The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  “Since it wasn’t an order, he couldn’t be accused of insubordination. But that’s what it was.”

  “Insubordination?”

  “Yes, disobeying orders. In the military it was an offense punishable by death.”

  I let out a groan. What a man my grandfather had been.

  “But there’s something I don’t understand. When Miyabe was ordered to become a kamikaze at the very tail end of the war, why didn’t he make an emergency landing somewhere? Why did the very man who’d urged me to abandon the mission and land somewhere safe go off and blow himself up?” Tanigawa folded his arms. “A good many veteran pilots were sent out to perform special attacks at Leyte, but I think that was due to the chaos and confusion. True, while Ensign Minami wasn’t a kamikaze himself, after sortieing from Ozawa Fleet, attacking the American task force, and making it to Echague Base on Luzon, he was tasked with the unforgiving duty of escorting kamikazes, which cost him his life.”

  “So he, too, died conducting a special attack, in effect.”

  Tanigawa nodded. “I also heard that Ensign Tsutomu Iwai and others from Ozawa Fleet who flew to the Philippines were nearly forced into becoming kamikazes. But by the time of the Okinawa Special Attacks starting in March of ’43, they had stopped using veteran pilots as kamikazes. They needed experienced pilots as instructors and to defend the mainland.”

  “So that means that most kamikaze pilots were very young.”

  “The majority of special attacks took place during the Battle of Okinawa in the final year of the conflict. Most were student reservists or very young airmen. I thought it was a mistake to use veteran pilots as kamikazes. Of course, the lives of young pilots were just as valuable as those of their seniors, and I’m not saying it was perfectly fine to send student reservists off to die. But I just can’t forgive the higher-ups for letting Minami-san get killed.”

  Tanigawa’s voice rose as he said, “Those men swore to follow behind and ordered so many subordinates into kamikaze units—how abominable that once the war was over, they coolly decided to go on living.”

  He slammed the desk, rattling the ashtray. I jumped.

  “Sorry. Got a bit worked up there.”

  “It’s fine, sir.”

  Tanigawa pulled a medicine bottle out of his breast pocket and put a pill in his mouth. My sister stood up, walked over to the sink, and filled a cup with water, then handed it to him.

  “Thank you, young lady.” Tanigawa took the cup and washed down the pill. After a moment he said, “I just don’t understand why Miyabe didn’t ditch someplace. He had the skills to do so.”

  “Were there pilots who did?”

  Tanigawa’s features briefly clouded. “Some kamikazes returned saying that they’d failed to make contact with the enemy or had engine trouble.”

  “Isn’t that—” Keiko began, but Tanigawa firmly shook his head.

  “I don’t know if it was intentional. But there were such pilots.”

  Silence filled the room.

  I opened my mouth. “My grandfather was listed as having died on the seas near Okinawa. Supposing he had run into engine trouble, where could he have landed in that area?”

  “Kikaijima Island,” Tanigawa replied instantly. “Kamikazes who had mechanical issues preventing them from completing their mission after taking off from southern Kyushu were to land there.”

  “Ah.”

  “But towards the end of the war the Americans controlled the airspace over Kikaijima too, so perhaps even Miyabe couldn’t pull it off with a heavy load of ordnance.”

  I nodded.

  “In any case, this all happened sixty years ago. We have no way of knowing the truth.”

  Tanigawa heaved a sigh. He reached out and flicked the switch on the wall and the fluorescent lights blinked on, brightening the dark room. He slowly pulled a single photograph from his pocket.

  “This is my wife. She passed away five years ago. She was incredibly devoted. When I returned to my hometown after being discharged, she started bawling the moment she saw me. She was a woman of iron will. I never saw her cry before nor since.” Tanigawa’s eyes shone faintly with tears. “Had Miyabe not said to me what he did, we might never have spent our lives together.”

  “You really loved each other,” Keiko said.

  He nodded. “We never had children, but we were very happy.”

  * * *

  —

  After we walked out of the nursing home, I noticed Keiko dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

  “I’m frustrated,” she said. “Grandfather made sure everyone else was happy, then went off and died himself. How is that possible? It’s just not fair.”

  “It’s not like he was the only one. Three million people died in the war. Or just counting the men in uniform, two million and three hundred thousand. Grandfather was just one of millions.”

  Keiko fell silent. She didn’t utter a word during the entire taxi ride.

  We got out at the train station. As we were heading towards the platform, she suddenly snapped, “You said before that Grandfather was just one in 2.3 million war dead. But to Grandma, he was her dear husband. And he was Mom’s father, her only one.”

  “And just as he was Grandma’s one and only husband at the time, all the other 2.3 million who died meant everything to those they left behind.”

  Keiko gave me a surprised look.

  “You might laugh at me for saying this, but right now I’m feeling the sorrow of all those people who died in the war.”

  Keiko nodded gravely. “I’m not laughing.”

  * * *

  —

  We were silent on the bullet train.

  Keiko seemed to be lost in thought, and I pondered on our conversation with Tanigawa. When I closed my eyes, I felt like I could see my grandfather. But it was hazy, like a mirage, and I wasn’t able to capture a clear image of him.

  Sometime after passing New Osaka Station, my sister broke her silence. “Listening to people who fought in the war, it makes me feel the rank and file were really treated like they were expendable.”

  I nodded.

  She continued, “They figured they’d always have a fresh supply of men if they just sent out draft notices. Apparently, officers used to tell soldiers that horses were more valuable than them. That they were ‘penny postcards’ that were easily replaceable.”

  “Penny postcards?”

  “The postage on a draft notice was a penny back then. So to the higher-ups, Army soldiers, Navy sailors, and pilots were worth just a penny each. And they could afford to buy as many as they wanted.”

  “And yet the recruits all fought bravely for the sake of their country.”

  My sister nodded ruefully. After another stretch of silence she said, “Can I discuss something with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve been doing all sorts of research about the war, and there’s something I’ve realized as a result.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The timidity of the admiral class.”

  “Wasn’t the Imperial military always pushing it though?”

  “It wasn’t that they were pushing it. So many of the operations were just foolhardy and suicidal. From Guadalcanal to New Guinea to the Battle of the Philippine Sea to the Battle of Leyte Gulf—it’s all the same. The famous Battle of Imphal in India, too. What we mustn’t forget, on the other hand, is that Imperial General HQ and the General Staff who hatched those operations could rest easy knowing there was absolutely no risk to their own lives.”

  “So the higher-ups could come up with all sorts of rash plans if all they were going to lose were rank-and-file soldiers.”

  “Exactly. But when they were commanding on the front and faced the possibility of their own deaths, they became extremely timid. Even when they were winning, they feared countera
ttacks and were quick to retreat.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know whether it should be called timidity, or caution, but take the attack on Pearl Harbor. The field officers urged a third wave of attacks, but Fleet Commander Nagumo chose to turn tail as fast as he could. At the battle of the Coral Sea, after sinking the USS Lexington, Fleet Commander Inoue pulled back the landing troops that were sent to invade Port Moresby, despite the fact that that operation had been in support of the landing. And during the first battle of the Solomon Seas in the early stages of the Guadalcanal Campaign, Fleet Commander Mikawa withdrew after defeating the enemy fleet, choosing not to pursue the American transport convoy even though the original goal of the operation was its destruction. Had they taken the opportunity to sink the transport ships, they might have prevented the later calamity on Guadalcanal. Halsey supposedly said that there were quite a number of battles where he’d have been done in if the Japanese forces had given just one more push. The foremost example of that is Kurita Fleet reversing course in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, like we just heard.”

  I was stunned to hear such a detailed analysis of the war from Keiko. She must have read a ton of books, I thought.

  “So why were there so many weak-willed men in the military?” I asked.

  “I’m sure it comes down to each person’s character, but in the Navy’s case, I think too many admirals were like that. So maybe there was a structural issue.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The admirals were the elite. The most gifted officers, graduates of the Naval Academy, were further handpicked for the Naval War College, which future admirals attended. These were the elite among the elite, so to speak. This is just my personal opinion, but I think their timidity was a result of their elite status. I can’t help but feel they were constantly thinking about their own careers.”

  “Their careers? In the middle of a war?”

  “I might be reading too much into it, but there are just too many instances. Researching individual battles, I feel that they prioritized not making any major mistake instead of focusing on destroying the enemy. Remember what Izaki-san said, for example. In the assessment for awarding medals to fleet commanders, sinking a warship earned the most points, while destroying dry docks, oil reserve tanks, and transport convoys didn’t amount to much. So they always put off such targets.”

  “But that doesn’t mean they were only thinking of their careers.”

  “Well, sure, I could be overthinking it. But these elites who entered the Naval Academy in their mid-teens, who fought their way through fierce competition, who went on to live the cutthroat competition of the small world called the Imperial Navy—is it so unnatural to think that they were saturated from head to toe with the desire to climb the ranks? That drive must have been especially strong among the admiral class, the very best students…During the Pacific War, all the fleet commanders were over fifty, and actually, the Navy hadn’t engaged in naval battles for nearly forty years, not since the Russo-Japanese war. In other words, since joining the Navy and until the Pacific War began, they didn’t experience actual combat and spent their lives competing for promotions within the Navy.”

  Wow, I thought. While I was surprised by Keiko’s unexpected breadth and depth of knowledge, what was even more impressive was her keen insight.

  “When I researched what the Navy was like back then, I realized something,” she continued. “Your promotion order in the Imperial Navy was basically determined by your Naval Academy standing, which they called the ‘hammock number.’ ”

  “So your ranking at graduation essentially decided the rest of your career.”

  “Right. The best test-takers are the ones who got ahead. Just like with bureaucrats today. So long as you avoid any major mistakes, you continue to get promoted. This might be going too far, but I think star students who excel at written exams might be great at playing by the book, but fragile in situations that aren’t covered by it. Also, they don’t imagine they could be wrong.”

  I leaned forward, pulling away from the seat’s backrest. “So the commanding officers that always had to react to unpredictable situations were chosen on the basis of written exams.”

  “It might have had something to do with the Imperial Navy’s fragility.”

  I nodded deeply. “What about the Americans?”

  “I haven’t really done much in-depth research yet, but in terms of one’s career, it was the same in America. Naval Academy graduation rankings had a lot to do with it. But that was only true during peacetime. During wars, the best combat commanders were given exceptional promotions. Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief Nimitz leapfrogged over dozens of men. Of course, they had to take responsibility for failures, too. Admiral Kimmel, who had held that position, was relieved of his command and demoted to rear admiral after the attack on Pearl Harbor wiped out the fleet there. It’s difficult to say whether Kimmel was to blame for the thrashing they took at Pearl Harbor, but apparently the U.S. military was very clear about assigning responsibility. Also, there seems to have been few, if any, timid commanders in the American Navy. They were all surprisingly aggressive.”

  Just how much research have you done? I wondered. She had always been the type to become engrossed in a subject that snagged her attention, but even so, she seemed especially intent on digging up info for this project. She’d always been pretty smart.

  “I see. So that could be the key to America’s strength.”

  “I was talking about the Imperial Navy just now, but it seems to have been the same with the Imperial Army. Apparently, the prewar Army and Navy War Colleges were harder to get into than Tokyo University in some ways. Just being selected from among the officers to take the entrance exam earned you a listing in the official gazette, so it must have been incredibly difficult. I’m bothering to tell you all this because the more research I do on Japan’s former military, the more it seems to have in common with our current bureaucratic system.”

  I looked at my sister again. Maybe I’d failed to get what she was about for the longest time. “I’ve been doing some research into the military back then, too, and realized something myself,” I offered.

  “Oh?”

  “You touched on this—how the senior officers in the Imperial Navy skirted accountability. Even if an operation ended in failure, they weren’t penalized for it. Take Fleet Commander Nagumo, who made a serious judgment error at Midway and lost four aircraft carriers. Or General Staff Chief Fukutome, who allowed important operational documents to fall into the hands of the American military when he got captured by anti-Japanese guerrillas before the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Vice Admiral Fukutome was taken prisoner, but the brass let him off the hook. Had he been a common soldier, there’d have been hell to pay.”

  “They ordered the rank and file to kill themselves rather than be captured, but turned a blind eye when it was one of them.”

  “It was common practice in the Army as well not to hold the top elite liable. Masanobu Tsuji was never taken to task for his repeated foolish operations on Guadalcanal. Lieutenant General Mutaguchi was never officially made to take responsibility for his unbelievably stupid Imphal operation that resulted in some thirty thousand soldiers dying of starvation. By the way, before the War in the Pacific ever began, Tsuji’s inept plans during the Nomonhan Incident had led to massive casualties, but he wasn’t held accountable and just continued to rise through the ranks. In his stead, field officers were forced to take the blame, and many regimental commanders were coerced into committing suicide.”

  “How awful!”

  “If Tsuji and other senior general staff had been made to take the fall for Nomonhan, it might have prevented the later tragedies on Guadalcanal from ever happening.”

  Keiko grimaced in irritation. “But why were they let off the hook?”

  “I’m not too clear on that point,” I said. “But my f
eeling is that they’d turned into bureaucracies.”

  Keiko nodded. “I see—they were able to shirk responsibility because the elite all covered up for each other. Making a fuss about their peers’ failure might come back to bite them later when they screwed up.”

  “I think that definitely was the case. Division Commander Kotoku Sato, who pulled back his troops against Mutaguchi’s orders during the Battle of Imphal, never faced a court-martial. They ruled it a mental breakdown and let him off the hook. Had a court-martial taken place, they’d have had to assess Mutaguchi’s blame as the operation’s commander. So to cover for Mutaguchi, they declared Sato mentally unfit to stand trial. Court-martial proceedings might touch on their own accountability as senior IGHQ staff since they’d green-lighted Mutaguchi’s operation. By the way, Lieutenant General Kawabe, who was the one who approved Mutaguchi’s Imphal operation as his superior, became a full general.”

  “That sucks,” Keiko muttered. “The regular troops had to risk their lives fighting for such people?”

  “Speaking of responsibility, remember what Ito-san told us? Commander-in-Chief Isoroku Yamamoto left for Pearl Harbor with the parting words, ‘Make sure this won’t be a sneak attack,’ but it did, in fact, end up being a nasty surprise attack thanks to the laxness of the embassy staff in Washington, who delayed in delivering the declaration of war. That story kept bugging me, so I did some research and found that no one was made to take any blame after the war.”

  “The higher-ups had been at a party the night before, right?”

  “Yeah, they drank the night away at a farewell party and were late getting to work the next day, a Sunday. The day before, they’d received a ‘Memorandum to the U.S. Government,’ an extremely high-priority thirteen-part cable from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, yet they didn’t bother typing it up and went partying. When they saw the telegram declaring war that arrived the next morning, they panicked and started to type out the memorandum first. It took them forever, and by the time they delivered the cable to Secretary of State Hull, the attack on Pearl Harbor had already commenced. The declaration of war itself was only eight lines long.”