Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  “I hadn’t seen this in nearly forty years until the other day, when I dug this out of my closet. I don’t think I had seen it since I built my house, and that was in the Sixties.”

  I thumb through the scrapbook, and it is indeed a treasure trove of wartime newspaper clippings. There are a couple of pieces about the Sekichō Unit – classmate Toshio Yoshitake’s old outfit – and one of the articles even has a picture of the dolls the pilots flew into battle with hanging from their canopy latches.

  There are pictures snipped from magazines and propaganda leaflets. Letters and postcards from home. But the real treasure in the book – what Fukagawa-san has called me here to hand over – is his mother’s letter. It is written in a beautiful and accomplished grasshand calligraphy on a long strip of letter scroll, a form of stationery that is almost never seen any more in Japan. The letter is crumbling along its edges and folds. Most of the damage is due to the effects of time and paper acidity, but physical wear and tear is also a factor. As Fukagawa-san explains, he kept it in the breastpocket of his flight suit during many a sweaty training session, and planned to carry it there – over his heart – when he made his final sortie.

  The letter seems imbued with an energy that tingles my fingertips as I handle it. Declaring my inability to make my way through all the elegant and almost Arabic swirls of the grasshand, I hand it back to Fukagawa-san so that he can read it for me:

  Looks like rainy season is upon us again.

  It certainly sounds like you are training very hard. We were all shocked speechless to hear about Corporal Makiuchi’s death. He sounded like such a nice young man. But you can take comfort in knowing that he has now joined the gods protecting our country. He is an angel watching over the Seiki Unit.

  Every morning since coming home from our last visit to your base, I have gone down to the river behind our house and ritually bathed before going to the local shrine to pray for the Seiki Unit’s success in battle. I pray that the gods give each one of you boys the chance to sink an enemy aircraft carrier. It will be a fine and glorious death.

  Whenever I visit the shrine, though, I can’t help but remember how you also used to go there so faithfully as a boy, praying to be accepted into the Military Academy. When I think of that, and all of the other things you have done to make me so proud of you, hot tears never fail to come to my eyes.

  It is hard to believe it has already been twenty-two years since we welcomed you into the world, Iwao. You have always been a source of pride for our family – always so diligent and hardworking, never accepting failure without a fight, studying from early morning until late at night everyday. Remember the alarm clock we bought for you to put on your desk when you were studying so hard to get into the Yōnen Gakkō? Maybe you didn’t know it, but I was awake every hour that you were, and many times when you weren’t. Sometimes I would find you fast asleep at your desk, and I would leave a little treat in your desk drawer for you to find when you woke up.

  I could never get over how cheerful you seemed as you worked and studied, but never so serious that we couldn’t share a laugh or a light moment once in a while, like the time we stood in front of the window looking out at the rain and sang the “Rainy Day” nursery rhyme you used to like so much as a toddler.

  Oh Iwao, what a joy you were for us. You can’t imagine how we felt when your letter arrived from the base telling us that that cute, precious little boy we once knew is now a tokkō flight leader. Our emotions were even more complex and intense when we got to meet you at the base – so sad on one hand that we will be losing our son, yet so proud of the fine young man you have become. There were so many things I wanted to say to you but didn’t because I know that what you are doing is for the good of the country. It took so much effort for me to smile in front of you and your men as I said “Go off and do your best.” I couldn’t say what I really felt, and it was all I could do to stop myself from shouting out “Iwao-chan,” calling you like I used to when you were a little boy.

  As the proud Japanese mother of a Divine Eagle, I could not show you my tears when I gave you the hanayome ningyo. All of us in the family poured our hearts and prayers into that doll as we made her, and I held her in my arms like a baby when I took her to the shrine to be blessed by a priest. We want you to carry her into battle with you. Don’t think of her as just a doll. Think of her as your real bride, and know that your father and I have asked her to watch over you and take care of you, and to give you strength in your moment of truth, making sure that you sink an enemy carrier. She will follow you into death, and accompany you on your journey to eternity. As I held her in my arms at the shrine, I thought she was so precious and adorable, but my heart became strong and proud when I gave her to you, because at that moment I realized that you are not my cute little boy anymore, but a man with a mission that will be known around the world. When you make your attack, you will show the enemy of what stuff Japanese men are made. Even as a child, you used to say “I’m going to put the name Fukagawa in the history books.” Well, now you are really going to do that after all.

  Fall like a beautiful cherry blossom for the Emperor, and take strength in knowing that you will not be going alone. There are one hundred million of us behind you – every one of us a tokkō warrior, too. If the enemy invades Kyūshū, we will fight him just as hard as you have, and I will surely avenge your death.

  Be sure to get a carrier. We are all praying for the success of the Seiki Unit. Please pass this message on to your men: [TO ALL SEIKI UNIT PILOTS: Thank you for working so hard for our son, and graciously overlooking his shortcomings].

  I am also writing letters to the families of your men. Hopefully, we will all stay in touch, and perhaps even meet in person someday.

  Iwao, if you have a chance and if your final forward base is close enough, please try to come visit one last time before your sortie. If you can’t come to us, we will do everything we can to come see you and be there for your send-off. If we can’t be there in person, though, we have prepared big Hinomaru flags for all of us to wave from our rooftop, so please try to fly over the house one last time if you can.

  Recently, there has been much on the radio about tokkō missions, and our ears prick up every time there is a special bulletin, wondering if you were involved or not. In any case, we will try to make it to your base and send you off with warm smiles.

  Take care of your health and exert all of your energies toward accomplishing your mission.

  Your Mother

  June 15, 1945

  I pretend not to notice the tears in Fukagawa-san’s eyes as he finishes the letter, then smoothes out the scroll paper like a monk preparing the Shroud of Turin for another decade of climate-controlled storage. As he performs this ritual, I wonder if he is thinking the same thing I am – that in another destiny, this letter would not exist. It would have burned up in a Hayate, or been blown into molecules against the deck of an American troop ship instead of lasting for sixty years tucked between shoe boxes in the back of an old man’s wardrobe closet.

  Fukagawa-san carefully folds the letter up along its yellowed, crumbly creases, puts it back in the album, then hands the album over to me. The sentimental look in his eyes is gone in a blink, and he is an army officer again.

  “Don’t lose this,” he says, with a chuckle that nevertheless has some push behind it.

  I slip the scrapbook album into my bookbag and remind myself to keep a tight grip on it, for today it is heavier than usual. It contains a life.

  We shake hands and exchange salutes – a quick ceremony that gets a few curious looks from otherwise busily scurrying passersby. Then the stoop-shouldered Fukagawa-san does a crisp about-face and stomps off into the Brownian motion of the Friday evening rush with his stiff, vaguely Nixonian shuffle, his crusty-but-benign Warren Oates face thrust forward like the prow of an icebreaker to clear a path through the crowd.

  Section Five: Nadeshiko

  19 Band of SistersKyūshū is the southernmost of the fo
ur main Japanese home islands. While the climate of the heavily developed and industrial northern half of the island bordering the Inland Sea is temperate, its more agricultural southern half is semi-tropical. Jutting out into the South China Sea, southern Kyūshū catches the full brunt of the Kuroshio Current, a perennial stream of latitude-ambitious seawater from equatorial climes that keeps the weather balmy from October to May, positively steaming from June to September, and rainy year-round. The climate is ideal for the cultivation of sweet potatoes, succulent fruit, flowers, green tea and, of course, rice. It also makes the region a popular retirement destination for winter-haters (who do not mind a lot of rain) from colder areas of the country. A preponderance of palmetto-fringed roadways and marine sports-themed amusement parks reinforces this “Japanese Florida” image.

  While the climate may be appealing to meteorologists, farmers and rheumatism sufferers, and the active volcanoes dotting the area draw seismologists from around the world, Kyūshū’s craggy terrain features are deserving of the scrutiny of military historians – especially those enamored of “what if” conjecture. The area was slated to have been the main battlefield for the opening rounds of Operation Olympic, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945. If that invasion had actually taken place, the island’s spiny topography and soggy rice paddies would have made maneuvering and logistics an absolute nightmare for an army in the field, with the 30-degree-sloped, heavily foliated mountain ranges threading the area providing a defense-in-depth network of natural fortresses perfectly suited for guerrilla ambushes and hunkered-down fanatics. In any scenario short of a quick Japanese surrender, casualties on both sides of the fighting would have been appalling.[184]

  Equally unpleasant to contemplate is the stress already war-weary American G.I.s would have been subjected to by such prolonged, bitter combat in this treacherous terrain, watching buddies cut down over weeks and months of grim struggle against a maddeningly determined foe, and the malice this could have engendered in the hearts of these Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa veterans towards a people and a culture they already considered to be something less than human – and therefore psychologically that much easier to exterminate. Estimates that the resulting destruction in this region alone would have been at least a ten-fold magnification of the horrific Operation Iceberg – where some 12,000 Americans and over 200,000 military and civilian Japanese were killed during the American invasion of Okinawa – are probably on the conservative side. That such a bloodbath did not come to pass is one of the few happy notes in the history of the Pacific War.

  But the historical significance of Kyūshū certainly does not begin and end with its almost-role as a backdrop for seven-figure body counts and apocalyptic culture clash. Long the most important conduit to the Japanese archipelago for migrations, trade and cultural contacts from the Asian mainland, the island is the setting for the ancient Nihon Shoki and Kojiki racial and national origin myths adroitly popularized in post-restoration Japan to legitimize central authority under the Imperial government[185]. In the early twentieth century, prominent scholars like folklorist Kunio Yanagita and philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji, recoiling from what they saw as the danger of Japan’s inadvertently adopting Western social values in the country’s headlong modernization rush, were fond of affording Kyūshū status as a cultural repository of timeless national essence. It was seen as a region where harmonious, agricultural life was closest to the spiritual core of the nation’s soul and the ideal natural state of its people.[186]

  As militarism began to gain momentum in the 1930s, much was also made of the island’s samurai heritage – especially that of the former Kagoshima fiefdom of the Satsuma, the warrior clan famed as the fiercest and most patriotic (read “most xenophobic”) in feudal Japan.[187] This martial heritage readily lent itself to propaganda efforts in the last year of the war, when the government began to lay the spiritual groundwork for maximum defensive effort against the American invasion expected to make a beachhead in the region. The symbolism was lost on no one when they were reminded that Kyūshū was the setting for the original kamikaze of legend that swept away a Mongol invasion fleet in 1281, especially when the old Satsuma holdings around Kagoshima in the south began turning into what was basically one gigantic tokkō base in early spring 1945.

  Steamy climate, rugged terrain, traditional Asian crossroads function and reactionary warrior heritage – all are reflected in the character of the Satsuma descendants living in present-day Kagoshima Prefecture, who are among the most conservative yet paradoxically most personable residents of the archipelago. Kagoshima natives tend to be stereotyped by other Japanese as easy going, with a slow-burn temperament that nevertheless blazes fiercely when finally and fully aroused. If true – and there may be some historical basis to this stereotype – it is a trait of which potential invaders and other uninvited visitors remain ignorant at their own peril.

  Kagoshima’s history as an ancient Asian migrant melting pot is clearly evident in the spectacularly varied physical appearance of its people. The full Japanese spectrum of Asian facial types is well distributed throughout its population, but if there can be said to be a classic “Kagoshima” look, one need only look at a daguerreotype of the large-eyed, full-lipped visage and powerful physique of legendary renegade samurai Takamori Saigō to get a perfect example. When visiting the area, one notices many people it is not difficult to imagine could be Saigō’s descendants, with warm facial features in common with Okinawan cousins to the south but stocky, barrel-chested builds that speak more of cold north Asian steppes than balmy tropics.

  Not surprisingly for a region with such a rich genetic potpourri, Kagoshima is renowned for the beauty of its women, who are traditionally referred to as nadeshiko, after the wildflower (wild pink, dianthus superbus) that thrives in the region. The tough nadeshiko flower, with its ability to blossom even in sunless spots and rocky soil without losing its beauty, is cherished as an age-old symbol of purity and quiet endurance in adversity. During World War II, when propaganda organs were searching for appropriate imagery to push acceptance of the mobilization of schoolgirls into wartime work details, the flower’s combination of beauty and grit seemed order-made for poster visuals and catchphrase sloganeering. Thus the phrase yamato nadeshiko was born, with the addition of the ancient names for Japan – Yamato – effectively de-regionalizing the imagery for application to chaste, patient, diligent young women nationwide.[188]

  This ideological usage of nadeshiko was so effectively disseminated, in fact, that it remains in wide use today, mostly by middle-aged and elderly men in the context of lamenting the Westernized emancipation of women in modern Japan to the detriment of more traditionally passive Japanese models of femininity. But even these chauvinistic old pessimists hold near and dear to their hearts the belief that “good old-fashioned Japanese girls” still exist where the inspiration for the modern-day archetype originated – in the sleepy farming communities nestled deep in the mountains of the Satsuma Peninsula on the western shore of Kagoshima Bay.

  These days, the most visited of these remote locales is undoubtedly Chiran, a town located about twenty kilometers north of the windswept slopes of Mount Kaimondake, an active volcano on the shores of the South China Sea. But an explanation for the recent surge in tourist interest in Chiran is not to be found in any preponderance of nubile nadeshiko among its female population. While the town has been besieged by busloads of daytrippers in recent years, these visitors are not eligible bachelors who have made a pilgrimage to look for doting, patient brides.

  Nor do visitors come in search of fun and sun. Chiran is not now – nor has it probably ever been – a place to spend a rollicking good Saturday night. And outside of day-trip tourism and tea farming, there is nothing particularly robust about its economy that might attract serious investment in the area. Rather, judging from all outward and empirically measurable signs, it would appear that the town is taking a slow country stroll into oblivion that its
residents do not seem all that riled up about trying to stop. Chiran’s population peaked at 19,639 in 1965 on the demographic tidal wave of Japan’s first postwar baby boom, but has since dropped to 13,846 in 2001, and the average household size has gone from 3.8 to 2.5 family members during the same time frame[189]. Data on average age has only been kept for the last ten years or so, but one walk down the town’s main drag tells you that things here are headed the way they are in rural districts all over the country – the population is shrinking and graying with alarming rapidity.

  The secret to Chiran’s recent popularity as a tourist destination lies not in its present or future, but in its past. Times were not always as sedate as they are now, and from early spring to early summer 1945, when Chiran was the location of the Imperial Japanese Army’s main tokkō hub airbase during the Okinawa Campaign, the town was the scene of some of the most intense pathos – both spontaneous and ritualized – to be found in any theater of World War II. It is remnants and echoes of those dramatic times, more than anything else, that Chiran’s typically humbled and somber-faced visitors – over a million of them in 2001[190] – have been coming to see and hear in recent years.

  In the summer of 2001, Chiran native Reiko Akabane (nee Torihama), a successful Tokyo restaurateur who splits her time between the capital and her hometown, made a significant contribution toward recreating some of the tragic yet dramatically charged atmosphere of Chiran’s wartime experience when she helped finance the restoration of an old two-story clapboard restaurant and inn in the center of town called the Tomiya Shokudō. In addition to being Mrs. Akabane’s birthplace and home for the first twenty years of her life, the Tomiya Shokudō was also the only army-licensed restaurant in wartime Chiran, and the only off-post establishment approved by local air base authorities for use by tokkō pilots as an R & R spot and a place to receive loved ones who came to see the pilots off for their final sorties[191].