Ozawa Fleet finally located its counterpart and sent out an attack force. It was not a “special” attack per se, but in essence very similar, as they would not be able to return. The carriers were lures, destined to be sunk, and the planes would be bereft of home ships. The pilots were instructed to go to various bases located in the Philippines if returning to the carriers proved too difficult in the aftermath of the attack, but this was a tall order for young aircrew unused to navigating over the vast Pacific. Besides, their surviving an onslaught of hostile interceptors from the mighty American carrier fleet was highly unlikely.
Indeed, most of the attack force was shot down by enemy fighters.
Yet Fleet Commander Ozawa’s desperate operation accomplished its objective. The American carriers led by Halsey discovered Ozawa Fleet and mistook it for the main threat.
At that point, Kurita Fleet had made a temporary about-face, convincing Halsey that severe losses had forced it to retreat. Halsey chose not to pursue and instead headed in full force towards Ozawa Fleet.
Judging that it had been spotted by Halsey, Ozawa Fleet promptly turned north to lure Halsey away. Intent on striking the Japanese Mobile Force, Halsey gave chase.
He made the obvious choice. Ever since Pearl Harbor, the key players of most battles on the Pacific were aircraft carriers. In addition, Ozawa Fleet had the Zuikaku, the Combined Fleet’s largest carrier. After achieving great military gains in the attack on Pearl Harbor, she had gone on to sink two U.S. carriers. To the Americans, the Zuikaku was a fearsome ship that had tormented them for the past three years.
I’ve heard that the American task force’s assault was ferocious. Most of Ozawa Fleet went down, barely able to put up a fight. That storied ship in service since Pearl Harbor, until then the Combined Fleet’s most blessed in battle, the Zuikaku, also sank at last, off Cape Engaño.
Yet Fleet Commander Ozawa’s grand, daredevil operation was a success. Halsey was wholly taken in by the ploy and lured away, leaving the seas near Leyte wide open.
That is to say, freed from enemy aerial attacks, Kurita Fleet had turned back towards Leyte. Kurita Fleet had lost some ships, including the Musashi, to aerial and submarine attacks, and those that remained were damaged as well, but the world’s most powerful ship, the Yamato, was still going strong, and a good number of other ships were still battle-worthy, too.
The American forces there, which consisted of six small escort carriers and seven destroyers, were thoroughly shocked when a Japanese fleet appeared off the coast of Samar Island. Throwing up a smokescreen, the destroyers launching torpedoes, they desperately tried to get away. Ozawa Fleet had managed to lure away the trusty Mobile Task Force, and the Americans who remained were prepared for utter annihilation, they say.
At last, the Japanese Navy’s desperate plan to offer up flesh in order to sunder the enemy’s bones bore fruit…
* * *
—
But then a miracle occurred for the Americans. Kurita Fleet abruptly reversed course.
This is the infamous incident that went down in history as “Kurita Fleet’s mysterious about-face.”
What on earth made Kurita Fleet reverse course? Various theories were postulated in later years, but the fleet commander himself passed away after the war without ever giving one word of explanation or justification.
What we do know is that he was unaware of the fact that Ozawa Fleet had successfully lured Halsey’s task force far to the north of the Philippines. Perhaps the intensity of the aerial attacks made him think that the Americans were close at hand. Perhaps he assumed that if he were to charge into the Gulf of Leyte, his entire fleet would be destroyed.
There are no “ifs” in history. But it is pretty certain that if Kurita Fleet had pressed on, he could have wiped out the Americans’ totally naked and defenseless transport convoy. There’s no doubt their invasion of the Philippines would have suffered a massive setback. Heavy losses in both personnel and materiel might have forced them to spend more than a year restructuring their operation. At the very least, it would have thwarted the deaths of tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers in the following land battle on Leyte.
Kurita Fleet’s withdrawal, however, wasted our final chance to deal a blow against the American forces. Ozawa Fleet’s officers and sailors had died in vain. The Musashi, which had valiantly borne the brunt of the assault from U.S. attack aircraft, had sunk in Surigao Strait for nothing.
The Shikishima Unit’s special attack came on the day after Kurita Fleet reversed course. But there was no chance for victory by then.
* * *
—
At first, the special attacks were meant to be specific to Operation Victory One at Leyte. In order to support Kurita Fleet’s advance into the gulf, pilots would daringly hurl themselves at American aircraft carriers’ flight decks, render them inoperable, and prevent the enemy from launching attack planes—as a tactic exclusive to Leyte.
Yet even after Kurita Fleet’s retreat and the failure of Operation Victory One, the special attacks didn’t end.
They assumed a life of their own. Had our commanders gone insane?
Day after day special attack units took off from Mabalacat. For some reason or other, I was never called up to become a kamikaze and instead tasked as part of their fighter escort. Perhaps it was because I was one of the precious few veteran pilots, but even this was very dangerous. Baptized by the Japanese military’s lethal tactic, the Americans cranked up their interception posture to frightening levels. There was no way an escort of a few fighters could fend off dozens of high-performance enemy planes lying in wait to pick off the kamikazes. Many of us died defending the kamikaze units. Even the veteran pilot Ensign Yoshimi Minami, who had served since the Sino-Japanese War, failed to return from one such mission.
Ensign Minami was a pilot with a long military career who had fought in many naval battles since the attack on Pearl Harbor. You could say he was the crown jewel of our navy’s air corps. He climbed the ranks from NCO and was a wonderful human being, too. Kind and soft-spoken, he’d taught me the ropes in Shanghai. He’d been assigned to a carrier at Leyte Gulf, but having lost his mothership and after a hairbreadth escape, he made it back to the Philippines. From there his luck ran out, though, and he died escorting a kamikaze unit.
I resigned myself to meeting the same fate there.
Several days later, on the way back from a mission, I ran into engine trouble and was forced to land at Nichols Field. It was there that I happened to cross paths again with Miyabe. He had been on the Zuikaku, and after attacking the American task force, he’d landed at that base.
Miyabe was aware of the special attacks, too. The actions of Lieutenant Yukio Seki and his Shikishima Unit had been reported to the entire armed forces. No kamikazes had been launched from Nichols Field, but the esprit de corps of the aircrew there had fallen to an all-time low.
More than a few books about the kamikazes written after the war claim that when the armed forces heard what Shikishima Unit had done, morale skyrocketed among the aviators. But this is decidedly untrue. Our morale was very clearly abysmal. Of course it was!
The day after I landed at Nichols Field, all the aircrew were assembled. Judging from the tense looks on the faces of the base commander and the squadron leader, I assumed our time had come. I’m sure the other guys thought so too.
After spouting some words about the unprecedented peril that Japan was facing, the base commander said, “All those who wish to volunteer for the Special Attack Force, step forward.”
Everyone stepped forward. They had heard of the Shikishima Unit and already resigned themselves. I stepped forward, just as I had at Mabalacat. I couldn’t suddenly refuse now.
Then I witnessed something unbelievable. One man hadn’t moved, in fact. Miyabe.
The squadron leader turned crimson and bellowed on behalf of the base commander, �
��All volunteers, step forward!”
But Miyabe didn’t budge. His face was ashen.
The squadron leader drew his saber and yelled again, “All volunteers step forward now!”
Miyabe was as immobile as a statue. The squadron leader’s body shook with rage. “Flight Chief Petty Officer Miyabe!” he yelled. “Do you hold your life so dear?”
Miyabe was silent.
“Answer me, damn it!”
Miyabe very nearly shouted, “I do, sir!”
The squadron leader’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “And you dare call yourself a member of the Imperial Navy?”
“Yes, sir,” Miyabe said, loud and clear.
The squadron leader glanced at the base commander, who muttered, “Dismiss them.”
An officer barked, “Dismissed!” The aircrew fell out of line and walked back to the barracks. No one spoke to Miyabe.
The next morning, there was no mission, but a strange mood had settled over the air contingent. The previous day’s “volunteering” for special attacks weighed heavily on everyone’s minds.
I invited Miyabe, and the two of us walked up a hill some distance from the airfield. Neither of us said anything.
Once we arrived atop the low hill, I sat down on a patch of grass. Miyabe sat down as well.
At last he said, “I absolutely refuse to volunteer for any special attack unit. I promised my wife to come home alive.”
I nodded silently.
“It wasn’t to die that I’ve fought until today,” he said.
I couldn’t manage a reply.
“No matter how severe the battle, I can fight like hell as long as there’s even the slightest chance of survival. But I can’t abide by any tactic that will result in my certain death.”
Honestly speaking, I felt the same way.
But looking back now, out of the thousands of aircrew back then, how many dared say such a thing out loud? Miyabe’s words revealed what really lay in the hearts of most of us. Yet, at the time, his words were frightening. They made me feel a bizarre, eerie sense of dread. I realize now that it was the fear of seeing my own self.
Miyabe suddenly asked, “Was that your first time volunteering, Tanigawa?”
“My second time. I first volunteered at Mabalacat.”
“I have a wife,” he said.
“So do I.”
Miyabe looked stunned. I told him how I’d gotten married four days before leaving Japan.
“Do you love her?” he asked me.
I nodded without thinking. Ah, so I do love her…
“Then why did you volunteer to become a kamikaze?” he demanded.
“Because I’m an Imperial Navy pilot!” I shouted.
And then I burst into tears. That was the first time I’d cried since becoming a fighter pilot. Miyabe simply stared at me, saying nothing.
As I made to stand up, he said, “Listen to me very carefully, Tanigawa. If you are ordered to fly as a kamikaze, find an island, any island, and just crash-land there.”
I was astonished. Those were frightening words, most definitely worthy of a death sentence at a court-martial.
“Even if you die a kamikaze, it won’t alter the state of the war one bit. But your death will hugely affect your wife’s future.”
An image of Kae floated up in my mind. “Don’t say that. If I’m ordered to, I’ll go, that’s all.”
Miyabe didn’t reply.
Just then, a siren sounded, and moments later an explosion boomed in the distance. An enemy air raid.
We raced towards the bomb shelter. On the airfield, the maintenance crew were moving the aircraft into the bunkers. At that point, we no longer launched interceptors against air raids. Instead of sending the few airplanes we still had only to have them shot down by a massive formation of enemy aircraft, we’d resorted to preserving as many as possible. There were only a precious few battle-ready ones at Nichols Field.
But luck wasn’t on our side that day. We were late in detecting the incoming fighters, and most of the aircraft on the ground were strafed. Nichols Field was left without a single operational aircraft. Soon thereafter, it was decided that the aviators there would be pulled back to the interior.
We boarded a transport plane that arrived from Clark Base, stopped over in Taiwan, then landed at Omura in Kyushu. We were ordered to rejoin our previous units.
I parted ways with Miyabe in Omura. I don’t remember our final conversation, but I would never see him again.
After a stint as an instructor at Iwakuni, I served with the Yokosuka Air Corps to defend the mainland’s skies. Beginning in March of 1945, a large number of kamikaze planes took off from southern Kyushu, headed for Okinawa. In the final days of the war, “All Planes Kamikaze” became the slogan. I’ve heard that they no longer asked for volunteers but ordered men into it.
I expected they would eventually call me up, but happily that day never came. I was at Misawa when the war ended. I only learned much later that Miyabe had died a kamikaze.
* * *
—
After the war ended and I returned to my village, everyone looked at me differently. I was like something unclean, and no one dared to approach me. They’d murmur behind my back, “He’s a war criminal.” One day, when I was walking along the riverbank, some children called out, “Here comes the war criminal!” and threw stones at me.
It was unbearable. The same people who had only yesterday cursed the British and the Americans as demons had done an about-face and now cried, “America, banzai!” and “Long live democracy!” And I, who had once been a local hero, was treated like some god of pestilence. My father had passed away, my brother had taken over the household, and Kae and I lived in the annex. My brother made it clear that he saw me as a burden.
Somehow a false rumor began circulating that all pilots who had participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor were going to be hanged as war criminals; and that any persons or villages sheltering them would face severe punishment. When I caught wind of this, I steeled myself for what was to come.
Then one day my brother offered me ten kilograms of rice as a farewell gift and told me to flee to Tokyo. It was a polite way of kicking me out. I took Kae with me, of course, and we left our hometown behind.
We arrived in Tokyo at the end of October. The place was a charred field in every direction. Kae and I stayed in a makeshift hut made out of tin sheets. I went out looking for work every day, but there was none to be had. We soon ran out of my brother’s rice, and I ended up working as a day laborer just to eke out a living.
Things were really hard back then. The city was crawling with Occupation soldiers. The American troops walked with Japanese girls on their arms. It was hard to believe that just three months earlier I’d been engaging American fighter pilots in mortal combat.
We somehow managed not to starve back then only after Kae spotted a want-ad looking for people who could sew. They hired her and provided lodging on site. Kae and I shared a literal closet of a room, but compared to the tin hut, it was heaven.
The following year, thanks to the influence of a former superior in the Navy, I was hired as a temporary worker for the Waterworks Bureau. But only a year later, I was fired during GHQ’s purge. The Americans didn’t want anyone associated with the previous regime to be in the public sector. After eleven years of service with the Navy, I had been discharged with the rank of lieutenant junior grade, and this had resulted in my being considered a career soldier. When Kae learned why I had been fired, she tried hard to console me.
“ ‘Career soldier’? What a terrible term. As if those who risked their lives for the sake of the country were doing it for the money. It’s unforgivable.”
Nothing gave me greater joy than to hear such words. And I made a fresh resolve to devote my life to her.
I decided to go into busines
s for myself. I tried my hand at all sorts of trades. I was deceived and betrayed countless times. People in the postwar years were entirely different from the prewar years. The night after a certain betrayal, I recalled my comrades who had fallen in battle and found myself wondering if they weren’t the lucky ones. I envied them for not having to witness what had become of Japan.
Yet the chaos and destitution of the immediate postwar years was a short-term state of affairs. Many Japanese showed compassion and warm-heartedness. Some tried to help others, even though staying alive themselves was almost all they could do. I believe that was why my wife and I survived that miserable period. I was eventually able to own a modest building in Tokyo only thanks to many kindnesses.
It wasn’t until many years later that Japanese truly changed.
Japan became a democracy, a peaceful society. We entered a period of rapid economic growth and enjoyed freedom and material wealth. But that caused us to lose something important. Postwar democracy and prosperity robbed the Japanese people of “morals”—I think.
Nowadays, the streets are filled with people who only care for themselves. It wasn’t like that sixty years ago.
Perhaps I’ve simply lived for too long.
* * *
—
The reception room that had been alight with the setting sun was now dark.
I felt that far more time had passed than the few hours that Tanigawa had spent talking. He’d looked like a young man as he spoke, a youth who fairly sparkled with fearlessness. But now there was just a skinny old man in a wheelchair.
I looked at his bony arms. They seemed so fragile. Once, those arms had handily commanded a Zero fighter fleeting through the skies, engaging in battle. The passage of sixty years made my chest feel tight.
“Even now I sometimes wonder if what I saw back at Nichols Field actually happened,” Tanigawa said softly, “or if I just dreamed it.”
“You mean how our grandfather refused to volunteer for the special attack?”
The Eternal Zero Page 24
