Samurai!

by Martin Caiden

  “But to fly is just like swimming. You do not forget easily.

  I have been on the ground for more than ten years. If I close my eyes, however, I can again feel the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, the rudder bar beneath my feet. I can sense the freedom and the cleanliness and all the things which a pilot knows.

  “No, I have not forgotten how to fly. If Japan needs me, if Communist forces press too closely against our nation, I will fly again. But I pray fervently that it is not for this reason that I return to the air.”

  Saburo Sakai

  Tokyo, 1956

  Martin Caidin

  New York, 1956

  CHAPTER 1

  On the southernmost main Japanese island of Kyushu, the small city of Saga lies midway between two major centers which in recent years have become well known to thousands of Americans, At Sasebo, the United States Navy based most of its fleet which participated in the Korean War; from the airfield runways at Ashiya, American fighters and bombers took off for flights over narrow Tsushima Strait to attack the Chinese and Red Koreans on the disputed peninsula.

  Saga City is no newcomer to military expeditions across Tsushima Strait. My own ancestors were members of the Japanese forces which in 1592 invaded Korea from Saga. Nor is the unpleasant outcome of the modem Korean conflict without its precedent; the medieval Korea-Japan War choked to a stalemate in 1597 after the Ming Dynasty of China threw its strength onto the side of the North Koreans, just as modern Red China has brought about the current Korean impasse.

  Thus my family has a warrior’s origin, and for many years my forebears served faithfully the feudal lord of Saga until, under a government centralization plan in the nineteenth century, he committed his estate to the Emperor’s keeping.

  In the feudal times when four castes divided the Japanese people, my family enjoyed the privilege of the ruling class known as the Samurai, or Warriors. Aloof from the mundane problems of everyday life, the Samurai lived proudly, without personal concern for such matters as income, and devoted their time to local government administration and to constant preparedness for emergencies which would make demands upon their fighting prowess. The Samurai’s living necessities were underwritten by his lord, regardless of farm depressions or other outside influences.

  The nineteenth century abolition of the caste system proved a crushing blow to the proud Samurai people. In a single stroke they were stripped of all their former privileges and forced to become merchants and farmers, and to adopt patterns of life under which they were ill suited to prosper.

  It was to be expected that most of the Samurai became destitute, struggling to eke out a living through the most menial labor or through dawn-to-dusk work on their small farms. My own grandfather fared no better than his friends; he finally accepted a small farm on which he struggled bitterly to scratch out the necessities of life. My family was then, and is today, one of the very poorest in the village. It was on this farm that I was born on August 26, 1916, the third of four sons; my family also included three sisters.

  Ironically, my own career closely paralleled that of my grandfather. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in August of 1945, I was at the time the leading live ace of my country, with an official total of sixty-four enemy planes shot down in aerial combat. With the war’s end, however, I was dismissed from the defunct Imperial Navy and barred from accepting any government position, was penniless and with no skill I could employ to adapt myself to a world which had crashed all about me. Like my grandfather, I lived by dint of the crudest manual labor; only after several years of bitter struggle did I manage to save enough to set up a small printing shop to serve as a means of livelihood.

  The task of tilling the one-acre household farm near Saga City fell heavily on the shoulders of my mother, who also had the problem of tending her seven children. To add to her unceasing labors, she was widowed when I was eleven years old. My memories of her at that time are of a woman steadfastly at work, my youngest sister strapped to her back as she bent over for hour upon hour in the fields, toiling under brutal conditions. But at no time do I recall hearing any complaint pass her lips. She was one of the bravest women I have ever known, a typical Samurai, proud and stem, but not without a warm heart when the occasion demanded.

  I sometimes returned home from school, whimpering after f having been thoroughly beaten by older and larger schoolboys. She had no sympathy for my tears, only scowls and admonishing words. “Shame on you,” was her favorite retort. “Do not forget that you are the son of a Samurai, that tears are not for you.”

  In the village primary school I worked hard at my studies and, throughout the six years, remained at the head of all my classes. But the future presented apparently insuperable problems to my further education. While the primary schools were government-financed, the majority of the more advanced institutions required the student to be supported by his family. This arrangement was, of course, impossible for the Sakai family, which barely met its needs for food and clothing. However, we had not reckoned with the generosity of my uncle in Tokyo, who offered, incredibly, to underwrite all my school expenses. He was a successful official in the Ministry of Communications and his offer included adoption and a complete education. We gratefully accepted our good fortune.

  In all Japan, the feudal clan of Saga occupied one of the poorest of the self-sustaining provinces. Its Samurai class had for ages lived an austere life, and was famous for its Spartan discipline. We were the only province in all the land which lived religiously by the Bushido code, Hagakure, the main theme of which was: Samurai lives in such a way that he will always be prepared to die. Hagakure during the war became a textbook for every school in the country, but it was the code under which I had always lived, and its severity served me well, both in my new school life and in the years to follow in combat.

  Everything in Tokyo bewildered me. I had never known a city larger than Saga, with its 50,000 people. The milling throngs in Japan’s capital were incredible, as were the constant turmoil, the noise, the large buildings, and all the activities of one of the world’s greatest centers. I was also to find that Tokyo in 1929 was a stage of fierce competition in every field; not only were new graduates competing bitterly for jobs, but even the young children had to fight for the comparatively few openings in the select schools.

  I had thought my life on the farm difficult; I had thought myself exceptional as the leading student of my school for six entire years. But I had never encountered school children who studied literally day and night, who crammed every available moment in order to beat out their fellow students! The select Tokyo high schools, such as the Tokyo First or the Tokyo Fourth, all chose their entrants from the outstanding students of the primary schools. Furthermore, of every thirty-five applicants, only one received admission.

  It was clearly out of the question for a country boy such as myself, bewildered as I was with this strange and tempestuous atmosphere, even to aspire for enrollment in these famed schools. I accepted gladly a student’s place in the Aoyama Gakuin, established years before by American missionaries. Not equal in reputation to the better known institutions, it was not, however, without repute.

  My new home life could not have been better. My uncle, however, was overly serious and of the opinion that the less seen or heard of children, the better. This was not the case with my aunt or her son and daughter, who could not have been kinder or more friendly. Under these pleasant circumstances I began high school, burning with ambition and enthusiasm, fully determined to retain always my comfortable place at the “head of the class.”

  It took less than a month for these dreams to vanish. My expectations of again leading all the students were rudely shattered. It was obvious, not only to my teachers but to myself as well, that many of the other boys—never leading students in their primary schools—bested me in studies. I found this difficult to believe. Yet, they knew many things of which I was totally ignorant; despite desperate studying into all hours of the night
, I was unable to learn as quickly as the others.

  The first semester ended in July. My school reports, which placed me in the middle of the class, were a heavy disappointment to my uncle, and the cause of despair for me. I knew that my uncle had accepted all my expenses because he felt I was a promising child, and could maintain student leadership. There was no denying his unhappiness at my failure. Summer vacation therefore became a period of intense home study. While my classmates went on their holidays, I crammed through the summer months, determined to make up my scholastic deficiencies. But the opening of the school year in September proved the futility of my efforts; there was no improvement.

  These repeated failures to gain scholastic prominence caused a feeling of sheer desperation. Not only had I become merely average in my studies; in sports, as well, I found myself outclassed. There could be no doubt that many of the boys in the school were more agile, more capable than myself.

  The disillusioned state which followed was unforgivable. Instead of continuing the attempt to surpass those students who had clearly indicated their scholastic superiority, I chose friends of mediocre abilities. I lost no time in asserting leadership over these other youngsters, and then went on to pick fights with the biggest of the school seniors. Hardly a day passed when I did not, through one means or the other, goad a senior into a fight, during which I thoroughly pummeled my adversary. Almost every night I returned to my uncle’s home covered with bruises, taking care, however, to keep these adventures secret.

  The first blow fell after the end of my first year at the Methodist school, when a letter from my teacher informed my uncle that I had been branded as a “problem pupil.” As best I could, I passed off as unimportant the fights, but made no attempt to discontinue what had become a most satisfying means of proving, to myself at least, that I was “better” than the older students. The teacher’s letters became more frequent and, finally, my uncle was summoned to the school for a direct verbal report of my disgraceful conduct.

  I finished my second year in school almost at the bottom of the list. It was too much for my uncle. He had become increasingly angry in his lectures to me and, now, decided finally that there was no further use in continuing my stay in Tokyo.

  “Saburo,” were his final words, “I weary of scolding you, and shall not do so further. Perhaps I am to blame for not supervising you more closely, but, whatever the cause, I seem to have made the child of the proud Sakai family into a delinquent. You are to go back to Saga. Obviously,” he added wryly, “Tokyo’s life has spoiled you.” I could not say one word in defense, for everything he said was true. The blame was all mine, but it did not make my return to Saga—in shame—any less bitter. I was determined to keep my embarrassment a secret, particularly from my uncle’s daughter Hatsuyo, of whom I was very fond. I passed off my departure as a visit to my family in Kyushu.

  That night, however, as the train glided out of the Tokyo Central Station for the 800-mile trip to Saga, I could not prevent the tears from coming to my eyes. I had failed my family, and I dreaded the return home.

  CHAPTER 2

  I returned as a disgrace to my family, and to the entire village as well. To complicate matters, my home suffered from increased poverty and misery. My mother and my oldest brother tilled the tiny farm from sunup to sundown. They and my three sisters were clad in tattered rags, and the small house in which I had been raised was shockingly neglected.

  Every person in the village had spurred me on with good wishes when I left for Tokyo; they would have a feeling of sharing my success. Now, although I had failed them, no one would reproach me face to face or utter words of anger. Their shame was in their eyes, however, and they turned aside to avoid embarrassment for me. I did not dare to walk through the village because of this reaction of my own people; I could not endure their silent admonitions. To flee this place of disgrace became my most fervent wish.

  It was then that I recalled a large poster in the Saga Railway Station calling for volunteers to enlist in the Navy. Enlistment seemed the only way out of an unhappy situation. My mother, having already suffered from my absence for several years, deplored my determination to leave once again, but she could offer no alternative.

  On May 31, 1933, I enlisted as a sixteen-year-old Seaman Recruit at the Sasebo Naval Base, some fifty miles east of my home, was the beginning of a new life of monstrously harsh discipline, of severity beyond my wildest nightmares. It was then that the strict Hagakure code under which I had been raised came to my aid.

  It is still difficult, if not altogether impossible, for Americans and other westerners to appreciate the harshness of the discipline under which we then lived in the Navy. The petty officers would not for a moment hesitate to administer the severest beatings to recruits they felt deserving of punishment. Whenever I committed a breach of discipline or an error in training, I was dragged physically from my cot by a petty officer.

  “Stand to the wall! Bend down, Recruit Sakai!” he would roar. “I’m doing this to you, not because I hate you, but because I like you and want to make you a good seaman. Bend down!”

  And with that he would swing a large stick of wood and with every ounce of strength he possessed would slam it against my upturned bottom. The pain was terrible, the force of the blows unremitting. There was no choice but to grit my teeth and struggle desperately not to cry out. At times I counted up to forty crashing impacts into my buttocks. Often I fainted from the pain. A lapse into unconsciousness constituted no escape however. The petty officer simply hurled a bucket of cold water over my prostrate form and bellowed for me to resume position, whereupon he continued his “discipline” until satisfied I would mend the error of my ways.

  To assure that every individual recruit in the station would do his utmost to prevent his fellows from committing too many errors, whenever one of us received a beating, each of the fifty other recruits in the outfit was made to bend down and receive one vicious blow. After such treatment it was impossible to lie on our backs on our cots. Furthermore, we were never allowed the indulgence of even a single satisfying groan in our misery. Let one single man moan in pain or anguish because of his “paternalistic discipline,” and to a man every recruit in the outfit would be kicked or dragged from his cot to receive the full course.

  Obviously, such treatment engendered no fondness for our petty officers, who were absolute tyrants in their own right. The majority were in their thirties and seemed destined to remain in the rank of petty officers throughout their careers. Their major obsession was to terrorize the new recruits—in this case, ourselves. We regarded these men as sadistic brutes of the worst sort. Within six months the incredibly severe training had made human cattle of every one of us. We never dared to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything but immediately carry out all the commands of our superiors. We were automatons who obeyed without thinking.

  Recruit training melted into a blur of drilling, studying, training, the vicious swings of the sticks and the always painful buttocks, the bruised and blackened skin, the wincing upon sitting down.

  When I completed the recruit training course, I was no longer the ambitious and zealous youth who had several years previously left his small farm village to conquer the Tokyo school system. My scholastic failures, the family disgrace, and the recruit discipline all combined effectively to humble me. I recognized the futility of questioning official authority; my egotism had been knocked out of me. But never, while I was in training or later, has my deep-rooted anger at the brutality of the petty officers abated.

  Upon completion of land training, I was assigned as an apprentice seaman to the battleship Kirishima. Life at sea proved a shock to me; I had thought that, with my initial training behind me, the harsh treatment of my immediate superiors would abate. But it did not; if anything, it was worse than before. All this time I had doggedly maintained my desire to get ahead, to better myself, to rise above the lowly position of a volunteer seaman. I had no more than an hour of free time each d
ay, but into this period of grace I crammed textbook study. My goal was enrollment at a Navy special training school. Only thus could a volunteer attain the special skills and techniques so indispensable to promotion.

  In 1935 I passed successfully the competitive entrance examinations for the Navy Gunners School. Six months later I had received a promotion to Seaman, and was assigned to sea duty again, this time to the battleship Haruna, where I worked in one of the main 16-inch gun turrets. Things were improving; after several months aboard the Haruna I was a non-commissioned officer with the rank of Petty Officer, Third Class.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Imperial Japanese Services were divided into two armed forces, the Army and Navy. Both commands operated their individual air fleets; an independent air force was never even considered before or during World War II. Neither were there Marines, in the sense that the United States enjoys an autonomous Marine Corps. Picked elements of the Army and Navy were trained for amphibious operations and performed the functions of the Marine units of foreign powers.

  In the mid-thirties all naval fliers received their training at the Navy Fliers School at Tsuchiura, fifty miles northeast of Tokyo. Three classes of students attended the school—ensigns graduated from the Naval Academy at Eta Jima in Western Japan, non-commissioned officers already in service, and boys in their teens who were willing to begin their naval careers as student pilots.

  After Japan engaged in all-out war with the United States, the Navy expanded its pilot-training facilities in a desperate attempt to produce combat pilots almost on a production-line basis. In 1937, however, this mass-training concept was wholly unknown. Pilot training was a highly select affair, and only the most qualified candidates in the entire nation could hope even to be considered. Tsuchiura accepted only a fraction of its applicants; in 1937, the year I applied, only seventy men were selected for the pilot class out of more than 1,500 hopefuls. My jubilation knew no bounds when I discovered my name on the list of the seventy non-commissioned officers accepted for training. There was grim satisfaction in my acceptance, for entry to Tsuchiura would wipe out the disgrace of my failure at the Tokyo school. It would return honor to my family and my village, and would vindicate the faith which had been placed in me.