Voyages of the Seventh Carrier

by Peter Albano

  Aogi smiled as he answered. “Admiral, we have thousands of pilots eager to fly for you. One hundred fifty are training at Tsuchuira and Tokyo International. Hundreds of gunners and seamen are awaiting your call at Sasebo.”

  “Aircraft? Engines?”

  The smile turned to a broad grin. “Nakajima is building a new twelve hundred horsepower Sakae, and Mitsubishi’s engineers have studied old museum A six M twos, and the plant has begun producing new airframes.”

  “We lost twenty-two Zeros.”

  “We have the planes and the pilots.”

  “Banzai! Banzai!”

  Fujita raised his hands slowly in sudden languor. Silence. “Have them assemble at Tokyo International. My flight leader,” he said and gestured at Matsuhara, “will select the replacements.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Captain Kawamoto spoke. “Admiral, there is a question of liberty for the crew.”

  The old admiral sank back, obviously tiring. “I know. Last December only half chose to go ashore and most of them returned in disgust. That is not the Japan we left.” He waved. “They do not revere the emperor as we do. They have their television sets and sit in front of them like vegetables. Music is gone, replaced by singers who screech and cannot read music or carry a melody and call themselves artists. Cars race over broad acres of concrete fouling our air. Buildings of cold concrete soar hundreds of meters into the sky like ugly, sterile forests. This is not our Japan. This is not what we left.”

  “But Hirohito is our emperor, sir. And this is the land of our birth.”

  Fujita nodded slowly. “Yes, Masao-san. It has been over four decades for our men — four decades of serving this ship.”

  “They do not complain, sir.”

  “I know, Masao-san. The blood in our veins keep our bodies alive. So is it with our crew. We cannot bleed them.”

  “They would not desert us, sir.”

  “Of course. I know. Offer liberty to those who will take it — port and starboard sections. But readiness status two must be maintained.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kawamoto said, scribbling a note on a yellow pad.

  Fujita stared with weary eyes the length of the table at the intent faces. Then he swept a palm over his riven cheek as if fatigue were a mask he could strip from his face and discard. He spoke slowly. “Our tasks are heavy, and great perils face us. But if we remember the words of the great warrior Takeda Shinge, who emblazoned on his banners the virtues of the samurai, ‘Fast as the wind; aggressive as fire; quiet as the forest; and immovable as the mountain,’ nothing can stop us!”

  “Banzai! Banzai!”

  “Hear! Hear!”

  The old man sat back, folded his hands on his chest and smiled. Then he said slowly to the overhead, “Return to your duties, gentlemen.”

  Quietly the officers filed out, leaving the admiral sunk in his chair, half-closed eyes staring. There was a look of contentment on the old face. “Home,” he said slowly, reaching into a drawer and removing a large folio. Sighing, he opened the album and stared at a faded, brown-tinted formal photograph of a slender dark man with a severe, haughty look in his eyes and a short beautiful woman whose lustrous skin and hair that glistened like lacquer glowed even from the ancient photograph. The man was in western garb, complete with waistcoat, cravat, and stickpin, while the woman wore an elegant traditional kimona with a white obi wrapped around her tiny waist and tabi on her feet. Two young boys, also in western dress, stood between them. One was perhaps nineteen, tall and slim as a reed with the distant look of the aesthete in his eyes. The other appeared to be about sixteen years of age, short, husky, with deep intelligence glowing from the wide-set eyes.

  Turning the photograph over, Fujita saw the words, Seiko and Akemi Fujita and their sons Hachiro and Hiroshi greet the year 2561 — the twentieth century to the English. Banzai Emperor Meiji.

  *

  The Fujita home, where Hiroshi Fujita was born and grew to manhood, was located in Sekigahara, a suburb of Nagoya where Seiko Fujita held the post of professor of mathematics at Nagoya University. Typical of houses built in a society terrorized by frequent earthquakes, the home was of wood and paper construction, with cypress posts and cedar planks chosen with care, fitted with precision and polished with devotion. Compared to its neighbors, it was large and opulent, reflecting the past glory of a great samurai tradition that was broken but not destroyed in the bloody Meiji restoration of 1871 and the Saigo rebellion of 1877.

  Hiroshi and Hachiro had their own rooms: Hiroshi’s a large “three mat” room with an amado that slid open on the garden. In fact, all the rooms opened onto the huge grounds with no trace of a dividing line between house and nature. Here, man seemed to be part and parcel of nature. There were carefully crafted paths winding through irregularly shaped lawns, scattered rocks, a stream, bridge, shrubs, beds of azaleas, jasmine, gardenias, all framed by a blurred boundary of pines and maples, concealing neighboring houses in the distance and perfecting the harmony of the whole.

  In their early years, the boys raced through this wonderland, shrieking and shouting with their playmates, playing samurai and clashing wooden sticks together in mock combat. Later as they grew bigger and stronger, the hard staves of kendo were substituted for the sticks, and the blows became swifter and painful despite protective pads. The boys loved archery, sumo, soccer, and a new game called beisuboru — an American game played with a ball and a bat that led to many arguments.

  Oka-san would scold and sometimes chase noisy playmates away, but Akemi could never conceal the twinkle of affection and good humor that always sparkled in her eyes.

  Each evening the entire family would remove personal dirt, which was considered an affront to the gods, by the purificatory rites of yuami. This was done by filling their large tub with hot water, washing themselves thoroughly and then entering the tub in an unalterable order: first Seiko, second Akemi, then Hachiro, and last Hiroshi. It was a time of purification for the soul as well as the body, and Seiko would discuss every samurai’s duty to the emperor and speak of the heroic deeds of their many distinguished ancestors.

  He would say wise things as all listened solemnly: “The whole world searches for God, but only Japan has the true God, Amaterasu, who shines in the sky and who gave birth to our imperial order. Japan is the divine country and the emperor is the key.” He deplored the westernization of the country and had loved to quote his favorite poet, Tachibana:

  It is a pleasure

  When in these days of delight

  In all things foreign

  I come across a man who

  Does not forget our Empire.

  The Fujita house had two altars, one honoring Buddha and the other dedicated to the mystic kami (gods) of Shinto. Through Shinto, the young Hiroshi learned to acknowledge the countless kami associated with the heavens and the natural wonders of the earth.

  Shinto taught that the sun goddess Amaterasu’s direct descendant, Emperor Jimmu, was the first mortal ruler of Japan and that Meiji was one hundred and twenty-second in this unbroken line. The family even made a pilgrimage to the shrine at Kumano-Nachi, built on a mountainside on the coast near Katsuura. At least 120 meters high, the Nachi Falls were enclosed by the temple, and the family climbed the stone steps notched into the hillside next to the roaring, spray-shrouded torrent. Finally, they stood tired and happy in the main hall under a great camphor tree. Here Hiroshi felt the spirit of the sun goddess as a palpable force that brought “Banzai Emperor Meiji,” bursting from his lips. His mother clutched him while his father and brother stood proudly by. At that moment, Hiroshi knew he was destined to serve the emperor with his sword.

  Buddhism was not neglected. Standing before the altar in the main room in their house, eyes focused on a small gold Buddha, which had been blessed at Naru’s Todajii Temple where the fifty foot Daibutsu sat — the great Buddha of bronze and gold — the family listened daily as Seiko spoke of the four truths: Existence is suffering; suffering springs from desire; de
sire can be extinguished; purification can only be attained by following Buddha’s path of truthfulness and chaste behavior.

  Both boys were fine students, leading their classmates in every subject. On Tango no sekku (Boys’ Day) the Fujitas flew the usual carp banner high above their house. However, theirs was larger, made of brighter-colored material and flew with more hauteur than any of their neighbors. Knowing the carp was the most exalted fish — a symbol of strength, determination, energy, and willpower — Hiroshi and Hachiro would stare upward, filled with pride.

  The new century was not a year old when trouble began to brew with Russian designs on Manchuria and Korea. Immediately, Hachiro joined the army and Hiroshi watched enviously as his father presented his older brother with the family sword as Hachiro left for officer’s training. Within a month, Hiroshi had joined the navy and been sent to Eta Jima where, if he could survive the rigorous regimen, he could earn a commission.

  On February 10, 1904, war broke out with Russia. Within weeks, the army was heavily engaged in Korea and Manchuria with fighting especially bloody around Port Arthur and Mukden. The war was not six months old when Hachiro was killed leading a charge against the Russian works at Mukden. Hiroshi, now a newly commissioned ensign, would never forget the homecoming for his brother’s ashes, contained in the usual white wooden box with ideograms describing his heroic death

  The box was brought to his home by Hachiro’s captain who handed it to his stony-faced father who stood next to Akemi, wide-eyed, jaw quivering. At least a hundred neighbors stood outside shouting, “Banzai!” Then Seiko, followed by the captain, his wife, son, and mourners walked around the house to the garden where a new shrine stood on a small plateau behind the stone bridge. The steps, lantern, and torii were all stone matching the polished granite of the shrine. On either side of the low entrance were the usual lion-dogs. However, these had been painted white. Reverently, Seiko Fujita laid his son’s ashes to rest while a Buddhist monk chanted and rang his bell. Before Hiroshi turned away, he noticed that there was room for one more box in the shrine.

  The war climaxed with a shattering victory over the Russian fleet in the Korean Straits. As control officer in the after turret of the battleship Mikasa, Hiroshi had had the thrill of finding the enemy in his range finder and of firing the great twelve inch guns himself. He killed hundreds. He was very proud.

  After the war ended, Japan annexed Korea and gained concessions in Manchuria. Hiroshi Fujita was ecstatic. For the first time in history, an Asian nation had defeated a European power. But oka-san spent long hours in the garden, kneeling before the granite shrine. Refusing her food, she withered and became an old woman almost overnight. The black lustrous hair became streaked with silver, the face lined, bright eyes dimmed.

  “Hachiro is with the gods. His spirit dwells in the Yasakuni Shrine! You should be happy,” Seiko pleaded one day when Hiroshi was home on leave.

  “Yes, I know, Seiko-san,” Akemi answered. “I am overjoyed.” In 1907, her withered body — little more than a skeleton — was found stretched between the two lion-dogs. Her wide sightless eyes were on the white box and her clawlike hands were reaching for it.

  After a suitable grieving period, Seiko returned to his post at the university, finding solace in the arms of a local geisha whom he established in a small house on the outskirts of Nagoya. Hiroshi returned to his own geisha, the Imperial Navy, where he rose quickly to full lieutenant. In 1912, a week after Emperor Meiji’s death, Seiko Fujita died. Everyone said it was grief — the same shattering sense of loss that led to the seppukus of General Nogi and Col. Enshu Konoye on the day of the funeral. But there were snickers, too, when the rumors spread that the old man expired from exhaustion between the heaving loins of one of Nagoy’s most famous geishas. Nevertheless, Hiroshi — with chants and chimes ringing in his ears — laid his father’s ashes to rest next to his mother’s in the Fujita crypt outside the great Ohara no Sanzen-in (Temple of the Absolute) near Kyoto. Then, returning to the empty family home, he stood outside the shrine, staring at the vacant shelf next to his brother’s ashes for a long, silent moment. Then he prayed — an invocation to the gods to be worthy of that space.

  In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany and by 1918, Japan had captured German bases in China and all of her island colonies in the Pacific. In 1919, Hiroshi was a full commander.

  Because the Japanese navy was modeled after the British, her first four battleships built in England and English the official language of the fleet, hundreds of officers were sent to England and the United States for advanced studies. By the end of 1919, Commander Fujita was enrolled in the University of Southern California as an English major. Fast rising, bright and a bachelor, he was an ideal candidate. Observant and with an infallible memory, he soon learned to respect the latent power of this country and the great war-making potential dormant in her big, strapping young men. He took many trips on the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads, finding a land so vast it challenged the great emptiness of the plains of southern China. He even took a trip to Mexico and met his friend and classmate from Eta Jima, Isoroku Yamamoto, who had hitchhiked from Harvard. Someday, Isoroku would command the combined fleet. They drank tequila, made love to Mexican girls, and laughed boisterously over reminiscences. Both knew Japan could never defeat America.

  After Hiroshi’s return to Japan, his bachelorhood became a heavy burden. Forty years of age, time was growing short, and he was the last Fujita. He fell in love twice the same year. His first love was the airplane and he consummated the courtship at the Kasumigaura Air Training School when he earned his flyer’s patch in June of 1924. Then, after his assignment as flight operations officer to the new carrier Akagi — a battle cruiser hybrid of the despised Washington Naval Conference — he met Akiko Minokama who lived in Hiroshima where the carrier was based.

  Small, with skin of burnished ivory, she was a polished jewel of a woman whose eyes swam with love for him the very first moment they met. Although she was seventeen years his junior, her father, a well-to-do rice merchant, was delighted with the union. Hiroshi sold the family home in Nagoya and had the shrine and his brother’s ashes moved to a lovely flower-strewn glade in the garden of a house he bought in Hiroshima. Then the couple settled down to an unusually blissful marriage in a country where unions were usually pledged by families at birth and consummated by near strangers just after puberty. Hiroshi never sought out a geisha as so many of his fellow officers did. Isoroku Yamamoto, happy in his marriage and madly in love with a geisha he kept in Kobe, often chided Hiroshi about his “abnormal attachment.” But Hiroshi just smiled. His son Kazuo was born in 1926 and Makoto in 1928.

  The next decade found Fujita and Yamamoto viewing the army’s growing ambitions in China with alarm. In 1931, the Kwangtung Army, acting as a state within a state, seized Manchuria, and the puppet state of Manchuko was established. The Chinese dragon turned to lick its wounds but the Russian bear growled angrily, massing new divisions of armor and artillery along its 2100 mile border with Manchuko. Knowing a war against Chinese and Russian manpower was unwinnable, the navy advocated expansion to the south — a push to the Dutch East Indies and the priceless oil fields of Sumatra and Java.

  By the middle of the decade, Fujita had risen to rear admiral and was a key officer on the staff of Isoroku Yamamoto, who was a full admiral. The navy watched uneasily as a variety of political figures who opposed the army’s expansionistic ambitions in China were murdered.

  “Government by assassination,” Isoroku called the killings angrily.

  Then in 1936, the Kodo-ha action took place when the First Infantry Division rebelled, left its Tokyo barracks and murdered some of the nation’s most prominent politicians. By pure chance, the prime minister escaped. Although the mutiny was suppressed and the leaders executed, the army emerged with control of the cabinet, and the march toward war accelerated.

  Fujita and Yamamoto not only feuded with the army, they found themselves at war with a clique o
f old admirals within the navy as well — the so-called battleship sailors who, in 1935, wangled funds from the government for four monstrous new battleships of the Yamato class. The fight was hard and tenacious and finally, in the Japanese tradition of compromise, three hulls would become battleships while the fourth, hull number 274, would someday become known as Yonaga.

  The war on the mainland enlarged, and the stalemate Fujita feared enveloped Japanese divisions as they confronted a quagmire of inexhaustible Chinese manpower. The Americans imposed sanctions, and Roosevelt and Hull shouted angry words. American pilots even flew against them in China. Then the naval general staff sent word to Yamamoto to draw up plans for an attack against American forces. Angrily, the admiral shouted, “This is insane! A war we cannot win!”

  But Isoroku was a professional, and despite his knowledge of the power of the great slumbering giant far to the east, he called in Kameto Kurashima, Minoru Genda, and Hiroshi Fujita, who was just forming the air groups for the new carrier Yonaga, and the planning for Plan Z — the Pearl Harbor attack — began.

  At the first meeting aboard the battleship Nagato, Yamamoto’s flagship, Hiroshi had said to the admiral, “Eighteen months. We can have our way for eighteen months. Then the Yankees…”

  “Nonsense,” Kuroshima had argued, cigarette dangling from his lips. “The barbarians will have no chance.”

  In November of 1941, Adm. Hiroshi Fujita knelt before his brother’s ashes for the last time and then stood rigidly while Akiko, Kazuo, and Makoto bowed, clapped and implored the gods to walk with husband and father. Then Hiroshi held Akiko briefly, clasped his son’s hands, turned and left. Glancing back for a last look at the family, which had followed him to the roadside where an Imperial Navy staff car waited, he paused. His eyes lingered for a long moment on his eldest son, Kazuo, a giant for a Japanese at six feet and perhaps 170 pounds with short-cropped hair, steady eyes, and a square jaw. Decades later, long after Kazuo had been reduced to swirling radioactive dust, he would meet a blond American giant who would bring Kazuo back with his strength, courage, and intelligence.