Burial in the Clouds (17 page)

We returned to the barracks in triumph, in the excitement rapping each other on the shoulders for no good reason at all. “Hey, buddy!” “Hey yourself!” We talked of nothing but the sumo match. At dinner, our instructor, Lt.jg S., stopped by to eat with us. I was curious as to how he would behave, but he seems to be genuinely happy for us in our victory. In due course, our prize was brought in: a case of beer and two bottles of sake. A couple of ensigns from the 13th Class came over to thank the wrestlers. Also present were Lt. O. of the Aviation Maintenance Branch, Surgeon Lt.jg A., and Paymaster Lt.jg J. Next, yet another ensign from the 13th Class, a carrier-based bomber pilot who was good and soused, staggered over to congratulate us. They all looked immensely pleased. Clearly, the Naval Engineering College graduates, the surgeons and the paymasters—not to mention the students of the 13th Class—really had it in for the Naval Academy men. Practically everybody came by, except for the junior officers of the first gun room, all of whom graduated from the Academy.

We had agreed among ourselves to drink no more than half a bottle of beer each, but our visitors wouldn't leave it at that. Again and again they cried out, “Cheers!” “Bring more sake!” Aviation Maintenance Lt. O. reeled away, singing “Bring me sake, my true love,” and back he came with a half-gallon jug. Paymaster Lt.jg J. sent his dog robber out to fetch his own personal ration of a dozen beers. And so the whole company went off on a mad drinking spree, singing military songs and overturning the dishes on the tables.

“Is our real enemy America or the Naval Academy?” someone asked. “We dedicate ourselves to Japan, but we don't intend to die for the Imperial Navy,” declared someone else. At which a drunken Fujikura yelled out, “I don't intend to die for anybody!” I kicked him in the shin. Fortunately, in all the chaos his voice didn't carry.

The party finally ended when the command to “Prepare for the rounds” was issued. By that time, we had emptied one hundred eighty bottles of beer, seven half-gallon jugs of sake, and a considerable quantity of alcoholic beverages of a dubious nature. Each of us downed eleven apples and four oranges. Hard to believe how much we consumed. After the rounds I stood duty, my head spinning.

November 19

We had a spell of lndian summer days, with on-again/off-again training flights. But today at 2140, for the first time in a long while, Lt.jg S. ordered us all out on deck. We drew up, wondering what could be the matter. There seemed to be no call for a reprimand, now that the frenzy over the sumo match had subsided. The lieutenant showed up on the dot with a strained look on his face. He stared at us for some time.

“As of tomorrow, your training flights will cease.” This was unexpected. “And there is no prospect of resuming them in the foreseeable future. No fuel is available. Japan staked the fate of the nation on Operation SHO-1 in the Philippines, and the results are anything but welcome.” His emotions overcame him as he spoke, but he pressed on as if talking to himself, choking up from time to time. “We spoke of life and death, we talked about breaking through, but now we have nothing. Nothing at all is left us.”

My mind went blank. I couldn't take it all in. In the month and a half since we arrived at Usa, we have had twelve days of flight training—in all, a mere ten hours and a smattering of minutes in the air. Now it looks as if the final battles may go on without us, that they may be lost to us forever.

As he wound things up, the lieutenant gave us a kind of placebo. “Surely you will be able to fly again, just as soon as we find a solution to the fuel problem. So don't let it get you down.” As I climbed into my hammock, a flood of tears streamed down my face. I have finally shaken off my attachments to the things I once loved—to the campus, to the beauty of Kyoto and Yamato, and also to the
Manyoshu.
I have at last directed my mind into a single channel, and now they are telling me yet again to abandon what has become my sole purpose in life. We are absolutely forbidden to live freely. Will we now be denied the chance to die gracefully?

November 22

Sunday schedule. Liberty.

My father phoned unexpectedly last night, saying that he was in Beppu and wanted to see me. I went directly to the Hinago Inn, diverting myself along the way with speculations as to the occasion for the visit, but what I heard on entering the room was that my brother Bunkichi is dead.

My dad says he presumably died with honor, together with his outfit on Tinian Island, toward the end of September. I had feared something like this would happen. My father couldn't bring himself to break the news in a letter, and what with the unbearable loneliness, he decided to arrange the family business so as to find time to see me personally. My mother had totally broken down when she heard. I thought about how she will feel when I'm killed, too.

Placed on one of the staggered shelves in the room was my brother's photograph, as a senior private in the Japanese Army. He looked melancholy. There was a glassiness about his eyes, and his uniform was a bit too big. He differed from me in personality, educational background, and circumstances. Above all, he wasn't young anymore. I imagine he lacked the youthful momentum that allows me and my comrades to coast along in military life. To him, everything must have been downright torture. In what way could his death possibly have helped arrest the decline of the Japanese forces? He must have died in perfect sadness, seeing himself as a weak soldier, and probably of little use for anything. I wish we could have let him live quietly, tucked away in some home unit in inland Japan.

I bathed alone. Unlike the inn at Kamegawa, this one is equipped with a fine bath. Pure, sweet water springs up abundantly from below. I can't believe that people who depart this world dwell in some kind of a “heaven,” with bodies like our own. But I have no difficulty imagining that they are, body and soul, resolved into the natural universe, that they are translated back into water, into mist, into the leaves of the mountain trees. Two months have passed. My brother must already have returned to the tidal currents of the ocean, to the autumn clouds, and to the wells of this hot spring. I stirred the smooth waters for a long time.

When I came out of the bath, the meal was already laid out. My father had asked the maid to serve the sake he brought with him, a brand called “Sakura Masamune.” There he sat, sipping sake and eating prawn tempura, in front of my brother's photograph. I changed into a padded kimono and took a seat opposite him. The people at the inn called me “young master,” which made me feel a bit iffy. But our maid very much resembled Fukiko, in features and in carriage, and as I mellowed, I felt like dropping a few hints about Fukiko, in the way a schoolboy might. But I dissuaded myself. I would certainly have told my father about her if the war were over, and he might have taken pleasure in listening to the story.

He gave me an heirloom dagger, which had been made by Kenroku, a pupil of Seki-no Magoroku. There was a scratch on the blade, probably made by a whetter, but it had a superb metallic smell. After the meal, we walked toward the shore of Shonin-ga-hama. The wooden clogs felt pleasant on my bare feet. The mountains in Beppu were ablaze with autumn colors. White plumes of steam rose up from the springs among the trees with their elegant lines. The ocean was bright, blue and clear. Waves lapped gently at the rocks, and then ebbed. Along the shore, hot water bubbled up here and there and streamed into the sea, leaving yellowish tracks among the stones.

“Before you were born, I came to Beppu with your mother and brother,” my father said. “And he sat down right there, along Nagare-gawa Street, and refused to budge an inch until I bought him a toy.” He smiled sorrowfully.

We returned to the inn around three o'clock, bathed again, and had dinner. My father returns home by boat tomorrow morning, so I took my leave and headed for the base.

The moon is five days old, so it was dark in the train. Still, Sakai, Fujikura, Murase, and a few others were all on board, and they consoled me for the loss of my brother.

November 25

Two carrier-based attack bombers, called the “Tenzan,” were brought in by air transport. The men put them through their paces, gunning the motors full throttle. The propellers made a tremendous roar. Several mechanics clung to the tail of each plane to keep it grounded, but even so, the planes bore down hard on the chocks with their wheels, making creaking noises. I felt envious. A torpedo was clasped to the fuselage of each Tenzan with two cables. I always thought torpedoes were slung directly underneath the body, but these were fastened a little to the right of center to allow, as I understand it, for the propeller wash and the gunsights.

Now that flights have been suspended, we do formation training on bicycles. Military discipline, including our reports to field headquarters, is as strict as it ever was during regular flight training, but otherwise, we just ride around the apron on bicycles, with model aircraft in tow. In other words, any practice we get is utterly useless.

No report on the status of the war. We have no information as to how our forces in the Philippines are being supplied, nor any idea whether effective measures have been taken to cut off the enemy's lines. Nothing but ominous silence. I hear we can now count our regular aircraft carriers on the fingers of one hand, and that we can count our remaining cruisers on the fingers of two. The carriers
Zuikaku
and
Zuibo
are both gone. According to Lt.jg S., the enemy's raid on Omura the other day destroyed a number of the new “Ryusei” carrier-based attack bombers, together with all the other aircraft that had just come off the line at the Aeronautical Arsenal. The planes were awaiting assignment when two hundred of them were destroyed in eight successive strikes. I wonder why they didn't take to the air and flee. Furthermore, Omura Air Station is a fighter base, so why didn't the fighters scramble when they learned enemy planes were over Cheju? Also, I hear that one hundred fighters en route to the Philippines were picked off by a mere four enemy aircraft. Most were shot down. The excuse is that our fighters were unarmed at the time, as they were to be armed when they reached their destination. But their destination was a battlefield! It's totally ridiculous. Word came in, too, that we produced three new four-engine long-range heavy bombers called the “Renzan,” and that two of them crashed during test flights. Some wag dubbed it “Self-Defeating Aerial Battle.” I can't shake off the feeling that we are dancing to the enemy's tune.

Tonight we watched a movie titled
The Twenty Thousand Kilometer Front,
which was not much more than parts of old newsreels cobbled together. Watching these images, most of which date from around the time we captured Singapore, I was overcome by the conviction that we are living in a completely different era.

November 30

No flights.

Time passes drowsily. We eat, do “formation flights” on bicycles to ease our minds, eat yet again, read novels, and sleep, and that's about all we do. Recently, all maki-zushi has vanished from the canteen, leaving buns with azuki-bean paste standing alone on the shelf. However, rations of roasted seaweed are plentiful, so breakfast is quite good. Turnips show up every day as pickles. The pickles have a faint preservative odor, but I enjoy their radishy bite.

To possess a robust body, with a healthy appetite for food and sex; to employ the mind well and often; to bequeath to the next generation superior offspring and a real intellectual inheritance:
that
is the ideal life for a man. However, the national crisis compels us to curb certain aspects of our character, both physical and spiritual, and to develop certain other aspects to unnatural extremes. We have accepted the situation, and have done our best to accommodate ourselves to it. But now we find ourselves thrown into a life where we just stuff our bellies, engage in pointless physical labor, and then sleep it all off. I can't imagine a more miserable situation for any man who wishes to get a sense of what he really is. Some indulge themselves in pleasure, precisely as if they didn't want to “fall behind in the Realm of Famished Ghosts,” using their status as navy warbirds for cover. These men I used secretly to regard as “fighting pigs,” but now it seems we are all “
non
-fighting pigs.”

Exams. An epidemic of fraud. And no wonder the epidemic spreads, because why on earth should “pigs” learn the theory of celestial navigation? I don't peek at others' exam papers myself, but I let my neighbors sneak a look at mine. And if I don't cheat, it's not because I hate the fraud, but because I don't give a damn about my grades.

I grow terribly forgetful. Not being able to recollect what I was thinking only the night before is getting to be an everyday affair. The English word for “kawa” slipped out of my memory, and I couldn't find it again for the life of me. I asked Sakai, but he said he didn't know, either.

“Wouldn't ‘river' do?” said a fellow who'd overheard us, making a face.

“Yes, that's it. It's ‘river.”' We laughed.

December 4

Still no flights.

A certain Lt.jg Tanaka came on deck toward evening to have a little talk with us. He is a stout man and holds a fifth rank in judo. He had been making a sortie to the Philippine Islands when bad visibility forced him to make a landing at Oita; that's how he ended up here. He described to us how the aircraft carrier
Ryu-jo
went down just east of Bougainville Island in August 1942. On board the sinking ship, he almost suffocated from the smoke and had to sustain himself on the air trapped in desk drawers. “Just look at you,” his superior officer had said, “what are you sucking at when you're about to die anyway?” And yet, he managed to survive. Now he is attached to a special attack force of carrier-based “Suisei” bombers. He will head for the Philippines as soon as the weather clears. Once there, he will take to the air outfitted lightly, with neither a reconnaissance crew nor machine guns—in fact, carrying nothing but a No. 80 (800 kg) bomb, lashed to the plane with straw rope. He will make his charge at 350 knots.