Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (13 page)

The worst accident occurred on the afternoon of May 27, about two months into the program, when Officer Candidates Tokumaru and Tomohisa Okujima collided while circling Kisarazu Field (Chiba Prefecture) in a landing pattern after a training flight was aborted in mid-mission for bad weather. The bodies of the dead students were returned to Shimoshizu the next day wrapped in silk from their own parachutes, and laid out for a wake in a hangar hung with special black and white striped funerary bunting for the next day’s formal funeral ceremony.

The school conducted a well-choreographed service. Retouched and blown-up photos of the deceased framed in black were displayed on an altar surrounded by attractive floral sprays. There were monks and incense and moving speeches by big brass, faculty and classmates. In the emotional climax of the ceremony, the bereaved parents walked front and center to face the gathering. The fathers had white cloth-covered ossuary boxes hanging from their necks by white cloth straps. The boxes contained the cremated remains of their sons. The mothers were presented with the retouched formal funerary portraits, which both women cradled in their arms. On cue, the group bowed deeply in unison before one of the fathers stepped up to the microphone stand, thanked the school for all it had done in allowing their boys to die honorable deaths in the service of the Fatherland and wished the faculty and student pilots the best of luck in combat against the foes of the Empire.

A few weeks later, a box of adorable amulet dolls handmade by Okujima’s younger sister arrived at the barracks. The dolls were sprinkled with perfume, and there was one for each of the twelve surviving squadron members. The box contained two additional dolls – one each for Okujima and Tokumaru – with a note requesting that they be carried into battle when the squadron went into action. Yoshitake and the other pilots hung the dolls from the canopy slide latches in the cockpits of their planes.

*****

Yoshitake and his classmates received their coveted
katana
samurai swords and commissions as second lieutenants in a modest ceremony on the morning of July 1
st
. That afternoon, they placed their kit bags and their precious katana in the storage space behind their cockpit seats and flew their aircraft to nearby Chōshi Army Airfield, where they would spend the next few weeks studying aerial gunnery, horizontal bombing, aerial combat and nape-of-the-earth flying.

Responsibility for the training of the Liaison/Spotter squad was handed over to Captain Kunio Takaishi (I
MA ’41), two senior lieutenants and a sergeant pilot in late July. Takaishi had been on the Northern China front for several years with the 54
th
Independent Air Group until the previous spring, when he had come to Shimoshizu for Aviation Recon Flight Leader School. Takaishi and the other instructors were combat seasoned pilots whose experience and leadership would help guide the trainees through the difficult next phase of their training, which would concentrate on over-water long range navigation, anti-submarine operations, convoy escort, dive-bombing and low-level attack techniques. The final phase of the training would be the most hazardous of all: instruction in recently developed anti-ship skip-bombing
[60]
techniques using a ship-like offshore reef formation as their target.

As the new lieutenants neared completion of Aviation Recon Basic, it became evident that it was not mere coincidence that they were being trained almost exclusively for an anti-shipping combat role. The trainees became quite proficient in it and began talking among themselves that perhaps they would not be used in a stale old recon role after all, but would be flying their
Ki-
51s – which, after all, were also assault aircraft – as an elite anti-shipping force to take on the inevitable American invasion fleets that would be threatening the inner line of the Empire’s defenses in coming months. Yoshitake and his classmates were told in no uncertain terms that they would be sent straight into action as soon as they finished the course, that their chances for survival were slim and that they would most likely be posted to the Philippines, where the Americans were expected to strike next.

The irony of this new mission profile was not lost on Yoshitake and his classmates. For most of their IMA cadet careers, they had been indoctrinated to view Communism as the greatest threat to the nation. Accordingly, their practical training had concentrated on search-and-destroy techniques for use against Chinese guerrillas or artillery spotting and aerial recon for the massive land battles they expected to fight against the Soviets in Manchuria someday. Even when the army took on extensive commitments in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific with the outbreak of hostilities with America and Britain, the IMA faculty looked on this conflict with condescension – almost resentment – referring to it as a “southern” or “ocean-going” matter that was better left to the navy (who had started it, after all) while the army faced down the real threat to the Empire that lay in wait to the west and north.

But like almost everything else the Japanese army had assumed or taken for granted in 1941, all of that thinking had been turned on its ear by 1944. Yoshitake and his classmates were going to be fighting Americans in a few more weeks – not raiding Chinese guerrilla camps or calling in artillery on Soviet armored divisions. Times had changed, and as usual, the army brass was far behind them and resenting being told to catch up.

A
fter a late October graduation furlough to say farewell – perhaps for the last time – to loved ones in Yamaguchi, Yoshitake returned to Chōshi, where he and his classmates were formally organized into an outfit designated Hakkō Unit 6
[61]
under the command of Captain Takaishi. The other instructors on his staff would stay on as regular pilots, with one of them, First Lieutenant Yoshio Hosoda, doubling as unit XO. Hakkō Unit 6 would be deployed immediately on “special assignment” to take part in the Leyte campaign, which had opened up while Yoshitake and his classmates were home on leave. No one in the new unit was exactly sure what “special assignment” meant. While some of the more pessimistically oriented pilots surmised that it might be something along the lines of the navy suicide attacks at Leyte that had been making such a big media splash of late, Yoshitake and most of the other pilots guessed that the designation could only mean that they were going to be an elite squadron of skip-bombers after all.

In a briefing on the afternoon of November 5
th
, the pilots of Hakkō Unit 6 found out that the pessimists had been right. They were to be posted to the Philippines with all possible haste for assignment to Lieutenant General Kyōji Tominaga’s Fourth Air Army as tokkō raiders. On the morn, twelve of the eighteen pilots, Yoshitake included, would go to Tachikawa Arsenal in Western Tokyo to take possession of twelve brand new
Ki
-51s with a special new tokkō modification enabling the planes to carry 500kg bombs (twice the
Ki-
51’s maximum safe bomb-load). The group would then fly back to Chōshi, wait for the remaining six squadron mates to bring in their new planes, then depart for Pollack Airfield near Manila as soon as the flight orders came in.

The pilots of Hakkō Unit 6 spent the next two evenings in rowdy send-off parties, the first of these hosted by the Chōshi base commander, Brigadier General Takeshi Hattori. The second party was held the following night at the pilots’ favorite off-post entertainment spot, the Itōya Inn. Special guests of honor were the mobilized local high school
[62]
girls who worked as grease monkeys in the Chōshi engine repair shops. Rounding off the guest list were several geisha, compliments of the house, who entertained the party with songs and dancing late into the night. The female guests were fully aware of what awaited their dashing young hosts in coming days or weeks, and as the festivities began to wind down, a contagious round of quiet sobbing began to work its way among the schoolgirls. One of the geisha barked at the girls to shut up, remarking that it was bad luck to end a party with tears. The tatami-matted banquet room fell into an uncomfortable silence.

Second Lieutenant Matsumitsu Kataoka, an older classmate who had entered the IMA from the regular army as a prior service cadet, assessed the situation expertly and moved quickly to save the party from ending in disaster. Tying a towel around his head, he started a round of clapping in a traditional festival rhythm and waited for the others to join in before jumping up to do the comical
dojō sukui
[63]
dance that was popular in Japan at the time. This got everyone laughing, and the party broke up on a cheerful note after Captain Takaishi was presented with a
yosegaki
placard signed by all the girls and decorated with now-common propaganda
kanji
idioms like
gochin
(“screaming dive sinking”) or
nikudan-hittchū
(“human bombshell never miss”) beautifully penned in the girls’ dainty calligraphy.

Early on the morning of November 8, the mildly hungover pilots of Hakkō Unit 6 left Chōshi in their bra
nd new
Ki-
51s for what was supposed to have been a two-day flight to Manila with rest and refueling stops on the way at Chiran Airfield in Kyūshū and Daitō Airfield in Taiwan. The first engine failure happened mere minutes after take-off from Chōshi, and it only got worse from there. Two days stretched into nine and as many emergency stops before the last
Ki-
51 sputtered into Pollack on November 17th. 

After a day of rest and aircraft maintenance, the pilots were invited to visit Fourth Air Army headquarters in Manila on the morning of the nineteenth for a special presentation from Lieutenant General Tominaga.
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An open bay truck with armed sentries was provided for the trip to HQ. Yoshitake and his squadron mates were instructed to ride with their service pistols drawn and their eyes on the trees and shacks they passed. Several burned out Japanese army vehicles along the sides of the roads leading to town showed what happened to those who failed to take the local guerrilla problem seriously.

Welcome to exotic Luzon.

On the ride in, explosions could be heard to the north in the direction of the Clark Airfield complex. A few moments later, columns of oily black appeared over the horizon. Pollack, of course, was in the same neighborhood, but it was a minor auxiliary base. The Americans would probably leave it alone. Everyone agreed that the smoke had to be coming from the Clark area bases.

When the pilots arrived at the venue, they were escorted directly to the general’s office, where a media ambush lay in wait. As a pushy platoon of Army News Service and civilian Nichiei cameramen popped flashbulbs and shouted questions at the blinking, bewildered young men, Tominaga presented Captain Takaishi with a handwritten certificate penned in the general’s own calligraph
y announcing that Hakkō Unit 6 had been officially christened
Sekichō
Unit. The name, taken from the classical
kanji
idiom “steel heart stone bowel” (“
Tesshin Sekichō
”), dated from the days of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius, and was chosen to evoke the stalwart resolve and sturdy constitution of brave souls.  

After the presentation, the general made the rounds with the pilots for photo ops before shooing out his guests with hearty back slaps and “Live up to your name, boys” comments loud enough for the reporters to catch. With their eyes still flashing purple from the press conference, the pilots were hustled out of the HQ and cut loose on the town for a nine-hour-furlough. Downtown Manila itself was relatively guerrilla-free, but abductions and assassinations of Japanese personnel were not unknown. They were told not to wander off alone, to avoid unlicensed entertainment establishments, and to report back to HQ by 1900 for a reception with Lieutenant General Tominaga.

The party that evening was an eerily beautiful affair held in the courtyard of the Hiromatsu, an R&R establishment near 4AF HQ for high-ranking Japanese personnel either stationed in or passing through Manila. Great effort had been put into simulating the effect of a real a Japanese inn here for the sake of homesick patrons. Outside of the scullery maids in the kitchen and other menial types, the restaurant was staffed entirely by Japanese girls, a swanky rarity in a colonial “comfort facility.” Many of the rooms had
tatami
matting and sliding paper
shoji
doors. The wood planked flooring of the corridors was well polished. Red paper lanterns were strung along the walls, casting a warm glow over the guests and the plates of sumptuous banquet fare as the saké flowed freely and laughter echoed into the night. Fireflies lit up the foliage ringing the courtyard like Christmas trees, adding to the festive atmosphere.

The next morning, after a pleasant stay in the best guest rooms at the nearby Air Corps Officers’ Club, the pilots boarded the transport truck for the ride back to Pollock. When they arrived at the field, they found cleanup crews sorting out wreckage and filling in runway craters. The smoke and explosions they had seen and heard coming from the direction of Clark the day before ha
d in fact been coming from here. Eight of the
Ki-
51s they had worked so hard to bring all the way down from Chōshi were now smoldering heaps, and another three were badly shot up, although not beyond repair.