Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  [114] Fukagawa, personal correspondence

  [115] Ibid.

  [116] This relationship – known in Japanese as amae – is best explained in Takeo Doi’s The Anatomy of Dependence (1973).

  [117] Ibid. Ruth Benedict (1946), pp.248-252. Benedict gives the classic Western interpretation of this and other facets of Japanese character in her seminal The Chysanthemum and the Sword, which is highly recommended for any reader interested in understanding Japan and Japanese society.

  [118] This is a reconstruction based on Suzuki-san’s recollection of the conversation.

  [119] Only one Etajima man – LT Kentarō Mitsuhashi INA ’42 – died in combat as an Ōka pilot. (Jinrai Butai Senyūkai (1997))

  [120] The type – woefully obsolete by 1944 – is today best remembered for its role in the Pearl Harbor raid.

  [121] Nine CV fleet carriers and eight CVL light carriers. (Morison, (1958), p.90.)

  [122] This is a reconstruction based on Suzuki-san’s recollection of the document.

  [123] Takei, personal correspondence.

  [124] Naitō (1999), p.98

  [125] http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/japan/japsh-s/shinano.htm

  [126] http://64.124.221.191/Shinano.htm

  [127] Only the officers and a fraction of the enlisted men were checked out on the Ōka trainer – and thus qualified for a combat mission – by this point.

  [128] “Grass hand” or sōshu is a cursive calligraphy style that, at its best, can seem paradoxically and simultaneously highly stylized and spontaneous. Originated by classical Chinese poets, the style requires many years of training with a calligraphy brush to master and has traditionally always been viewed in Japan as a sign of great erudition and impeccable taste. Suzuki (1959) provides several good examples, especially plate 22.

  [129] Naitō (1999), p.106.

  [130]H.Halloran, personal correspondence

  [131]www.haphalloran.com

  [132]Takaki & Sakaida (2001).

  [133]H. Halloran, personal correspondence. Halloran would go on to spend seven months as a POW – including a miserable day on display in a cage at Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. He also spent several months with an illustrious cellmate: Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington of USMC Black Sheep Squadron fame. Readers interested in more information about Halloran’s experiences are urged to avail themselves of his memoirs, “Hap’s War”. The book is available through his website

  [134] An IJA branch of service similar in political and counterintelligence functions to the Nazi Gestapo, while also responsible for a conventional military police role. See Harries (1991) for more information on its function.

  [135] “First spring wind.” A powerful blast of southwesterly wind that whips through Japan every year in late February or early March on the leading edge of the massive, humid low-pressure warm front that banishes winter weather from the archipelago for the next nine months.

  [136] “The Fast Carrier Task Force was composed of 4 Task Groups under the overall command of a Vice Admiral. Depending upon the fleet commander (Admiral Halsey with the 3rd fleet or Admiral Spruance with the 5th fleet) the carrier striking arm was designated Task Force (TF) 38 or 58. The designation changed whenever the fleet commander alternated for planning purposes.” Heimsteidt (http://boracay.vasia.com/ddivers/ph_history.htm)

  [137] Kimata (2001), p.99

  [138] See Taylor (1954) for numerous examples of the admiral’s vicious eloquence on this topic.

  [139] An operation Mitscher had played a crucial role in as commander of the carrier Hornet. See Cohen (1983) for details and an excellent photographic record of the mission.

  [140] Inoguchi (1958), p.142, Hoyt (1983), Kamikazes, p.239

  [141] Inoguchi (1958), p.143.

  [142] Naitō (1999), p.148.

  [143] Naitō (1999), p.155

  [144] Inoguchi (1958), p.144

  [145] Naitō (1999), p.161

  [146] Tillman (1979), p.210

  [147] Japanese air-to-air and air-to-surface vox radio was unreliable throughout the war, and the army and navy primarily depended on Morse code for radio transmissions during air operations.

  [148] See Hoyt (1993) for an account of this incident, plus detailed background biographical information on Ugaki. Ugaki’s wartime diary has been translated to English and is available under the title Fading Victory: The Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki 1941-1945. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press (2001). This is highly recommended for valuable insights into this complicated, sensitive man’s thinking.

  [149] Rear Admiral Morton Deyo’s Task Force 54 – not to be confused with Mitscher’s TF 58 – was tasked with providing naval gunfire and cover for the Okinawa landings.

  [150] C.W. Stanford, personal correspondence

  [151] www.multied.com/navy/destroyer/MannertLAbeledd733.html

  [152] Stanford, personal correspondence.

  [153] http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~un3k-mn/ooka-history.htm

  [154] Readers with Japanese ability may do a double-take at this name, which also happens to be one of the Japanese words for “wife.” Fukagawa-san himself is not sure of the origins of this naming.

  [155] See Gellner (1983) and Hobsbawm (1990) for enlightening analyses of this phenomenon in a Western context.

  [156] Harries (1991), p.168

  [157] IMA ’44 was the last class to study at the Ichigaya campus. The core curriculum campus was shifted to Zama in Kanagawa Prefecture (present day Camp Zama – a joint U.S./Japan Self-Defense Force base) in October 1941.

  [158] For ease of understanding, I use here the USMA terminology for equivalent training undergone by West Point cadets during their junior year summer.

  [159] IMA ’44 was the only class sent to overseas units for CTLT, although the assignments were limited to China, as theaters where combat was being engaged with the Americans were considered too hazardous.

  [160] The practice of bringing IMA cadets along to observe combat operations was soon cancelled when reports of this incident reached High Command in Tokyo. Even Japan’s formidable propaganda machine would have been hard-pressed to explain a cadet getting shot during a training mission.

  [161] Fukagawa-san renders this as shinryakusha ishiki in Japanese.

  [162] In Japanese terminology, this is called Otsu-Shū or “Phase B” training.

  [163] Some Ki-27s were used as tokkō aircraft when things got really desperate in 1945

  [164] Rikushi Dai57-ki Kōkūshi (1995) p.49

  [165] Mainichi Shimbun, October 28, 1944. Front page headlines reported seven American aircraft carriers sunk. In reality, American carrier losses at Leyte amounted to one light and two escort types. The light carrier Princeton was lost on October 24 to land-based conventional aircraft attack. The escorts were both from Sprague’s Taffy 3, and both went down on October 25:Gambier Bay was lost to shellfire from Kurita’s attack force and St Lo was, of course, sunk by Lieutenant Seki’s Shikishima Flight tokkō attack.

  [166] The phrase, translated literally, is “Special Hands-on Flight Officer Training Program.” See Nagatsuka (1972) for a personal account of the program from a trainee’s perspective.

  [167] Fukagawa (1990), 57-ki Kōkūshi Bunka-hen, pp.51-52

  [168] This was the army equivalent of the navy’s Yobigakusei program attended by Ōka pilots Hideo Suzuki and Tokuji Naitō.

  [169] This is a reference to the quasi-supernatural ishin denshin telepathic nonverbal communication said to have existed between well-trained Japanese pilots (in many popular Nihonjinron folk anthropological treatises, this is claimed to be a unique and innate talent of the Japanese race). See Peattie (2001) for more discussion of this topic in a military aviation context.

  [170] Fukagawa et al., pp.71-72

  [171] Fukagawa-san refers to this as an uta – which usually means “song” in Japanese, but can also mean “poem” when, as in this case, the piece is only meant to be recited rather than sung to a melody.


  [172] The Kokubō Fujin Kai was a somewhat more plebeian and populist version of the Women’s Patriotic League (Aikoku Fujin Kai), and with a much larger membership. I use “League” in my translation of the latter organization’s Japanese name to imply its more elite status. See Smethurst (1974) for a detailed explanation of the class issues involved in this matter.

  [173] Inevitably aiming at the practice dummy’s crotch – this was purported to be the strapping, bulky Americans’ most vulnerable weak spot. It is reasonable to assume that the targeting of this area also had symbolic meaning, given the Japanese regime’s constant warnings to the female populace that the approaching Americans were violent satyromaniacs.

  [174] An IMA ’44 classmate of Fukagawa’s – who will remain unnamed – survived the war and ended up marrying one such “fan.”

  [175] Fukagawa, personal correspondence.

  [176] After the French piste (“runway”). Unlike the Japanese navy, whose aviation arm was influenced by pre-war British advisors (see Peattie (2001) for an enlightening exploration of this relationship), Japanese army aviation tradition owed much to French advisors invited to Japan immediately after World War One.

  [177] From left to right: Abe, Fukagawa, Makino, Teruko, Bando, Tsuma, Yonekichi, Yabuta (partially obscured)

  [178] Nogami – another IMA ’44 man – was CO of the 196th SBT

  [179] Present-day Fukuoka University, a campus of the national university system.

  [180] Tiger imagery was used due to the popular Japanese belief that the fierce animal always found its way back to its lair, no matter how far it ranged during its hunting activity (Fukagawa, personal correspondence).

  [181] See Nagatsuka (1972), p.41, for a more graphic description of this phenomenon.

  [182] Shinto tradition, Japanese folklore and even Imperial court protocol is filled with examples of such “not to be looked upon” taboos.

  [183] For an interesting constrast of modern Japanese thought on this subject, see Kudō (2001) and Fukabori (2001).

  [184] Tim Maga’s America Attacks Japan: The Invasion That Never Was (2002) offers an interesting conjectural exploration of this nightmare scenario.

  [185] See Kōnishi (1999) and Edwards (2003) for analysis of this propaganda.

  [186] Actually, an extrapolation on this line of thought applied at a national cultural level colors Japanese diplomacy and trade policy to this day. Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, influenced by Watsuji’s theoretical model, has long been one of its major proponents, and is fond of referring to Japan as a “warm, wet, cooperative” culture of rice farmers as opposed to the “cold, dry, competitive” Western primeval hunter cultural legacy in explaining innate Japanese aversion to unregulated trade, among other diplomatic, political and economic logjams vis-à-vis Western countries. See van Wolferen (1989), Hashimoto (1998), Scheiner (1998), Befu (2001) and Oguma (2002) for further details of this ideology.

  [187] Ironically, the Satsuma samurai were also the most resistant to centralized authority, and it was a renegade samurai rebellion led by Kyūshū demi-god Takamori Saigō in this very part of Japan that gave the Emperor Meiji his biggest headaches when he was consolidating his power in the 1870s.

  [188] Shōko Nagasaki, personal communication.

  [189] www.town.chiran.kagoshima.jp

  [190] TIME, September 2, 2002 vol.160 no. 6 “Ascent of the Fireflies”, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

  [191] Tokkō had become publicly accepted and institutionalized enough by this point in the war that such personal involvement by family members and other loved ones was common. For more on this phenomenon, see Takagi (1973), Satō (1997), and Akabane (2001).

  [192] See Chiran Kōjō Nadeshiko Kai (1979) for a collection of group members’ wartime diary entries and reminiscences.

  [193] Not a misprint. “Unagi Pai” are a confectionary made from powdered eels (yes, eels), butter, flour and sugar. They are a famous souvenir product of the Hamamatsu/Lake Hamana region renowned for their rich taste and supposed stamina-improving properties.

  [194] For details on the land acquisition process, see Takagi (1973).

  [195] “American-British-Chinese-Dutch”

  [196] See Lord (1957), Prange (1981) and O’Neill (1982) for details of the midget sub operations at Pearl.

  [197] Tanka are like haiku, but with thirty-one syllables instead of seventeen. They are also not stylistically limited to seasonal themes, like the shorter haiku, so are better suited for commemorative poetry.

  [198] This informant function was usually performed by neighborhood merchants in the Army Reservist Association or housewives in the local Defense Women’s Association (Kokubo- Fujinkai).

  [199] The national government took over the collection of scrap metal by official decree in 1944. All pots, pans and other metal utensils were declared the property of the state and collected from communities by local authorities. Coins were also removed from national currency system and replaced with paper notes. (Bunkazai Kamisu, p.20)

  [200] Flower-themed names for mobilized female student units were common during the war. Along with Chiran’s Nadeshiko Unit, the most famous – and undoubtedly most tragic – of these was the Himeyuri (Scarlet Lily) Unit, a detachment of nursing students mobilized for combat aid stations in Okinawan caves who committed suicide with hand grenades rather than allow themselves to be captured by the Marines who invaded the island. Survivor testimony indicates that rather than patriotic sentiment, urging by armed Japanese soldiers in the caves and panicked fear of rape and murder at the hands of the Americans formed the strongest motivation for the suicides.

  [201] Many of these were intended to serve not only as bomb shelters, but also as long-term underground defense facilities to be used when the American invasion came.

  [202] This raid was conducted by the same Task Force 58 element that was the intended target of the disastrous first Ōka sortie from Kanoya N.A.S. three days later on March 21.

  [203] This may have been a (the) formation that mined the Shimonoseki Straits between Kyūshū and Honshū on this day.

  [204] Unlike the navy, the army did not send up tokkō flights in poor visibility conditions, likely due to army pilots’ notoriously underdeveloped navigational skills, especially over water.

  [205] Warner p.188

  [206] Morison, Victory, p. 390

  [207] Morison, Victory, p. 390

  [208] Tillman, Hellcat, p.211

  [209] See Burt (1995) for a harrowing personal account of the lifelong psychological consequences of surviving a tokkō attack.

  [210] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/okinawa-battle.htm

  [211] This was one of the last tokkō sorties from Chiran launched in daylight. As the Hellcat and Corsair raids became increasingly intense, pre-dawn became the only time safe enough to gas up the planes and get them in the air to reach Okinawa with enough light for the pilots to see their targets.

  [212] Shōko Nagasaki, personal correspondence.

  [213] In the actual article, the location is deleted and described as “A Base Somewhere In Japan” (Marumaru-kichi). This convention is ignored in my translation for purposes of clarity.

  [214]This, apparently, is Miss Sada’s own interpretation of the old Shinto taboo against female physical contact with hallowed ground or sacred weaponry. The most well known surviving legacy in modern day Japan of this nearly extinct belief is the taboo against female contact with any of the apparatus involved in sumo wrestling, including setting foot in the ring. This causes protocol problems every year at the trophy presentation ceremony after the Osaka tourney, as the current governor of the prefecture is a woman. Despite initial protest not only on her part but also from women’s rights groups and other liberals around the country, the governor caved to the forces of tradition just before her moment of truth, and has delegated the ceremonial duties to a male subordinate ever since.

  [215] Akabane (2001), p.76

  [216]From text of display at Tomiya Ryokan


  [217] A diminutive familiar abbreviation of Miyakawa’s first name, Saburō.

  [218] Dialogue reconstructed from Akabane (2001) pp.160-166 and interview of May 31, 2002.

  [219] Naoko Motoki, personal communication.

  [220] http://ww.tcr.org/tcr/essays/EPrize_kamikaze.pdf

  [221] Axell & Kase (2002), p.55

  [222] Takagi (1973), p.119

  [223] Axell & Kase (2001), p.70

  [224] Satō (1997), p.20

  [225] Satō (1997), p.21

  [226] Shiino (2000), p.186

  [227] The symbolism seems to hint at the intriguing possibility that at this stage of the war – mid-August 1945 – the Americans were psychologically preparing the Japanese people for the a joint Soviet-American occupation scenario.

  [228] Takagi (1973) p.202

  [229] Residents of the area – and most of the Japanese population – still had no knowledge of the atomic bombings by this time, and would not until several years after the war.

  [230] Takagi (1973), p.200

  [231] Both during and immediately after the war, rumors of uncontrollable American sexual avarice terrified the Japanese populace (perhaps fueled in part by the exploits of their own China campaign veterans?). One of the odder rumors was that American males were driven to paroxysms of lust by the sight of bare female feet, prompting a desperate op-ed plea in the September 9, 1945 issue of the Asahi Shimbun for the immediate distribution of socks to the nation’s women before the bulk of the Occupation troops arrived.