Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (10 page)

At 1500, they got their contact. Escort carriers had been spotted where they had been expected, east of Samar, steaming south. The exact coordinates were hurriedly plotted onto the maps, the compasses came out and the vectors calculated. The targets were at the extreme range of a bomb-laden Zero. If the planes arrived and could not find these targets, being able to return safely to base would be risky at best – downright imposs
ible if they ran into combat either coming or going and had to push their engines at war emergency power settings for more than a few minutes.
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Ōnishi felt that the odds, considering what was at stake, were too long. He cancelled the mission without asking for opinions. Although everyone present understood the logic behind the decision, there was a palpable air of disappointment in the room.

“Tamai, I’m heading back to Manila HQ this evening,” Ōnishi said, suddenly. “But I’d like to say goodbye to the boys
before I go.”

“Yes sir,” the XO replied, looking up from the maps.

“Where is Seki’s flight right now?”

“Shikishima Flight, sir? At the west end ready area.”

“Let’s go, then”

Adjutant Moji collected Ōnishi’s papers and joined the admiral, Tamai and the Nic
hiei cameraman in the limo. When they arrived at the ready area, they left the limo near a line of Zeros and found Seki and the six enlisted pilots of the Shikishima and Yamato flights sitting on the ground in a circle on a grassy ridge.
[46]

“As you were, boys,” Ōnishi said, cutting off Seki’s “
Ki wo tsuke
!” (Attention!) before it even made it past the lieutenant’s lips. “Carry on.”

To the group’s surprise, the admiral gestured for a break in the circle and plopped right down to join the flyers sitting cross-legg
ed on the ground. There were twenty minutes or so of light-hearted banter about hobbies, hometowns and sports before the admiral’s sense of timing had him mulling over a fitting exit. The boys had work to do, and everyone was running out of small talk.

“Well,” the admiral said, “Good luck, boys.” 

As the group rose to its feet, Ōnishi asked for his adjutant’s canteen.

“Let’s say goodbye like they used to in olden days,” the admiral said, addressing the boys now lined up before him. There was no saké on hand for a toast, but a water toast – in the s
amurai
mizu-sakazuki
(literally “water cup”) ritual – was actually even more sacred, involving as it did symbolic cleansing of the warrior in mind and body on the eve of battle. 

Ōnishi held out the aluminum canteen cap/cup while Moji filled it, then rais
ed it in a toast to everyone present. His hand trembled slightly as he drained the cup, which was passed on to Inoguchi and Moji, then from Tamai and Seki to the rest of the flyers. When the junior member present finished his drink, Seki called his unit to attention and they saluted the admiral in unison.

“You’re not saluting me, boys,” the admiral said, raising his hand to the bill of his cap with a textbook, 45-degree snap and not a sign of trembling left. “I’m saluting you.”

The group disbanded quietly, with Ōnishi, the other staff officers and the cameraman squeezing back into the limo to return to the HQ compound. An hour later, Ōnishi left Mabalacat for the long ride back to Manila, which was even quieter than the ride up had been. Not a word was spoken in the car until the admiral arrived at Manila HQ for the official 1st Air Fleet change-of-command ceremony with Vice Admiral Teraoka that evening at 2000.

*****

Morale was low at Mabalacat Field on the morning of October 25
th
. The weather had been foul for days. Steamy, dripping heat made for sleepless nights, plagues of mosquitoes and edgy tempers. On-again-off-again rain socked in the field for hours at a time, hampered the effectiveness of recon flights and turned huge areas of the base into seas of black volcanic mud. Combat results – or lack thereof – were not helping things, either. So far, the Shinpū program had been a total flop.

Flights had been going out on tokkō missions since the twenty-first, but every one of them had come up empty: target
s weren’t where they were supposed to be; green flyers got lost in the fog (some never to return); flights were jumped by American fighters; engines broke down in mid-flight from Marianas Gas, worn cylinders or just poor maintenance, forcing pilots to return to base in shame and bitter disappointment. Seki and his Shikishima
Flight had already been out on three of these abortive missions over the past four days and their morale was bottoming out. But the worst experience, by far, had been after the first mission. They had gotten a dramatic send-off by the now safely returned Captain Yamamoto (hobbling on crutches, no less), solemn toasts with saké at a special, white linen-draped table, tears and cheers from the other flyers and ground crews and a rousing group singing of
Umi Yukaba
, the whole thing captured on celluloid by the Nichiei cameraman. Limping back to base a few hours later with nothing to report but fog, cloud banks and empty expanses of Pacific had been the ultimate anti-climax – the most excruciating humiliation imaginable. Send-offs after that had become mercifully subdued. Everyone did their best to keep up a show of enthusiasm, but the overall mood on the base had settled into a routine of gray fear and numbing ennui, the only excitement coming from the occasional Hellcat sweep over the field. Death hung in the air now like the Mabalacat mist – an unpleasant feature of the landscape that no one seemed to notice anymore.

At 0725, Seki’s flight bombed up and took off once again. The event went la
rgely unnoticed by all but the ground staff immediately involved.

Making things worse for morale this morning were signs of the first cracks in the Shō plan. Reports were coming in about a terrible bloodletting in Surigao Strait several hours before dawn,
but no one had any names or numbers yet. Details started coming in several hours after Seki had taken off, and the news was worse than anyone had expected; Nishimura’s southern pincer prong had run head on into Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet battle line lying in ambush (and well-stocked with armor-piercing rounds)
[47]
. In the ensuing slaughter, Nishimura had gone down with his flagship
Yamashiro
, and the
Fusō
and three destroyers had also been sent to the bottom.
[48]
Adding to the mayhem and carnage, Shima’s squadron, seemingly oblivious to the conflagration ahead, had blundered up the Strait right behind Nishimura with no coordination whatsoever and there had been an embarrassing collision between the heavy cruisers
Nachi
(Shima’s flagship) and
Mogami
from Nishimura’s element in the midst of all the confusion.
Mogami
, already on fire from the ambush, suffered grievous damage, slowed to a crawl and was finally done in by American Avenger torpedo bombers around 0900. Shima’s ships had, however, managed to rescue some of Nishimura’s men from the shark-infested waters of the Strait and make good their escape, but all in all, the operation had been an unmitigated disaster. Taken alone, it was the most humiliating and lopsided defeat of Japanese line ships in a surface gunnery engagement in the nation’s history. It would have to be avenged before the battle was out.              

Meanwhile, Ozawa’s decoy force had done its job well, although they were about to pay a terrible price for it. The potential prize of bagging Japanese carriers – most definitely on the endangered species list by late 1944 – had proven too much for Halsey and Mitscher to resist, and they had committed everything to going after them. Task Force 38 was now hundreds of kilometers to the north of Leyte and too far to double back to arrive in time to help stop Kurita’s force, which according to the last reports, had made it through the now wide-open San Bernardino Strait and down the coast of Samar Island unopposed and was now within a hair’s breadth of smashing its way into the gulf to destroy the main staging area of the invasion fleet.

The loss of the
Musashi
to American air on the way through the Sibuyan Sea was irreplaceable, but Kurita still had more than enough seapower at his command to break through the perilously thin line of escort carriers and destroyers off Samar and blocking the northern approaches to the gulf – all that lay between the Japanese Fleet and a stunning victory that could set the Allied war effort in the Pacific back by months, if not years, potentially even bringing the humbled Americans to the negotiating table with their hats in their hands.

Seki and his men had been thoroughly briefed on as many of these developments as were known by 0720, and they were well aware of the gravity of their mission and what was at stake. The young lieutenant, perhaps, was most aware of these factors, remembering his tactics classes at the Naval Academy, and how so many of  history’s greatest sea battles had turned on quickly seized opportunities posed by unforeseen developments, on mistakes and misfortunes, or even just on plain dumb luck. With determination and the right breaks, the Shikishima Flight could score hits and take out some carriers. Five planes… That could mean five enemy carriers dead in the water with useless flight decks… It could even mean five enemy carriers sunk! Any success by the Shikishima planes would mean fewer American aircraft over Kurita’s flotilla. If the timing was right and luck was with them, it just might work. Operation Sh
ō could still be salvaged.

*****

Around 1030, a breathless runner from the western ready area telephone shack ran down the flight line, where Zeroes of the new
Wakazakura
(“Young Cherry Blossom”) Flight were being gassed up to be ferried down to Cebu for evening strikes in Leyte. The runner’s face was beaming. Success! He was bearing the first good news in many days. Planes from the Yamazakura and Asahi flights and the newly formed
Kikusui
(“Floating Chrysanthemum”
[49]
) Flight had sortied from Davao
[50]
several hours earlier and had broken through the American combat air patrol (CAP) over the Seventh Fleet’s screen, scoring hits on at least two escort carriers and setting them ablaze.

The Wakazakura flyers, still numbed from the Surigao reports just minutes befor
e, were electrified by the breaking news, and although they harbored some envy that others had beaten them to the honor of scoring the first Shinpū successes, this just made them all the more determined to get through and score even more spectacular hits. More than anything else, though, their prayers were with their young CO and the Shikishima Flight, which would be close to reaching their targets by now. If anyone could get through to the American carriers, it would be Lieutenant Seki.

*****

At 1045, as the shock of the first grim Surigao communiqué – followed so quickly by the elation of the Kikusui Flight reports – was still being digested in command posts all over the Philippines, the Shikishima Flight was clearing the last spiny, mist-shrouded mountain ridges of Samar Island at a stiff clip before breaking out over the Pacific. It was a Zen warrior’s moment of the type that Seki had dreamed of since his days as a teenage midshipman. The doubts and despair about life cut short and everything that might have been, thoughts of his wife and mother that had ruined his sleep for the past four nights
[51]
– all that mental static had to be banished. In order to strike true and clean, his mind and eyes had to be clear. He was at peace with himself and at war with an enemy who had a flotilla full of fat, juicy targets waiting for the taking.

It was a good day to die.

*****

The 1AF HQ communications room orderly knew what to do as soon as the cable from Mabalacat came through. Grabbing up the paper, he ran to Vice Admiral Ōnishi’s office, knocked, and opened the door to find the admiral up and pacing, pallid-looking, beads of sweat on dripping from his buzzcut to gather around the tight collar of his uniform shirt.

“Another report from Mabalacat, sir,” the orderly an
nounced. “Just in.”

“Is it the Shikishima
Flight?” the admiral asked, wide-eyed. “Lieutenant Seki?”

“Yes sir. I believe so. And details of this morning’s strike out of Davao, also, sir.”

Ōnishi snatched the typed cable from the orderly’s hands and sat down at his desk, his brow furrowed as he pored over the news. 

The first tokkō to make apparently successful hits were Zeroes out of Davao from the Kikusui Flight. The planes sortied at 0630 with the Yamazakura and Asahi flights. Soon after take-off, one pla
ne from the Kikusui Flight was forced back to base, unable to retract its landing gear. A stupid maintenance error. Another two planes – one each from Yamazakura and Asahi – turned back with engine trouble shortly after that. Not even at the target yet, and nearly half the force was already out of the fight. Inexcusable. American CAP destroyed two more strikers on the way in, leaving two strikers to arrive over an element of American escort carriers at 0740. Two of the carriers were confirmed burning by one of the Kikusui escort pilots, the only man in the entire formation who made it back from the target area alive.

This was not the most auspicious debut for the tokkō units the admiral could have imagined, but still, two carriers for two Zeros. That was not
bad. Not bad at all. He skimmed halfheartedly over the Davao administrative details to get to the Shikishima report.