Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze

by Sheftall, M. G.

  Ōnishi’s decision was firm. No tokkō planes would take off from Mabalacat unless there were clearly identified targets. In the meantime, the recon planes would stay up and continue to search.

  However concerned he was with getting results, the admiral was almost as worried about the effect of an interminable, excruciatingly boring morning on the morale of the flyers, which would be the ultimate anti-climax after all of last night’s drama and passionate exhortations, brave hands of the NCO aviators thrust in the air under blackout lamps, what must have been young Seki’s soul-searching, sleepless journey through the longest night of his life, no doubt tortured with imagery of his poor mother and young wife. Damaged morale, too, was to be avoided, but unlike bad weather or elusive American carriers, the admiral could do something about the danger of flagging spirits.

  “Tamai,” he said suddenly, “I want to speak to the Shinpū boys this morning. And the ground crews. Everyone involved with the program. Call a formation for ten hundred hours.”

  *****

  At a few minutes before ten, Ōnishi, Tamai, Adjutant Moji and the Nichiei News Service newsreel cameraman waited on the veranda of the HQ while the admiral’s limousine was brought around for the ride to Mabalacat field. When the limo pulled up the driveway, its passengers were somewhat surprised to see that during the night, some orderly – no doubt following base vehicle camouflage SOP to the letter and not realizing whose car he was decorating – had given the Packard’s shiny roof and hood toupees of thatched palm frond and elephant grass, making the vehicle look like a giant duffer’s divot with wheels. But there was no time to remove the offending foliage. It would have to stay.

  When the entourage reached Mabalacat and the admiral stepped down from his shaggy Packard, all twenty-four tokkō volunteers were already lined up in front of the flight ops shack, with Seki front and center. Other 201st personnel formed up on the side of the clearing. A Rising Sun ensign snapped on the windsock pole, its colors somewhat subdued by the gray sky it fluttered against.

  Commander Tamai received Seki’s salute, did an about face, and reported the 201st formed. The admiral mounted a wooden crate someone had placed at the head of the formation. He stood at attention while Tamai called out “Keirei!” and all present raised their hands to their cap bills in unison. Ōnishi held his salute longer than was customary, his hand trembling slightly as he looked into the eyes of each man lined in front of him. The longest gaze was reserved for Seki.

  The admiral, still standing rigidly at attention, dropped the salute and cleared his throat. The air was charged with the unspoken understanding that everyone present was witnessing – and living – a scene destined for immortality in the pantheon of great moments in Japanese history.

  “Japan is in grave danger,” the admiral began. “Someone must come to her rescue, but it will not be admirals or generals or politicians, and certainly not senior officers like me. It will be fine, strong young men like you. Think of me standing humbly before you right now as the embodiment, if you will, of all one hundred million of your countrymen, asking for your help. Praying for your success.

  “Having taken up this sacred task, you have all become young gods with no earthly desires anymore beyond the perfectly natural desire to know whether or not you have been successful in carrying out your missions and hitting your targets. As you are all about to head off into that long, good sleep, I am sorry to say that there will be no way of your knowing this for sure, and there will be no way for us, the living, to tell you. You may depart on your missions, however, secure in the knowledge that your deeds will be duly reported to a grateful nation. Do your best, boys. Do your best...”[41]

  The admiral began to say something else, but his words caught in his throat. Tears welled in his eyes and he choked back a sob. Sniffles could be heard from the ranks, and the newsreel cameraman present was so moved by the proceedings that he had forgotten to turn on his camera. There was a brief, somewhat tense silence among the men that Tamai ended, after a respectful pause, with a parade ground volume command for another salute.

  “Keirei!”

  Ōnishi returned the salute and stepped off of the crate to shake hands with each of the young aviators. Their handshakes were resolute. Some of the boys were stern-faced, while enigmatic smiles flitted across the faces of others, but there was no fear in their eyes – only thousand-yard stares tinged with fire, glossy with emotion from the admiral’s speech and the existential weight of the moment.

  For months now, these boys had been in the thick of one-sided combat conditions none of them had expected to survive. With the kill ratios the Americans were racking up of late, it seemed as if Japanese pilots were embarking on suicide missions every time they climbed into the cockpits of their battered planes, tokkō or not. But now, thanks to the wisdom and beneficence of Vice Admiral Ōnishi and the Combined Fleet General Staff, they were going to be able to go out in a blaze of glory to return, with interest, some of the licks they had been taking for so long. This, more than any fatalistic somberness or stirring patriotism, was the dominant mood of the gathering – a paradoxically resigned eagerness. The unmistakable lure of empowerment was working its seductive magic on these boys. They were proud, fed up with losing, and ready to die.

  With the ceremony at an end, Tamai ordered “Kaisan” (“dismissed,” or “break ranks”) and the men went off to their respective ready areas, with two flight sections headed off to the eastern edge of Mabalacat Field, while the other two sections followed Seki to the western end.

  The officers returned to the HQ building in the admiral’s thatch-roofed limo. Ōnishi had Inoguchi write up official orders for posting on the HQ bulletin board and forwarding up the chain of command. The admiral read them over, penciled in some corrections, then handed the sheet over to Tamai. The orders read:

  “Item One: In light of the current military situation, it has been determined that there is no alternative but to organize the 201st’s twenty-six remaining Zeroes into a tokkō unit. Thirteen of the planes will be assigned to actual taiatari missions, while the remaining thirteen will be assigned to escort. This tokkō unit will be divided into four flight sections, whose mission will be the destruction or at least critical disabling of the enemy escort carriers operating in waters to the east of the main area of operations if and when these forces should appear. This should be accomplished before the main elements of our surface forces are committed to the battle. The number of tokkō units will be increased as the combat situation dictates. The official name of the tokkō unit is the Shinpū Special Attack Unit[42].

  “Item Two: The full resources of the 201st will be devoted to the successful completion of our organized tokkō missions, eliminating the enemy escort carrier targets by October 25th at the latest.

  “Item Three: Lieutenant Yukio Seki will assume command of the Shinpū unit, effective immediately.

  “Item Four: The four flight sections will be named Shikishima, Yamato, Asahi, and Yamazakura[43], respectively.”[44]

  So that was it. Tokkō was now official. There would be no turning back.

  *****

  Ōnishi, Inoguchi, Tamai and the other 201st staff officers worked through lunch at the map table, really just marking time, more than anything, waiting until they got promising from the afternoon’s flight of recon planes.

  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 impossible 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.[45] Ōnishi felt that the odds, considering what was at stake, were too long. He cancelled the mission without asking for opinions. Although everyone pres
ent 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 Nichiei 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-legged 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 samurai 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 raised 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 25th. 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: targets 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 largely 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 dea
d 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 Shō 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 before, 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.