A Thousand Stitches

by Constance O'Keefe

  The briefing ran until nine. The five of us were still sitting in the dining room when Seaman Hashimoto appeared and asked if we would like sake or wine. A pleasant surprise. We all preferred sake, and we got it. We also had the privilege of ignoring lights out if we wanted, but decided that it would be best to take heed. Hard work awaited us in the morning.

  Our first full day in Tokyo began with the traditional “five-minutes before,” reveille at six, and the routine of morning assembly, which, because there was no parade ground, took place on the airfield apron. Standing at the head of the rows and facing the men was another new experience for us. It felt important and I thought about how serious my responsibilities were. After the assembly, we went back to the officers’ quarters and found our seamen making our beds and cleaning our rooms. Things were really going to be different here! When we went to the dining room, we had a choice of Japanese style or Western style breakfast.

  Training the cadets was scheduled to start at eight, but the five of us were told to assemble at seven-thirty. Each of us was to take a plane up so we could regain a feel for the Model 93. When I got in the front cockpit, I was shocked at the difference from the Zero. I put it in full throttle, but wondered if it would really get off the ground. But by the time I had taxied to the end of the runway, I was ready, and then up and aloft. Away I went, to the south, remembering my first takeoff from Izumi. But by the time I had climbed and turned to the left over Tokyo Bay, I was present only in the moment, flying again. I headed toward the Boso Peninsula and then made another left turn, to the north. The saw-ridges of Mt. Nokogiri on the Peninsula were on my right. Tokyo spread out to my left. I was astonished at how vast it was and then surprised again: when I turned left once more, straight on toward the city, I could see Mt. Fuji. I hadn’t realized how close Fuji was to Tokyo. It was massive—and gorgeous. I thought about the last time I had seen it—through the train window in 1932, on the way to Matsuyama with Mother when I first arrived in Japan. Twelve years ago. How I had changed, how times had changed, I thought as I made the last turn and descended toward the runway. A perfect three-point landing. I was ready to go. Ready for the cadets.

  I parked the plane and reported to Lieutenant Suga. He introduced me to the four NCOs who would work with my squad. They all had combat experience, and I was confident that we would do a good job with the cadets. Utsumi, Yamamoto, Watanabe, Kawazaki, and I lined up as the cadets came running in formation from their barracks. Lieutenant Suga introduced us. He said, “These are Zero fighter pilots. They are full of Navy spirit. Learn well from them.” It was clear we were expected to be tough on the cadets. Lieutenant Suga gave the order for us to begin.

  My first cadet was nervous. I had never been in the rear cockpit seat, but gave him much the same talk I had heard myself just ten months before in Izumi. But things had changed; the training schedule was accelerated. He was to put his hands and feet on the controls even on this first flight. Once we were in the air, I let him take control. He overreacted, and the plane banked to the right. He made the same mistake twice more, and when we approached the runway to land, he gripped the controls so tightly that I had difficulty pulling the nose up in time. Needless to say, when we climbed out of the plane, he got a good whack on the cheek.

  The next cadet did much better. He had some trouble maintaining altitude, tending to dip a bit. I pulled the plane back up a few times, but his sense of balance improved by the end of the flight. The full day’s work involved eight or nine cadets. Because we were deep into autumn, the days were getting shorter, and we had to stop at four-thirty.

  On November 1, we were training as usual. It was a bright, warm day, an unusual bonus of later summer-like weather. Just before noon, when I had begun wondering what we would have for lunch, a huge plane appeared, flying north far above us. Its silvery body was beautiful against the clear blue sky. As the trainers landed, the Lieutenants kept them on the ground. Those with binoculars reported that the mysterious plane was flying at about 10,000 meters. About five minutes after the plane had passed out of sight, sirens sounded and the PA announced the same thing over and over: “Enemy aircraft raiding Tokyo!”

  We were stunned. An enemy aircraft flying right over our heads? We stood around, not knowing what to do. About twenty minutes later, the plane reappeared, this time a bit further to the east, but flying in the opposite direction—going south—back where it came from. There was no sign of bombing. It was just as beautiful the second time we saw it. We watched it in awe. Once the plane was gone, we couldn’t get it out of our thoughts.

  It was only later that the rumors were confirmed. It was a B-29 Superfortress, a much more powerful bomber than what the Allies had deployed in Europe. The more I thought about it, the more confused I was—my awe yielded to fear, and even dread—but I resolutely banished those emotions. Spirit is what we need.

  That night the B-29 was the only topic of conversation in the Gun Room. The consensus was that the plane was on a reconnaissance mission, and that bombing of Tokyo would begin soon. Bombing! Tokyo! We had to prepare!

  Training continued. Three weeks passed with no air raids. Some of the cadets were close to soloing. And then one day, we heard the siren again. We grounded the planes and ushered the cadets to the shelters. Other than moving them into the hangars, we had no procedure for protecting or concealing the planes, so we waited and worried. Nothing happened. The Communications Officer arrived with the news that an area west of Tokyo was being bombed. Then we heard planes, a large number, flying east. They were much too far away for us to see them clearly, but by the sound of their engines we decided they were B-29s again. We learned later that an aircraft plant was bombed that day.

  In late November, regular nighttime raids of Tokyo started—most of them in residential areas. By late December, it hit home for us at the Detachment. Incendiary bombs fell all around us. One landed on the roof of the shelter, which had a thick dirt cover. As the dirt fell around us, we realized how lucky we were that there wasn’t a concrete roof to collapse on us. When we emerged, there were flames all around us. There was nothing we could do but wait for the fire crew to arrive with extinguishers.

  Early the next morning, the Commander ordered me to take a patrol out to the residential area nearby. Much of it was burnt to the ground, and we saw a number of incinerated bodies lying in the streets. We also saw a few people who were just standing in the rubble dazed. We stopped to talk to one man and learned that his home was gone. He kept saying that he was happy that his family had evacuated to another part of the city, that they were safe. It was clear that he was in shock and had no idea what to do. I went back to the Commander and suggested that he send food and arrange for shelter for our neighbors. He sent off a few cables; once he had secured permission, he ordered Lieutenant Shimizu to help our neighbors. We loaded up food to distribute and assigned cadets to use Detachment trucks to transport the civilians anywhere they wanted to go within the city limits. Evidently there was no space for them at the Detachment. That was the day we felt the war had come to mainland Japan.

  Late in the afternoon of December 1, I was summoned to Commander Fujimura’s office. As I entered his office I wondered why he wanted to see me and tried to think if there was something I had done wrong. As I stood in front of him and bowed, I was astonished to hear him say, “Congratulations.” I didn’t understand and worried more about what I had done wrong.

  “May I ask what this is about, Sir?”

  “I offered my congratulations because as of this date you are promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade,” he said.

  I was so surprised that I said the first thing that came into my head. “What about my classmates, Sir?” We had all been promoted to Ensign together the previous July, and I assumed that all our promotions would be on a lockstep basis.

  “No, it’s just you. Here,” he said handing me two small silver cherry blossom pins, “these are to add to the emblems on your collar.”

  Back in my quarters, Seam
an Hashimoto did a careful, professional tailoring job: he cut the emblems off my collar, pushed the new silver cherry blossoms through them and sewed them back on. It would have taken me hours, but Hashimoto finished in about half an hour. I slipped my jacket on again and admired the gleam of the silver blossoms in the mirror, two of them on each side of my collar.

  At dinner time, I strolled into the dining room as nonchalantly as I could manage. Most of the other junior officers were already there. No one noticed anything until I took my seat at the table. Kawazaki, sitting across from me said, “Hey, Imagawa, are you sure you’re wearing your own jacket?” When all heads swiveled in my direction, I explained. There was some joking about how I shouldn’t pull rank on them. I truly couldn’t figure out why I was promoted, and I don’t think any of my colleagues could either. I did find out later that about ten percent of those whom I started with at Mie were promoted that day; I was the only one at the Tokyo Detachment.

  With my promotion, I was appointed Deck Officer, which, I learned, meant I was responsible for morale. We had a three-day break to celebrate the New Year holiday. As Deck Officer, I was at the front gate to welcome the professional comics, dancers, and singers who came to entertain us. Several of them greeted Hashimoto as old friends. The cadets loved the performance, and the other officers and I enjoyed it too, of course. Losing ourselves in laughter was a rare treat.

  Now that I was Deck Officer, Seaman Second Class Ito was an even greater asset to me than Hashimoto. Ito was a well-known samurai actor. Like Hashimoto, he had been drafted and considered himself lucky to be stationed in Tokyo. I often sent him to movie distributors to borrow films. The distributors were happy to supply them and refused to accept payment. The cadets loved samurai films, and all of the first ones we watched featured Ito. There was always a great cheer when he appeared on the screen.

  One day when Ito returned to the Detachment, he told me that we had seen most of the samurai films available, but the distributors had American films we could borrow. I was surprised, thinking they had all been locked away or destroyed. They were absolutely forbidden in movie theaters. The other officers wanted to see them, and I was curious. I told Ito to bring some back the next time. They had Japanese subtitles, so the cadets enjoyed them—but not as much as the samurai films, of course. I sat transfixed in the dark, watching the elegant, long-limbed actresses, and listening to the language of my childhood. Many winter and early spring mornings were foggy. When there wasn’t enough visibility to fly, we organized activities to keep the cadets busy. Volleyball was the most popular. We also organized group singing. We had the cadets form circles, with one ring around another. I loved watching the inner ring march in one direction, and the outer ring the other way. The cadets sang as they marched, and the sounds of their voices crossed each other, mingled, and made a wonderful whole. Every one of these group sings concluded with the naval aviators’ version of the popular song Doki no Sakura: We are cherry blossoms that bloomed on the same day. Although we are not blood relatives we cannot be separated. We will scatter and fall together for our country. Although we will die elsewhere, we will meet and bloom again as cherry blossoms in the spring tree tops of Yasukuni Shrine. Music was always sheer joy for me, and I loved watching the cadets march and listening to them sing. Listening to the lyrics and the layers of harmony of the song made me remember the cherry blossoms at Matsuyama Castle. I didn’t allow myself to think much about Yasukuni Shrine and these teenagers—and myself—dying far from home.

  As it got warmer, we let the cadets wade in the Bay on some of the foggy mornings, digging for clams. The area was off-limits to civilians, so the catch was quite plentiful. And when the cadets were successful, the officers were the beneficiaries; because they had no way to cook the clams they caught, the cadets gave them all to us, and we grilled them on a hibachi in our Gun Room. Needless to say, a great deal of sake went down with those clams. Our bellies were full, and one evening I realized that I had come to quite enjoy the shabby place called the Tokyo Detachment.

  February 11 is the day Japanese celebrate the origins of the country, the old story I had learned at Bancho about the god and goddess dipping their spears into the sea at Amanohashidate and shaking off droplets that became the islands of Japan. During the war, the holiday was called Empire Day, and the glory of the Japan’s Asian Empire was the focus of the celebration. It was still dark at our morning assembly that day. We knew there would be no training because of the holiday, but had no idea how special the day would be until Commander Fujimura finished his holiday address, and then went on, solemnly, to say that he had received a special communication. The Naval General Staff Office had ordered him to form a Special Attack Unit at the Tokyo Detachment. By then we all knew what that meant. Special Attack units had been operating since the fall, first from the Philippines and then from Okinawa and Kyushu.

  Commander Fujimura never mentioned the death—the suicide—that was involved. Instead he said, “The time has come for you to serve your country in the best way possible. But the Special Attack Unit of this Detachment will be formed with volunteers only. You need not volunteer if you are married or if you are the first or only son of your family. Think carefully. I will ask those of you who want to volunteer to take one step forward.”

  There was absolute silence. Time stretched and warped during his pause of a few seconds. “Volunteers, one step forward!”

  There was a loud thud. Virtually everyone stepped forward—together. Cadets and instructors alike. I was among them. I gave no thought, no consideration to the fact that I was the first and only son of the Imagawa family. In fact, I don’t think I thought about anything at all. At the command, my body moved automatically. To volunteer to die for the country was the only thing to do. I was not afraid, and afterwards I had absolutely no regrets.

  “I commend you for your courageous decision, but I see that we have too many volunteers for the small number of aircraft available to us. The squadron commanders will take down the names of the volunteers, and later the senior officers will select the pilots and navigators needed for the Unit.”

  We were given the news in the Gun Room. Lieutenant Commander Shimizu was appointed the training commander for the Special Attack Unit, which would consist of two squadrons. Each squadron would have three squads of four planes each. I was to lead the second squadron and was also the leader for my group’s first squad. With twenty-four planes assigned to the Special Attack Unit, there would be only about a dozen planes left for regular flight training.

  Special Attack Unit training began the next day to prepare us to fly those flimsy bi-wing trainers into the territory of enemy fighters. If we allowed ourselves to think about it, we would have felt helpless at such a prospect, but we were determined to succeed in our missions. We put everything we had into our training.

  We concentrated on formation flying. The squad leader took off first and had to gain altitude while keeping speed down to give the others time to catch up. At first the formations were quite loose, but with practice they got tighter and tighter, until the four pilots could make out each other’s facial expressions. We cruised at 2,000 meters to specific points, such as Odawara to the south and Choshi to the east, before turning around to return to the airfield.

  On March 1, 1945, the Detachment became the Tokyo Naval Air Corps (NAC) under the command of the Eleventh Combined Air Force. But it was a change in name only. Everything remained the same. By then we were ready to begin night flight training. Taking off for our missions in the dark would help us evade enemy fighters and give us a chance to make it to our targets. The idea was that we would dive into the targets at dawn.

  March 9 was a lovely spring-like day—a first taste of real warmth. That afternoon we again witnessed a single B-29 flying high above the city. The afternoon was windy and the sky clear. By evening, even though the winds had risen, we decided it was warm enough to show the evening movie outside. We were enjoying Olivia de Havilland in Robin Hood when the air ra
id siren sounded. We ran toward the planes still on the tarmac, moved them into the hangars, and then scrambled into the shelters. The B-29s roared in overhead. It sounded like there were hundreds, in large formations. They flew from the southwest to the northeast, dropping bombs—most of them incendiary bombs—along the way. It sounded to us like the central and northern parts of the city were taking the hardest hits. Fires began almost immediately; they were so huge that we heard and felt them in the shelter. When we emerged it looked like the entire city was in flames. We scanned the sky, looking for the enemy planes. When the cloud cover parted, the underbellies of the huge silvery aircraft glowed red, reflecting the sea of fire below. The B-29s remained beautiful, sailing high above the destruction.

  The all clear sounded just before dawn. After our morning assembly, Commander Fujimura took me aside and ordered me to fly around the city and report back with an assessment of the damage. He was particularly concerned about the Imperial Palace. Following orders, I flew to the Palace first and was relieved to see that the large green oasis in the middle of the city was untouched. But when I turned northeast, the picture changed dramatically. The central, northern, and eastern portions of the city, the oldest and most traditional parts—Tokyo’s old shitamachi—spread on either side of the Sumida River, were flattened, burned to nothing. Where there had been miles and miles of factories and the small wooden houses of the working classes, only the shells of a few concrete buildings remained.

  The winds had tossed burning embers and debris into the air and whipped the fires from the incendiary bombs into a storm that had devoured the flimsy dwellings along with their occupants, who had heeded the government’s instructions to avoid the few public shelters and stay near their homes to defend them. Fires were still burning and I could make out the smoldering skeleton of Kokugikan, the national sumo wrestling hall. I descended to look for the nearby Asakusa Kannon Temple, which had been a refuge for the people of that neighborhood during the great Tokyo fire that followed the earthquake of 1923. I couldn’t find any trace of that grand structure and was shocked that at the lower altitude, the heat from the ground reached up to my plane.