Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  [43] These names are taken from the lines of a famous poem by late eighteenth century proto-patriot and kokugaku “scholar” (I would translate his discipline as “inquiries into the nature of Japaneseness”) Norinaga Moto’ori extolling the virtues of Japanese culture and manhood. Both their origin and significance would have been familiar to any schoolboy in 1944 Japan. See Ogami (1996) and Befu (2001) for details on Moto’ori’s career and his ideological influence on Japanese nationalism a century later.

  [44] Kaneko (2001), p.62

  [45] Accounts of tokkō aircraft being given only enough fuel for a one-way trip to their targets are fallacious and probably have their origins in Allied propaganda or sensational wartime/early post-war journalism, perhaps concocted to impress upon both the American public and the vanquished Japanese a sense of Western cultural superiority by playing up on a spurious “callous Japanese disregard for human life” angle. While Japan was certainly strapped for fuel in late 1944, it was even more desperately strapped for pilots and aircraft. Fully-gassed flights that failed to find their targets would be able to return to base and be available for new missions, while planes fueled for only a one-way trip would be gone for good, mission accomplished or not. Additionally, there were combat effectiveness considerations: aviation gas remaining in fuel tanks gave a considerable boost to the killing and maiming capabilities of tokkō planes (basically turning them into giant Molotov cocktails) when they hit their targets, especially in the case of light fighter types like the Zero, which had a maximum bomb load of only 250kg.

  [46] See Mori (1995), p.494.

  [47] See “USS West Virginia (BB-48) Action Report: Leyte Gulf/Surigao Strait” http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/logs/BB/bb48-Surigao.html

  [48] Not only did it spell the end of Nishimura and his force, but it also spelled the end of an era in naval warfare; the Battle of Surigao Strait was the last true ship-to-ship gun battery naval engagement in history. With the exception of mop-up operations against Nishimura’s battered stragglers hours after the main battle, there was no use of air power by either side during the engagement.

  [49] This unit was named for the emblem used as the family crest of Masashige Kusunoki, a medieval samurai with a presence in Japanese lore similar to that of Nathan Hale in American history. He died on the battlefield regretting that he did not have more than one life to give for the Emperor. See Turnbull (1996), p.46.

  [50] The Yamazakura, Yamato and Asahi flights had been sent to Cebu Island on the afternoon of October 20,, then on to Davao Base on Mindanao Island on October 23 in order to be nearer the main area of operations. The Kikusui Flight, one of the “expansion” units made possible by the open-ended wording of Ōnishi’s standing orders for the Shinpū program, was formed on the evening of October 22 and sent to join the other flights at Davao the next morning. See Mori (1995), pp516-519.

  [51] Mori (1995), pp501-505.

  [52] Nishizawa was most likely Japan’s leading ace of the war with 36 confirmed and 83 claimed aerial victories. Landing their Zeroes after the mission at Cebu Island, Nishizawa and the other surviving Shikishima escort pilots, Warrant Officers Honda and Baba, were killed the next day when the transport plane they were riding back to Mabalacat was shot down by Task Force 38 Hellcats. Nishizawa’s loss was an enormous blow to Japanese morale, both military and civilian, equivalent in weight and effect to the grief experienced by the German nation after Manfred von Richtofen’s combat death in April 1918.

  [53] By most Japanese estimates, these kills were numbers 102 and 103, respectively, in Nishizawa’s final official tally, although more than half of this total consists of unconfirmed scores. Sakaida (1998) cites Nishizawa’s confirmed score at 36.

  [54] Oide, p.78

  [55] A somewhat nebulous Japanese legal term loosely translated as “corporation,” but which is usually applied to NPOs, schools and political associations.

  [56] Understandably eager to separate Japan from the existence and deeds of wartime Nazi allies, defenders of Japan’s conduct in the war prefer this term, which both politically and etymologically treats the European theater of the conflict as a separate war. It also underscores rightist Japanese attempts to portray the conflict as a war of liberation fought by Japan on behalf of Asia against Western imperialism. See Buruma (1995), Orr (2001) and Nathan (2004) for analysis of modern permutations of this mindset.

  [57] See Chang (1997) for convincing evidence to the contrary.

  [58] These positions are clearly explained in bilingual displays at Yasukuni’s museum, which is open to the public, and in its English website at http://www.yasukuni.or.jp/english/.

  [59] The last class graduated in March 1945.

  [60] Skip-bombing was pioneered by U.S. Army Air Force units such as the 345TH BG “Air Apaches” in the Southwest Pacific in the early stages of the war as an effective – and extremely hazardous to the attacker – method of attacking weakly armored merchant and transport shipping. An expedient tactic for flyers lacking extensive training in naval warfare (e.g. unable to dive-bomb moving targets accurately), the technique involved flying at wave-top altitude and using a standard high explosive bomb like an above-water torpedo. Dropped close enough to ensure a hit but hopefully far enough away to give the plane a chance to zoom away safely before detonation, the bomb would skip over the water like a flat pebble to bound into the side of the target vessel and explode.

  [61] The Hakkō of the unit name refers to the first half of the “Japanese manifest destiny” hakkō slogan.

  [62] Under the old Japanese educational system, a “high school” was equivalent to a junior college today. Students would have been from eighteen to twenty years old.

  [63] “The Loach Scooper” dance; the loach is an evolutionarily quirky fish/lizard/eel-like creature that lives in the soil of tidal mudflats in many areas of Japan, propelling itself through the muck using its fins like legs. Not exactly a culinary delight of haute cuisine, the loach nonetheless provided an important and free source of protein in rural Japan until the modern era. The Loach Scooper dance is supposed to pantomime the futile efforts of a hapless hyottoko bumpkin clown trying to chase his dinner down in slippery muck.

  [64] Later publicly humiliated after abandoning his post and fleeing to Taiwan as the Americans closed in at the end of the Philippines Campaign. His orders had been to stay and fight to the death. He survived the war. Hundreds of young army pilots he ordered on tokkō missions in the Philippines, however, did not.

  [65] Fraternization between commissioned and noncom pilots in off-duty social situations was already a semi-officially recognized custom in tokkō units by this time, even in the rigidly stratified army, although most units nevertheless kept a subtle and mutually agreed-upon separation between the two groups.

  [66] See Kawachiyama (1990) for details of this and other early IJA tokkō operations.

  [67] The Nakajima Hayabusa was the IJA’s mainstay fighter for most of the war, largely replaced in the last year of the conflict by the vastly superior Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate. See Bueschel (1997), Sakaida (1997) , Nohara and Mochizuki (2000).

  [68] See Hudson (1999), Edwards (2000) and http://www.pitt.edu/~annj/courses/notes/jomon_genes.html.

  [69] And it should be noted that intercepted and subsequently widely publicized American propaganda did nothing to dispel these fears – at least the last two. For a detailed discussion of this process and its effect on Japanese military and civilian morale, see Dower (1986), pp246-248.

  [70] The newest and most authoritative historical interpretations of Hirohito’s wartime experience suggest that he had a much more active – if not dominating – role in guiding the war’s conduct than had been previously believed. Readers interested in pursuing this topic are urged to read John Dower’s Embracing Defeat (1999) and Herbert Bix’s Hirohito (2000).

  [71] See Reischauer (1970) for an explanation of this process. See Suzuki (1959) for a detailed aesthetic analysis of the result.

  [72] This re
gional technological legacy in small motor production matched with a thriving local bicycle manufacturing industry led to a domination of global motorcycle production by these firms – joined by a postwar competitor, Honda – a mere twenty years later. The world headquarters of all three firms remain in the Hamamatsu area to this day.

  [73] Lowered from twenty to nineteen in 1943, then to seventeen in 1944

  [74]Syllabary acronym for Hikō Yokarenshūsei.

  [75] Akabane, personal correspondence.

  [76]This Japanese fairy tale character is traditionally depicted as an immaculately conceived (sprung from a peach – that was his name, after all) boy with supernatural abilities who rids his rustic community of marauding auslander demons and banishes them from Japan. See Dower (1986) pp.251-257 for accounts of how this fairy tale was “enlisted” into the Japanese war effort and used to legitimize expansionist aggression in Asia in the public eye.

  [77] There were twenty Yokaren schools by the end of the war, each attached to a functioning regional naval air group at a campus bearing the base’s name. For example, the Tsuchiura Yokaren was attached to – and under the nominal authority of – the Tsuchiura Air Group (KKT).

  [78] Takei, personal correspondence.

  [79] Columbia Records remained in business in Japan – name unchanged – after the opening of hostilities, and went on to churn out some of the war’s most effective propaganda music before switching quickly back to jitterbug and love songs in time for the GIs to arrive for the Occupation. Like many other American corporate subsidiaries trapped in Axis territory during the war, Columbia (now owned by Sony) continued doing business as normal in its host country and collaborating with the local war effort as it saw fit.

  [80] Lyrics by Yatsuto Saijō, music by Yūji Koseki. Columbia Records (Japan), 1943.

  [81] Ohnuki (2002), p.162

  [82] There were three types of Yokaren, designated using the classical Japanese sequential nomenclature of Kō, Otsu and Hei, respectively. Kō cadets were boys who had at least three years of post-elementary school education, whether at junior high or vocational school level. Otsu cadets were boys who had only completed compulsory education. Because of the difference in educational background, the Otsu programs were longer, and their graduates were not promoted as quickly as Kō personnel. Hei cadets were from enlisted ranks of active servicemen, and were thus several years older than their Kō and Otsu counterparts. See Tagaya (2004) for detailed treatment of Yokaren program.

  [83] The Japanese and American versions differ melodically, but are similar in length and tempo. Visitors to Yasukuni can hear it at regular intervals over the shrine’s loudspeaker system.

  [84] In Japanese, seishinbō and battā, respectively.

  [85] See Tagaya (2004) for details of Yokaren expansion.

  [86] Unlike the Darwinian policies that doomed “washouts” in American pilot training and other elite training programs to military careers which could be metaphorically likened to “shoveling shit in Louisiana,” in Patton’s immortal phrase, the shame of Yokaren failures was only temporary. Administrators would recycle physically capable washouts to the next class group coming in and these cadets would be given extra instruction until they succeeded. This “no member left behind” educational philosophy is a salient feature of the so-called Japanese group mentality Western observers – and Americans in particular – so often interpret as being robot-like, cold and inhuman. What – if any – effect this approach may have had on overall ability and esprit de corps of IJN pilots vis-à-vis their American counterparts is interesting to contemplate.

  [87] In both IJA and IJN pilot training programs in the later stages of the war, time spent in the observer or “passenger” seat of an Akatonbo was counted in solo flight hour tallies for log book entries to insure that cadets could meet requirements for pilot qualification on schedule. This policy of “doubling up” also helped to conserve fuel and reduce wear on engine parts more desperately needed at the front than in rear area training schools.

  [88] Isshiki rikkō is short for Isshiki Rikujō Kōgekiki or “Type One Land-based Attack Plane.” The aircraft’s most famous WW2 deployments were during the brilliant Takijirō Ōnishi-planned mission that sank the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales off of Malaya in December 1941. Admiral Yamamoto was riding one when shot down over Buin in the Solomons in April 1943. Like so many other IJN designs, it had superlative range and good speed which it enjoyed at the cost of sacrificing protective armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. The aircraft were called “Flying Lighters” by pilots of both sides of the conflict for their habit of exploding into fireballs as soon as they sustained hits in combat. See Yuzawa (1996) and Watanabe (2003) for more performance information on this aircraft Davis (1969) and Hammel (1992) provide graphic assessments of the aircraft’s performance from the perspective of Americans who shot it down

  [89] See Yuzawa (1995) and Nohara (2000) for performance details of the Shidenkai.

  [90] Takei, personal correspondence.

  [91] First sons and only children, in the traditional Japanese family model, are expected to assume responsibility for carrying on the family name and caring for parents in their dotage. The importance of this role is reflected in the special attention, respect and privileges afforded such children both inside and outside of the family.

  [92] Kimata (2001), p.88.

  [93] Common Japanese written symbol of strong approval or enthusiastic praise, often used by teachers on pupils’ calligraphy practice sheets.

  [94] Kimata (2001), p.89

  [95] Japanese code names for projects or proposals often use this maru- prefix+key element suffix nomenclature convention. Maru, which means “circle”, refers to the circle actually drawn around the key element character when this nomenclature is written as a symbol. “Dai” in this case is taken from an alternate reading of Ōta’s name.

  [96] This top secret fuel was code named FTD6, and was a mixture of 60% cotton fibrous stabilizing filler, 3% potassium sulfate, 7% mono-nitro-naphthalene and 27% pure nitro-glycerin. (Kimata (2001) p.34). For further details on this weapon’s performance see Saeki (1991) and Naitō (1999).

  [97] Naitō, personal correspondence.

  [98] Japanese Morse code for the syllable Yo, meant here as an abbreviation of Yoi (“ready”). (Asano, personal correspondence)

  [99] The reason for using a tree-lined strip was to conceal activities there from the prying eyes of observers – and possible spies – lurking outside the perimeter fence of the high security installation. (Asano, personal correspondence)

  [100] The official name for the Marudai craft was Ōka (“Cherry Blossom”), and it was the latter nomenclature that was used in press releases after the Jinrai Unit began combat operations in March 1945. However, according to Mr. Takei, most pilots called it “Marudai” until the end of the war.

  [101] Japanese naval and army personnel did not “serve KP” in the sense traditionally abhorred by generations of American servicemen. In rear area posts such as Kōnoike, such duties were performed by specialized kitchen staff, and “KP” for Tokurō and his peers consisted of lugging full rice and stew pots prepared in the kitchen down to the barracks, then lugging the empty pots and cans back to the kitchen after chow (there were no “mess halls” on Japanese posts – personnel usually ate in their barracks or at their duty stations – the youngest personnel would drag the food cans around to wherever someone was waiting for chow).

  [102] These packs contained several thousand calories worth of caramels and were intended to be used as pilot survival rations. They were normally found in emergency medical kits on aircraft.

  [103] For more details of Kōnoike base life, see Kamisu Chō Kyōiku Iinkai (1995).

  [104] Kaigun Jinrai Butai Senyukai, 1995

  [105] Suzuki-san’s comment in the original Japanese was: “Dakara, hotondo, yakusoku dōri ni korosareteshimatta.” (1:02:45) Readers knowledgeable in Japanese will note that responsibility is tactfully vag
ue in this passive utterance.

  [106] In a peacetime curriculum, they would have graduated the following March.

  [107] Suzuki had already received and passed a preliminary physical clearing him for cavalry service, which at this point in the war probably would have meant Manchurian border guard service.

  [108] It may help the reader to envisage this course as a WW2 Japanese version of what Richard Gere was put through in “An Officer And A Gentleman”.

  [109] Literally “martial arts place”, in this case the standard judo/kendo gymnasium found on any established Japanese military or naval base.

  [110]This was yet another monster propaganda hit for the Japanese subsidiary of a Western record company. Over sixty years after its debut, the ditty remains a favorite for drunken karaoke carousers, usually of the businessman type to whom the song’s message of cheery yet selfless dedication to dreary work no doubt has an immediate poignancy.

  [111] Inochi wo kakete in the original Japanese, which can also be translated as “risk one’s life” or even just “give it one’s all.”

  [112] See Smethurst (1974) for details of the establishment and function of this organization in Japanese society.

  [113] Suzuki, personal correspondence. Kamidana and butsudan are home altars for Shinto and Buddhist worship, respectively. In mid-twentieth century Japan, most homes would have had both, with the kamidana being the domain of actual deities, both natural and ancestral, who watched over house and family, theologically similar in importance and function to Lares in ancient Roman homes. The butsudan, however, was less of a place for communication with deities than it was a place to mourn and report news to recently deceased (within one, perhaps two generations) family members. The idea that the soul of a son in uniform could be addressed in both places seems to suggest that combat death would jump a recently departed soul several generations up the ancestral line to be put on a level with older ancestors as household protectors. That the death was incurred while ostensibly in the Emperor’s service would also give robust Shinto legitimacy to such early deification. The gunshin institution, of course, is the best and ultimate example of this process. While many Japanese families paid lip service to such rites, the degree of actual faith involved is impossible to estimate with any accuracy. They could perhaps be more reasonably considered as expressions of patriotic devotion than as religious observance.