Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  While pilots’ family members who made it to Chiran had to endure the agony of a send-off only once, the Nadeshiko Unit girls had to go through a barely less devastating version of it over and over again, day in and day out, without rest or reprieve. And no matter how often they participated in these farewell rituals, they never became inured to the pain. Things could have been a little easier to bear, perhaps, if there had been any time to grieve together as a group, but this was impossible, because they would have to go back to the sangakuheisha immediately after each send-off to get the barracks ready for the next group coming in. The floors would be swept, new bedding laid out, tears wiped dry and best smiles put on before the next trucks bumped down from the airfield and another ten or twenty beatific boys in flight suits would amble up the dirt trail to the barracks compound with innocent smiles of their own.

  For most of the girls, the real grieving didn’t come until years later. And every one of them still has dreams and the occasional crying jag about it to this day.

  “If fourteen or fifteen-year-old girls in this day and age experienced the kind of long-term grief and stress we went through that spring they would be getting psychological counseling right now,” Shōko says. “But we didn’t get anything like that. People didn’t think like that back then. That doesn’t mean the scars aren’t there, though.”

  *****

  During the last days of March and the first days of April, the Imperial Army and Navy joint tokkō command finalized preparations for Operation Ten-Gō. While the Nadeshiko girls were sending their young heroes off in flights of ten or twelve at a time with flowers and song, hundreds of new tokkō pilots and aircraft from around the country streamed into Chiran and every other army air base and naval air station in southern Kyūshū to go on immediate standby for “Kikusui 1” – the first attack wave of Operation Ten-Gō.

  Meanwhile, 500 kilometers to the south, on and under the decks of Admiral Spruance’s Fifth Fleet warships, a different group of young heroes went about the business of their war with the same resolution as their Japanese counterparts, albeit without the benefit of bouquet-bearing teenaged cheerleaders. Spruance’s men had long since become experts at the job invasion support, and for the first five days of the Okinawa operation, it was looking like things here were not going to be any better or worse than anything else they had faced to date. Of course, there had been a steady stream of a dozen-odd suicider attacks a day ever since they had arrived off Okinawa, but these were spread pretty thin over an armada the size of the Fifth Fleet. And the fact that no ships had been lost so far during the course of the operation was reassuring proof not only that the Fifth’s luck seemed to be holding out, but more importantly, that its sailors and airmen had become highly proficient at protecting themselves as well as they looked out for the men on the beach.

  Over the last six months, the Japanese suicide tactics had become a regular feature of life on an American warship in the Central Pacific, and while the latest attacks were not to be underestimated in their potential for destruction and mayhem, they were nothing to make the sailors feel any less sorry for the guys they all knew were getting the crummiest deal in this operation – the poor Army and Marine dogfaces having to slog, slash and shoot their way through the honeycombed Jap defenses ashore. Never forgetting to feel thankful for their own relative comfort (if not safety), the aviators and sailors of Fifth Fleet kept their well-oiled machinery of war and destruction humming in support of the people who had to earn their combat pay humping a rucksack and an M-1 through the jungle. And if the boys ashore did their jobs as well as the Fifth Fleet was doing its own, it was looking as if this could all be wrapped up in another couple of weeks.

  No doubt many American sailors in the vicinity of Okinawa were entertaining such reassuring thoughts and hopes as April 6 dawned. Perhaps some of the crew of the radar picket destroyer Colhoun did, too, even after an unusually busy pre-dawn morning of near-miss conventional bombing attacks by Japanese raiders. Things had quickly returned to normal after the raids, and the Colhoun spent the rest of the forenoon watch performing her usual duties, steaming in a ten kilometer-wide circle on Radar Picket Station 2 about 75 kilometers NNE of Okinawa to provide CAP vectoring and early warning info for the rest of the fleet.

  Shortly after noon, business picked up. Reports began coming in over the radio that Task Force 58, presently steaming about 100 kilometers east of Okinawa, was coming under attack by large numbers of suiciders approaching from the northeast.[205] Although the reports merited concern, there was nothing Colhoun could do to help, given her location and modest allotment of CAP, which in any case would be but a drop into the bucket compared with the combined aerial might TF 58 would be able to put up in its own defense. The destroyer maintained General Quarters, but remained on station, noting radar contacts and sending regular reports to “Delegate Base”.

  Around 1530, someone elses’ problem suddenly became Colhoun’s as well. Her radarmen picked up new waves of attackers headed straight for her position from the northeast. Minutes later, calls for immediate assistance came in from the Bush, a destroyer patrolling Radar Picket Station 1 some twenty kilometers to the west. She was reporting a direct kamikaze hit amidships. While her crew fought fires and waited for the cavalry to arrive, more suiciders began swarming overhead – lurking, but for some reason, holding back from attacking. With both her own and the rapidly approaching Colhoun’s allotted CAPs caught up in dogfights too far away to help, there was nothing for the crew of the Bush to do but continue fighting fires and pray for a miracle.

  When the Colhoun showed up some half an hour later, the Bush was smoking and dead in the water. But with the suiciders now swarming overhead both ships, the Colhoun could do nothing but take evasive action and try to draw the attackers’ attention away from the now utterly helpless Bush. Beginning at 1700, perhaps after ascertaining that no Hellcats or Corsairs were going to be coming to the rescue of their quarry, the suiciders began to attack again, this time concentrating their wrath on the as of yet unmolested Colhoun. The destroyer put up a brave fight, pounding away at the Japanese planes with every weapon on board, but facing such numbers and without the protection of air cover, it was a hopeless struggle. By nightfall, both the Bush and the Colhoun were at the bottom of the South China Sea and 129 American sailors were dead or missing, never to be seen again.[206].

  Farther to the east and south, the suiciders’ fury continued unabated against Task Force 58 and the invasion fleet, even as wave after wave of the attackers were cut down with deadly efficiency by the veteran American fighter pilots and withering AA fire. The picket destroyers on station and supply ships in the invasion fleet anchorages caught the brunt of the attacks. Before the last suicider was splashed, another 238 sailors were killed, in addition to the Bush and Colhoun losses, and four more ships were sent to the bottom – the destroyer minesweeper Emmons, LST-447 and two ammunition carriers that went up with cataclysmic explosions.[207] A further eleven ships had been badly damaged, with several requiring Stateside repairs that took them out of the fight for the duration of the war.

  The Japanese threw 355 planes and their aircrew into the attacks.[208] In hard tactical terms, the combat results did not compensate for this exorbitant expenditure in lives and machinery. The psychological effect on their enemy, however, was another story. Although Ten-Gō had just fired the most fearsome bolt it would manage for the rest of the campaign, the shell-shocked American survivors of Fifth Fleet licking their wounds and counting their losses on the morning of April 7 had no way of knowing that there was not more of the same in store for them each and every night after that, brewing out beyond the northeast horizon over Kyūshū like a malevolent hurricane that would crash down on their heads and snatch away their lives. For the sailors of the Fifth, the remainder of the Okinawa campaign would be a gut-wrenching day-to-day struggle with their own tortured memories of April 6, and every waking minute afterwards would be spent with eyes on the skies and ears pricked
for the tell-tale pom-pom-pom of AA fire and the unforgettable scream of a Japanese plane in an incoming death dive. Most men proved able to face their fears, but others did not – the Fifth Fleet suffered battle stress casualties at levels never seen before or since by American fighting men on land or at sea[209].

  By the end of the Okinawa campaign in late June, nearly 5,000 Fifth Fleet sailors and had been killed – with again as many wounded – mostly through tokkō attacks. A total of thirty-four warships and other vessels had been sunk, with an additional 368 damaged. 763 warplanes had been lost, hundreds of these turned into twisted hunks of metal on flight decks shattered by suiciders.[210] All-in-all, the invasion of Okinawa was the bloodiest episode in the entire history of the United States Navy – and the suicide attacks that characterized this battle were deemed so potentially damaging to public morale that the War Department censored any mention of them in news reports or personal correspondence from Fifth Fleet sailors, lest people on the home front realize what hell their young men were facing so far away. Most of the American public would not hear about the carnage wreaked by Japanese suicide attacks at Okinawa until the final weeks before V-J Day.

  Takujiro Ōnishi must have been pleased.

  21 FirefliesFor the first two weeks of Operation Ten-Gō, the boys stopping over in Chiran were only on layovers before going on to make their final attack sorties from the island of Tokunoshima in the South China Sea, so the Nadeshiko Unit could take some comfort during their farewells in thinking that they were not technically sending the flyers off to their deaths. After the Tokunoshima base was destroyed by the Americans, however, the Shinbu units had to start flying directly from Chiran for the two-and-a-half hour flight required to reach targets off Okinawa.

  The first of these direct attack sorties was scheduled for the afternoon of April 12.[211] The girls – fully aware that the pilots were now going to be flying straight into battle and, if all went well, straight into an American warship – knew that the day’s send-off was going to be even more emotionally charged than usual. Shōko brought along an armful of blossom-laden boughs she had cut from the big cherry tree in her grandfather’s back yard (the girls had already stripped bare the cherry tree in the neighborhood Shinto shrine by this point for other send-offs). The branches were passed out to the other Nadeshiko Unit girls lining the Chiran airbase runway. It was a serendipitous development for the newspaper cameramen on hand for the event. One snapshot in particular of the Nadeshiko Unit’s blossom-bough waving farewell to the Hayabusas beginning their take-off runs that April afternoon has gone on to become one of the classic Japanese home front photographs of the war and a veritable icon for the paradoxical beauty and banality of the tokkō program itself.

  As they inevitably were in any tokkō venue (with the notable exceptions of top-secret Kaiten and Ōka facilities), journalists were a regular fixture in the Chiran landscape. They even had their own permanent sangakuheisha in the barracks compound.[212] Although the girls were not responsible for attending to the upkeep of these quarters and thus did not have daily contact with their occupants, the propaganda value of the Nadeshiko Unit did not go unnoticed by the newsmen. In early April, after an emotionally brutal day of no less than four send-offs, Shōko and six other girls were interviewed by a reporter named Kawagoe. The piece – published several weeks after the interviews were conducted –is reproduced here in its entirety:

  Potted Flowers For A Spartan Room: A Day In The Life Of Our Divine Eagles

  By Special Correspondent Kawagoe

  April 19th, 1945, Chiran Airbase[213]: A pure dawn mist pierced by silvery morning sunrays floats over the moss and through the trees of a wooded hillock. Here, young divine eagles sleep on fluffy futons provided by the generosity of local citizens. The innocence of little boys still remains on the faces of the pilots, sprawling comfortably in their bedding, dreaming of who-knows-what. Looking at them, it is hard to believe that before noon they will be flying over seas of flame to strike at the heart of the enemy.

  Little bouquets of rapeseed blossom and wild camellia brighten up corners of their spartan wood barracks. Placed in old bottles filled with water, it is clear that the flowers were arranged by unsophisticated but tender hands. They are the handiwork of third graders from Chiran Girls’ School who have volunteered to work in these barracks. Hinomaru headbands and poems written in blood arrive at the barracks daily, sent by still other schoolgirls from as far away as Manchuria and Tohoku for the young eagles to wear and carry into battle.

  In most cases, these pilots are only a year or two older than the girl students who work in their barracks, and they always have kind words for them, like “You girls remind us of our little sisters back home. We’ll take care of the enemy so that you can become upstanding, fine Japanese mothers someday.” This reporter sees and hears beautiful exchanges like this on a daily basis here in these simple barracks, and it is clear that the pure hearts of the girls have had an ennobling and strengthening influence on the hearts of these young men.

  The girls wash laundry and mend socks with feelings of warm affection for the young eagles, remembering all of the others they have seen off on attack sorties in the past. Let us hear from their own lips some of the thoughts and feelings these girls have experienced performing their duties here:

  SHŌKO MAEDA: “I remember Corporal Fuke, who before he left said that his only concern before he sortied was for the well being of his younger sister. She is supposedly our age, and the corporal spoke at length of fond memories of their childhood together and of his hopes that she will grow up to be a fine Japanese woman. I know I speak for all of the other girls as well in saying how lucky we are to be Japanese girls who have such fine young men to look after us – who are so compassionate and concerned for our well being even in the last moments before their sorties.”

  HIDEKO TSUJI: “I told Corporal Sasaki that I wanted to write to his family so I could describe for them the scene of his final sortie. When I handed him a piece of paper and pen and asked him to write his family’s address, he wrote down ‘A Nice Shady Tomb on the corner of Hades Avenue and Styx Street.’ Then he explained to me that he was an only child and his mother and father were already dead. Although I was mortified at my gaffe, he wasn’t the type to take offense easily. Rather, he was one of the most cheerful pilots in the barracks. I remember when his sortie kept getting delayed, he would always say ‘Well, looks like another day I’ve missed my chance to die…I’ve lived another day too long.’ I think he really regretted it, though, even though he tried to make light of his situation for our sake.”

  SHŌKO HIRATA: “Second Lieutenant Miyazaki asked us what we would do if the enemy invaded. When we all answered that we will try to kill at least one enemy each before we die, the lieutenant said ‘Don’t be in such a hurry to die,’ and told us stories about brave samurai wives in days of old.”

  YOKO MORI: “He told us to always have pride as Japanese women, and to let him worry about taking care of the enemy.”

  SHŌKO MAEDA: “Just before he left he gave us all of his personal belongings. I was given his fountain pen, and I promised to write to his sister and tell her about her brother’s sortie. There were four send-offs today – so many we ran out of cherry boughs to give to the pilots. We stripped the trees at Chiran Shrine bare.”

  YONEKO SADA: “The airbase people told us to climb up on the airplanes and put cherry boughs into the cockpits, but I didn’t feel it was right to step up on the airplanes and defile these hallowed weapons with a woman’s touch, so I declined the honor.”[214]

  FUKUKO IWAWAKI: “Watching the airplanes take off I couldn’t help but feel caught up in the moment, and I was sure that the gods were with the pilots in the cockpits, holding on to the control sticks, lifting the planes into the air. The other girls said they had the same feeling watching the take-offs. One of the pilots told us that he would only stop being nervous once he heard the booming of the enemy’s anti-aircraft fire. We said to him that if the
enemy was bound to come anyway, then he might as well take us along with him in the plane on his sortie. But he told us to stay alive, no matter what happens, because we have to become the Japanese mothers of the future – we have to protect the country, too, in our own way.”

  YASU IWAWAKI: “I’ll never forget how we used to all sing nursery rhymes like “The Old Woodcutter” together. It was so much fun. No one ever talked about death. I remember one of the pilots – whose mother was dead – looked so happy and proud on the day of his sortie when he said ‘I’m going to bring an enemy aircraft carrier with me to heaven as a souvenir for my mother’.”

  SHŌKO MAEDA: “Before their sorties, Corporal Fuke wrote ‘Heaven can wait, I’m off to do some demon-killing’ and Corporal Iwama wrote ‘All that lives is born to die, and cherry blossoms will always blow away in the wind, every last one’. I gave them a picture of my cousin, who was killed in the Third Battle of the Solomons, and told them to take it with them into battle. They promised to do so, and told me not to worry, because they would be sure to get some enemy for my dear cousin, too.” (Kagoshima Nippō {Kagoshima Daily}, April 19, 1945)

  Obviously, the media treatment of the Nadeshiko Unit story completely negated the girls’ original orders not to tell their families about the nature of their work at the airbase. With the big splash in the papers, the cat was out of the bag. Many of the girls’ now clued-in mothers were furious that the authorities had been callous enough to put their daughters through the emotional clotheswringer of such duty and to expose them to the constant danger posed by American raids on the airfield. But even these furious mothers were wise enough to vent their anger quietly or in the privacy of their own homes, and none of them were bold, headstrong or concerned enough to request that their daughters be withdrawn from the Nadeshiko Unit.