I don’t mind. Please, continue.”

  Takayama seemed hesitant but gave a slight nod at Keiko’s words and said, “I think the kamikaze attack people who gave their lives for the Emperor and the state were fanatical nationalists.”

  My sister nodded again, but I found myself wanting to argue. “Our grandfather was someone who valued his life, though. He wanted to live for his family’s sake.”

  “People always love their families. But before the war, all Japanese were taught that the Emperor was a living god, and many people accepted their indoctrination. This wasn’t your grandfather’s fault. The blame lies with the times.”

  “I can’t be sure, but I doubt my grandfather placed the Emperor above his own family.”

  Takayama nodded and took a sip from his coffee. “You don’t know very much about that era. Before the war, Japan was a country of fanatics. A large percentage of the populace was brainwashed by the military and believed that dying for the Emperor was not only sufferable but even a joyous deed. I believe it’s the mission of us journalists not to allow this country to become like that again.”

  “But I never ever heard my grandmother, who survived the war, say, ‘Banzai. Long live the Emperor.’ ”

  “That’s because the brainwashing came undone. I believe that an army of political theorists and journalists who came before me brought the populace to its senses after the war. I became a newspaperman because I wanted to follow in their footsteps. And I still aim to become a true journalist.”

  Takayama gave a bashful smile. He seemed very sincere. Keiko was staring at his profile with a trusting expression.

  I pondered what he had said and concluded that on the whole, he was correct. But deep in my heart I felt something was off, even though I couldn’t say what. After considering for a moment, I ventured, “I don’t believe the mental make-up of Japanese and the Islamic extremists are the same.”

  “I didn’t say all Japanese. I am speaking of the similarities between kamikazes and suicide bombers.”

  “Doesn’t that amount to arguing that the kamikazes were special?”

  Takayama inclined his head questioningly. “What do you mean?”

  “Were the kamikaze pilots so special, so unique? I don’t think they were. I think they were typical Japanese. Aside from the fact that they happened to be pilots, weren’t they just ordinary people?”

  Takayama lowered his gaze and fell into a brief silence. “This is a very basic thing, but those men who volunteered for the kamikaze forces were not conscripts. They weren’t called up by the draft and forcibly sent to the battlefront. Had the kamikaze attack been carried out by conscripts, I think I, too, would view the matter in a different light. But at the time, aircrew were comprised entirely of volunteers. The student reservists, the boy pilots, all of them. Which is why I’d go as far as to say that all kamikazes were people who wanted to join the military, who chose to fight.”

  I saw what he was getting at.

  “Your grandfather joined the Navy at age fifteen, right? That means he enlisted, he wasn’t drafted.”

  Before I could respond, Keiko interjected, “Takayama-san, you mean to say that the mental make-up of conscripts and volunteers were different to begin with, correct? That those who enlisted of their own free will already had what it took to be part of the kamikaze forces?”

  “Exactly, Saeki-san. But I’m not saying they were completely different. I just think that the volunteers had a stronger than average desire to dedicate their lives to their country to begin with.”

  He had valid points. Maybe one couldn’t discuss conscripts and volunteers in the same terms. Had something within my grandfather made him consent to becoming a kamikaze? Why had he joined the Navy in the first place? Hasegawa had joined the Navy to escape from reality, and Ito had joined out of an admiration for the air corps. Had my grandfather also been a militant youth who yearned to become a pilot?

  “By the way, I have a request for you, Kentaro. Will you allow me to write an article about you gathering information about your grandfather?”

  “You want to write about me?”

  “I could write about your sister, but I think a young man is preferable. I’m not sure yet what the final product will look like, but a young man hailing from a generation that knows nothing of war tracing the itinerary of his grandfather, who died as a kamikaze, and visiting former comrades is an extremely fascinating project.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I tried to refuse.

  “Why not do it, Kentaro?” Keiko butted in.

  “Um, let me think it over.”

  “Of course. Please take your time.”

  * * *

  —

  After Takayama had left, I asked Keiko, “What the hell was that all about? A project about me? Was that the point of this meeting from the start?”

  “No, Takayama-san came up with that today. He probably thought of it after I told him about our research.” She didn’t seem to be lying. “He has a crush on you, doesn’t he?”

  Keiko didn’t deny it. She had always been popular with men. She was turning thirty this year, but looked much younger and was fairly attractive.

  “Is he single?”

  “Yes, but divorced.”

  Keiko said she met Takayama at the beginning of the year through work. Thanks to his introduction, she got to do an article for the newspaper company’s weekly magazine. Naturally, it was Takayama who had recruited her for the sixtieth anniversary project too.

  “He likes you. That’s why he’s doing you so many favors.”

  “Don’t put it that way.”

  “So what about you? Do you like him?”

  “Hmm, I don’t really know. I don’t mind him. I think he’s quite a guy.”

  “So he’s the one who hit on you?”

  “Pretty aggressively, yeah,” she said and gave a forced laugh. “But I don’t really mind men being that way. Besides, I’m getting to the age where I should settle down, and I’ve got no objections to him as a potential spouse.”

  “Sounds like a calculated marriage.”

  Keiko looked annoyed by my remark. “There aren’t many men out there who are sympathetic to working women like me. For men, whom they marry might not have that much of an impact on their careers, but it’s a considerably more weighty decision for a woman. You could even say it’s the biggest job-related issue. Right? The type of man a woman marries determines what kind of work style and lifestyle she’ll be pursuing. So don’t call my being careful ‘calculating’!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” she quickly assured me. “Sorry for flaring up. But women like me who don’t jump right into it might be the permanent part-timers of the marriage world.”

  Though she smiled as she said this, her expression was a little lonely.

  * * *

  —

  On the weekend after meeting Takayama, my sister and I visited former Imperial Navy Flight Chief Petty Officer Genjiro Izaki.

  Izaki was in a university hospital in the city. We had been contacted by his daughter. From the outset I planned on going along with Keiko on the interview; Ito’s story had really spurred my interest in researching my grandfather.

  A woman in her fifties was waiting in the hospital lobby. “I’m Izaki’s daughter, Suzuko Emura,” she greeted us. “This is my son,” she also introduced a young man standing beside her.

  He lazily jerked his chin out. He look
ed to be around twenty. His hair was dyed, and he wore a Hawaiian print shirt. In his left hand was a gaudily painted motorbike helmet.

  “My father is quite ill, so he can’t talk for very long.”

  “Please, we don’t want him to overexert himself,” Keiko said.

  “He once told me about Miyabe-san. That it was only thanks to Miyabe-san that he was still alive.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “I ain’t heard nothin’ like that,” the young man said brusquely.

  His mother ignored him. “My father was very surprised to hear from the veterans’ organization that Miyabe-san’s grandchild had contacted them.”

  “He must’ve cried himself to sleep that night,” the young man mocked.

  “My father is in poor health and the doctors have cautioned him against discussing anything that could upset him. But he ignored them and insisted on meeting you.”

  “I’m sorry for all this trouble,” Keiko said, bowing her head deeply.

  “Also, he wanted his grandson to hear what he had to say as well, which is why I’ve brought my son along. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Whatta pain in the ass,” the punk-haired youth muttered, but his mother seemed not to have heard him.

  Izaki had a private room. Upon entering, we found a skinny old man sitting upright on the bed.

  “Father, should you really be sitting up?” Suzuko said in a fluster.

  “I’m fine,” the old man responded in a sure voice. Bowing his head towards me and my sister, he said, “I am Genjiro Izaki. I apologize for my state of dress.”

  He was referring to being in his pajamas. He stared at Keiko and me.

  “To think I’d be able to meet Miyabe-san’s grandchildren after all these years…”

  “I was born thirty years after his death,” Keiko said.

  “I hear Miyabe-san died a kamikaze.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  Izaki looked up at the ceiling. “In the past week since you contacted me, I’ve been recalling all sorts of things about Miyabe-san. I lay in bed remembering those days of the war, sixty years long gone, buried for over half a century at the very bottom of my memories. I’d forgotten plenty of things.” He turned to his grandson. “You listen to this, too, Seiichi.”

  “Got nothin’ to do with me.”

  “It doesn’t. But I still want you to hear it.”

  Seiichi signaled his acquiescence with a wave of his hand.

  Izaki turned back to us and righted his posture anew. “I first met Miyabe-san in Rabaul,” he began slowly.

  * * *

  —

  I graduated from pilot training at Yatabe in Ibaraki Prefecture and was assigned to the Tainan Air Corps. That was in February 1942. I was twenty by the old reckoning, eighteen going by the Western style.

  After graduating from higher primary school, I worked at a local silk mill. I joined the Navy when I was fifteen. The first year I was a gunner on the battleship Kirishima, but when I heard they were recruiting sailors to join the air corps, I went through pilot training and became part of the aircrew.

  Why did I join the Navy?

  Hmm, sometimes I wonder why. In those days, I’d have been drafted once I turned twenty anyways. I figured if I was going to join the military in any case, I preferred the Navy. The wages at the silk mill were meager, the work was grueling, and it had poor prospects. Looking back now, I think it’s strange that those were the reasons I joined the military when I could die by doing so. In those days it was pretty typical, but when I think back to it, I believe that poverty was behind my choice to join the Navy.

  * * *

  —

  We had gone to war with the U.S. in December of the previous year. I’d heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor while part of the Yatabe Air Unit.

  The following year, I was sent to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. It had once belonged to the Americans, but the Tainan Air Corps destroyed all of their planes in an air raid two days after the start of the war, and subsequently the Japanese military occupied the base. Apparently the thirty-four Zeros in the Tainan Air Corps knocked out almost all of the Americans’ sixty fighters, while our side suffered just four lost aircraft.

  By the time I went to the Philippines, the Americans had been eradicated so we had it pretty easy.

  The Tainan Air Corps was filled with some of the bravest and most experienced aircrew, but I was still green. My rank was Flight Seaman 1st Class—basically a plain soldier. The Navy’s ranks included seamen, non-commissioned officers, and officers.

  As soon as I arrived at Clark Air Base an NCO said, “Let’s dogfight.” By that he meant a mock air battle. We were to practice going around and coming up close behind the opponent as in a real air battle.

  “I haven’t seen combat in a while, so I just want to spar with you,” he said. It was obvious that his ulterior motive was to see if I was any good. The other senior crew were laughing.

  “With your permission, sir,” I said humbly, but in fact I was quite confident when it came to mock dogfights. Back at Yatabe I had been at the top of my class or near it. I wanted to impress on my seniors that I was pretty good.

  The battle began with me in an advantageous position, as was agreed beforehand. It was like he had given me a leg up. In aerial combat, the aircraft at a higher altitude has an overwhelming advantage.

  I dove from that higher altitude. My opponent smoothly turned and broke away, but I still had the advantage. Making good use of my speed I went right after him. He attempted to evade by pulling up into a loop. I followed. But the next instant, I lost sight of him. I’d never experienced anything like that before. My opponent’s plane was nowhere to be seen. Then I looked behind me to find him right on my tail!

  He pulled up alongside me, opened his windshield, and indicated another round, just as I’d hoped for.

  We began again with me at a higher altitude, but the match ended in the exact same manner. At some point while I was pursuing him, he snuck right up behind me. We went a third round. It ended the same way yet again.

  When I got back to the base, the NCO long-timers laughed at me.

  “With piss-poor skills like that, you’d never survive even if you had countless lives.”

  My opponent, Flight Petty Officer 3rd Class Hayashi, was a year older than I.

  “I lose, sir,” I said meekly. “You’re really an excellent pilot, Petty Officer Hayashi.”

  “Me? I’m one of the shittier ones in the Tainan Air Corps. I can’t hold a candle to the likes of CPO Miyazaki and PO1 Sakai.”

  “Really?”

  “The only way is up, as they say,” PO3 Hayashi said, slapping me on the shoulder.

  I totally lost my self-confidence.

  Piloting an airplane isn’t as simple as driving a car, where turning the steering wheel turns the vehicle. With an airplane, you have to integrate use of the foot bar, too, to bank, and the rudder’s effect is intricately intertwined with the plane’s velocity. This is because aircraft move along a vertical axis as well as horizontally. Up until that point, I had been pretty confident in the cockpit, but the skills of these first-rate pilots far exceeded my expectations.

  After that, my superiors drilled me via mock dogfights. They were totally different from the mock fights we did at Yatabe. I realized that actual combat was like these drills. You can bet that I desperately tried out all sorts of maneuvers. It was thanks to the precious training my superiors gave me back then that I was able to somehow survive the war.

  While I say “superiors” they were all barely past twenty themselves. Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Saburo Sakai, the oldest NCO there, was only around twenty-five at the time. But to me, they seemed almost middle-aged.

  Looking back now, we were all so very young.

  * * *r />
  —

  Around then, Nagumo Mobile Task Force was taking southern island after island by storm, and the Navy built forward bases on each. To these, aviation units from the interior moved out in quick succession. Soon, the Tainan Air Corps received orders to advance to Rabaul, located on New Britain Island, past the equator, in the northeast part of New Guinea. The island had just recently come under Japan’s control, in February of 1942, and the base was some 6,000 kilometers away from Japan proper. It became our farthest-flung base in the South Pacific.

  We traveled to Rabaul in the spring of ’42 on a troop transport ship. On the way, there was intel that a submarine was tailing us, so until we reached Rabaul we felt very helpless. The transport ship was the Komaki-maru. We had only a small submarine chaser as our escort, so if an enemy sub attacked us in earnest, we were as good as dead. The day after the transport ship docked at Rabaul, it was bombed by enemy planes and sank there in the harbor. The ship was later converted into Komaki Pier.

  I realized this later, but had the Komaki-maru been sunk at sea, it would have dealt a major blow to the Tainan Air Corps and to the Imperial Navy as a whole. Losing so many highly skilled fighter pilots at once would have been an incalculable setback. At the time, the Combined Fleet had many warships merely idling in the Truk Lagoon, so they could have sent a couple of destroyers to protect us pilots. But perhaps the brass thought of pilots as easily replaceable commodities.

  * * *