Keiko tried to say something, but Tanigawa motioned for her to be still.
“I know what you’re going to say. Perhaps these stories should be passed on. Perhaps that is the duty of those of us who fought in the war. I think those who choose to talk about their wartime experiences are digging up a lot of painful things out of a sense of obligation.”
He placed his teacup on the table. “I don’t have a lot of time left. I’ve given much thought to it since my wife passed away, but I still don’t know the answer. Perhaps my time will be up before I ever figure this out.” Tanigawa looked me in the eye. “But today, I’ll tell.”
* * *
—
I fought alongside Miyabe as part of the 12th Air Fleet, based in Shanghai, China. He was an incredibly courageous and fearless fighter pilot. His skills in the cockpit were outstanding, and he was extraordinarily good at dogfighting. Once he locked on to an enemy aircraft, he never let go. One of the guys said, “That Miyabe’s just like a snapping turtle.”
Back then in Shanghai we had loads of masters in our ranks, like Sadaaki Akamatsu, Toshio Kuroiwa, and Kanichi Kashimura. Tetsuzo Iwamoto was also there, but compared to the others he was still wet behind the ears.
I got beaten up by Akamatsu-san fairly often. He was a force of nature born back in the Meiji era, and drinking made him wild. He had so many counts of alcohol-induced violence that he had his good-conduct badge taken away. Akamatsu-san continued to cause trouble even after the war and has a bad reputation, but he was a truly masterful pilot. He claimed 350 kills, which was actually a big fat lie, but his aerial combat skills were the real deal.
Kuroiwa-san was adept at one-on-one dogfights and famously handled a young Saburo Sakai like a child during a mock dogfight. He was discharged before the Pacific War and became a pilot at a private airline, but took on cargo transport duty during the war and died off the coast of the Malay Peninsula in 1944. Had he been flying a fighter instead, I’m sure he wouldn’t have gotten shot down.
Kashimura-san was famous for making a return trip on just one wing, believe it or not. In an air battle over Nanchang, he lost one of the wings of his Type 96 carrier-based fighter, yet still managed to dexterously pilot the plane back to base. The newspapers published articles about his feat, and he became the most renowned naval pilot in the nation prior to World War II. His air combat skills were also exemplary, of course. I had him as an opponent in many mock dogfights, but I was no match. Yet, Kashimura-san, too, died in combat at Guadalcanal in 1943.
Even among such incredible pilots, Miyabe could hold his own. Even Akamatsu-san admitted, “He just might be a genius.” At the same time, Kuroiwa-san once told him, “Stop being so reckless, or you’ll be a goner no matter how many lives you have.”
I was neither on particularly good or bad terms with Miyabe. We were the same age and joined the Navy around the same time, but Miyabe had become a trainee pilot before me, so he had more experience in the cockpit. Since he was obviously more skilled as well, there wasn’t any sense of rivalry between us. But if you’ll allow me to boast about one thing, before the Pacific War began, the overall skill level of us pilot trainees was very high. In my year, only fifty candidates out of eight thousand were accepted, and just over twenty made it to the end and became carrier pilots. We’re talking about a 1 in 400 ratio. We were the chosen few, if I do say so myself.
In the spring of 1941, Miyabe and I were recalled to the interior and joined the crew of aircraft carriers. I was assigned to the Soryu and he to the Akagi, so although we were part of the same fleet and participated in the same operations for six months starting with Pearl Harbor, we never met during that time.
* * *
—
We ran riot, though. We were undefeated everywhere we went. That probably hurt us in the end. The higher-ups took to believing that we’d never lose no matter what.
Even so, we pilots never let down our guard. Why? Because we were always on the front lines of the conflict. While the Mobile Force enjoyed consecutive victories, it was impossible for us not to lose any pilots in the process. No matter how overwhelming the victory, there were always some planes that never made it back. We lost twenty-nine planes even at Pearl Harbor. So we always fought with everything we had. It was our own lives that would end if we got careless in the skies.
At Midway too, our Zero fighters shot down over a hundred enemy land- and carrier-based aircraft. Our losing that battle is on Nagumo, and also Genda.
After Midway, we aviators were summoned back to the interior and quarantined for about a month. We were issued a gag order about the four sunken aircraft carriers. There was a sense that if we dared to say anything, we would be court-martialed. It was so absurd. Why keep the truth from the people? What’s worse, apparently the Navy didn’t even tell the Army the full truth. I’ve heard the Army was just baffled that the Navy couldn’t wrest control of the seas and skies despite being at an advantage, supposedly, against the Americans.
After that, I was assigned to a newly formed carrier air group. Most of the pilots not boarding a carrier were ordered to Rabaul.
I was part of the crew of the converted aircraft carrier Hiyo and participated in the Guadalcanal Campaign. We also fought in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, which pushed us to the limit. We managed to sink the USS Hornet after several waves of attacks, but we lost a great number of battle-tested aviators, distinguished bomber aircrew in particular.
In the end, we failed to recapture Guadalcanal. During the half-year-long conflict, the majority of those who had survived Midway perished in the skies above the Solomon Islands. I think we lost about eighty percent of our most seasoned pilots there. It was an irrevocable blunder on the part of the Imperial Navy.
After six months working as a flight instructor in the interior, I was transferred to Kupang Base on Timor in Indonesia. From there, we repeatedly attacked Port Darwin, Australia.
At that point, though, the Americans already had complete hegemony in the southeast Pacific. Rabaul was bearing the brunt of America’s counteroffensive. Attacking Australia under such circumstances was a howler.
They called Rabaul the Airmen’s Graveyard, but by the latter half of ’43, the surviving minority were all highly competent and withstood the American counterstrike quite well. After all, earlier they’d had to make the dangerous long-haul runs from Rabaul to Guadalcanal over 1,000 kilometers away, while now they were on the defense, intercepting incoming attacks. They could ambush the enemy on our own turf, so to speak.
Tetsuzo Iwamoto would have been at Rabaul at the time. Iwamoto-san was a flying ace with more kills than any other pilot in either the Japanese or American air forces in the Pacific theater. I believe he had over two hundred kills in the end.
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa was also there. He was temporarily transferred back to the interior, but I believe he returned to Rabaul in ’43. Nishizawa was a master, possibly even better than Iwamoto. The American forces held him in high esteem, and reportedly there’s a photo of him hanging in the halls of the U.S. Department of Defense. Pretty unique he was.
Tsutomu Iwai and Sadamu Komachi must have been at Rabaul, too. Komachi was young, but an expert pilot. In any case, while few in number, the pilots remaining there had virtuoso-like skills in the air. Those were not men who would be easily shot down. And Miyabe was amongst them.
Thanks to the efforts of those pilots, Rabaul held out, but they were far outnumbered. And since we had lost mastery over the seas, it became very difficult to replenish supplies, and eventually Rabaul became useless. As such, the Americans no longer needed to try and capture it. In the end, they succeeded in isolating Rabaul and hopping over to Saipan.
The American forces had lunged into our space swinging.
* * *
—
In early ’44, I was transferred to the Philippines as part of the aircrew on the carrier Zuikaku,
which had been deployed since Pearl Harbor. She had sunk the Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Hornet in the South Pacific. She was a blessed warship that had never once suffered damage in battle. I felt lucky to be assigned to her. I figured that so long as I was on board that ship, I just might survive again. Military men are more superstitious than you might think.
Crewmembers were scraped together from disparate bases and assigned to aircraft carriers. That was how I had an unexpected reunion with a certain someone—Miyabe.
It was quite a surprise for both of us. Most of those who had survived the Sino-Japanese war had died in the Pacific, so to encounter an old war buddy at that point was truly thrilling.
Miyabe and I were never all that close before, but being reunited with him filled me with the joy of running into an old, dear friend. He seemed to feel the same way.
“So you’re still alive, huh?”
“Glad to see you looking well, Tanigawa-san.”
“Knock off the formal crap, we enlisted the same damn year. You’re gonna make me feel awkward too. No honorifics.”
Miyabe broke into a smile. “All right, Tanigawa.”
After ten years of service, we’d both been promoted to flight chief petty officer of the fleet, which meant in the Imperial Navy nomenclature that we were warrant officers. Neither of us discussed the particulars of where or how we’d fought, but we were both fully aware of how great a feat it was to have survived to that point.
“Looks like it’ll be an all-out battle,” I said.
“It’s gonna get real tough.”
“We might not make it this time.”
Miyabe tightened his lips in reply.
* * *
—
Facing the American Mobile Task Force, which had begun a counteroffensive, was our own Mobile Force of nine aircraft carriers, including the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, which had been deployed since Midway, and the newly built Taiho. Those three were the only “true” aircraft carriers, while the rest, smaller, were often reconstructed merchant ships. The Americans, however, kept pumping out large Essex-class carriers one after another. According to aerial observers’ reports, the Americans had over a dozen carriers. The gap between our respective military might had stretched into a wide chasm. By the way, those Essex-class carriers were ridiculously resilient, and our side never managed to destroy even one of them.
But even when the enemy has the overwhelming advantage, you still have to fight. That’s war.
What was heartening was the fact that the aircraft flown by the First Carrier Division comprised of the Shokaku, Zuikaku, and Taiho were all state-of-the-art. The fighters were cutting-edge Zero Model 52s, the dive bombers were the Suisei D4Y, and the attack bombers were the Tenzan B6N. Since we were at the point where the old Type 99s and Type 97s couldn’t compete, having the latest models of aircraft on board was reassuring. The Suisei bombers were said to be faster than the enemy fighter planes, so we had high hopes that they would lend us much-needed striking power.
Moreover, the Taiho was a large-scale carrier on par with a 40,000-ton battleship, with an armor-plated flight deck able to withstand a dive-bombing with 500-kilo bombs.
“If we’d had the Taiho at Midway, we could’ve won,” I said to Miyabe on the deck of the Zuikaku as I gazed at her in the distance. All four of the carriers we’d lost at Midway had been destroyed by 500-kilo bombs.
He laughed. “Haven’t you got it backwards? If we hadn’t lost at Midway, we’d never have made a powerful carrier like that.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Personally, I’d rather we had planes with better protection.”
I agreed. How many excellent pilots had been killed in action simply because their planes lacked bulletproof armor? I felt it was terribly unfair that a single stray bullet could take your life.
The Grumman F6F Hellcats could take 100 bullets from a 7.7-mm machine gun and still be entirely unfazed. When I was at Kupang Air Base, I once saw the wreckage of a downed Hellcat. I was amazed by how thick the steel plates covering the fuselage were. In particular, the bulletproof armor installed behind the pilot’s seat was so thick that a 7.7 mm bullet could never pierce through.
The Americans really value the lives of their pilots, I thought enviously.
When they conducted air raids on us, they were always accompanied by submarines. It was to rescue any pilots that had to make an emergency landing in the water.
When I discussed this with Miyabe, he said, “If fallen pilots can be returned to the front lines, they can teach others lessons about why they failed.”
“While if we fail just once, we’re dead ducks.”
“There’s that, and they keep building up their collective experience, grooming more and more seasoned pilots.”
“Even as our ranks of veteran pilots grow thin.”
By that point, the skills of the American pilots were far and away superior to what they had been at the start of the war. Plus, the cutting-edge Hellcats and Sikorsky fighters surpassed the Zeros in performance. They flew those excellent aircraft in formation, skillfully coordinated by good radio communication. And to top it off, their sheer numbers overwhelmed us.
On our side, most of our pilots were young, with less than two years’ experience. There was no way to cover up such a decline in skill. This became glaringly obvious when I watched them practice carrier takeoffs and landings off the coast of Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines. One after another, they failed to land on the carrier deck. Some crashed into the ship’s stern, some flipped over on the flight deck, while others failed to rein in their momentum and skidded right off the bow. With every takeoff and landing practice, we lost a considerable number of aircraft and pilots—more than fifty of them all told. Just through landing training, we lost the equivalent of one carrier’s fighting force.
“What the hell are we doing?” I asked Miyabe one time when we found ourselves alone in the crew lounge. “How on earth are we supposed to wage war with kids who can’t even nail down a carrier landing?”
He sat down in a chair and folded his arms. “They must’ve shortened the training period and sent inexperienced recruits right into combat. I recently asked a young pilot how many flight hours he had, and he said a hundred. You can’t land on a carrier with just 100 hours under your belt.”
“Hell, they can barely keep a plane in the air with just 100 hours.” He nodded, and I continued, “By the time we struck Pearl Harbor, we all had over 1,000 hours each.”
Miyabe closed his eyes. “So basically that means the First Carrier Division isn’t anything near what it used to be.”
* * *
—
It wasn’t long before the carrier takeoff and landing drills were halted. It was clear that we’d only continue to lose more aircraft and pilots. Also, enemy submarines patrolled the waters just outside Tawi-Tawi’s bay, so training there was extremely dangerous. While on the lookout for subs, warships followed a zigzag course through the waters, but during aircraft takeoffs and landings, carriers had to sail straight into the wind, making them an excellent target for submarine attacks.
Our fleet of destroyers were sorely lacking in anti-submarine capabilities. They were unable to halt the enemy rampaging under the waves. At times, the destroyers would be sunk by the subs they were supposed to be protecting us from. That’s like the mice getting the cat. It was thanks to the other side’s superior underwater equipment, their sonar and radar. Basically, it was a technological gap. And Command simply chose not to further expose their precious carriers to risk for the sake of mere landing drills.
The night of the decision to halt them, I asked Miyabe to join me on the flight deck.
“Halt their training, and then what?” I asked him.
A warm breeze swept across the deck. It was a typical evening in the tropics. We sat down on the deck.
&
nbsp; Miyabe replied, “The brass probably thinks being able to take off will do. That’s actually not too difficult, even for the new guys.”
“Then the initial attack will be our only one.”
He nodded. “They’re betting everything on a single strike.”
That put me into a black mood. Halting the drills was a severe blow to the aircrew. Training was the best way to maintain our edge. It’s just like in sports, you see?
We were facing a decisive battle but couldn’t fly for nearly a month.
* * *
—
In June of 1944, the Americans at last launched their fierce attack on Saipan.
Apparently this development had been wholly unforeseen by the General Staff. Our military had established many bases on Saipan and the islands in the Guam sector and had an impressive aggregate number of aircraft. The brass obviously assumed the Americans would never dare to attack. This could only be explained as negligence on their part.
The American Mobile Task Force sent an incredible number of aircraft to attack these bases, crushing our land-based aviation units and practically annihilating them.
But Saipan was one island that our military had to defend at all costs. We had captured Guadalcanal and Rabaul only after the war had begun, but Saipan was different. It had been under Japanese rule since before the war, and there were entire towns there where many civilian nationals lived. And if the Americans captured Saipan, their state-of-the-art B-29 bombers would be within striking distance of the Japanese mainland. That’s why Saipan was within our military’s critical defense zone.
As soon as the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet learned that the Americans had landed on Saipan, he immediately implemented Operation A-Go, a battle plan intended to wipe out the American Mobile Task Force.
The Eternal Zero Page 21
