For the next several days we cursed the Army and bemoaned the loss of the enemy bomber. Today, of course, the incident provokes humor, but not in 1942. When the Flying Fortress was the most formidable opponent among all the Allied planes. As the week passed tension between the Navy pilots and the Army garrison increased acutely. We did no combat flying during this period, and our tempers grew short. The unhappy situation exploded one night when, lying on my cot, I forgot the blackout and lit a cigarette.
Immediately a voice called from outside. “Cut out that smoking in there, you stupid bastard! Don’t you even know what the regulations are?”
The pilot next to me, NAP 3/C Honda, jumped to his feet and dashed out the door. In an instant he grabbed the soldier by the throat and was cursing him soundly. Honda, my wing-man, was always too quick to take offense at any slight to me. I ran after him, but I was too late. Honda lost all control and before I could reach him there was the sound of a fist against flesh, and then a thud as the soldier fell unconscious to the ground.
Honda raged. He ran from the billet and stood on the grass, shouting as loudly as he could. “Come on, you Army bastards! Here I am, Honda of the Navy! Come on out and fight, morons!”
Two soldiers rushed from their barracks and jumped Honda. I saw him grin as he spun about and with a shout of glee leaped upon the Army men. There was a brisk scuffle, the sound of blows struck quickly, and Honda rose to his feet, standing triumphantly over two more prostrate forms.
“Honda! Stop it!” I called, but without effect. More soldiers came running out and Honda happily turned to do battle. But the Army lieutenant was hard on the heels of his own men, and herded them back to their own area. He said not a word to us, but we could hear him cursing out his troops. “You are here to fight the enemy, idiots, swine!” he spat. “Not our own countrymen. And if you must fight, pick a quarrel with someone you can finish. Those pilots, every one of them is a Samurai, and they like nothing better than to fight.”
The following morning the lieutenant entered our club, and we braced ourselves for the expected complaints for our behavior. Instead he smiled and said, “Gentlemen, I am happy to bring you the news that another Army contingent at Bandung in Java has captured a B-17 bomber intact and flyable.” A loud cheer went up. A B-17 we could fly!
The lieutenant waved his hands for silence. “Unfortunately, Tokyo has ordered the bomber sent to Japan at once. I did not receive news of the capture until the B-17 took off for the home islands this morning.”
Disappointed voices and curses met this last report. “However,” the lieutenant added hastily, “I assure you I will try to obtain as much information as possible about the captured aircraft for you.” He saluted and left the room quickly.
We despaired of ever getting a single scrap of information concerning the captured B-17. As far as the Army and Navy were concerned, the left hand never knew what the right hand was doing at any moment.
Another week went by, and we were still grounded. Even the peaceful atmosphere of Bali began to grate on our nerves. Perhaps under other circumstances we could have enjoyed the inactivity, but we had come here to fight. For years I had done nothing but learn how to fight, and all I and the other pilots wanted to do was to get back into the air.
Then one morning a pilot rushed breathlessly into our billet with startling news. Rotation! That was the rumor, and it appeared as if some of us would be sent back to Japan. Everyone began to total up his overseas time.
I felt that, of all the men to be sent home, I would be the first to leave. I had left Japan for China in May of 1938 and, deducting my one year of recuperation after being wounded, had been overseas for thirty-five months. When I realized I might actually see my home again, I became acutely homesick. I spent all afternoon reading through the letters from Fujiko and my mother. They had written me at great length about the elaborate celebrations at home when Singapore fell in February, and of the many other festivities which our continued victories occasioned. All Japan was flushed with the sensational conquests of our forces, especially in the air. I yearned to again look at Fujiko, the most beautiful girl I had ever known. Only once had I gazed at her, and the thought that possibly—or even probably—she would become my bride made me burst with happiness.
Unlike most rumors, the news of rotation turned out to be true. On the twelfth of March, Lieutenant Commander Tadashi Nakajima arrived from Japan, and informed the squadron that he was relieving Lieutenant S. G. Eijo Shingo as squadron commander. “Lieutenant Shingo is relieved for rotation,” he said. “I will now read off the names of those pilots ordered to return to Japan.”
Not a sound interrupted Nakajima’s voice as he began reading down the list of pilots’ names. The first man was not, as I had hoped, myself. Neither was the second, nor the third.
I listened with disbelief as the commander ran through the list of more than seventy names, none of which was mine. I was baffled and hurt. I could not understand why I had been dropped from the list of pilots who were to return to Japan. And I had been overseas longer than most!
Later, I approached the new commander and asked, “Sir, I understand that my name was not among those of the pilots to be sent home. Would you be kind enough to tell me of the reason? I do not believe I…”
Commander Nakajima interrupted me by waving his hands in the air and grinning. “No, you do not go home with the other men. I need you, Sakai, to go with me. We are advancing to a new air base, the foremost post against the enemy.”
“We shall move to Rabaul at New Britain. So far as I am concerned, you are the best pilot in this squadron, and you will fly with me. Let these other men go home to defend the homeland.”
And that was that. The conversation was ended. Under our Navy system, I dared not even question the commander further. I returned to my billet, upset, miserable with the world, and despairing of ever seeing Fujiko and my family. I did not learn until many months later that Commander Nakajima’s preference for me as one of his pilots in reality saved my life. Those pilots who returned home transferred later to the Midway Task Force, which suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the enemy Navy on June 5. Almost all those men who left Bali were killed.
The next several weeks were among the worst I have ever spent. Never have I suffered so much illness, dejection, and despondency crowded into such a brief period of time.
Our next destination, Rabaul, was 2,500 miles east of Bali, too great a distance for the Zero fighter to fly. Instead of transferring our group of pilots by transport plane or flying boat or even on a fast warship, we were horrified to find ourselves herded like cattle into a small, old, and decrepit merchant freighter. More than eighty of us were jammed into the stinking vessel, which crawled sluggishly through the water at twelve knots. For protection we were given only one small 1,000-ton sub chaser.
Never have I felt so naked or exposed to the enemy as I did on that horrible vessel. We could not understand the workings of the high command’s mind. Just one torpedo from a lurking submarine, one 500-lb. bomb from a diving bomber, and the thin-skinned freighted would blow into a thousand pieces! It was inconceivable, but true, that our commanders would risk half of the theater’s fighter pilots, especially those with the most experience, in such a seagoing monstrosity fDis-contented and unhappy, I finally succumbed to my low Spirits and became really ill. I was confined to my bunk in the hold of the ship for most of the two-week voyage from Bali to Rabaul.
The ship creaked and groaned incessantly as it wallowed along in its zigzag pattern. Every time we passed the wash of the escorting subchaser we heeled over, rolling drunkenly. Inside the vessel conditions were torturous. The heat was almost unbearable; I did not spend a single dry day during the entire two weeks. Sweat poured from our bodies in the humid and sultry holds. The smell of paint was gagging, and every single pilot in my hold became violently ill. After passing Timor Island, already occupied by our troops, the lone naval escort turned and disappeared rapidly in the distance. By
now I was seriously ill. At times I felt I was dying, and I believe I would have welcomed the release from my engulfing misery.
But even the worst of experiences can have its rewards. At my side for most of the trip was a young lieutenant, recently assigned to lead my flight in combat. Lieutenant J/G Junichi Sasai was one of the most impressive men I have ever met. A graduate of the Japanese Naval Academy, he should have remained aloof from the problems of the non-commissioned officers. So strict was the Navy caste system that, even had we been dying in the holds, he would not have been required, indeed, would not have been expected, to enter those stinking quarters. Sasai, however, was different. He paid no attention to the unwritten law that officers did not make friends with enlisted men. While in delirium I groaned and cried, lying in the reek of sweat and body odors, Sasai sat beside my cot, anxiously tending me as best he could. Every now and then I opened my eyes to gaze into his, clear and compassionate. His friendliness and ministrations pulled me through the worst of the voyage.
At last the ship chugged its way into Rabaul Harbor, the main port of New Britain. With a gasp of relief, I staggered from below decks to the pier. I could not believe what I saw. If Bali had been a paradise, then Rabaul was plucked from the very depths of hell itself. There was a narrow and dusty airstrip which was to serve our group. It was the worst airfield I had ever seen anywhere. Immediately behind this wretched runway a ghastly volcano loomed 700 feet into the air. Every few minutes the ground trembled and the volcano groaned deeply, then hurled out stones and thick, choking smoke. Behind the volcano stood pallid mountains stripped of all their trees and foliage.
As soon as we were off the ship, the pilots were taken to the airstrip. The dusty road over which we traveled was inches deep in pumice and bitter volcanic ash. The airstrip was desolate and forbidding. Dust and ashes rose into the air directly behind us. Mutters of despair rose from the pilots when they found among the parked fighters several of the long-obsolete, open-cockpit, fixed-landing-gear Claude fighters! It was all too much for me. I became ill again and collapsed. Lieutenant Sasai rushed me to the half-completed hospital on a hill bordering the airstrip.
We learned early the next morning that Rabaul was by no means the place of exile I believed it to be. Instead of being isolated from the war, Rabaul was rapidly being sucked into its very center.
The air-raid alarm jerked me out of a drugged sleep. Through the window I saw a dozen Marauders, twin-engined bombers, streaking low over the harbor and expertly pouring bombs into the Komaki Maru, the ship which had brought us here from Bali. Her crew, unloading cargo when the B-26 bombers struck, scattered across the pier and dove into the water. In a few moments the burning and gutted ship was sinking. The bombers, all bearing Australian markings, then worked over the runway and the planes parked there. For three successive days the Marauders returned to blast the field and anything which moved. They cruised slowly at low altitude, their gunners enjoying a field day of strafing. No man was safe above the ground, for he was sure to draw the fire of several heavy machine guns.
The attacks were the best possible tonic for me. At least Rabaul promised action to jerk me out of the stupor into which I had sunk from so many weeks of being grounded. I begged the doctor to discharge me from the hospital at once; I fairly itched to get my hands at the controls of a Zero again.
The doctor laughed. “You stay here, Sakai, for another few days. There’s no use letting you out now. We haven’t any fighters for you to fly. When our planes come in, I’ll let you go.”
Four days later, greatly improved, I left the hospital. With nineteen other fighter pilots I climbed into a four-engined flying boat which had arrived only that morning. We were soon to be flying again, for the seaplane was from the converted carrier Kasuga which had brought twenty new Zero fighter planes for our squadron. Constant enemy reconnaissance and bombing prevented the Kasuga from entering Rabaul, and she waited near Buka Island, 200 miles away, for the seaplane to transport us there.
Two hours later we were back at Rabaul, grinning like school children with our twenty new fighters, all armed and ready for combat. That same day, however, a reconnaissance plane saw our fighters on the ground and disappeared before we could take off. Rabaul became quiet, except for the volcanic eruptions which continued unabated.
For the next several weeks there was a constant flow of fighters and bombers into Rabaul. We rapidly accumulated new strength for the growing offensive to be directed against Australia and Port Moresby in New Guinea. We were told that Japanese plans called for the complete occupation of New Guinea.
Early in April, thirty of us from the Tainan Wing transferred to a new air base at Lae, on the eastern coast of New Guinea. Captain Masahisa Saito led our group to the new installation. Then began some of the fiercest air battles of the entire Pacific war. Only 180 miles away from the Allied bastion of Port Moresby, we began our new assignments by flying escort almost daily for our bombers, which flew from Rabaul to hammer the enemy installations in the critical Moresby area. No longer was the war entirely one-sided. As often as we lashed out at Moresby, Allied fighters and bombers came to attack Lae. The valor of the Allied pilots and their willingness to fight surprised us all. Whenever they attacked Lae, they were invariably intercepted and several of their planes were damaged or shot down. Our attacks on Moresby also contributed to the Allied losses.
The willingness of the Allied pilots to engage us in combat deserves special mention here, for, regardless of the odds, their fighters were always screaming in to attack. And it is important to point out that their fighter planes were clearly inferior in performance to our own Zeros. Furthermore, almost all of our pilots were skilled air veterans; coupled with the Zero’s outstanding performance, this afforded us a distinct advantage. The men we fought then were among the bravest I have ever encountered, no less so than our own pilots who, three years later, went out willingly on missions from which there was no hope of return.
CHAPTER 12
ON APRIL 8 I flew with eight other pilots from Rabaul to our new base on Lae. I groaned when I circled the field. Where were the hangars, the maintenance shops, the control tower? Where was anything but a dirty, small runway? I felt as though I were landing on a carrier deck. On three sides of the runway there towered the rugged mountains of the Papuan peninsula; the fourth side, from which I approached, was bordered by the ocean.
Twenty-one other pilots, who had preceded us by several days, awaited us at the end of the runway as we taxied off the strip. Honda and Yonekawa, my wingmen in the Java theater, were the first to greet me.
“Welcome home, Sakai!” Honda shouted, grinning. “The world’s most wonderful place greets you!”
I looked at Honda. As usual, he was joking, although I could find little cause for humor in this forsaken mudhole. The runway was 3,000 feet long at the most, and ran at a right angle from the mountain slope almost down to the water. Adjacent to the beach was a small aircraft hangar, riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes. Three shattered Australian transport planes lay in a tangled heap on the floor, and demolished equipment littered the area. The hangar and its contents had been bombed and strafed by our planes during landing operations the previous month.
The Lae airdrome had been hacked out by the Australians to airlift supplies and gold ore to and from the Kokoda Mine, which lay deep within the formidable Owen Stanley Mountains. Overland access to the mine was almost impossible, since thick, steaming jungles and precipitous mountain slopes barred the way to foot travel. The seaport was as desolate as the airfield. A single merchant ship of 500 tons, also Australian, lay in the harbor mud, its stern and a mast jutting from the water, near the primitive pier. And that was the only vessel in sight. I was convinced that Lae was the worst airfield I had ever seen, not excluding Rabaul or even the advanced fields in China.
However, nothing could dampen Honda’s spirits. “I tell you, Saburo,” he insisted, “you have come to the best hunting grounds on the earth. Don’t let this field
or the jungle fool you. We have never had better opportunities to bag game than we have here.” He was still grinning. Honda was serious; he liked being here. He went on to explain that the isolated air base had seen brisk action for three consecutive days before my arrival. On April 5, four Zeros from Lae escorting seven bombers raided Port Moresby and shot down two enemy fighters with the loss of a Zero. On the next day, the same number of planes went out, and the fighter pilots came home jubilantly with claims for five enemy planes shot down. Yesterday, the seventh, two Zeros intercepted three enemy bombers over Salamaua and in a running fight shot down two, in addition to one probable. The enemy gunners took one Zero with them.
To Honda, action was the most important thing in life. He was indifferent to the pesthole from which we flew; that was unimportant.
That afternoon we assembled for briefing in the airfield Command Post. I use the words Command Post freely. The CP was ridiculously inadequate. It failed to deserve even the name “shack,” for it had no walls! Mats hung from flimsy overhead beams to serve as walls, curtains, and doors. The room was barely large enough to hold all thirty fliers when they huddled closely together. In the center was a large, crude table hewn from local timber. A few candles and one kerosene lamp served for illumination. Our electricity for telephones came from batteries.
After we had been briefed by Captain Saito, we went to our billets. Outside the CP I saw all the vehicles assigned to Lae. These consisted of an ancient, rusty, creaky Ford sedan, one decrepit truck, and one fueling vehicle. They served the entire base. There were no hangars. We lacked even a control tower! However, my obvious disappointment at Lae failed to dampen the spirits of Honda and Yonekawa. Honda grabbed my duffel bag and sang gaily as we walked to the billets; on the way Yonekawa pointed out the base facilities.
Two hundred sailors manned flak positions beyond the airstrip. They provided the entire combat garrison. These 200 men, plus 100 maintenance personnel and the thirty pilots, comprised the entire Japanese strength at Lae. During our stay, and until Lae’s capture by the Allies in 1943, no attempt was made to improve our facilities, nor were any ground reinforcements brought in.
Samurai! Page 9