The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  Many of those who commanded kamikaze operations were that type of officer. They would say, “You aren’t the only ones who are going off to die. I’ll be following you without fail.” But barely any of those officers actually followed their men as promised. Once the war ended, they all feigned ignorance, acting like they had no responsibility whatsoever. Even worse, a good number said things like, “The kamikazes were all volunteers. They all gave their lives for the country out of the pureness of their hearts.” They were shirking responsibility by flattering the kamikazes. Or maybe they were attempting to lessen the pangs of their consciences. In any case, it was because of this sophistry that the kamikazes became the subject of public criticism after the war.

  I said that there were almost no officers that followed the kamikazes into death. But Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, the “Father of Special Attacks,” committed seppuku the day after Japan surrendered. More than a few people interpreted his suicide as a noble act, calling it Onishi’s atonement. But I don’t think it was noble in the slightest. How is the suicide of one old man sufficient atonement for stealing the futures of so many young men?

  Even if I ever ceded that it was a desperate but necessary tactic for the Battle of Leyte, special attacks were altogether pointless from the Battle of Okinawa on. If he had the courage to die, then why didn’t he say, “I oppose special attacks even at the cost of my life,” and disembowel himself then?

  * * *

  —

  They say that Vice Admiral Onishi proposed and adopted kamikaze tactics in October 1944. But was that true? Onishi, himself, once called the special attacks “heresy for any commander.”

  The Navy started to deploy other suicide weapons, the Kaitens and Ohkas, towards the end of 1944. But they had been in development since the beginning of that year. Such weapons would never have been developed had the military not already mapped out that course of action, which leads me to believe that Vice Admiral Onishi was just made into a scapegoat. He never attempted to make any excuses. It’s likely he died shielding many others who’d been involved. If he was going to shield anyone, I wish it’d been all those young men.

  The Kaiten was a human torpedo. A modern torpedo is guided by computers, so even if the target tries to escape it can still give pursuit and score a hit. With the Kaiten, humans played the role of those computers. No other country’s military would ever have come up with that.

  It’s possible that the groundwork for the kamikazes existed within the Navy since the very start. Type A submarines were deployed in special attacks on Pearl Harbor at the outset of the war.

  Type A subs were midget submarines with two-man crews. For Pearl Harbor, they were loaded onto full-size submarines and carried close to the Hawaiian shore, then launched into the harbor. But there was little hope of small subs making it into a heavily guarded U.S. naval port. Even if they managed to succeed in their mission, it was impossible for the crew to then escape and be recovered by the mother submarine waiting off shore. In other words, this tactic was essentially the same as the kamikaze forces. The ten crewmembers that sortied knew full well there was no hope of them returning alive. And indeed, all five Type A subs never made it back. I think that was the point when the fate of the future special attack units was sealed.

  This is a digression, but during that mission one of the Type A subs ran aground at the mouth of the harbor, and one of her crew was taken prisoner. Imperial General HQ sang the praises of the nine others who had fallen in combat, proclaiming them war gods, and totally ignored Ensign Sakamaki, who had been captured. Even so, Ensign Sakamaki’s name became known to the public. Stones were thrown at his parents’ house, and abusive letters poured in from all over the country. “Why didn’t that damn unpatriotic guy kill himself?” and all that.

  An essential navigational instrument, the gyrocompass, was malfunctioning on Ensign Sakamaki’s sub. The captain of his mother sub asked, “What do you plan to do?” Ensign Sakamaki apparently replied, “It’s a go, sir.” There was no military man then who could refuse to embark on a mission when asked that by a superior officer. Why didn’t the captain simply cancel his sortie? Due to the faulty gyrocompass, Ensign Sakamaki was unable to properly direct the sub, miscalculated his position, and ran aground. His crewmate died.

  In stark contrast to Ensign Sakamaki, who was branded as unpatriotic, local villagers and children thronged the houses of the nine dead men, praising them as heroes. But after the war, the villagers abruptly reversed their opinions and frowned upon their families as ones that had produced war criminals.

  There is nothing that puts me in a fouler mood than stories like this.

  * * *

  —

  There’s an endless supply of infuriating people and events concerning the kamikazes, but, in particular, I will never find it in me to forgive the commander of the Fifth Air Fleet, Matome Ugaki. Once he learned that the war was over, he sought out a place to die and took along seventeen of his subordinates, young men who didn’t need to perish, on a final suicide mission. “If he wanted to die, I wish he’d done it alone.” That’s what the father of Lieutenant Nakatsuru, one of the subordinates, said, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

  But there’s someone we mustn’t forget: Lieutenant Commander Tadashi Minobe, who stridently opposed the use of kamikazes.

  In February 1945, over eighty military commanders convened a council at Kisarazu to discuss the Combined Fleet’s battle strategy for Okinawa. There, Lt. Cdr. Minobe expressed unambiguous opposition to the presiding general staff officer’s announcement of a full-force kamikaze operation.

  The military had been imprinted with the concept that an order from a superior officer was an order from the Emperor himself. Those who disobeyed orders could be executed after a court-martial. Yet Lt. Cdr. Minobe defied death and voiced steadfast opposition. When his superiors yelled themselves red in the face at him, he retorted, “Is there anyone gathered here today who is ready to charge in?” Then he said, “And it is preposterous to order kamikaze missions using training aircraft. If you think that I am lying, try getting into the cockpit of one and carrying out an attack. I will easily shoot each and every one of you down with a Zero.”

  After the war, when I learned of what he had said, I was deeply impressed that such a brave officer had existed in the Imperial Navy. Had there been just a few more men like him present at that council, the plan to use kamikazes at Okinawa might never have been enacted.

  I blame the negligence of journalists for the fact that most Japanese have never even heard the name Tadashi Minobe.

  —Why isn’t he well-known?

  I think that has to do with his postwar career as an officer of the Self-Defense Force. Progressive journalists who considered the SDF to be evil were probably unwilling to praise its senior officers. Moreover, ultimately, Minobe did not totally oppose the use of kamikazes. After the war he said, “In the absence of any other effective course of action, a special attack is inevitable.” Perhaps they considered this statement to be an affirmation of kamikaze tactics. Yet Lt. Cdr. Minobe never sent a single pilot in his squadron off on a special attack.

  I’ve heard that his name is held in higher regard overseas than in Japan. That’s unfortunate. Tadashi Minobe was one of the truly magnificent Japanese of that period. I don’t think he should be forgotten.

  Lieutenant Commander Saburo Shindo was another exemplary fighter squadron commander. Shindo was the CO of the squadron of thirteen Zero fighters when the aircraft made its spectacular debut over mainland China. He went on to serve in Rabaul, fought at the Mariana Islands and Leyte Gulf, then became the commander of the 203rd Air Unit in Kagoshima in the final year of the war. Even as the “All Planes Kamikaze” call came from the brass, Shindo did not deploy a single special attack.

  Lieutenant Commander Kiyokuma Okajima of the 303rd Combat Flight Unit also staunchly refused to send out any kamikazes, whatsoever, eve
n after command branded him a traitor to his country.

  So, even among the Naval Academy graduates, there were some fine, upstanding officers. Unfortunately, though, their numbers were disappointingly few.

  * * *

  —

  Anyway, let me tell you about Miyabe-san.

  He was an excellent instructor. Many of the student reservists adored him. His gentle bearing and polite manner of speech were entirely unexpected of a military man of that era. Even so, there was something indescribably intimidating about him. We often said among ourselves that he was what they called a professional.

  We never did any mock air battles because all of us student reservists were intended to be used on kamikaze missions.

  On the day our training ended, we were forced to fill out a Special Attack Force volunteer form. It was a direct order masquerading as an opportunity. Because of this, those in command were later able to get away with saying that “They all became kamikazes of their own volition,” and even sixty years later, men like that journalist insist on echoing the lie.

  Let me be very clear. Except for a small number of exceptions, the special attack pilots were ordered into it. I don’t want to tell you about the pain and inner anguish we felt when we checked the “I volunteer” box on the form. Even if I told you, I don’t think you’d fully understand.

  After we graduated from flight school and were commissioned with the rank of ensign, we weren’t immediately deployed. Instead, we underwent continued flight training. Around that time, there was a shortage of aircraft fuel, and we’d barely been able to practice as flight students.

  Even during the continued training, what we flew were either biplane trainers that we called “red dragonflies” or the old Type 96 carrier-based fighter. Training aircraft were fueled with crude gasoline, oil derived from pine tree roots, or ethyl alcohol. I heard later on that even actual combat aircraft weren’t using high-octane fuel.

  This is getting off topic a bit, but after the war the Americans ran various flight tests on Japanese fighters. When they fueled an Army Type 4 fighter with U.S. military-grade high-octane gasoline, they found that it indicated performance levels superior to that of a P-51 Mustang. The P-51 was considered the most powerful fighter of WWII. When I heard of this, it really sank in that winning a war is all about comprehensive strength. Even if you have one or two superior elements, that doesn’t mean much in the end.

  Still we persevered. We thought that if our poor abilities might aid the country, we would volunteer. We were willing to sacrifice our lives to protect our homeland. Are such thoughts really fanatical nationalism?

  Once I became a kamikaze reserve, I piloted my first Zero. I was stunned by its performance, which was on a different level from the trainers I’d flown up until then. I was thrilled and deeply moved to be sitting in the cockpit of the fighter that was out there gunning down American aircraft.

  But our training in the Zeros was limited only to diving. That was what kamikaze training consisted of. Carry a bomb and fling yourself at an enemy ship—we were practicing how to die. Yet we tackled it in earnest.

  Why? That’s just how people are.

  One day, during drills for pulling out of a steep dive, for the first time even I thought I’d done quite well. After the training session, I approached Instructor Miyabe on the airfield and said, “I did pretty well today, don’t you think, sir?”

  “I was surprised. That was extremely well executed,” he said with a smile.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. I’m not flattering you. You’re all excellent, yourself included, Takeda-san. I can see why the Navy wanted to turn so many college students into pilots. But…” The smile faded from his face. “Those who become good pilots are immediately shipped off to the front.”

  I understood what he was saying. At the front, we would be made into kamikazes.

  Instructor Miyabe continued. “When I trained to be a pilot, the lessons were on how to survive. How to best shoot down an enemy fighter, how best to escape an attack. All fighter pilots should be given such training. But the situation is different for you. You’re only being trained on how to die. What’s more, the best ones get sent out first. In such a case, never improving would be better.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  “Japan needs you all. When this war is over, this country is going to need people like you,” Instructor Miyabe declared.

  Today, I firmly believe that it was Miyabe-san that Japan needed for its future. He was the one who should never have died.

  “Is the war going to end, sir?”

  “It will. And soon.”

  “Will we win, sir?”

  He laughed. It was a decidedly sad sort of laugh. “That, I don’t know,” he said. “I have fought the Americans in the Pacific since Pearl Harbor. They are frighteningly strong.”

  “In terms of materiel, sir?”

  “Not just that. They are superior to our forces in every way.”

  “What about the Zeros?”

  “At the start of the war, the Zero was invincible. I thought that as long as I was in a Zero, I would never lose. But in the latter half of ’43, the Americans finally started deploying fighters that are better than the Zero. The Grumman F6Fs and the Sikorskys significantly outperform the Zero.”

  His statement was earth-shattering. We had been taught that the Zero, the most powerful fighter in the world, was so dominant it could smash any and all enemy fighters.

  “The Zero has fought for way too long,” Instructor Miyabe said. “It has fought in the vanguard for five years, since the Sino-Japanese War. They’ve made countless minor revisions to it, but there has never been any dramatic improvement in performance. The tragedy of the Zero is that they never developed new aircraft that could succeed it. Once, the planes were unrivaled warriors, but now they’re a bunch of…old-timers.”

  The image of the plane as he spoke of it overlapped with him in my eyes. I found myself wondering if the Zero wasn’t an avatar of the instructing officer himself.

  * * *

  —

  Day by day, the state of the war worsened, yet every day we kept on throwing ourselves into training, at considerable risk to our lives. If you made a split-second error in a nose-dive, you were a goner. In fact, more than a few flight students were killed in training accidents.

  My best friend, Ito, died that way. He failed to pull up the nose of his aircraft during a diving drill and crashed into the ground. He was a very bright, cheerful guy, popular with everyone. He was great at reciting old comical limericks, and after a tough day of training when everyone was feeling depressed, he would amuse us with his wonderful voice. He died right before my eyes. “Shock” can’t come close to describing what I felt.

  Miyabe-san was the instructor at that time. When he got out of his plane, his face was white as a sheet.

  That night, all the students were made to line up. A junior-grade lieutenant, a Naval Academy graduate, screamed at us in a hysterical voice. “I don’t think I need to tell you that there was a fatal accident here today!” We thought he was about to offer condolences. What he actually said next was wholly unexpected.

  “The reservist officer who died today lacked spirit. How could such a man fight a real battle?!” the JG screamed at us, striking the ferrule of his saber cover against the ground. By going out of his way to refer to Ito as a “reservist officer,” he made it clear that he held us all in contempt.

  “Anyone who dies in training is a disgrace to the military. How dare he ruin a precious airplane? All of you had better make damn sure it never happens again.”

  In our hearts, we were all shedding bitter tears. Was this war? Was this the military? I learned that a man’s life was worth less than an aircraft for them.

  It happened then. “Sir!” Instructor Miyabe said. “The late Ensign Ito was an ups
tanding young man. He was no disgrace to the military.”

  The phrase “the air froze solid” was created for moments like that.

  The JG’s face went bright red as he trembled with rage. “You damn bastard!” He jumped down from the dais and threw a punch at Instructor Miyabe, who held his ground and withstood the blow. The JG struck again. Blood spurted from Instructor Miyabe’s nose and mouth, but he remained standing.

  The JG was short. Even though he was throwing punches with all his might, he couldn’t knock down our instructor, who stood looking down his bleeding nose at the smaller man. The JG’s face scrunched like he was going to cry.

  “Ensign Ito was a fine man, sir!” Instructor Miyabe bellowed as loud as the JG.

  He gave a jolt. “For an SDO, you are one insolent bastard!” With this, he punched the instructor once more, then spun on his heels and marched towards the barracks. The squadron leader, looking a bit perturbed, said, “Dismissed,” and we fell out of line.

  The damage to Instructor Miyabe’s face was fairly severe. His lips were split in several places and blood was running down his face from a cut above his eye.

  We were all extremely moved. In our hearts, we all thanked him for defending Ito’s honor.

  It was then that a thought occurred to me. If I can protect this man by becoming a kamikaze, then so be it.

  * * *

  —

  I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. One guy actually risked his life to save Instructor Miyabe, in fact.

  This happened right after Ito’s death. Instructor Miyabe was leading three reserve officers through a diving drill. Then, as he was flying along at low altitude, four Sikorskys came through a gap in the clouds behind him and attacked.

  The air raid siren didn’t sound. The fighters were probably launched from an aircraft carrier in the nearby seas to recon in force. By that point, it wasn’t rare for carrier-based planes to conduct open raids on the mainland. By the time the lookout realized their presence, the fighters were already at low altitude.