Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  Due to security issues, Ōtsushima was closed to all non-essential personnel – even, with the exception of special occasions, to the ubiquitous PR and Nichiei reporter types one normally found on most army or navy tokkō bases. For the first few months after the Kaiten Unit’s activation, its personnel could leave the island only for special cases such as treatment for serious injuries or illnesses that could not be handled by the base’s very modest infirmary, for family emergencies, or in the case of the higher ranking officers, for official navy business. Things gradually loosened up after the base was running smoothly, and short leaves were available, but Konada and most of the other commissioned pilots were far too busy to take advantage of this privilege. Instead, they were dependent on what minor provisions for entertainment command had deemed fit for the isolated base. Most often, this involved not much more than availing themselves of one of the shōgi chessboards at the officer’s liaison room for an hour or two between training, duty officer stints and debriefing sessions.

  Options for organized athletics were extremely limited, as there was not enough flat space on the island to accommodate sports such as rugby, soccer or baseball. However, there was just enough space on the waterfront for bōtaoshi (“pole-toppling”), a sport in which one team would attempt to knock over a caber-like pole defended by an opposing team. The sport – possibly of British Royal Navy origin and a time-honored tradition at Etajima since the academy’s inception – was encouraged by base command as it was thought to foster close-knit teamwork, leadership and aggressiveness. The best tactic for the attackers was to have a first line run up to the defenders, then crouch down to form human steps so others behind them could get height advantage and leverage when grabbing onto the pole to knock it over. No holds were barred and kicking, punching and gouging were allowed, so not surprisingly, injuries such as busted noses and broken teeth were frequent.

  Provisions for recreation were more generous at Hikari Naval Arsenal in Yamaguchi Prefecture, site of the second major Kaiten installation and the base where Harumi Kawasaki spent six of the last eight months of the war. Facilities were available for baseball and basketball, as well as a small martial arts hall for the usual kendō and judo. As security procedures loosened up and settled into a routine, there were occasional visits to the bases by road show troupes of professional performers. On occasion, when such high-caliber entertainment was not available, some of the more theatrically gifted personnel on base were not averse to sharing their talents with their comrades. At Hikari, a group of motivated thespians even organized a drama contest replete with costumed productions and a jug band orchestra.

  But despite the best efforts of professional and amateur alike, anyone involved in the Kaiten program who is still alive today would have to agree that the most impressive dramatic productions they saw during their time in the service were the send-off ceremonies.

  35 A Pillar Of Smoke By DayOn September 20, 1944, American forces took possession of Ulithi, the world’s fourth largest lagoon. Ringed by palm-dotted coral reefs and sandbars, this relatively shallow body of water was spacious enough to accommodate thousands of ships at a time. Its location about one-third of the way between Guam and Leyte Gulf also made it ideally situated as a staging area and supply point for the Philippine invasion campaign about to kickoff.

  From the American perspective, the only eventful things about the “invasion” of the atoll were the accidental death of an Ulithian princess after a beach prep Hellcat strafing[296] and the infinitely happier discovery that the local womenfolk went about topless. Happier still was the fact that the landings went completely unopposed. The previous non-native occupants of this ring of skinny sandbars – a Japanese observation station and naval seaplane unit – were already several weeks gone when the first G.I. boot hit the coral.

  Within days of taking the real estate, the Americans had a working installation up and running, and within the span of the next few weeks, while the attention of the rest of a world at war was focused elsewhere, Navy Seabees and stevedores transformed this forgotten backwater in the Southwest Pacific into the busiest temporary military harbor in history. By late October, Ulithi was so thick with fleet carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and merchantmen ferrying to and from the new Leyte Gulf beachheads that an observer in an overhead plane would have to be forgiven for thinking he was looking down at some gray metropolis mysteriously plunked down in the middle of a turquoise lagoon.

  Whether the residents of this floating city knew it or not, they were being observed in just this manner on a fairly regular basis. IJN planners – no doubt ruing their decision to give up Ulithi without a fight when they ordered its abandonment three months earlier – were by now fully aware of the lagoon’s sudden and crucial importance, and were kept posted of comings and goings at the new anchorage by sub patrols and high-altitude photo recon flyovers out of the IJN base at Truk. Everyone at Combined Fleet HQ agreed that Ulithi made a most tempting target, and with the still top secret Kaiten now coming on line, they had what they thought was just the right weapon to juke the anchorage’s now formidable defenses, send some serious tonnage to the bottom of the lagoon, and just as importantly, strike a blow against American morale with another psychological shock to follow up on the Shikishima Flight tokkō successes at Leyte on October 25. By the first week of November, three submarines – I-36, I-37 and I-47 – had been modified to carry Kaitens and detailed attack plans were ready for the mission.

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  On the morning of November 7, 1944, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Miwa, commander of the 6th Fleet,[297] arrived at Ōtsushima with an entourage of adjutants, aides-de-camp, a small brass band, and a few closely escorted navy PR types in tow. That afternoon, under snapping pennants and flags, the admiral addressed the assembled base personnel. Lined up front and center were Sekio Nishina and the eleven other Kaiten pilots of the newly formed and named Kikusui Unit. These were the men – all commissioned officers – who would be the first to ride the Kaiten into battle. After the speech, the band struck up a medley of martial tunes as the admiral handed out shortswords[298] and white headbands to the twelve pilots standing tall in the new human torpedo uniforms – smart khaki zipper-up coveralls with a green-on-black embroidered shoulder patch featuring Masashige Kusunoki’s Kikusui floating chrysanthemum emblem.

  Newly promoted and Kaiten-qualified Lieutenant (j.g.) Toshiharu Konada was in attendance as a spectator at the shortsword ceremony that afternoon, and also at the high-spirited and emotionally charged send-off party held for the pilots later that evening at the officers’ liaison room, the crude but adequately spacious structure that also served as the base officer’s club. Songs were sung and short, informal speeches were made throughout the party, as guests and guests-of-honor alike supped on sumptuous fare and drank liberal amounts of saké.

  Naval etiquette dictated that subordinates could not leave a party before their commanding officer did, so the admiral – conscious that the boys needed their sleep for the big day tomorrow – stood up to leave at a decent hour. The evening ended with a series of banzai cheers for the soon-to-be-departed, and the men filtered back to the billets in pairs or small groups, with some of the more sentimental individuals in tears.

  On the morn, under a cold and partly cloudy sky, the base personnel formed up in two long parallel lines leading from the HQ building down to the water, where three IJN submarines – I-36, I-37 and I-47 – were moored at the quay, their crews lined up along the handrails at a rigid position of attention. Bolted to the deck of each sub were four glossy, coal black Kaitens with white Kikusui emblems painted on their conning towers. Trampoline-sized Hinomaru flags painted on canvas sheets were lashed to the conning towers of the mother subs, and Rising Sun battle jacks, almost as large, flew from the periscope masts.

  On a signal, Nishina and the other Kikusui pilots – resplendent in gleaming white headbands and crisp uniforms – emerged from the HQ building and filed down to the water through the lines of officers and
sailors amidst a rolling chorus of cheers as the banners waved and Admiral Miwa’s little band thumped a patriotic march. Nishina, at the head of the file, carried a white ossuary box containing the sacred reliquary of Kuroki’s ashes. Behind him, another man carried the mortal dust of Lieutenant Higuchi. The dead officers would be making the sortie with their comrades.

  When the pilots reached the quay, they stopped for deep bows and a quick prayer at the base Shinto shrine, then split up into three groups of four men each to board their respective subs. Once aboard, they clambered atop their Kaitens to brandish their katana swords over their heads as the subs cast off and pulled away into the lagoon, the Ōtsushima personnel now thronging the water’s edge, crying and shouting themselves hoarse as the subs faded away into the morning mist, their top-secret destination known only to their captains.

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  After carrying her volatile cargo of diesel oil and aviation gas from the United States across most of the Pacific Ocean, the twenty-five-thousand-ton USS Mississinewa (AO-59) – a fleet oiler supporting Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman’s Task Group 38.3 – spent the afternoon of November 19, 1944 at Ulithi Berth 131 shifting aviation-grade gasoline from two of her huge storage tanks to tanks on the other side of the ship. This balancing operation was being undertaken to right the noticeable list the ship had taken after pumping operations earlier in the day.

  Handling fuel in this kind of volume was by nature an extremely hazardous procedure, and the danger did not go away after the pumps were done with their work. Drained of their contents, the tanks were actually at a higher risk of explosion empty than they were full. Thoroughly saturated with aerated fuel fumes, the interior of a recently emptied tank was not unlike a fueled cylinder head in a car engine just before it is ignited by a spark plug. In order to prevent the kind of cataclysm that could result if an errant spark somehow found its way into such a volatile environment, Navy SOP called for “purging” the tanks with seawater immediately after unloading operations. This was done without fail while at sea, and usually – but not always – done while at port.

  As the sailors on Mississinewa’s pump detail were unloading the last of the day’s order and preparing to purge tanks, the rest of the crew was assembling in the raised cargo deck aft of the bridge to watch a movie someone had been able wangle while ashore. The film was called Black Parachute,[299] a B-grade spy thriller about a brave OSS agent, played by Larry Parks, fighting to liberate Eastern Europe from the yoke of Nazi tyranny. Ostensibly, the title referred to the hero’s method of entry behind enemy lines – a night drop to take care of the evil German general played by John Carradine (who else could it have in a 1940s B-film?) and liberate the country before sweeping Resistance fighter Jeanne Bates off her feet in the last reel. Citizen Kane it was not, but it would nevertheless be a welcome break from the monotony of pumping gas and sitting at anchor at Ulithi.

  What happened next is something of a mystery – but among Mississinewa’s survivors still with us today, there are two basic theories. The more popular version holds that the ship’s skipper, Captain Philip G. Beck, may have been appreciative of the outstanding job the pump men had done this afternoon and aware that they were getting edgy about missing the movie. Thinking there could be little harm in letting them go early to join their shipmates for the film, he decided to forego the usual tank purge after the fuel pumping operation. After all, it was not like the Mississinewa – or any other oiler in the fleet, for that matter – had never missed a tank purge or two while at anchor. The captain had every right to expect that the ship would be perfectly safe and sound here at Ulithi, with anti-submarine nets guarding the entrances to the lagoon and combat air patrols from Sherman’s carriers overhead twenty-four hours a day. And as long as nobody on board did something stupid like tossing a lit cigarette where they shouldn’t, there was no reason to think anything untoward would happen.

  The second version holds that the captain was not the sort of commander who would give much of a damn about his men missing a movie, and that there must have been some other reason – perhaps mere expediency – to explain the decision not to purge.

  In either case, what is known with certainty is that after the pumping operations, Captain Beck belayed the SOP purge order for the empty tanks, and the pump men were now free to go aft to watch their movie.[300]

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  Some twelve hours later, Ulithi lagoon was waking up to the business of another workday in fits and starts. Here and there packet boats and patrol craft plied the powder blue water between mammoth warships and freighters hulking in the morning mist. Galleys on the ships had been up and running for several hours now, going through the major production of preparing breakfasts for hundreds (or in the case of the big warships, thousands) of men, but elsewhere, most of those sailors lucky enough not to be on watch still slumbered peacefully.

  At Ulithi Berth 131, the Mississinewa was quietly riding at anchor, bathed on one side in pale orange light from the eastern horizon. Most of her complement of 278 sailors and twenty officers were still asleep, perhaps a few of them dreaming about sweeping Jeanne Bates off her feet, probably more than a few of them dreaming about home, and certainly all of them blissfully unaware that at this very moment, they were being stalked.

  The ship still carried hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in her forward tanks, and this is where one of I-47’s Kaitens hit at 0545[301], instantly killing fifteen crewmen asleep on the cargo deck over the tanks, killing dozens more amidships and ripping a 25-meter long hole in the ship’s hull. A split-second later, the fumes in the Mississinewa’s empty centerline tank ignited in an even larger explosion, cracking the ship’s keel and blowing yet another gaping hole in the hull. A series of secondary explosions now rocked the vessel as flaming fuel oil raced across her decks, cooking off the ammo for her anti-aircraft batteries in the searing heat.

  Amidships, the carnage was indescribable. As the anchorage was jolted into frenzied activity, the sirens of ships going to General Quarters yelped and whooped across the waters of the lagoon, drowning out the screams of men being burned alive aboard the Mississinewa or in the flaming oil slicks now ringing the ship. Above the conflagration, a column of impenetrable black smoke rose kilometers high straight up into the blue sky like some Old Testament fire and brimstone display.

  While the inferno raged, it was increasingly obvious that the Mississinewa could not be saved. Captain Beck, naked after stripping off his burning pajamas, gave the order to abandon ship, and everyone who still could either jumped or was thrown overboard. As destroyers charged about searching for mystery intruders and depth charging the entrance of the lagoon, other boats raced in from around the anchorage to rescue the Mississinewa’s survivors. At one point, even an old Kingfisher seaplane got into the action, throwing towlines to men in the water and using its prop blast to clear the area of burning oil slicks.[302] Miraculously, 218 of the ship’s crew and seventeen of her officers were rescued. Sixty sailors and three officers were not so fortunate.[303]

  Neither was the Mississinewa. At 0830, after two and a half hours of brave but fruitless salvage efforts, the ship rolled and sank, coming to rest where she trickled diesel oil until 2003[304] and still lies peacefully to this day – under twenty-three fathoms of water on the sandy bottom of Ulithi lagoon.

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  Before being chased into a crash dive by the sight of American destroyers approaching at flank speed, submarine I-47 had spent most of the early morning hours of November 20 at periscope depth so that her skipper, Lieutenant Commander Zenji Orita, could watch for distant fireballs from the direction of Ulithi after launching his sub’s four Kaiten. Orita logged entries for two large explosions in quick succession at 0545, then recorded numerous smaller explosions throughout the morning. These observations were duly reported at the big Kikusui debrief held at Kure on November 24.[305]

  Also present at the Kure debrief was the commander of I-36, Lieutenant Commander Iwao Teramoto, who
confirmed Orita’s log entries with his own observations of explosions in the Ulithi anchorage. No doubt much to Teramoto’s chagrin, however, he also had to report the disappointing fact that three of I-36’s four Kaiten had lodged in their deck braces or proved otherwise inoperable, preventing their use in the mission. In the end, only one of his Kaitens had been able to join in the attack.

  Notably absent from the Kure proceedings was anyone from I-37, which had followed a slightly different mission profile that called for its Kaiten to be deployed against American shipping in the Kossol Passage to the northwest of Ulithi. Neither hide nor hair had been seen of the sub since sallying forth from Ōtsushima, and it was not until many years after the war that a team of Japanese researchers (including Konada-san) were able to conclude from Department of Defense records that the I-37 had been sunk on station at its mission objective by American destroyers on November 19, 1944. It never had a chance to loose its Kaitens, and went down with all hands.

  During discussions following Orita’s and Teramoto’s reports, the sub skippers made the tactical suggestion that the Kaiten could probably be employed more effectively on the high seas, where the formidable anti-sub measures available to the enemy in a harbor or anchorage-type situation could not be brought to bear. The brass in attendance were hearing none of this, however, and remained convinced of the merit of their original concept of the Kaiten as a weapon to be deployed against shipping at anchor. Orita and Teramoto were thanked for their input, and their observations of November 20 were freely interpreted by command as an indication that the brave pilots of the illustrious Kikusui Unit had sunk three aircraft carriers and two battleships at Ulithi.[306] So it was written, so it was done, and glowing reports of the mission and of the new superweapon’s capabilities were delivered in a Tokyo audience with His Majesty on December 12.[307] The general public would have to wait a while longer for the good news.