As he left the commander’s office I ran up to him and begged him to change his mind. He stared unbelievingly at me. He tried to speak, but his face turned redder and redder, until he yelled, “Shut up!” at me and stalked off, muttering that all fliers were crazy.
I was reassigned as a flight instructor to the Omura Air Base, near Sasebo.
The new wing arrived at Rabaul on April 3. Before a week passed, I read in the battlefront reports, they had carried out major attacks against Guadalcanal, Milne Bay, Port Darwin, and other critical targets. In four missions enemy fighters and antiaircraft guns shot no less than forty-nine of the wing’s planes out of the air.
Disaster followed disaster. On April 19, a horrible rumor, shortly thereafter confirmed, spread among the officers. On the eighteenth, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the esteemed Commander in Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was killed. I read and reread the action report. Admiral Yamamoto was a passenger in one of two bombers escorted by Zero fighters when several of the American’s new P-38 fighters ripped through the Zero cover and blasted both bombers from the sky.
And I sat at Omura, training new pilots. I found it hard to believe, when I saw the new trainees staggering along the runway, bumping their way into the air. The Navy was frantic for pilots, and the school was expanded almost every month, with correspondingly lower entrance requirements. Men who could never have dreamed even of getting near a fighter plane before the war were now thrown into battle.
Everything was urgent! We were told to rush the men through, to forget the fine points, just to teach them how to fly and shoot. One after the other, singly, in twos and threes, the training planes smashed into the ground, skidded wildly through the air. For long and tedious months, I tried to build fighter pilots from the men they thrust at us at Omura. It was a hopeless task. Our facilities were too meager, the demand too great, the students too many.
I felt I was rusting away. There was no longer any doubt that our country was in trouble. The civilian populace was not aware of this fact, nor were the students, nor any of the enlisted men. But those officers who saw the reports, who had been in combat, realized the gravity of the situation. The majority adhered to their unshakable belief that Japan would emerge the victor, but the victory parties and glad cries were fewer and further between than before.
Not even my remoteness from the field of battle reduced the immediacy or the pain of the war. In September of 1943, I was shocked to learn that an old and close friend, one of Japan’s greatest pilots, NAP 1/C Kenji Okabe, had been shot down and killed over Bougainville. He had been a classmate at Tsuchiura, and was the ace who set our Navy’s all-time record by shooting down seven enemy planes in a single day’s action.
Was there no end to their deaths?
As I read on I felt like weeping. After Okabe’s sensational day in the air over Rabaul, Admiral Ninichi Kusaka, the commander of the nth Air Fleet, had requested Naval Headquarters in Tokyo to award his pilot a medal for his outstanding valor. Nothing had changed. Tokyo had refused the request on the basis of “no precedent,” exactly as it had refused Captain Saito a year before. Admiral Kusaka, however, was not to be turned aside so easily. Irritated at the decision from Headquarters, the Admiral had bestowed upon Okabe, in a special honor presentation, his own ceremonial sword.
Three days later Okabe burned to death when his Zero fell in flames.
CHAPTER 26
In April of 1944, after long and wearying months of training student pilots at Omura, I was transferred to the Yokosuka Air Wing. Prior to the war, Yokosuka was a coveted assignment, since it was an Imperial Guard air unit which protected the air gateway to Tokyo. Now, it was just another wing. The days of coveted assignments were past.
With the secret reports available to me as an officer, I had been able to maintain a true appraisal of the war. The secret documents were a far cry from the drivel shouted over the radios to the unsuspecting populace. Everywhere in the Pacific our units were being forced back. Incredibly powerful American task forces, fleet units the size of which staggered the imagination, roamed the Pacific almost at will.
I read report after report, telling of the murderous havoc raised by these swift-striking fleets. The enemy’s Army air force had grown tremendously in power. By the hundreds, their P-38s soared above the reach of our fighters, choosing combat at will. New types of fighters and bombers appeared almost daily, and our pilots’ stories of their vastly improved performance boded ill for the future. We were still hanging on at Rabaul, but no longer did that once-mighty bastion threaten Moresby and the enemy’s other bases. Rabaul suffered in more ways than one. The Americans were using it for bombing practice, to break in their new replacements.
Soon after I reached Yokosuka, I requested leave and took the train from the naval base to Tokyo, only ninety minutes away. My uncle’s family welcomed me as if their own son had returned for a visit. I knew that any time I could leave the base for several hours or longer, this was my “home.”
That night, after dinner, Hatsuyo began to chide me about the fact that I had not yet married. Her teasing seemed fully as serious as it was fun, and I shot back, “Why are you still single, my dear cousin? What is wrong with you, that you have not yet selected for yourself a nice husband?”
My uncle and aunt interrupted the fireworks, laughing at us. “The both of you,” my uncle mocked us, “so choosy!”
I grinned. “I don’t see why Hatsuyo-san hasn’t picked out a husband. Just look at her. She is as pretty as any movie star in the country. And how many girls today can boast of being an accomplished pianist?” I grinned. “I do believe,” I said to them, looking at Hatsuyo, “that you could select for her an excellent husband.”
My uncle and aunt smiled at my remarks. But not Hatsuyo. She glared at me and looked the other way, her eyes averted. “What is wrong, Hatsuyo-san?”
She ignored me. I was startled; she was angry. I changed the subject at once.
“Hatsuyo-san, will you favor me, please? The piano? It is a long time since you have honored me with a recital.”
She looked at me questioningly.
“Remember when I first enrolled at school? You played, let me see...Yes, I remember now. Mozart. Will you play it again?”
For reply Hatsuyo walked to the piano and sat down. As her fingers caressed the ivory keys, who would have thought a war was raging across thousands of miles in the Pacific! I closed my eyes and in my mind saw the flickering blue exhausts of fighters and bombers taxiing down runways, hurling dust and stones behind them, lifting with a thundering crescendo of power off the ground, to disappear into the night, many of them not to return.
And here I sat, in the Tokyo suburbs, relaxed, my body whole and well, my stomach full, basking in the warmth and affection of these people who loved me no less than a son. And others were dying. It was a strange world.
The music stopped. Hatsuyo sat at the piano for several moments, then turned and looked at me strangely. Her eyes were wide and questioning, and she spoke softly. “Saburo-san, I have another I wish to play, especially for you. Listen carefully. It will tell you something I cannot myself express in words.”
She looked so strange! Then a flush spread over her face and she quickly averted her gaze.
She played for a long time. The music rolled from the piano, lifted quietly and drifted through the room, then crashed and soared. I looked at this girl. I knew her, and yet I knew her not at all. Never had I seen Hatsuyo like this. What did she mean when she said, “It will tell you something I cannot myself express?”
Suddenly I realized I was looking at Hatsuyo, not as a young girl, not as my cousin, but as a woman! For the first time I really saw her, intent at the keyboard, her fingers flashing up and down, her face tense as she poured her soul into the music.
Hatsuyo? And I? The thought was staggering. But, she was no longer a child. Wake up, Sakai, you fool! She is a woman. She is telling you, now, this moment, that she is in love with you! I knew now what sh
e meant. In a rush of emotion, I wished to respond. It could not be, I told myself. But it was; it is! It is Hatsuyo. You are in love with her, you fool, and you did not even know how she felt. I remembered the hospital, when she threw her arms around me and sobbed that she was sure I would fly again.
So she had loved me, and for much longer than I would have dared imagine. It was so strange. At that moment I knew that I, too, was in love. With her. But what could I do? I had suffered those dark months long ago, when Fujiko cried at my refusal. Were the reasons now any the less compelling? Could I throw away the love of Fujiko then, because I was half blind, and do less than to refuse Hatsuyo’s unspoken plea to me?
How could I now humble my pride, ignore these same beliefs, pretend that miraculously I could see again clearly and well enough to take to the air as the ace I once was? Could I do all that and retain my integrity? No!
So far as Hatsuyo was concerned, her message was wasted on me. I gave no indication that I knew what she was telling me, that I wished fervently to respond. When Hatsuyo finished playing, I waited as long as courtesy required, then retired for the evening, pleading weariness. But I did not fall asleep for many hours.
During my assignment to Yokosuka, I visited Tokyo often. In the eighteen months of my absence, the capital city had changed. The color and gaiety were gone. People no longer laughed as quickly or as heartily. The streets were dreary and lifeless. The people moved along, heads bent, intent on their own problems. The “Warship March” no longer generated enthusiasm. Too many sons of these same people, too many husbands and brothers and uncles and nephews, were never to come home again.
But Tokyo still did not truly reflect the war, although the shouting was over. The stores had run short of commodities, and strict rationing was now in force. People braved the wind and the cold in long queues, waiting for bowls of steaming broth. The homeland remained untouched, however, except for that one single raid back in 1942, the daring flight of Doolittle’s bombers, which raced over the city and fled for China. Tokyo and all our cities had remained unviolated by the thunder and the screaming pieces of steel from American bombs.
War came to Japan in June of 1944. The effect on our population was unmistakable. On June 15 the people of Japan were shocked to hear that twenty bombers, tremendous giants of the air which dwarfed the powerful B-17, had flown an incredible distance from China to attack a city in Northern Kyushu. The raid did little damage, and twenty planes were hardly enough to cause national excitement. But in the homes and the stores, in the factories and on the streets, everywhere in Japan, the people talked about the raid, discussed the fact that our fighters had failed to stop the bombers. They all asked the same questions. Who was next? When? And how many bombers would come?
The newscasters gave them something else to worry about. The Americans had invaded Saipan. In more ways than one, the war had come home. Saipan was not very distant. The maps were unrolled, and our people looked for the tiny dot which lay not so far off our coastline. And they looked at each other. They began to question—never aloud, but in furtive conversations—the ceaseless reports of victories. How could we have smashed the enemy’s ships, destroyed his planes, decimated his armies, if Saipan had been invaded? It was a question which everyone asked, but which very few dared to answer.
No sooner did we receive the news of the Saipan attack than powerful units of our fleet sailed for the Marianas to engage in what everyone at Yokosuka knew would be one of the decisive battles of the war. We were no longer invading foreign islands, we were guarding the very portals of our homeland.
The next morning the Yokosuka Wing received orders to transfer to the island of Iwo Jima. Our high command feared that, with Saipan secured, the Americans would strike next at that strategic point. With Iwo Jima in their hands, all of Japan was imperiled. Those great battles in the Marianas are history. Saipan fell before the terrible enemy onslaught. Our Navy sustained a crushing defeat and the American task forces roamed the Pacific, all-powerful, indomitable, and fearless.
The fact that Iwo Jima was not invaded in the summer of 1944 surprised us all. The island was barely able to defend itself! A fraction of the force which took Saipan could have stormed Iwo’s beaches and crushed the token resistance which our skeleton forces then on the island could have mustered. For some unknown reason the invasion was delayed for many long months, during which time the Army and Navy poured men and weapons onto the strategic little isle.
When the Yokosuka Air Wing received orders to establish an air defense of the island, we were able to spare only thirty Zero fighters for the task. Thirty fighter planes, essentially the very same Zero with which I had fought in China nearly five years before. That was all! Yet no invasion came. We considered this turn of events nothing less than a miracle.
Commander Nakajima was back at Yokosuka. One month after he had left Toyohashi for Rabaul, Tokyo had ordered him to return to Japan for reassignment to Yokosuka, where he was to help turn out new fighter pilots at a record rate. Now, after a year on the homeland, he was leaving again, but for a campaign of more epic proportions than any he had ever undertaken.
I received orders to report to his office. “Sakai, why don’t you come with me this time?” he asked. “You know how anxious I am to have you flying with me again, I don’t care what any doctors say, you were, you are now, an excellent pilot. You prove it every time I see you fly.”
He paused. “Let us be entirely honest, Saburo. You know better than any of us the questionable ability of these new pilots. I fear for their lives once they face the new American planes. We need something to bolster their morale, to give them a greater will to fight.
“You see, Saburo, I need you with me. Desperately. You are almost a god to these men. With you flying with us, their morale will soar. They will follow you anywhere.”
“You need to ask me, sir?” I burst out. “You ask me if I will go with you? How many times have I tried! How many times have I been told no! ‘You cannot fly, Sakai.’ ‘You are half blind, Sakai.’ ‘You are no good any more, Sakai.’ Of course I want to go! I want to go with you, sir, I want to fight again!” Times had changed. No surgeon rose in heated protest to prevent my leaving. The niceties of keeping a one-eyed pilot out of the war no longer existed. We could not afford to worry about such minor details any longer. Japan herself was endangered, and a one-eyed pilot with my combat experience was no longer a liability.
I had come into my own again. My country needed me.
We received orders to leave at once for Iwo Jima. We did not even have time in which to contact our families. There were no farewells.
On the morning of June 16 we took off from Yokosuka and moved into formation as we headed for the distant island. We never made Iwo. After 100 miles of wild flying through a low, thick overcast and torrential rains, we were forced to turn back for Yokosuka. Japan’s rainy season had begun. Nakajima and I could have made it to Iwo, as could several other fliers. But the majority of the thirty pilots in our group were inexperienced men. The storms would have detached them from our formation in no time and that would have been their end.
Iwo Jima is a tiny island 650 miles south of Yokosuka. It is barely two miles across at its widest point. On a global map, Iwo seems to be the last of a long series of stepping-stones in the Bonin group which extends from Yokosuka to Guam. Maps are notoriously misleading, however, and in the vast reaches of the Pacific the distance between each small outcropping of land can assume terrifying proportions. Without radar, indeed, without even radios in our Zero fighters, we dared not risk the loss of most of our planes.
Our experience in such matters had been tragic. Early in 1943, several squadrons of Army fighter planes, manned by pilots who had absolutely no experience in long-distance flying over the ocean, left Japan for a base to the south. En route, they encountered severe weather conditions, but refused to turn back. Almost every plane disappeared in the endless reaches of the Pacific.
We tried again the following
morning, June 17. This time we flew less than 100 miles from Yokosuka before the storms forced our return, although ironically the weather over Iwo Jima and the Marianas was reported perfect! We languished in our billets, listening to radio reports from our island garrisons, telling of the enemy air attacks all through the day and on into the night.
Four times we took off for Iwo, and four times the raging storms foiled our flight. On June 20, when we made our fifth attempt, the weather conditions were still far below minimum safety standards. Nakajma, however, was determined to get through. The inexperienced pilots glued their eyes to the wings and tails of the lead Zeros, and we fought our way through the violent updrafts and blinding sheets of rain.
None of us knew it at the time, of course, but this was the day our major fleet units suffered a disastrous beating by the planes and guns of the enemy task force rampaging through the Marianas.
Finally we came out of the storm front. Several minutes later, after we had flown 650 miles, Iwo’s volcanic hump loomed out of the water. Nakajima began a wide circle over the second air strip, over Mount Motoyama, in the center of Iwo. I had thought the dusty runway of Lae bad, but this was impossible! Landing on the deck of a pitching and rolling aircraft carrier would have been simpler than descending to the monstrosity below us. Two sides of the landing strip were steep rock walls. Even the slightest skid on landing and...a ball of fire. At the end of the runway there waited for any unwary pilot who missed his brakes a towering cliff.
Nakajima refused to take his men onto the forbidding runway. He led the formation back to the first airfield on the southern slopes of the volcanic island. Here was a wide, long runway. One after the other, the fighters dropped from the air.
More than ninety planes lined the long runway. Not an inch of parking space for our fighters was left.
Samurai! Page 24