Strangely, the more intense fighting someone had seen, the less inclined they were to discuss the war, while those with little experience in battle tended to act like they were the authority on what the front lines were like. Miyabe-san, too, rarely spoke of his experiences in battle. He wasn’t the type to talk of glory or brag about his exploits.
Instructing Officer Miyabe’s rank was ensign, but he always spoke very politely to us. The few instructing officers there who had graduated from the Naval Academy tended to speak very rudely and yelled at us as a matter of course. But Miyabe-san never once raised his voice when speaking to a student. While he was technically an ensign, he was a so-called “special duty officer,” treated as a notch below an officer who had graduated from the Naval Academy. Once, I witnessed a young ensign from the Naval Academy chewing out an SDO lieutenant junior grade. Such were the ways of the military.
The student aviators who had graduated before us were branded “reserve officers” or “spares” and considered one rung below those who had attended the Naval Academy, too, so we were sympathetic towards the SDOs. But the non-comms must have thought of us as belonging to a privileged class.
* * *
—
While Miyabe-san was very polite, he was an extremely strict instructor. He was infamous for not readily giving passing marks to his students. Where other staff would give us qualifying marks, it was extremely common for him to give out F’s.
Therefore, he wasn’t popular with many students, me included.
“I’m sure to someone who’s just back from the front, our flying skills are pretty bad. But that attitude is even nastier than bragging about war experiences.”
“I bet he doesn’t like the fact that we’re officer candidates, but why harass us in this way?”
I also sensed something obstinate in Miyabe-san’s methods. I thought that maybe what someone had said was right on the mark: he was probably unhappy with the fact that we were graduating right into the rank of ensign with hardly any effort at all, while it had taken him over a decade of work to get there. I could understand such feelings, but it was not our fault.
After Miyabe-san began instructing us, there was supposedly scant progress in our training. Finally, a group of students complained about him to a more senior instructing officer.
The next day, when Miyabe-san drilled us on in-flight turning, he failed every one of us. I could understand giving a majority of students F’s, but to fail everyone seemed like it was just plain harassment.
Again we complained to the senior instructor, but Miyabe-san’s attitude didn’t change one bit. He continued to fail most of his students. Our hearts almost went out to our nemesis, because here was a man made of incredibly stubborn stuff. Eventually, he was relieved of his duties as an instructor.
However, they were short of teachers, and Miyabe-san was quickly reinstated. But he was limited to carrying out in-flight training only, and it was another instructor’s duty to grade our practical skills. This was probably an order from above.
The arrangement clearly had an effect on Miyabe-san. Well, of course. A sensei who can’t mark his pupils is, after all, not a real sensei at all. The situation had probably greatly wounded his pride. From that point on, his instructing style became even more meticulous. Serves you right, we thought to ourselves.
However, he was obviously disgusted whenever he said, “You have improved some,” which irked us to no end.
One day after I had completed a turning drill, Miyabe-san said, “You’ve made progress.” But I could see on his face that his words weren’t sincere. I felt that my performance had at least been adequate. Quite irritated, I suddenly found myself saying, “Instructing Officer Miyabe, are you really that dissatisfied with the fact that I have improved?”
He looked stunned. “No, of course not. If I have given you that impression, then the blame is entirely mine,” he replied and deeply bowed his head.
His attitude struck me as a mere hypocritical courtesy. “If that’s the case, then why can’t you look even a tiny bit happy about my progress?”
Instructor Miyabe fell silent.
“Or are you really thinking that I’m totally hopeless?”
He didn’t reply.
“Well? Or are you, in fact, just being spiteful?”
“To be perfectly honest, Flight Student Okabe,” he said, “I think your flying skills will not be worth a damn in combat.”
I felt myself flush red. “How…on what grounds?” was all I could manage.
“Flight Student Okabe, if you were to go to the front right now, you would almost certainly be shot down.”
I wanted to object, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“I do not continue to fail everyone out of mere spite. I have seen too many pilots lose their lives in battle. Many men more skilled than me with longer military careers have been shot out of the sky. The Zero is no longer the invincible fighter it once was. The other side now has excellent aircraft, and their sheer numbers are overwhelming. Battles are severe and unforgiving. Do you think I am just blowing wind about the front lines?”
“Um…no.”
“At the Mariana Islands, and at Leyte, many young pilots were sent into battle before they had acquired sufficient experience or training. Most died on their very first mission.”
Instructor Miyabe spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. I couldn’t come up with any reply.
“I have mentioned my concerns to the squadron leader, but he was deaf to my words. In fact, he ordered me to give passing marks to all students except in the case of an extreme blunder. He said that great skill didn’t matter anymore because they’re short on pilots and want as many fresh ones as they can get as soon as possible.”
I nodded.
“As I instruct such excellent young men as yourselves, I honestly find myself thinking that you should not be made pilots. I think you all can and should do something better with your lives, more magnificent work than that. If I had any say in the matter, I would not send any of you to your deaths.”
Instructor Miyabe’s words lodged in my heart and stayed with me all through the postwar years. Whenever I was having a hard time at work, those words came back to me.
“That was terribly impudent of me.” Instructor Miyabe bowed his head and then turned and walked towards his quarters.
I was ashamed. I’d judged him in such a shallow manner, and I couldn’t forgive myself for it.
* * *
—
I completed the pilot curriculum at the end of February. The short training had taken less than a year to finish. The old Preparatory Flight Training Program would have taken more than two years to complete, so it was patently obvious that ours had merely been a crash course.
That night I was handed a single sheet of paper. On it was written the question: “Do you volunteer for the Special Attack Force?” And I was ordered to submit an answer by the following day.
This is it then, I thought. But the shock of actually receiving that sheet of paper was far greater than whatever resolve I’d been able to muster.
I had been prepared to die from the moment I joined the training unit as a student reservist. This was something I had discussed many times with classmates that I was friendly with. But we had meant dying after giving our all in battle. Volunteering for a special attack unit and certain demise was something altogether beyond what I had been prepared for.
But we’d known that they’d started using kamikazes the previous year, so I wasn’t totally panicked in face of the volunteer form. Shikishima Unit’s actions at Leyte Gulf in the fall of ’44 had been announced with great fanfare by the papers and such. The media and Imperial General HQ had continued to issue news on kamikaze units for days on end. So I had kept the possibility of this happening in the back of my mind.
—Was I shocked by reports of the
first kamikaze attack? Not really, to be frank. It did make me gird up.
By that time, I think I’d become desensitized with regards to death. It had become common to see the phrase “shattered jewels” in newspaper columns. What did “shattered jewels” really mean? Annihilation. It meant that all members of a unit had died in combat. They replaced “annihilation” with “shattered jewels” to paper over the sheer calamity of it. Back then, the Japanese military used such rephrasings on all sorts of matters. They referred to the mass evacuations from the cities to the countryside as “dispersals,” and retreating on the battlefield was “advancing upon turning.” But I think “shattered jewels” is the worst example because the intent was to disguise death as something beautiful. Eventually, the press bandied about the phrase “100 million shattered jewels”—a call for the entire nation’s all-out fight to the death.
After seeing news reports of so many deaths day in and day out, I began to think of life as something quite insignificant and transient. As thousands of soldiers were dying on the front lines each day, the thought of a dozen or so kamikaze pilots sortieing to their certain demise didn’t seem all that shocking.
But once I found myself in their shoes, my perception of the situation completely shifted. People are so very self-centered, as you know.
I thought of my parents—my mother and father who had doted on me like nothing else. And I thought of my little sister, ten years my junior. While my parents would be able to bear my death, my sister would no doubt weep inconsolably. She loved me more than anyone else. “I love you the best, big brother. I love you even more than Mom or Dad,” she liked to say.
The truth is, my sister was mentally disabled, though not acutely. Like many such children, she was exceedingly innocent, never mistrustful of anyone, which made her all the more pitiable and endearing.
Had I had a girlfriend or wife, things might have been different. But thankfully I was single back then. I didn’t even have someone I admired in secret. So at the time, I was only concerned for my family.
I thought that my parents would be able to bear up. They would even pardon me for failing in my filial duty. Perhaps they would feel pride over their son having given his life to defend the homeland. But I was filled with remorse for my sister. There would be no one left to care for her once my folks passed away, and I couldn’t get over that.
I don’t remember how I actually made up my mind with the volunteer form staring me in the face. I don’t really remember a thing now as to whether I made the decision with some deep-seated mental resolve or what.
Near dawn, I finally checked the box next to the “I volunteer” option. I think I was driven by the sense that many if not all of the others would be volunteering. I didn’t want to become the only coward. I remember taking care to keep my hand steady when I wrote down my name. I was worried about such things even at that juncture.
All of the flight students elected to volunteer. But later I did hear that some had originally checked “I do not volunteer.” Those reserves had been individually called up by the officers and persuaded to change their answers. “Persuasion” by one’s superiors in the military back then was essentially the same as being ordered to do something. It was virtually impossible to disobey.
Do you think we were wimps? I don’t expect people born and raised breathing freedom to be able to understand. But really, even nowadays, how many people at work do you think are actually capable of sticking their necks out and boldly saying “no” to their superiors? We “volunteers” were faced with a far more severe situation back then.
When I heard that some had initially chosen not to volunteer, all I thought was that since we were going to be coerced into doing it anyway, they should’ve just consented from the start.
Now I’m convinced, though—the men who initially refused to volunteer were truly admirable. The ones who made completely unfettered choices about a matter of life and death, according to their own will and nothing else, were the real men. Looking back, had more Japanese people, including myself, been made of such stuff, we could have ended the war much sooner.
The ones who convinced those men to change their answers might not have been superior officers but their fellow reserves. To be sure, none of us were happy with the idea of going to our deaths. But back then, there simply was no alternative. The military would never have forgiven us for refusing to volunteer for the kamikaze units. Indeed, there were rumors to that effect. Pilots from other training units who had stubbornly refused were shipped off to join the ground troops fighting on the front lines or were deployed in suicidal battles. They were only rumors, so we had no way of knowing how much, if any of it, was true. But for those of us in that era, it was sufficiently close enough to the truth to believe.
The military thought nothing of the lives of the troops. I said earlier that 4,400 young lives were lost in kamikaze attacks. But a single mission of the Surface Special Attack Force led by the battleship Yamato during the Battle of Okinawa saw the loss of nearly as many lives.
The Yamato’s sortie was a desperate effort. The preposterous plan was for the ship to be beached on Okinawa and used as a land-based gun battery against invading American troops. Of course, such a plan of action was doomed to fail. A single battleship with no air cover and just a handful of escort ships had practically no chance of actually making it to Okinawa.
Essentially, the Yamato was turned into a kamikaze unit that took the lives of her entire 3,300-man crew plus those of smaller vessels along with her. The staff officers who had come up with that plan didn’t care a farthing about the lives of those men. Maybe they were incapable of imagining that the 3,300 were all human beings with families, mothers and fathers, wives, children, and siblings. Even in a battle they knew they would lose, the higher-ups couldn’t just stand by, so they used the Yamato and several light cruisers and destroyers and thousands of crew members in a “special attack” to save face with a bold gesture.
The General Staff and the Combined Fleet admirals who drew up a flimsy battle plan which would sacrifice the Yamato, the pride of the Combined Fleet, would obviously not hesitate to throw away the lives of student reservists as kamikazes. In the best-case scenario, a warship could be sunk at the cost of only one man and one plane. They likely thought it couldn’t be helped that dozens of aircraft and pilots would be lost for the sake of one such strike hitting its target.
By the way, even when you volunteered to become a kamikaze, you weren’t immediately shipped off. Making us volunteer for special attacks was merely a premise, an element of process for the military. Once you volunteered, you were put into the pool of special-attack personnel from which the higher-ups could freely select when and who to send on kamikaze missions.
Even after we had graduated and been commissioned as officers, we were put through continued drills. At that time, though, while there were enough warm bodies for the kamikaze units, there weren’t enough aircraft. And not just aircraft—we didn’t have enough fuel, either, which interfered with our training.
* * *
—
It was around that time that the Okinawa Special Attack Operation began.
From March of 1945, kamikaze planes took off from bases in Kyushu almost every day to strike against the U.S. fleet in the seas around Okinawa. There was a media blitz concerning those attacks.
One day in April, there was an announcement: sixteen members of my 14th class of reserve officers had been named as special attack personnel. I was not on the list. Those selected were all our class’s top pilots.
My best friend, Yoshio Takahashi, was among those called up. We had been in the same year at Keio University. He loved literature and hoped to become a scholar of Japanese lit. He was also a third-rank judo wrestler of the Kodokan School. He cut a stately figure, standing nearly six feet, the very picture of excellence in both mind and body.
There was one incident between
us that I’ll never forget.
Once, when he was over at my house for a visit, my sister came home in tears. According to a girl from the neighborhood who was with her, some middle schoolers had teased her, called her “retard,” and then slapped her about the face until she started crying. Even before then, she’d been laughed at and teased for her disability, to my great irritation, but this time I’d had enough. Getting slapped around because she was mentally disabled?
I asked the neighbor girl which school those kids were from.
Then, when I turned around, I saw something that floored me. Takahashi was petting my sister’s head and sobbing himself.
“You poor thing, you poor thing, Kazuko-chan. You didn’t do anything to deserve that,” he said, tears streaming down his face.
Takahashi’s kindness towards her pierced my heart. I felt like I could do anything for the man.
And now, he’d been called up to be a kamikaze.
“Trade places with me,” I begged him.
“Don’t be stupid, Okabe,” Takahashi laughed.
“Please, let me go in your place.”
“Nope.”
“Trade with me, damn it!” I yelled, grabbing him by the lapels.
“Hell no!” he bellowed right back.
“Trade with me, Takahashi,” I said, trying to push him over.
“Like I would,” he said, then sent me sprawling.
I got up and wrapped my arms around his waist, but he had no trouble flinging me off. As I stood up and tackled him again, I was crying. Seeing me in such a state was making him cry, too, but he continued to fling me away.
At long last I had used up all my strength and lay prone, weeping.
“Okabe, you survive. For Kazuko’s sake, you can’t die,” Takahashi said, embracing me about the shoulders. He was still in tears.
We weren’t the only men to cry that day. At night, after getting drunk, those who hadn’t been selected wailed aloud and begged those who’d been chosen to let them go in their stead, though it wasn’t an option. Some guys even went and pled with the flight commander in tears to be allowed to go on a special attack.
The Eternal Zero Page 27
