I drilled at it every damn day. I was always practicing plucking flies out of midair with my hands. After countless efforts, I was able to nab them with near certainty. My special talent gained a measure of notoriety within my unit. Everyone tried their hands at it, but hardly anyone succeeded.
I scored over twenty kills at Rabaul.
There aren’t any official records, because by that time the Navy didn’t acknowledge individual kills. Kills were credited to the unit as a whole. How very Japanese that was. They tried to erase any hint of individual achievement.
I suspect the reason the Navy stopped recognizing individual kill records was that such stats would reveal who kicked ass and who sucked. That’d be enough to make any incompetent commissioned officer uncomfortable, huh?
Formations were always led into combat by commissioned officers, regardless of skill level. Some of them were good, but that was very rare. Most Naval Academy-trained formation leaders were inexperienced and incompetent. There were many times when a leader’s lame decision resulted in the entire formation getting into a jam. I myself was faced with such danger many times. But in the military, a superior officer’s orders are absolute. Even if we knew it was dangerous to fly in a certain direction, if the formation leader flew that way we had no choice but to follow. And just as expected, we would be attacked by enemy aircraft lying in wait.
Had they made individual kill records public, it would have been painfully obvious that incompetent commanders were leading highly capable non-comms into battle.
Apparently things were different in the U.S. military. All their pilots were commissioned officers, and those with superior skills headed their formations. Individual kill scores were made public, and pilots were openly lauded for their achievements. All their pilots would excitedly rush into battle, eager to raise their own scores. If a pair of pilots shot down one aircraft, they would each receive 0.5 points. Isn’t that so very American? That encouraged pilots to hustle even when they had to work in tandem. Those guys went all in. You can’t win a fight otherwise.
The Imperial Navy was nothing like that. No matter how excellent an aviator, an NCO was never made a unit commander. At best, he could become a flight leader. My rank then was Flight Seaman 1st Class, the third rank from the bottom. No matter how many enemy aircraft I shot down, my advancement up the ranks was never fast-tracked. The IJN was designed to never allow individuals to stand out.
Yet, there were some who triumphantly defied the policy. Tetsuzo Iwamoto just went ahead and painted the number of kills on the fuselage of his beloved plane. His ride was thus covered in cherry blossoms, one for each kill. From a distance, that whole section looked to be of a different color.
In person, he looked like a lackluster middle-aged fellow. But once he flew off into the sky he and his aircraft sparkled. He called himself “a penniless ronin of the big wide world.” An oddball.
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, too. When the pilot of a Gekkou, a new-model night fighter, downed a B-17 and was presented a saber to commemorate his exploit, Nishizawa is said to have audibly wisecracked, “I wonder how many kills it’d take for me to get one of those.” Nishizawa was a quiet man, but he exuded an indescribable vibe. He wasn’t the type to ever brag about his kill number. I think he made that remark because he was frustrated that the Zero pilots, constantly on the front lines, were rarely rewarded for their service. He was indeed another fine blade in the IJN’s arsenal. Yet they shipped him off to the Philippines on a troop transport and let that precious gem slip through their fingers. So stupid!
I didn’t mark up my plane to record my kills, but I remembered every single aircraft that I’d downed. I didn’t care if no one else knew, so long as I did. I kept a mental tally of each time I shot down an aircraft. I meant to eventually reach a hundred, even two hundred. They said back then that Nishizawa and Iwamoto each had over a hundred kills, and I wanted to rival them. They were stalwarts who had served since the Sino-Japanese War. They had spent years building up their kill records. I was a total greenhorn. But I always thought, Someday I’ll catch up to them…
Since there were no official records at that time, the only way to confirm someone’s kill number was to hear it from the pilot himself. The numbers that Nishizawa and Iwamoto mentioned to close friends spread from person to person. Since everyone accepted that those two aces could have easily made so many kills, the rumored numbers grew legs. You could try to exaggerate, but everyone knew your skill level. Lies didn’t pass in that world.
* * *
—
I loved to dogfight. It was in the skies that I felt the most alive. If an enemy shot me down, I’d have no regrets.
After the war I became a yakuza. Not that I looked up to them. In fact, I looked down on men who ganged up and relied on violence, more than anything else. But after the war, my fast living resulted in me getting dragged into that world. After roaming about in search of a place to hang it all up, I found that I had become an outlaw.
I’ve committed murder, too. I was sent to prison many times. My life was threatened many times. Yet by the devil’s luck, I’ve survived to this age. Compared to the battles we waged in the skies back then, giving and taking lives down here is like child’s play. Some issues can be resolved with money, and some lives can be saved with bodyguards.
There were no compromises in the sky, though. The tiniest mistake could get you killed. But if the enemy’s skills exceeded my own, I was willing to go down like a man.
To be sure, the other side had superior fighters, but they used simple hit-and-run tactics when attacking. So long as you could dodge their first strike, there wasn’t much left to fear. They rarely engaged in one-on-one dogfights. While the Zero was getting on in years, they were well aware of its terrifying fighting prowess.
I would lure the enemy into dogfights. If one of them attacked, I would purposely flee downwards, which was the more dangerous route, and get him to give chase. In that scenario, it was important to get him to shift his longitudinal axis line—the direction the nose of the plane is pointing towards. Machine guns fire along that trajectory. So if that line is angled away from you, no matter how many bullets are fired they won’t strike you. Just when he thinks he can lock onto you and shoot you down, he’s right where you want him. Pull your nose up, and then drag him into a contest of lateral turns. By the time he thinks, Oh, shit, it’s already too late. After the first turn, I’m up right on his tail and open fire with my machine guns. I downed dozens of planes that way.
I think there were very few Zero pilots who did things like that. Iwamoto, for instance, almost never engaged in dogfights. He was a hit-and-run genius. He’d spot an unfriendly before anyone else, sneak up behind him, deal him a blow from diagonally above, and then make a clean getaway, just like the Americans preferred to do. He also made a habit of targeting solo aircraft. In an ambush, instead of engaging right away he would wait until they drew back, and then cut them down from behind. It was like he was a master of the quick draw. He was the mirror opposite of Nishizawa, who was adept at orthodox dogfighting. Come to think of it, Iwamoto was like a man possessed by the spirit of aerial battle. He dedicated his life to sending enemy aircraft to oblivion. I, too, gave my all to air battles, but I didn’t become a fighter pilot until 1943. By that point, Iwamoto had already seen five years of combat.
If Nishizawa was a fine Masamune sword, then Iwamoto was the enchanted blade Muramasa. Of course, this is my own interpretation, but I don’t think it’s far off the mark.
Legend has it that wielding the enchanted Muramasa transforms you into a terrifying slaughterer. Perhaps the Zero was Iwamoto’s Muramasa. He was never able to blend into postwar society, and people eventually forgot him. I hear he died in obscurity of complications from battle injuries. Maybe postwar Japan was no longer a world where flying aces could live.
* * *
—
I didn’t fight for t
he sake of my country or for my fellow countrymen. Not even for my family. And certainly not for the Emperor—no, absolutely not.
I have no relatives, so I was never fighting for anyone else’s sake.
I was born a bastard. My mother was some guy’s mistress. She’d lost her own mother when she was a child. Her father died when she was fifteen. She probably became a kept woman just to survive. Her keeper, my father, was an up-and-coming trader. My mother died the year I started middle school, and he took me in.
In his large home lived his wife and my older half-brothers. They always looked at me as if I was a piece of filth. My father never gave me any affection, either, or even his surname. If anything, he made it clear that he considered me a parasite. He, himself, had been adopted into his wife’s family and was totally spineless, never able to stand up to his wife. He deserved nothing but scorn.
The attack on Pearl Harbor took place when I was in my fifth year of middle school. The following year, when I graduated, I sat for the Preparatory Flight Training Program. It had begun accepting large numbers of applicants since the start of hostilities with the U.S., which is why a bad student like me passed.
From that point, I never saw my family again. Well, they weren’t my family to begin with.
Once I became a pilot, I decided to live my life as a bushi, a warrior. It was my mother’s word. Her grandfather had been a vassal of the Nagaoka Clan and had died in the Boshin War. His son had been branded a traitor after the Meiji Restoration and had endured terrible hardship. He died destitute, leaving behind a fifteen-year-old daughter.
When I was a child my mother often said to me, “Samurai blood flows through your veins. Live proudly as a bushi.”
So for me, that war existed for my sake. I never fought for anyone else. It was for myself that I fought.
Just as Musashi Miyamoto fought purely for the sake of his swordsmanship, I fought as a mere fighter pilot.
I didn’t have any friends, either. I’d been friendless ever since I was little. What is friendship, anyways? Huddling together? Friendship in our society just means you hang out or go drinking together. I’ve never felt that I wanted such a relationship, not once.
My wife? I don’t have one. Never been married, not in my whole life. Of course, I don’t have any kids.
There’ve been women, though. I never wanted for female company. I even lived with one for a time. That was all after the war. During the war I never had a lover, never longed for anyone back home. Out on the front lines I was only concerned with fighting. I lost my virginity after the war to a streetwalker.
Never wanted kids. Since I don’t have any siblings, the Kageura line will end when I die.
But so what? Children are merely a consolation. Men who can’t recognize any other proof of their own existence have kids and treasure them for the rest of their lives.
I chose not to have kids. I knocked up several women, but I made them get abortions each time. When I was forty, on a friend’s suggestion I got a vasectomy. That was a huge relief. I thought, Finally I’m free of shackles. Somehow it made me feel like I was ready for death at any time. I should’ve had it done much sooner.
I figured as soon as you have kids, you can no longer live like a true man. Same thing with taking a wife, of course. Women are nothing more than playmates in this fleeting life. There was one woman that I lived with for years. But I never fell in love with any, not once. And I don’t think any of them ever loved me.
* * *
—
But Miyabe, even in the midst of a life-or-death struggle, thought of his family more than anything else. Does a bushi clashing swords on the battlefield spare a thought for his family? I can’t forgive a man who deemed his wife and child most important when the fate of the nation was at stake.
Even so, had he been a wimp, I could have just laughed at him. The thing that I couldn’t tolerate one bit was all the talk about him being such an outstanding fighter pilot.
He thought of nothing more than his family while fighting, and yet he excelled at aerial combat. Why couldn’t I forgive that? All I can say is that I was still young.
While all of us were putting our life on the line, he alone thought of his wife and child and engaged in combat on the side, so to speak. And yet his skills were supposedly better than everyone else’s. I couldn’t stand it.
It’s not that I ever saw him in action myself, but many veteran pilots including Nishizawa all held him in high regard. His kill score was a total mystery, though. The rumors were all over the place. Some said he’d downed nearly a hundred; others thought the number was closer to a dozen. This was due to the fact that he hardly ever stated kills when he was debriefed. Kills were only considered confirmed if you succeeded in blowing up an enemy aircraft in midair or witnessed the pilot bailing, or if the aircraft crashed into the ocean. Aside from those cases, if you could only report that you saw the aircraft falling or that it began to spout fire, the kill was considered “unconfirmed.” Most of Miyabe’s kills seemed to fall into that category.
One day, I asked him point-blank: “Flight CPO Miyabe, how many kills do you have?”
“I do not remember,” he replied without drama. His manner of speech was excessively polite. He spoke to someone even three ranks below him as if he were addressing a superior officer. That only added fuel to my anger.
“The guys are spreading all kinds of rumors,” I persisted. “Some say ten, others say a hundred. So what’s the real number?”
“I think that I might have shot down more than ten.”
This answer was a surprise. I was hoping to estimate the number through his response. If he’d laughed it off, it meant his kill total wasn’t all that impressive. If he’d given an outsized number, he was nothing more than a braggart. Yet his response was neither of these.
And then he said, “No matter how many of their aircraft I shoot down, if they shoot me down just once, I’m done for.”
I was momentarily lost for words.
He continued, “It’s important to the air corps to know how many enemy aircraft were taken out. War is about inflicting losses on each other. If our losses are small and their losses are large, HQ considers that a win. If we lose only one aircraft and they lose ten, then it’s a major victory. But what if that one aircraft is yours?”
His question left me bewildered. “I fight my own battles,” I said.
Miyabe laughed. “I feel the same way. So instead of focusing on how many aircraft I downed, I fight desperately to avoid getting shot down.”
I felt like he was laughing at me. I had always considered air battles to be like fights between master swordsmen. I wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of dying. If I’d fought with every esoteric technique available to me, then losing was fine. Miyabe’s words directly opposed my kind of resolve.
“But—” I started to say when Miyabe suddenly grasped my shoulder.
“Flight Seaman 1st Class Kageura, you seem to fancy yourself a Musashi Miyamoto, but remember that Musashi did plenty of running away in his time. And another thing: Musashi never challenged an opponent that he couldn’t beat. Is that not the inner-most secret of a top swordsman?”
I could feel my face heat up. I was sure he was making fun of the phrase I’d drawn on my scarf—The Sword and Zen are One—and telling me that I seemed childish to him. It was Musashi Miyamoto who had said that.
After Miyabe left, I tore my scarf to shreds, tears of chagrin rolling down my face. I swore I’d become a better fighter pilot than Miyabe.
* * *
—
My hatred of Miyabe wasn’t some half-baked thing. Whether I slept or I was awake, my mind was always filled with thoughts of him. Sometimes he appeared in my dreams. On some occasions, I would spring out of bed in the middle of the night covered in sweat, Miyabe’s laughter still ringing in my ears.
One day I sa
id to him, “Flight CPO Miyabe, I have a request.”
“What is it?” he asked, his expression typically dispassionate.
“I would like for us to engage in a mock dogfight, sir.”
“That isn’t necessary. You are a very skilled pilot, Kageura.”
“I have heard that you are unparalleled when it comes to mock dogfights. Please, I ask for your instruction, sir.”
“A mock battle is nothing more than a practice run. It’s not a real fight. You are much better than I when it comes to actual combat.”
“Please, sir!”
“We are on the front lines. We currently do not have the time or resources to spare on such a thing. And HQ won’t allow it.”
I fell to my knees and begged, “Please!”
“No!” Miyabe said sharply, and quickly walked away.
I had never been more humiliated in my life. And in the sixty years I’ve lived since then, I have never tasted such mortification. I was on the verge of launching myself at him. If there hadn’t been several mechanics looking on from a short distance away, I might have done so.
For the next few days, I was obsessed with the idea of dogfighting Miyabe. If only I were with the American forces—then I could dogfight him, I even thought.
* * *
—
Several days later, as I was racing towards my fighter in order to intercept incoming aircraft, I caught sight of Miyabe next to me. In order to make myself heard over the roar of the engines, I shouted, “Flight CPO Miyabe, after today’s defensive action, please fight a mock battle with me!”
Miyabe, not even looking in my direction as he ran, said no.
“I’ll do it even if you don’t,” I shouted.
Miyabe glanced at me. His expression was filled with an intensity I’d never seen until then. Then, without a word of reply, he ran off towards his plane.
The Eternal Zero Page 32
