Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (52 page)

Even in death, Sugawara’s penance continues, attended to on this mortal plane by his children. Since the general’s passing in 1983 at the age of ninety-five, his sons Michiyoshi Fukabori (INA ’45)
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and Michihiro Sugawara (IMA
’48
)
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have maintained the family tradition of tireless service to the Tokkō Zaidan organization their father helped to form and attendance at monthly services at the temple he helped build.

After a soggy stroll from the nearby ramen shop where I have eaten my late lunch, I arrive at Setagaya Kan’non and join a small queue of people climbing the short flight of wooden stairs to the Tokkō Chapel. At the top of the stairs, we remove our shoes before entering the close, incense-smoky confines of the
chapel, where the abbot is straightening out folding chairs and seating cushions on the tatami. Sure enough, Michiyoshi Fukabori is here, and I exchange head nods and greetings with him, as well as with Naoko Motoki, Iwao Fukagawa, and other people I have met during the course of my research. After waiting on another short line to sign the guestbook, I take a seat next to Naoko-san, my usual memorial service neighbor.

At two o’clock, Abbot Ōta rings a chime, and the congregation approaches a brocade-draped altar in pairs to sprinkle finely chipped sandalwood into an incense burner pot. When this is done, copies of prayer text are passed around, and with a long, climbing first syllable, the abbot begins chanting the customary tokkō sutra. The congregation catches up a syllable or two later, singing the praises of the brave pilots and their sacrifices against daunting odds in combating Western colonialism and thanking them
for the peace and prosperity of modern day Japan. Most people here do not need the cheat sheets, having said the prayer hundreds or even thousands of times in their lives, but I cannot count myself among this in-group. I try to keep up with the archaic language used in the text – crossing my fingers in the part where it badmouths the West, of course – but even with Naoko-san frequently reaching over to point out what verse I should be on, I just get lost again a few lines later.

Eventually I give up, and
pass the rest of the service as I always do, people-watching and looking around at all the old bric-a-brac in the room: a painted statuette of an impossibly beautiful tokkō pilot in a glass case, like a male version of a
hanayome ningyo
; some journeyman artist’s oil paintings of flaming aerial combat; hand-brushed quotations of great men and solemn blood oaths in bold grasshand; age-yellowed photos of glorious dead along the walls. To the left of the altar, there is a blowup of one of Toshirō Takagi’s famous Chiran shots. In the picture, a long-necked Akio Motoki with a Mona Lisa smile and the countenance of a confident young Plains Indian chief is going over flight maps with his pilots before their sortie. On the other side of the room, a bull-necked Takijirō Ōnishi – looking ever the irritable electrician – glowers down at me with an unwelcoming stare from a dark alcove.

With the end of services, everyone gathers in the congregation house on the south side of the compound. The comfortably homey tatami-floo
red wooden structure is usually used for religious lectures or various club meetings, as well as for accommodating mourners when funerals or memorial services are held at the temple. There is a sizeable kitchen facility in the building staffed by middle-aged and elderly neighborhood women and overseen by Abbot Ōta’s wife, and it can put together a decent spread for up to about one hundred people. But today, there will be no need for any big productions – just packets of snack food and a few bottles of beer for a light-drinking group of twenty.

When everyone is seated, Abbot Ōta calls for a toast, after which the gathering spends the next hour or so discussing research projects, current activities of other memorial groups, verbal obituaries for recently decea
sed comrades and friends, personal news, and political developments in Tokyo. It is this last subject that inevitably brings on the heaviest exchanges, with right-leaning opinions generally lengthier and noisier than more tolerant views.   

Recent Chinese cheek and North Korean high jinks have been the biggest topics of late, with discussion characterized by collective laments over constitutional restraints on formal rearmament and openly expressed disgust with the limpwristedness of Japanese diplomacy and bureaucracy. Today we are discussing a recent incident in which Chinese police violated the territoriality of the Japanese consulate in Shenyang to arrest a group of asylum seekers while the consulate staff stood by without lifting a hand. Someone remarks that the Americans would never stand for the Chinese walking all over them like that.

Suddenly, all eyes in the room are on me, but I field the enquiry with universal body language for “No comment” – a shrug and sideways tip of my head. I always feel uncomfortable when Japanese compare their country unfavorably with America in my presence – especially when other Japanese are within earshot. Nothing healthy and constructive can come out of it, and in any case, Americans have no need to swagger in this part of the world. Our footprints here are deep enough, and the Japanese – certainly the generation of the people in this room – are perfectly aware of what we are capable of in a confrontation.

The topic is bounced around the table a bit longer, ending with the general consensus that something like the consulate incident never would have happened in the old days, and that nobody respects Japan anymore.

In the lull that follows, I cannot help but think that some American responsibility has just been implied. But perhaps I am being paranoid. Nevertheless, I am relieved when conversation resumes to nibble on a new nut.

The afternoon’s meeting ends on a peaceful note, with promises, as always, to meet again in a month. As the rest of the gathering disperses to go home, I remain behind on the tatami floor of the meeting hall, chatting with today’s interview subject, Doctor
Fumitake Hiroshima.

Although his name sounds more like a James Bond nemesis, Doctor Hiroshima is in actuality nothing more menacing than a kindly old Setagaya veterinarian, and his fireplug build and cheerful bear cub personality would be more at home in the cartoons of Hanna-Barbera than the pages of an Ian Fleming novel. He looks and sounds every bit of what he is – a man who has devoted his life to making others happy.

At our first meeting six months ago, I can remember the personal warmth I immediately sensed from the doctor – the kind that makes you think
I hope nothing bad ever happens to this person
. It did not take too long, however, to catch on to the sadness playing foil to the smile in his eyes. As we spoke and the doctor’s story unfolded, I learned that despite a naturally happy disposition and a career that could have been screenwritten for a Robin Williams vehicle, this was a man who had also suffered some enormous losses in his day. But this knowledge did not make me feel sorry for him – it only increased my feelings of affinity for this gentle human being. After all, how could you not help but like a man who does volunteer work in his spare time driving a petting zoo-on-wheels for kindergartners?

During the past half-year I have been let in on the rough outline of the doctor’s wartime experiences, but until now I have not pushed for too much detail. Today, however, I plan to be frank. I inform the doctor of my intentions, and he gives his consent. Best to get it all down while he still can, he says. His brother deserves the truth to be told.

As the doctor and I settle down to begin our interview, he arranges some notes on the tabletop. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out something he never leaves home without – a laminated photo of his brother Tadao in the nineteenth summer of his life. Resplendent in his naval aviator flight suit and Rising Sun hachimaki, Tadao is the very image of a proud and resolute warrior in the picture, and minus sixty years of wear and tear, he has the same rawboned, salt-of-the-earth Kyūshū country boy face as his younger brother. For all their resemblance, the siblings could almost be identical twins.  

The doctor inevitably shows this picture whenever he meets someone new at Setagaya Kan’non. But the doctor and I are not meeting for the first time, he knows I have seen the photo before, and he is not taking it out now for my sake at all. Rather, its display is a form of what I am tempted to call, for lack of a better term, photographic transubstantiation. Anyone who has ever been to a Japanese wake has seen this concept at work when a photo of the deceased (serene facial expressions are favored) is positioned to look down at the mourners from on high, as if placed there to thank personally each person who approaches the casket to light an incense punk. Photos of the deceased are also often seen carried by family or trusted former employees to be
paraded at building openings or ship christenings or other such commemorative events when the principals behind the original projects have not lived long enough to see the fruit of their labor. Readers may recall Sydney Olympics 100kg judo champion Kōsei Inoue cradling his mother’s photo on the medal podium. Similar displays are sometimes even seen at the conclusion of murder trials, when family members of the victim will carry a large framed photo of the deceased into the courtroom to hear the judges’ verdict read.
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In all of these cases, the deceased, through traces of phantasmal essence captured in the displayed photo,
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is considered to be present and accounted for to participate in the proceedings.

Likewise, when the doctor places his brother’s photo on the tabletop to face me, the meaning of the gesture is clear. Tadao will be joining our conversation today. Perhaps, I cannot help wondering, he is also here to look out for his kid brother
Fumitake, just as he always did when they were boys.

*****

Fumitake Hiroshima was born in 1927 in Tsuyazaki, Fukuoka Prefecture, a small village on the Sea of Japan coastline of northwestern Kyūshū. He was the sixth of six children of Mankichi Hiroshima, a prosperous landowner and local government official. When not tending to his duties at the local municipal office, Mankichi raised rice and livestock with his wife Haruō to supplement his income from the saltbeds he operated on the beach behind his house. Previous generations of Hiroshimas had been prosperous salt makers in the region since the late Edo period before adding agriculture to the family business; the saltbeds they built are still there.

“You can see them from the air,” Doctor Hiroshima says proudly. “Whenever I fly into Fukuoka I can always look down and see exactly where I grew up.”

The doctor’s earliest memories are of that beach, because the locale was the backdrop of most of his childhood bonding with Tadao.

“I think we spent more time on the beach than we did in the house,” the doctor says.

While all of the Hiroshima siblings enjoyed good relationships with one another, their wide age spread meant that the oldest children in the house – sisters Shizuko and Tamae – were already fielding suitors by the time Fumitake was beginning to walk and talk. Likewise, oldest sons Junkō and Keijirō were approaching puberty and not inclinded to bother much with a toddler. They were fond and protective of their little brother, but the age gap precluded close bonding.

Third son Tadao, however, was only a year and a hal
f older than Fumitake, and the rest of the family regarded and raised the boys almost as twins. Perhaps as a result of this egalitarian treatment, the two were as much best friends as they were brothers, and absolutely inseparable when growing up. Well into their teens, they were still playing, studying, and bathing together. They even shared the same futon blanket at night.

The bond was just as tight away from home, and the boys always looked out for each other. For Fumitake, being only one grade behind Tadao at school meant that a devoted and fearless protector was never farther than a shout for help away. Although Tadao disliked aggression, he had a rock-solid sense of justice and always came running when his kid brother was in trouble. As a result, school bullies and local toughs learned to leave Fumitake alone when looking for punching bags.

While the brothers bore an almost clone-like physical resemblance to each other, they were temperamentally quite distinct, with Fumitake’s caring and gregarious personality the polar opposite of his older brother’s bookish and rather dispassionate introspection. Doctor Hiroshima notes that Tadao was born in the Year of the Cow, according to the Chinese zodiac, and had a stolid, patient personality to match. He had no rough edges to be accommodated, and – unless prompted to action by extreme circumstances – was utterly non-confrontational. But this did not mean that he was averse to play-wrestling with his brother in front of the living room radio when sumo matches were broadcast, acting out moves and throws as the announcer narrated the ring action.

Sumo pantomiming aside, the two rarely fought in earnest, but when they did, things could get nasty. Fumitake was an especially sore loser and grudge holder, and often did mean things in the wake of fights that he later regretted. Some of those acts still cause regret seventy years later.

“I remember ripping Tadao’s favorite picture of himself after one of our fights,” Doctor Hiroshima says. “It was a picture of him riding a hobby horse during a visit to our rich uncle in Osaka. We were able to paste the photo back together, and Tadao soon forgot all about the incident, but I never did.”

Personality differences were also manifested in the boys’ choices of organized sports at school. Where Fumitake enjoyed the close, sweaty and aggressive exertions of kendo, the reserved Tadao – when not burying his face in some highbrow novel – played tennis. The sport was a rarity in rural Japan at the time, and seen as an activity only for cosmopolitan rich kids. But then, Tadao was an exceptional child in many ways, with intellectual abilities far beyond most of his peers. At the age of twelve, when he entered junior high, only about one out of ten male classmates – and an infinitesimally small number of girls – followed him. With the move, he also became the first person in family history to pursue education beyond the elementary school level. More precedent was set the next year when Fumitake followed in his brother’s footsteps, making the Hiroshimas the first family in Tsuyazaki ever to send more than one child to junior high.