Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  The 711th never had a chance. The engagement was all over in less than twenty minutes.

  By the time the last shred of Japanese airframe fluttered down into the East China Sea, fifteen Ōkas, eighteen Isshiki Rikkōs and ten Zeros had been destroyed. One hundred sixty men were dead. One American Hellcat was lost.[146]

  As this massacre unfolded, Ugaki and Okamura had been in the radio shack for nearly three hours now, standing with a crowd of staff officers, pilots and clerks that surrounded a radio set. Close to the attack force’s ETA of approximately 1500 hours, the radioman’s Morse ticker registered a single, enigmatic MISSION CANCELLED message.[147] After that, dead silence.

  Late in the afternoon, the few shot-up Zero stragglers that were the only survivors of the debacle began landing at Kanoya. Their eyewitness reports confirmed everyone’s worst fears – the devastation had been total. The force had not gotten anywhere near being close enough to drop the Ōkas before all of the bombers were shot down. Nonaka, the other section leaders, all of the Ōka pilots and everyone else who had been on an Isshiki Rikkō were lost, along with over half the escort fighters. Nobody else was coming back.

  The enormity of the disaster only became more emotionally crushing as the initial numbing shock wore off, the evening wore on, and every man in Kanoya was left left alone to face a long night of brokenhearted bitterness. By most accounts, Admiral Matome Ugaki was the most despondent of them all, and was never the same man again after being told the news. Perhaps the smiling faces of the Jinrai pilots were projected in his mind’s eye when, less than five months later on August 15, he ignored the surrender announcement and disobeyed his Emperor’s orders for the only time in his life to fly the final tokkō sortie of the war.[148]

  From a morale standpoint, no one could accept another debacle like the March 21 outing, and Ugaki waited ten days before committing to another sortie with the Ōkas. And this time around, he was going to keep his gamble small. On April 1, the second Jinrai attack force left Kanoya with only three Isshiki Rikkō/Ōka strike teams. Although small, the mission saw the Jinrai’s first successes, with the American battleship West Virginia and three transport ships damaged.

  Ugaki – a brave but never rash or daring man – refused to allow the minor successes of April 1 go to his head, and he waited until April 12 for just the right conditions to order the next Ōka attack. He was, however, emboldened enough on this day to up his ante to eight Isshiki Rikkō/Ōkas.

  *****

  On the afternoon of April 12, eighteen-year-old Radio Operator Third Class Charles Stanford was at battle stations in the “radar shack” of Mannert L. Abele, a Task Force 54[149] destroyer on picket duty with several other “tin cans” at radar patrolling station 14 (“Sugar Charlie”) about seventy miles northwest of Okinawa in the East China Sea. The job of the picket destroyers was to protect the American invasion fleet by their keeping a constant radar search vigil over the area of operations, and vectoring in CAP to intercept anything deemed a potential threat. Since the introduction of tokkō tactics by the Japanese, this function had taken on crucial importance. Since the start of the Okinawa campaign, it had become a matter of life and death.

  Veterans of fierce action during the defense of the Iwo Jima invasion fleet, the Abele’s radarmen were good at their jobs – experts at the arcane art of IFF (Identify Friend or Foe). When Stanford picked up a large formation of unidentified aircraft approaching from the northeast at a range of 286 miles, the well-oiled human machinery of the radar shack clicked into gear:

  “We went to battle stations 5 minutes later after satisfying ourselves that the threat was real,” Stanford writes fifty-eight years later. “Captain (Alton E.) Parker called down to the radar shack, instructing us to advise "Delegate Base" (Command Post for the sixteen Destroyer Picket Stations surrounding Okinawa) of our radar contact…They scrambled additional aircraft immediately. We had four Hellcats under our direct control but had released them earlier to check on other "bogies" who were closer to the Hellcats position than our incoming contact.”[150]

  In short, Sugar Charlie’s dedicated CAP was too far out to get back to help before the bogies arrived, assuming they maintained present speed and heading. Whatever the planes were and whoever was flying them, they were coming in, and there was nothing Stanford and his shipmates could do now but wait for them to show up and play their hand.

  At about 1340, the first of the Japanese attackers – three obsolescent Aichi Val dive bombers – appeared over Sugar Charlie, where they were made quick work of by the AA crews of Abele and the other ships on station. By 1400, however, another fifteen to twenty Japanese planes were swarming overhead, circling the American ships like sharks in a feeding frenzy. At about 1440, a Zero with Abele’s number jinked AA fire to crash her amidships, knocking out the engine room and leaving the destroyer as good as dead in the water.[151]

  About five minutes after the Zero strike, three Japanese heavy bombers were observed approaching from a distance, then turning away before closing any further. A moment later, the Abele’s survivors and AA gunners on the other ships caught a split-second glimpse of something they had never seen before. Visible only as a light gray streak against a light gray horizon, a missile of some sort came whistling in at extreme speed and wave cap altitude, cracking the Abele with a tremendous explosion right above the waterline and nearly splitting the ship in half. Stanford and Captain Parker were the last two men to leave the ship alive.

  Within minutes, the Abele slipped under the waves. But the Jinrai was not through with her crew. As Stanford and those shipmates still able treaded water, clutching for dear life onto anything that floated and kicked at the sharks that were beginning to gather, two of the Jinrai’s escort Zeros barreled in and began strafing and bombing the Abele’s survivors.[152]

  The Ōka had just killed its first ship.

  15 Echoes Of ThunderOn April 14, Suzuki and Naitō and about forty other Ōka pilots were flown from Kōnoike down to Kanoya to replace the steep operational losses of the previous three weeks. When news of the March 21 debacle reached Kōnoike, the pilots there shook off their initial sadness and disappointment with the rationalization that there was no accounting for the fortunes of war. The only thing the pilots could do was to give it a better showing when it was their turn to strap into the Ōkas. But no one on the April 14 flight to Kanoya had any idea when they were going to be given a chance to prove their mettle.

  The plane from Kōnoike had barely rolled to a stop and its passengers lined up on Kanoya’s tarmac before the pilots were to go on standby for attack orders. The directive was given by a flight ops staff officer with about as much tact and emotion as if he were ordering a bowl of noodles in a restaurant.

  “Have you ever heard the expression ‘I felt like ice water was poured down my back’?” Suzuki-san asks me. “Well, that is exactly what I experienced when we got that standby command.”

  Naitō-san laughs and nods when he hears this description.

  “I couldn’t believe that we were going to be sent out so soon,” he says. “I thought we’d at least have a little time to mentally prepare ourselves. But it was not really a “fear” kind of shock, more a feeling of being not quite ready for this. You know how people say “my life flashed in front of my eyes”? Well, in that moment that’s exactly what I experienced…Like there was a slideshow of faces and places in my head. I think I was really saying goodbye to those people and things. But I did not have much time. I had to say my goodbyes quickly. After that, though, I experienced a kind of calm and thought ‘So, this is it. I’m dead. Well, now I guess I don’t have to worry about dying anymore’.”

  A few minutes later, as the stunned pilots were going through the final checks on their gear, the flight ops officer swaggered up to the group once again.

  “Stand down,” he said, with just as much nonchalance as his previous utterance. “Pick up your gear and report to Personnel for billeting.”

  That night, the pilots were
told about the April 12 sinking of the American destroyer. The news electrified the group, but Suzuki’s excitement was tinged with loss when he heard the name of the man who had piloted the Ōka. It was his best friend, Saburō Dohi. Still, Suzuki could not help but be proud of his friend’s success, and most of all, of his bravery.

  “I talked later to the pilot of the Isshiki Rikkō that carried Dohi’s Ōka on that mission,” Suzuki-san says. “He said Dohi was so cool and collected that he napped most of the trip down from Kanoya. They had to wake him up to get him into his Ōka when they closed in on the drop point.”

  Naitō had one more close call on May 6, when his mission was cancelled on the flight line. The Isshiki Rikkōs’ engines had been gunning and the Ōka pilots were walking toward their planes when the stand down order came. For the next two months, Suzuki and Naitō were left off the attack rosters, attending instead to the lonely vigil of watching their buddies fly off on their missions, never to return. During those surreal weeks of send-offs and long hours of contemplation on the subject of their imminent demise, the young men gradually came to terms with their fate. This grim determination, however, would turn out to be unnecessary. They could not have known it at the time, but their war was already over.

  The Jinrai’s war ended on June 22 with a failed four-plane mission to Okinawa. In the end, the Ōka never lived up to expectations, having sunk only the Mannert L. Abele and damaged six other American vessels for the loss of 375 Isshiki Rikkō crewmen and fifty-five Ōka pilots.[153]

  The final months of the war were even more anti-climactic for Takei, Asano and their other Kō-13 classmates stranded at Kōnoike. They sat out the rest of the spring of 1945 in a training regimen that steadily slowed as the fuel situation worsened. During the long hot summer that followed, training ground to a halt as the last precious drops of the nation’s aviation fuel stocks were ordered set aside exclusively for tokkō missions.

  After the surrender, the young petty officers were demobilized quickly. They now had to sort out the rest of their lives as fifteen and sixteen-year-old veterans of a war that had devastated their country and overturned the entire value system of its people. The boys were destined to bear the brunt of the backbreaking labor that would be required over the next twenty years to rebuild a nation that had been destroyed in the previous two. In many ways, their hardest days and toughest challenges were still to come.

  “When I went back to Hamamatsu, I enrolled in junior high right where I had left off before Yokaren,” Takei-san says, now grinning as he approaches the punchline of the anecdote. “But there was one major problem. The school didn’t have a roof anymore. Every time it rained, classes were cancelled.”

  *****

  It is September 13, 2002, and Takei-san and I are riding the Shinkansen home after attending the last annual meeting of the Zero Fighter Pilots’ Association (Takei-san qualifies for membership, having trained in the plane). The association officially disbanded today – its members too old and far-flung throughout the archipelago to keep up their annual congregation. From now on, activities will be informal, and carried out mostly by newsletter.

  Perhaps the finality inherent in today’s ceremony has the normally taciturn Takei-san in a philosophical mood, for he is now regaling me with stories about his life after the war. I am not asking anything. Just listening and nodding.

  Takei-san talks about how he finished up his studies, got his engineering qualifications and began his rise through Japan’s rough and tumble construction business during the exciting and turbulent years of the postwar economic growth period. He talks a little about fishing, his post-retirement passion. Toward the end of his monologue, however, his tone becomes pensive. He begins to talk about raising a family, and about how, during his busiest years, he lost touch with his wife and children for a while, even when they were all living under the same roof. He has devoted the years since his retirement to making up for lost time and trying to refurbish these relationships, but the going has been slow and not always easy.

  “I grew up being told that a father was supposed to be strong and silent, and that working hard for the family was the only thing really expected of him. Emotions and tenderness for the children, sitting down and talking with them about school and troubles and worries – all that was supposed to be the mother’s job. That was the way it always was, and it seemed to work just fine when I was a kid.”

  Unbeknownst to his generation until it was almost too late, the dynamics of the Japanese family had changed, most radically and critically in the terms of the role of the father. And, to use Takei-san’s metaphor, there was no user’s manual to help them through the transition.

  “Now I see that I was wrong,” he says to the window glass. “I wish I had another chance to redo those years. I would have spent more time with my family…Helped my wife out a little more than I did…”

  Silence returns, but it is not uncomfortable. We are tired, and quietly staring out the window seems as good an idea as any for passing the rest of the journey home. A night landscape whips by the window at 200 kilometers an hour, all glittery industrial plant, neon-blazing pachinko parlors and mammoth, Orwellian apartment blocks stretching as far as the eye can see, everything strung with bridges, honeycombed with underpasses and tunnel entrances. I realize that ninety percent of everything I am looking at right now – including the magnificent train on which we are riding – was built and paid for with the hope, sweat and youth of men like Tokurō Takei.

  Was it really only this generation’s war dead who ended up sacrificing their lives for Japan?

  Section Four: A Soldier’s Scrapbook

  16 Bright-eyed Boys From The Provinces

  Iwao Fukagawa is slightly stoop-shouldered, but he has the vigorous presence of a man still in the prime of life, with a full head of bushy white hair and small eyes as lively and animated as his foghorn voice. He bears a strong resemblance to Warren Oates, if you can imagine what the actor might have looked like if he had lived clean and managed to reach eighty relatively intact.

  Every minute of the nearly half a century the stentorian Fukagawa-san spent as a business executive is evident in his hurried but economical movements, and in his voluminous but measured speech, which is what a linguist or computer programmer would call “semantically dense.” Nary a breath is wasted, and every utterance is task-oriented. No matter the topic, Fukagawa-san speaks excitedly and with unqualified conviction – one moment a football coach motivating his players before a big game, the next a mother lecturing her children about dressing warmly in cold weather. Although I do not always think everything he says necessarily merits such conviction – especially when the subject of “correct” history is broached – I find his attitude refreshing and his energy contagious, and there is a confidence-instilling sincerity in everything about him. His is a vanishing breed of Japanese male, imbued with an undeniable quality of what my grandparents’ generation would have called “sand.”

  As we begin our interview in a tatami conference room at Kaikōsha – the veterans’ club venue where I will also interview Toshio Yoshitake a month later – Fukagawa-san arranges his papers and appointment book (open to today’s date, of course) just so, everything spread out before him within easy arm’s reach, the lower edge of each item parallel to the edge of the table. No sooner have I asked my first formal question of the interview than Fukagawa-san is off and running, summarizing his brief but dramatic career in military aviation by reading from a sheaf of notes itemized in chronological order and broken down by unit and airbase location. I can barely get a word in edgewise, but I have no problem with that, and it is obvious that Fukagawa-san has no problem with the arrangement, either. In the meantime, the recorder is running, and it will catch everything.

  *****

  Iwao Fukagawa was born the second of three brothers on January 18, 1923 on the outskirts of Saga City, a manufacturing center in northwestern Kyūshū in what was once the old samurai province of Higo. Although his fathe
r Yonekichi liked to talk about the proud samurai heritage of the region, the Fukagawas were originally of peasant stock, hailing from deep in the Kyūshū mountains, and Iwao and his siblings were the first generation of the family born in an urban environment. Yonekichi had worked very hard to make that possible.

  In his own youth, regional primogeniture traditions meant that Yonekichi – as the youngest of four sons – would not be expected to devote his life to caring for his parents in their dotage and looking after the family homestead. Sharing the fate of his next oldest two brothers, it also meant that he was cut out of any claim to his father’s estate, which would go lock, stock, and barrel to the eldest son. But the flip side of this de facto congenital disownment was that Yonekichi was free to seek his fortune wherever and however he chose to do so. After completing elementary school, he exercised this freedom by leaving the family farm and heading off to Ogi-machi on the outskirts of Saga City to apprentice as a carpenter.

  The boy was a quick study, skilled with his hands, and blessed with keen business sense and political savvy. His day-to-day activities were fueled by a vigorously extraverted temperament, a robust hard-work ethic, and lofty ambitions that, in his case, even an unwelcome year of army conscript duty failed to derail. Returning to Saga after his stint, he continued to hone his professional chops while establishing the network of contacts and customers that would help him set up his own saw mill, lumber yard and woodworking factory by his late twenties. By the time his second son Iwao was born in 1923, Yonekichi was already on his way to becoming a successful businessman and a leader in his local community.

  Although Yonekichi Fukagawa was by no means a highly educated man, he believed himself to be a wise one, and thus eminently qualified to instruct his family in the ways of the world. A favorite after dinner activity in the Fukagawa household was for Yonekichi to gather his children in front of him in the living room and tell them School Of Hard Knocks diligence fables and stories about how tough his own life had been as a child and young man, especially during his hand-to-mouth apprenticeship years.