The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  The second wave of Japanese troops was thoroughly defeated too, and many fled into the jungle, where they were beset with starvation. Guadalcanal had been Ga Island for short, but the character for “starve” is used for that first syllable off and on because of this. IGHQ continued to commit separate waves of troops, and most of them, too, faced starvation, dying not from battle but from malnourishment.

  The troops on Ga Island developed a metric for determining the lifespans of their comrades: “If he can stand, he has thirty days to live. If he can sit, he has three weeks. If he’s bedridden, he has one week. If he wets himself while sleeping, he has three days. If he can no longer speak, he has two days. If he no longer blinks, he has one day left.”

  In total, we sent over 30,000 troops to attack Guadalcanal, out of which 20,000 lost their lives. Of that number, 5,000 perished in battle. The rest died of starvation. They say even the living were ridden with maggots. You can imagine just how deplorable the situation was.

  By the way, there were other Japanese military operations that resulted in soldiers suffering starvation. Tens of thousands of officers and grunts died of starvation in New Guinea, Leyte, Luzon, and Imphal.

  Why did they starve? Because the military hadn’t prepared rations. In all these instances, they sent the troops into battle with only the amount of provisions stipulated in the operation plan. The thinking was that the troops would take the enemy position in so many days; they could seize the encampment’s provisions and be resupplied via the captured base. Perhaps the brass thought soldiers without food would fight with blind fury, their only option to win. The Kawaguchi Expeditionary Force sent in after Ichiki’s is said to have referred to the U.S. provisions that they were counting on acquiring as “Roosevelt’s grant.”

  But war rarely goes simply according to plan. On the battlefields that I just mentioned, instead of wiping out the enemy our forces ended up getting pulverized, and those who survived fought starvation. Logistics is basic to war. It means supplying rations and ammunition and such. They say that generals of our Warring States period considered logistics to be of the utmost importance. Yet, the staff at IGHQ didn’t even think of such essentials. Top graduates of the Army War College, they were all exceptionally bright, too. The Army War College’s top graduates back then were on par with the cream of the cream of Tokyo University’s elite Law Department.

  That was how 30,000 officers and soldiers ended up isolated and abandoned on Guadalcanal. But we couldn’t leave them to die. The IJN did send many ships to replenish their supplies of ammunition and food, but before the slow-moving transports could reach the island, planes launched from the airfield on Guadalcanal attacked and sank them. At long last, in a desperate measure, high-speed destroyers were deployed to deliver provisions. Rice and other staples were packed into metal drums which were then allowed to drift to shore at night via ropes. “Rat Transportation,” the destroyers’ captains self-deprecatingly nicknamed it. But even with this risky method, a single destroyer could only deliver several days’ worth of provisions for the more than 20,000 troops. A number of these destroyers, too, were sunk in enemy ambushes. Plus, come morning, many of the supply drums would be strafed by American fighter planes and sink, riddled with machine-gun bullets.

  Eventually, submarines unloaded the torpedoes that were more valuable to them than life itself in order to ferry in rice.

  * * *

  —

  During this period the IJN fought many battles in the seas around the Solomon Islands. In some battles, the Combined Fleet managed to defeat the Americans, while in others the U.S. forces sank our vessels.

  Actually, we had had a good chance to claim victory in the early stages of the naval battle at Guadalcanal.

  I mentioned that the Americans launched a surprise attack on Guadalcanal on August 7th. The IJN’s Eighth Fleet, located at Rabaul at that time, immediately headed out to attack the enemy’s transport convoy. The night next, on August 8th, they happened upon an American fleet escorting the convoy off the coast of Savo Island. This would later be referred to as the First Battle of the Solomon Sea. Led by Gunichi Mikawa, the Eighth Fleet trounced the American cruisers by pulling off a surprise attack by night, a specialty of the IJN.

  But Mikawa Fleet immediately withdrew. If they had taken the opportunity to press forward and attack the transport ships, they probably could have destroyed most of the convoy.

  Even though Captain Hayakawa of the cruiser Chokai strongly suggested pushing forward to wipe out the transport convoy, Fleet Commander Mikawa chose to withdraw instead.

  Reportedly, he feared U.S. aircraft carriers. He thought that even if they managed to destroy the convoy, if carrier-based planes attacked them come morning, a fleet that lacked a fighter escort would be in dire straits.

  However, at that time the three U.S. aircraft carriers he was worried about were far away from Guadalcanal. That is because their fighter squadrons had sustained heavy damage from Rabaul’s Zeros. Petty Officers Sakai and Nishizawa and others had fought bravely the day before, and that very morning Flight Leader Miyabe and I had participated in a desperate attack. The commander of the carrier air group, Admiral Fletcher, felt that Japanese carriers were approaching, and judging that he wouldn’t be able to fend off an attack since he’d already lost many fighters, he retreated eastward. Those two days of do-or-die fighting on the part of the Zeros had driven away the enemy carriers.

  But Mikawa Fleet let this chance at victory slip away. The enemy’s transport ships hadn’t yet offloaded their heavy artillery and such, so if only Mikawa Fleet had attacked, they could have sunk much of the convoy’s weapons and ammunition. Had that happened, the engagements of the Ichiki and Kawaguchi expeditionary forces would likely have taken totally different courses. The foot soldiers on the front line were risking their lives in combat, yet the weakness of those in charge caused such an outcome. So very unfortunate…

  Here’s something else I learned after the war: when Fleet Commander Mikawa was appointed to lead the Eighth Fleet, General Staff Chief Nagano apparently told him, “Our country’s manufacturing industry is quite small, so do your best to keep our ships from sinking.” What a philosophy. Perfectly fine with treating soldiers and airmen like sacrificial pawns, they treasured the expensive warships with utmost devotion.

  There’s another ugly rumor that I heard. The Order of the Golden Kite, the highest honor that could be bestowed on a commander of a military fleet, was granted based on sinking enemy warships in battle more than anything else. Battleships were worth the greatest number of points, followed by cruisers, destroyers, and so on. But transport ships didn’t count for any, no matter how many you sank. Moreover, losing any of your own ships meant a significant deduction. Is it much of a stretch to imagine that after sinking the cruisers and destroyers, Fleet Commander Mikawa withdrew without so much as a glance at the transport convoy for precisely this reason?

  In any case, Mikawa Fleet’s withdrawal was a terribly regrettable decision in the Battle of Guadalcanal.

  * * *

  —

  Subsequently too, the Navy managed to deal some crushing blows to the American fleet. Our submarine, I-26, torpedoed the Lexington-class carrier Saratoga, rendering her incapable of combat. Another sub, I-19, sank the aircraft carrier Wasp in September.

  During the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands on October 26th, in the first carrier showdown since the Battle of Midway, our carrier-based pilots fought like fiends, sinking the U.S. aircraft carrier Hornet and badly damaging the Enterprise. The Hornet had carried out an air raid on Tokyo. Our pilots sortied knowing the mission was a long-range attack from which most would not return alive, and sank the Hornet at the cost of a very high number of casualties.

  The Japanese military didn’t know, but immediately after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Americans were in a very precarious position, as they were left without a single operat
ional aircraft carrier. That day was apparently Navy Day in the United States and was dubbed “the worst Navy Day in history.” Supposedly, the Americans even considered withdrawing their garrison from Guadalcanal. In fact, after the war, many of their military historians noted that Japan could have recaptured Guadalcanal by mobilizing the Combined Fleet’s entire might at that juncture. But the IJN missed the chance of a lifetime by choosing to attack incrementally, once again, with small forces. It was the Americans, in their sink-or-swim position, who threw their entire force into battle.

  The world’s largest battleship Yamato was anchored in Truk Lagoon just over 1,000 kilometers north of Rabaul but was kept safe, never once showing up at Guadalcanal. Admiral Yamamoto and HQ staffers dined on lavish lunches to musical accompaniment courtesy of a military band while they issued orders to the officers and sailors fighting on the front lines. Do you know what us rank-and-file sailors called the Yamato?

  The Hotel Yamato.

  Nevertheless, the men on the front lines fought with everything they had. At Lunga Point, destroyers conducting a “rat transportation” were ambushed by four American heavy cruisers. While we did lose one of the destroyers, they accomplished the incredible feat of sinking one enemy cruiser and badly damaging the remaining three. Normally, there’s no contest between destroyers and heavy cruisers. It’s like pitting a compact car against a tractor trailer. But with a valiant counterstrike Fleet Commander Raizo Tanaka defeated the heavy cruisers.

  I’m getting off topic here, but Fleet Commander Tanaka, who pulled off such a victory, fell into disfavor after the battle for some ridiculous reason. This was a man who earned the highest praise from the American naval forces, who called him “the bravest, most dauntless admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy.” By the way, even though the submarine I-26 put the USS Saratoga out of commission for three months, because it was thanks to a single hit with a torpedo, none of the crew from the captain on down were honored for their efforts. Those men had persevered just to make that strike and only survived after suffering twelve hours of ferocious retaliation from the enemy’s depth charges.

  In general, the IJN was incredibly callous to those who risked their lives fighting on the front lines. It was an organization where commissioned officers from the Naval Academy rose up no matter how badly they screwed up, while self-made men were rewarded for their efforts only once in a blue moon.

  We rank-and-file seamen and petty officers were treated from the start as nothing more than tools. For the joint staff, our lives didn’t rate higher than ammo. Those Imperial HQ people and Command were hardly human beings!

  * * *

  —

  Oh, sorry. I got a bit worked up there. Let’s get back on topic.

  So, while we managed to score some gains in combat, there were more than a few battles where we suffered major losses. During the night battle off Savo Island we lost a heavy cruiser to radar-guided fire from the American fleet, and in the Third Battle of the Solomon Seas two older battleships were likewise sunk. That time, too, the Combined Fleet was reluctant to deploy the Yamato and only sent out second-class battleships.

  But worse still than individual naval battles were the dismal results of the transport operations. This was due to the fact that we did not control the airspace. Those 560 nautical miles proved too far a distance for aircraft to provide a screen for the Japanese supply ships. Later we built an air base at Buin on Bougainville Island, situated between Rabaul and Guadalcanal, and while that granted us some leeway, it was not close enough to regain mastery of the airspace over Guadalcanal.

  That left support from aircraft carriers, but it was extremely dangerous for them to get anywhere near a powerful enemy air base situated on solid land. We had lost four carriers at Midway, which made the General Staff and the Combined Fleet Command too skittish to devise any remotely risky operation. They really should have, though.

  It beats me why the Imperial Army and Navy chose to fight in a location where they couldn’t even supply their troops.

  Regardless, the battle had already begun. In order to recapture the airfield on Guadalcanal, we absolutely had to destroy the enemy’s air power. And it was us, the pilots of the Rabaul Air Corps, who were tasked with the mission. It was from that point onward that Rabaul came to be known as the Airmen’s Graveyard.

  * * *

  —

  The Rabaul Air Corps was rapidly depleted after the start of the conflict at Guadalcanal. The sorties continued day after day, and we lost no small number of aircraft each time. The unit that had the highest number of casualties was the medium bomber squadron comprised of Type 1 land-based bombers. I mentioned before how the Americans had dubbed the Type 1s “one-shot lighters” because of their poor defenses, right? The Zeros also had extremely poor defenses, but their exceptional maneuverability and combat prowess made up for their lack of armor. But the Type 1 bombers were horribly slow and defenseless in the face of enemy fighters.

  By the fall of 1942, nearly half of the medium bombers launched were failing to return. On some missions, we lost every single one.

  The bomber crews seemed to have given up all hope of surviving. And who could blame them? On each mission, there was a higher than fifty percent chance they would be shot down, and the sorties continued on and on and on. All trace of vigor had vanished from their faces, and their bodies gave off an aura of utter exhaustion. Yet they were brave up to the bitter end. They never once complained as they carried out their assigned duties. Just as the kamikaze pilots that came later took off having fully accepted their fate, the bomber crews of Rabaul went into battle with death as the premise.

  The Zero fighter squadron also saw losses of one or two planes on each mission. The personal belongings of the pilot left behind in the barracks were collected and sent to his family back in the interior. Some of the men had written wills. Others hadn’t. I wrote one just in case, but more than a few felt that preparing for death might actually get them killed in action.

  It wasn’t immediately after a battle when the pain of losing a comrade was keenest. It was at night, in the mess hall. The fellow pilot that you had breakfast with wasn’t there. They always cooked enough meals for everyone for dinner. Our seats weren’t assigned, but out of habit we tended to sit in the same places each time. That happens in company meetings, too, doesn’t it? People tend to always sit in the same places.

  So at night, if there was an empty seat in the mess hall, it meant that the pilot who always sat there hadn’t returned to base. It was unbearable if it was the guy next to you. He’d been wisecracking just the day before, or rather that morning at breakfast, but was now gone. When a pilot dies in battle, there is no corpse. After a particularly intense battle, several seats in the mess hall would become empty all at once. That’s why we all stopped cracking jokes during dinner.

  One day in September during breakfast, FPO2 Higashino, a senior of mine from the Yatabe Air Unit, said loudly, “Just once, I wanna eat a delicious rice cake stuffed with bean jam!”

  Upon hearing that, I began to imagine a sweet rice cake and gulped audibly. I hadn’t had a single sweet rice pastry since arriving at Rabaul.

  “We’re risking our lives fighting out here. You’d think they’d at least let us eat sweet rice cakes,” PO Higashino joked, and everyone laughed.

  That night, there were bean-jam rice cakes lined up on the mess hall tables. The kitchen staff had overheard PO Higashino and had gone all out making rice cakes for us. But PO Higashino, himself, wasn’t there for dinner. No one dared to touch his rice cake.

  Eventually such scenes became commonplace.

  * * *

  —

  FPO1 Sakai, who had returned from the first battle at Guadalcanal despite severe injuries, ended up returning to the interior blind in one eye. Only three weeks into the fighting, “The Ace of Rabaul” Lieutenant JG Junichi Sasai, second only to FPO1 Sakai, failed to return
to base. In September, we lost FPO1 Toraichi Takatsuka, a veteran pilot, and FPO3 Kazushi Uto, an expert dogfighter despite his youth. In October, FPO1 Toshio Ohta, who had performed the formation loops above Port Moresby with POs Sakai and Nishizawa, didn’t make it back to base.

  The situation was unbelievable. Maybe it would have been understandable if they were new recruits who had arrived just the day before, but week after week these expert pilots, the pride of the navy’s aviation corps, were failing to return.

  But when you think about it, this was only natural. For days on end we were ordered to make a round trip of over 2,000 kilometers to engage in combat in enemy territory. Once we took off, we were in the cockpit for about seven hours straight, and the whole time death was looking over our shoulders. The fatigue was immense.

  We couldn’t let our guards down on the way to Guadalcanal, either. The enemy could attack at any time. And upon reaching hostile airspace, we were confronted by their interceptors. Thanks to their superior radar they were able to detect our attack formations in advance and were always in an advantageous position to ambush us. At the time, we suffered a huge gap in radar detection technology.

  Engaging in air battles from a disadvantageous position was no cakewalk even for Zeros. Moreover, the Zeros had the very important job of defending the medium bombers. We were unable to fight freely. Plus, our fuel tanks were filled to the brim for the return trip, weighing us down and ruling out nimble maneuvers.

  After our bombers completed their run, we evaded the enemy aircraft in hot pursuit to make the long 1,000-kilometer journey home. Sometimes the enemy would be lurking along our return path, so even then we couldn’t relax for a second. I’d never experienced such intense physical and mental fatigue. And if you got separated from your formation on the way back, you had to calculate your course with map and compass as you flew.