Samurai!

by Martin Caiden

  “Japan,” here his voice choked, “has decided to accept the enemy’s terms. We will abide by the Potsdam Declaration.”

  He stared at us with vacant eyes. “The surrender orders may be announced at any moment. I want all officers to cooperate with me to the fullest. Order must be maintained at this base. There may be hotheads who will refuse to accept the decision to surrender. We cannot afford to have our men violate whatever conditions our country accepts. Remember— and never forget it—that His Majesty’s orders come before anything else.”

  A bomb could have exploded among us, and not a man would have flinched. We were rooted to the floor, unbelieving. We had known the end would come, but we had not anticipated this. The men walked slowly from the room, dazed, many staring dully ahead of them or at the floor. Some of the officers were crying, others-cursing.

  I myself was incapable of thought or speech. I walked in a fog, crossing the field without looking to either side. For some reason I wanted to be near my plane, and I leaned weakly against the Zero.

  A close friend of mine, Ensign Jiro Kawachi, walked up to me. For several minutes we stood next to each other, mute, unable to talk.

  It was over.

  We had lost.

  Japan was about to surrender.

  “Sakai.” I looked up. “Saburo, it...it is just about the end now,” Kawachi spoke. “We have very little time left. Let us make one more flight together, one last fight.”

  He kicked the ground idly with his foot. “We just can’t quit like this,” he protested. “We have to draw blood once more.”

  I nodded. He was right. We told the maintenance men to move our two Zeros out to the runway, to prepare them for flight. We knew that the Superfortresses would bomb tonight. The weather forecast appeared promising, and there were so many bombers overhead every evening that B-29s could be intercepted almost anywhere. For a long time they had flown over Oppama without opposition, using the field for a landmark. They would not expect fighters.

  Kawachi and I kept our plans strictly to ourselves, not even telling the other pilots. After we inspected our fighters, we walked to the tower and sat down to wait. Several hours passed without a word between us. We were lost in our thoughts, the memories of the long years from China onward.

  The afternoon passed and we remained seated, almost invisible in the darkness. Shortly before midnight the tower radio spluttered. “Alert. Alert. A B-29 formation is now approaching the Yokosuka-Tokyo area.”

  We jumped to our feet and ran across the field to our planes. The air base lay in blackness, not a light showing. There was just enough light from the stars to enable us to make our way. When we reached the Zeros, we discovered we were not the only pilots determined to go up for a last mission. At least eight other fighters were lined up at the edge of the runway, fueled and armed.

  I was afraid that with only one eye I would not be able to see properly at night in the air, and I asked Kawachi to lead me off the ground. We took off at once, without any further conversation. At any moment, we knew, the commandant might learn of our plans and order the planes held on the ground. The moment we were airborne, I swung in close to Kawachi’s fighter and took up a position off his wing. Eight other Zeros were in the air with us, forming into two flights behind our planes. We climbed steadily, then circled at 10,000 feet over Tokyo Bay.

  Kawachi’s fighter banked abruptly and pulled away to the east. I flew with him, the two flights close behind.

  For a few moments I failed to see any other planes in the air. Then Kawachi’s cannon started firing, and I made out the big bomber flying northward. I had him now, clear in my sights. I pulled up almost alongside Kawachi’s plane and opened fire. We each had four cannon now, and we would need every weapon against the tremendous airplane. I had never seen anything so huge! As I swung around after completing my firing pass, I saw the eight other fighters storming the Superfortress. They appeared like tiny gnats milling around a tremendous bull. How could we hope to shoot down an airplane of such incredible size?

  I came in again, climbing and sending my fire into the B-29’s underside. The counterfire was terrible. Tracers spilled into the air from the multiple turrets on the B-29, and I felt the Zero shudder several times as the enemy gunners found their mark. We ignored the bomber guns and kept pressing home the attack. The Superfortress turned and headed south. Apparently we had damaged the big plane, and now he was running for home. I clung to Kawachi and slammed the engine on overboost. The other eight fighters were already lost far behind us, and it was doubtful that we could keep up with the bomber. It possessed remarkable speed and was, in fact, faster than the Zeros I had flown at Lae.

  Kawachi, however, had no intention of losing the big plane in the dark. He cut inside the B-29’s wide turn and led me down in a shallow diving attack. This time we had a clear shot, and both Kawachi and I kept the triggers down, watching the tracers and shells ripping into the glass along the bomber’s nose. We had him! Suddenly, the Superfortress’s speed fell off and the pilot dropped the airplane down for a long dive. We came around in a tight turn, firing steadily in short bursts, pouring the cannon shells into the crippled plane.

  The great bomber descended quickly. I saw no fire or smoke. There was no visible damage, but the airplane continued to lose altitude steadily, dropping toward the ocean. We kept after the fleeing plane. O Shima Island suddenly loomed out of the darkness. We were fifty miles south of Yokosuka.

  We pulled out of our dives, and climbed to 1,500 feet. A volcano on the island reared 1,000 feet above the water, and we dared not risk a collision in the blackness. I could make out the bomber faintly as it dropped. Presently it ditched with a splash of white foam in the ocean, several miles off O Shima’s northern coastline. In less than a minute the B-29 disappeared beneath the water.

  Back at the airfield, we learned that at least three cities had been gutted during the night. The fires were still burning fiercely, unchecked, sweeping before the wind.

  The war was to end less than twelve hours later. I shook my head in dismay.

  The commandant was visibly angry over our flight, but he spared us his wrath. “I suppose I can’t blame you,” he said, “but we cannot have any repetition of what occurred tonight. From this moment on, all planes are grounded.”

  He told me that Atsugi was the scene of wild riots, that a near rebellion had occurred on the field. That was the Raiden fighter base where Akamatsu and other pilots were stationed men who could not accept the idea of a surrender, who tried to get their planes into the air. They lost their heads and defied the officers, swearing that they would refuse to accept surrender, that they would fight until their last breath. Reinforcements were moved in; not until several days after the surrender was a semblance of order restored.

  The destruction of the enemy bomber was kept secret for many years, and no record was made of our flight that night. And, of course, no pilot claimed credit for the destruction of the B-29. This is my first disclosure of that battle. We felt no exultation at shooting down the tremendous bomber. Nothing mattered except that we were surrendering our nation, our people, our homes to the enemy.

  I slept fitfully on a mess-hall table until daybreak. The air base was pandemonium itself. Many of the pilots were blind drunk, shouting and cursing wildly.

  Other men appeared dazed, as if they were in shock, when the historic dawn of August 15, 1945, arrived. The war was over. It was done. In every office high-ranking officers burned documents and files. Men walked around in a stupor or sat on floors or the ground outside.

  Exactly at noon we heard the Emperor personally read the surrender orders to our armed forces, wherever they happened to be. The 2,000 men at Oppama stood rigidly at attention on the field. Most of us had never before heard the Emperor’s voice. Many of the men were crying unashamedly.

  Suddenly I remembered—I had not been home last night! Hatsuyo! What would she think? If she hears the Emperor’s broadcast, she will think I was killed and....
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  I listened no more, but ran from the room. There were no cars. I grabbed a bicycle and pedaled frantically toward my small home. I was there in a few minutes. I leaped off the bicycle even before it stopped moving. I flung open the door, shouting for her. Hatsuyo ran from her room and flung herself into my arms, sobbing. For several minutes we clung fiercely to one another, unable to speak.

  Finally she lifted her head. “Are—are you all right, Saburo?” she whispered. I nodded.

  “Oh, my sweet,” she cried. “I wept like a child when I heard. It is really over, isn’t it? The fighting...all the bombing, it is all done?”

  I shook my head slowly in assent.

  “I don’t care about anything, Saburo, I don’t care! You have won all your battles, my darling, even if we have lost.”

  A light dawned in her eyes as she looked at me. “You—you will never have to fight again!” she whispered. “It is all over now. Never, never again!”

  She drew back suddenly and withdrew the dagger from beneath her sash.

  “I will never need it again!” she cried, flinging the shining steel to the floor.

  The dagger clattered across the room and came to a stop in the corner.

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