One Man's Justice

by Akira Yoshimura

  Until that point, Takuya’s image of the enemy had been focused upon the aircraft itself, but now the people who flew it, dropped the bombs and manned its guns became his enemy. If there were twelve crew per plane and one hundred bombers taking part in a raid, this represented no fewer than one thousand two hundred of the enemy bent on raining havoc and destruction upon Japanese citizens. Each time he heard that Japanese fighters were engaging the intruders, in his mind’s eye he pictured the American machine-gunners firing their weapons. When the bombers had reached their target, he imagined the bombardier looking through his sights and pressing the button to open the bomb-bay doors.

  With the American landings on Okinawa starting on the twenty-sixth of March, air raids on the Kyushu region intensified dramatically. The following day and night, there were attacks by over two hundred B-29s on munitions factories in the Kokura and Yawata areas. On the thirty-first approximately a hundred and seventy Superfortresses attacked air force bases in Tachiarai, Kanoya and Ohmura. And on both the twenty-eighth and the twenty-ninth a force of approximately seven hundred and thirty enemy warplanes operating from aircraft carriers attacked air force and naval targets on the Kyushu eastern coastline and in the areas of Kanoya, Kagoshima, Miyazaki and Sasebo.

  Repeated raids on the Tokyo and Nagoya areas lasted into April, and on the sixteenth locations in Kyushu were attacked by a combined force of about a hundred bombers and fighters. Raids targeting mainly air force installations in Kyushu were carried out on the seventeenth by approximately eighty B-29s, and then from the twenty-first to the twenty-ninth by a total of around eight hundred and forty Superfortresses. Takuya was kept frantically busy collecting information and issuing air-raid warnings.

  During this time he came to think that these twenty-four prisoners would probably all be executed, but on the afternoon of the seventeenth of May, he heard that two of them had been removed from the holding-cells and transported by truck to the Faculty of Medicine at Kyushu Imperial University. The aide to the chief of staff who had told Takuya this said that one of the men was the crewman who had been shot through the lung with a hunting-rifle and that the other was an airman who had serious problems with his digestive organs. Both, he said, were going to the university hospital to receive treatment.

  On hearing this, Takuya had thought that surely there was little need to take people to the hospital for medical treatment if they were to be executed soon, but he assumed there was a policy of having the prisoners as physically sound as possible at the time of the execution.

  In May the air raids became even more relentless. In the eleven days between the third and the fourteenth, around two hundred and fifty B-29s and sixteen hundred and fifty carrier-borne aircraft attacked targets all over Kyushu.

  Just after midnight on the twenty-third, a force of twenty B-29s dropped a large number of mines in the Kanmon Strait before heading east back over the ocean at around 1.40 a.m. In the air battle enacted under a canopy of stars the interceptors shot down four bombers and inflicted serious damage on four others. Takuya relieved one of his junior officers that night, taking off only his jacket before slipping into the bed in the rest area just off the operations room.

  Awaking at eight the next morning, Takuya ate a simple meal of sorghum with barley rice before heading out to the tactical operations centre, a concrete structure half set into the ground behind the headquarters building. On the way he saw two prisoners being led along the corridor and out of the back door. Both wore black cloth blindfolds and their hands were manacled in front of them. They were accompanied by a doctor assigned to military duty and five soldiers carrying rifles with bayonets. The prisoners were pushed into an army lorry parked in the yard behind the building and the rear flap of the lorry’s old tattered hood was pulled down and fastened. An army medical officer was with them, and Takuya guessed that these prisoners must also be going to the university hospital, although there were no obvious signs that they were wounded or ill in any way.

  The lorry moved slowly out of the yard and down the slope, flicking up pieces of gravel with its rear tyres.

  By late May, Western Regional Headquarters staff were working frantically to tighten defences in their region as part of Imperial Army Headquarters’ decision to engage the enemy in a final decisive battle on the Japanese mainland.

  In the Okinawa area, the American invasion force, comprising around fourteen hundred warships and almost two hundred thousand army and navy personnel, had already established a bridgehead on the island, but because of tenacious resistance the American advance was much slower than expected. In response to these landings, the Japanese mobilised a special attack force centred on the battleship Yamato, with kamikaze units smashing relentlessly into the oncoming American warships. The kamikaze attacks were a serious menace to the American force, but their only feasible approach to Okinawa was a course following the line of the Nansei islands, so they were easily detected by radar, allowing the Americans to intercept them with large numbers of fighter planes. As a result, losses were significant and most planes in these units were shot down before they could reach their destination.

  The American ground troops, supported by bombardment from warships and strafing from fighters operating off aircraft carriers, gradually pushed forwards, and, though the Japanese provided determined opposition, they were eventually forced to retreat to the south-western corner of the main island of Okinawa, where they were now playing out the final act of their resistance.

  With the fall of Okinawa just days away, the High Command predicted that the Americans would lose little time in turning their efforts toward a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland islands. Based on this assumption, plans were drawn up for the ultimate battle to defend the homeland, which centred on intense analysis of the enemy’s situation. Essentially, the Americans’ weak point was that they had to rely upon greatly extended supply lines stretching across the Pacific Ocean, and in contrast to previous battles, in which Japanese troops had had little choice but to make desperate banzai charges on far-flung Pacific islands, it was hoped that in a defence of the mainland itself the Japanese would have a decided advantage. Levels of available manpower were still high and, if the local populace was united in its support of the defensive effort, it was thought that there was a significant chance of victory. Public declarations were made that this decisive battle would by no means be a defensive struggle, and that it was indeed nothing less than an all-out offensive against the enemy.

  There were numerous opinions as to the specific locations the Americans would target for their invasion, but in the end it was assumed that they would most likely select the southern Kyushu area, as that would allow them to use Okinawan airfields to provide fighter cover for the ground troops. In terms of specific landing-points, it was predicted that the invasion would primarily target the Miyazaki coastline, Ariake Bay and points on both the west and south coastlines of the Satsuma peninsula.

  Imperial Headquarters relocated a number of units from Honshu to Kyushu and placed them under the command of Western Regional Headquarters. In accordance with orders from Tokyo, the extra troops were stationed around the locations judged most likely to bear the brunt of an invasion, and with the co-operation of local authorities and the general public work was begun on the construction of defensive positions. In addition, High Command dispatched a staff officer to Western headquarters, and other young officers who had completed a course of training at the Imperial Army’s Nakano ‘School’ of subterfuge and intelligence activities were chosen to take command of, and begin tactical preparation for, units specifically designed to penetrate and disrupt the invading forces.

  At the end of May, operating from repaired airfields in Okinawa, the Americans began a concentrated bombing offensive on the Kyushu area. On the twenty-eighth of May a combined force of about seventy bombers and fighters attacked targets all over southern Kyushu, and subsequently there were raids on both the second and third of June by a total of four hundred and
twenty carrier-borne aircraft, followed by another combined force of some three hundred bombers and fighters attacking Air Force facilities.

  By now the struggle in Okinawa had reached its finale, with the surviving defenders and large numbers of civilian refugees retreating to make a last stand at the southernmost tip of the island. An air of gloom hung over Western Regional Headquarters as staff listened in to the wireless communications of the defenders in Okinawa.

  On the ninth of June, Takuya was told by the staff officer attached to the tactical operations centre that eight of the American prisoners were dead. Evidently they were the ones who had been taken in pairs from the holding-cells at headquarters to the Faculty of Medicine at Kyushu Imperial University.

  He had been told that the first two captives transported to the university hospital were to receive treatment, but it now seemed that they had in fact been executed by medical staff. The prisoners had been sent to their deaths by a staff officer, Colonel Tahara, and Medical Officer Haruki, who had decided to use prisoners condemned to death as guinea pigs in experiments for medical research, and so requested that Professor Iwase of the First Department of Surgery use his good offices to facilitate it.

  The two prisoners were anaesthetised with ether and carried to the anatomy laboratory, where they were laid on separate dissection tables. Professor Iwase operated to remove portions of the lobe of each of their lungs, but both men died from massive haemorrhaging when arteries were severed in the process. Subsequently, another six prisoners were brought to the anatomy laboratory, each undergoing surgery on his stomach, liver, or brain, the complete removal of the gall bladder, or injection of refined sea water into their arteries. All six died on the operating-table during this experimental surgery, and evidently both Colonel Tahara and Medical Officer Haruki were present on each occasion.

  ‘They were all well anaesthetised and in a coma, so maybe it was a painless way to be executed,’ whispered Colonel Tahara, adding that the bodies had been cremated on Abura-yama and the ashes buried.

  The other staff in the tactical operations centre learnt about the eight prisoners in the course of that day. Colonel Tahara instructed them not to mention what had happened to anyone else, telling them that the official stance was to be that these prisoners had been sent to Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo.

  While Takuya felt no particular emotion about their death, it struck him that executing them by means of experimental surgery was rather unusual. Still, regardless of the method used, he did not falter in his belief that it was only natural that they should die for their sins. In fact, more than anything, he felt increasingly indignant that the remaining prisoners were still alive and depleting precious food stocks in the headquarters compound.

  That evening, in the headquarters judicial department, the remaining sixteen prisoners were arraigned before a formal military tribunal, and based on a re-examination of the transcripts of their interrogations it was confirmed that every one of the airmen had taken part in the bombing of urban targets. All were found guilty of the murder of non-combatants and, based on the tenets of international law, all were sentenced to death.

  The following day, another seventeen airmen who had been captured after parachuting from B-29s shot down over Kyushu were delivered to the rear entrance of the headquarters building in a kempeitai lorry, then put into holding-cells together with the previous batch of prisoners. The cells were too small to handle the influx of prisoners, however, and with four men in each it was almost impossible for all of them to lie down. So the judicial department moved immediately to convert the litigants’ waiting-room in their part of the building into an extra holding-cell for some of the newcomers.

  Over the next few days, Takuya found himself virtually confined to the tactical operations centre. On the eighth of June, reconnaissance photographs taken by a plane flying over US Army Air Force facilities on Okinawa were delivered to headquarters. They showed clearly that the airfields in north and central Okinawa, along with those on Ie Island, were fully operational, and confirmed the existence of at least five hundred and twenty-three fighters and bombers. Takuya and his comrades all sensed that an intensification of the attacks on Kyushu was imminent, and that the stage was set for a decisive battle for the homeland.

  On the evening of the eighteenth of June, the mood at Western headquarters grew sombre. On the radio they had heard the farewell message from Lieutenant-General Ushijima Mitsuru, commander of the Thirty-second Army in Okinawa, to Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo, informing his superiors that he was about to give his life for the Emperor’s cause. ‘While our forces have fought with supreme heroism over the last two months, the enemy’s overwhelming numerical superiority on land, sea and air means that this struggle has entered its closing stages. I most humbly report that the final preparations are in hand to lead those surviving soldiers to a glorious death.’

  The final battle for Okinawa was a struggle of apocalyptic proportions. According to reports from pilots of reconnaissance planes, the pummelling of the southern tip of the island by concentrated bombardment from warships, ground-based artillery and the air was such that it looked as though there had been a huge volcanic eruption, with streams of tracer bullets, raging fires and plumes of grey and black smoke all adding a macabre effect to the hellish scene. Since the battle for Saipan and the struggles for the islands across the northern Pacific, non-combatants had been deeply embroiled in the conflict and had even lost their lives, together with the soldiers of each defending garrison. No doubt this tragedy had been repeated in Okinawa, with scores of old men, women and children losing their lives in the bombardment or choosing to die by their own hand.

  That night, the news came that a force of fifty B-29s based in Saipan had attacked Hamamatsu and another thirty had raided the city of Yokkaichi, both attacks involving incendiaries and resulting in firestorms so destructive that the targets were virtually burnt to cinders. To date, the number of aircraft involved in bombing raids on targets in Japan had soared to over twenty thousand, claiming some four hundred thousand lives, destroying one million six hundred thousand homes and producing six million three hundred thousand refugees.

  The next morning brought blue skies, with the meteorological office forecasting fine weather all over Kyushu. To those in the tactical operations centre, this meant a drastically increased likelihood of large-scale bombing raids, and orders were issued for spotters to be particularly vigilant.

  The daylight hours passed uneventfully, and when the sun dipped low in the evening the bright red of the western sky signalled that another fine day would follow. Within minutes of the sunset the sky was a mass of twinkling stars.

  That night, at 7.50 p.m., a report came in from an electronic listening-post set to cover the Hyuga coastline that a force of aircraft was heading north-west over that quadrant of the Kyushu defensive perimeter. As there was nothing to suggest that this was friendly aircraft on patrol, Takuya immediately assumed that it was a force of B-29s from Saipan and issued an air-raid warning to all areas of northern Kyushu.

  Knowing that a lone Superfortress had flown a reconnaissance mission over Fukuoka the previous night, Takuya expected that before long Kyushu’s largest city would bear the brunt of an attack. Thousands of tons of incendiaries had already reduced major urban centres such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka to scorched wastelands, but so far the attacks on Kyushu had mostly been limited to military targets or munitions factories, and the island had been spared the saturation raids aimed at razing towns and cities to the ground. Okinawa was now completely in American hands, and it was likely that their next move would be to obliterate the cities of Kyushu before launching an invasion force on to its beaches.

  Red lights lit up on the otherwise darkened map of Kyushu on the wall of the operations room as one report after another of aircraft intruding into the perimeter came in from electronic listening-points. The sequence of the lights indicated that the enemy bombers were proceeding on a course toward northern Kyushu.r />
  Processing the incoming data, Takuya realised that this force, comprising around seventy aircraft, had split into two separate groups somewhere over Hita city in Oita prefecture. Around ten planes were continuing straight on their original course, while the other sixty had veered slightly to the north-west. It was presumed that the ten aircraft were on what would be the fifth mission to drop mines in the Kanmon Strait, adding to the total of eighty planes that had already done so, and that the other, larger group was heading for Fukuoka. When incoming reports confirmed beyond a doubt that Fukuoka was indeed the target, the tactical operations centre immediately issued an air-raid warning for the city and its environs.

  The first word that intruders had entered Fukuoka airspace came from Dazaifu, just south-east of the metropolitan area, and was soon followed by reports of aircraft sighted above the city itself. Takuya knew from the data that the bombers were deploying at a low level over the city, and by now would have started their bombing runs. The intruders appeared to have followed the line of the Nakagawa river into the city and then dropped their load on Shin-Yanagi-Machi and the Higashi–Nakasu area, resulting in a rash of reports of fires raging in those areas.

  Those in the tactical operations centre, a construction set partially into the ground and cased in reinforced concrete, were removed from the thunderous blasts of exploding bombs and the clamour of a city in the throes of incineration. Takuya and his fellow officers stood staring at the red lamps on the map of Kyushu stretched across one wall. The lights indicating the Fukuoka metropolitan area remained on, as did those representing the Kanmon Strait, confirming that the smaller force of ten aircraft had reached its predicted target.

  Takuya sat motionless, staring at the map on the wall in front of his desk. Although the sky above the headquarters building was swarming with enemy planes, and the area around their safe haven was probably engulfed in flames, the atmosphere within the operations room was almost transquil. As the officer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligence, Takuya focused his attention solely on imparting information about the movements of enemy aircraft, and to him there was no difference between planes directly above and planes attacking a more distant region within the defensive perimeter.