by Peter Albano
“Sustain the old traditions and remember the sacrifices to honor made by your ancestors. The need to be a man exceeds all other hungers that life can produce because all things that make up a man draw strength from this need. Discipline and honor and bushido — remember this triumvirate because they must rule your life, give substance to your mind, heart and manhood.”
Taku emerged from childhood hating Americans, Koreans, Dutch, English, and Chinese. His most venomous feeling was directed at those unclean, barbaric Yankees who had arrogantly slapped the faces of a proud people by restricting Japanese immigration in 1924. Also, there were stories of racial insults to doho — Japanese immigrants — affronts and open competition with the Empire for bases in the Pacific. Why the naval bastions at Guam, Manila, and Hawaii if not to threaten Nippon? Why the collusion with the despised Dutch and British to fence in the Empire if not to make a second-rate power of Japan in its own Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Was this not done, anyway, at the contemptible Washington Naval Conference with the 5:5:3 ratio?
Taku was a creature of the sea and knew, one day, he would serve the Mikado in a great warship. Often, he and Oto-san would sit in silent awe in their tossing boat watching as columns of great gray ships passed en route to the Pacific or returning to the Inland Sea. But it was the silvery machines that roared overhead that challenged the boy more than anything afloat. To fly, to free one’s spirit from the glue of the land, to soar with the gods, this would be the ultimate freeing of the spirit. And what better way to serve the Emperor?
All naval fliers were trained at the Naval Fliers’ School at Tsuchuira, eighty kilometers northeast of Tokyo. Three classes of students were accepted: ensigns who had graduated from the Naval Academy at
Eta Jima, petty officers already with the fleet, and teenage boys as young as fifteen. Taku, perennially at the head of his class and an extraordinary physical specimen, was accepted in 1938. Joy and pride ran rampant in the Ishikawa household.
Before reporting to Tsuchuira, Shimei and Hatsuyo took their son to the great shrine of Amaterasu-omikami at Ise in the Mie Prefecture. Standing in the great stone chamber facing the giant statue of the goddess and the dozens of icons surrounding her, Shimei clapped twice before calling on the divine ancestress of the Imperial line, his powerful voice echoing from the hard stone surfaces.
“Oh, mother of the Mikado, give our son a spine of steel — a spine of martial strength hardened in the crucible of discipline. Give him the resolve to forget who he is and permit him to become a part of the infinite whole, blending like the mists of the Suido and the fog of the Pacific. Let him be above all else a samurai and if he is to be called to you, let him die facing the enemy.’’
Hatsuyo stiffened noticeably, but remained silent. Slowly, she turned to her son. “Taku-san, my sister, Tomi, and your cousin, Katsuko, have promised to stand on a Tokyo corner until a thousand strangers have completed your belt of a thousand stitches.”
“Thank you, Oka-san,” Taku said, addressing his mother formally. “Truly, I will bring you honor with the power of a thousand prayers worn around my waist.”
“And here,” she continued, handing her son an exquisitely embroidered velvet charm bag. “It contains a talisman of the ‘Eight Myriads of Deities,’ a Buddha from ‘Three Thousand Worlds’ and even a ‘Dai Nichi Nyorai’ — a Buddha with metaphysical power.” Her jaw worked and her eyes suddenly glistened like polished ebony. “Tomi’s grandfather carried them through the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese War, and the Russian War without a scratch they say…” her voice thickened, “they say, a bullet cannot strike a man if he carries them.”
“Yes, Oka-san, I know,” Taku said softly.
Taku not only found a new day at Tsuchuira, but a new world. Of the 1,500 applicants for his class, only 70 were selected. Taku’s jubilation knew no bounds when he found his name on the list.
But joy was cut short by a petty officer’s fist. Standing in ranks the first day at the training center — a complex that included two runways of 3,000 and 2,000 meters and six huge hangars bordering the ocean — a first-class boatswain’s mate casually inspecting the group suddenly, and without warning, smashed his open hand across Ishikawa’s face. Instantly, Taku stepped forward, fists balled, staring into the PO’s black eyes that gleamed back like polished glass. No! A test, cracked through the young fisherman’s mind. He restrained himself. Smirking, the petty officer moved down the ranks.
The brutality was monstrous, far beyond Taku’s wildest nightmares. Because the officer and petty officer recruits from Eta Jima and the fleet were spared, all of the noncoms’ frustrations were vented on the teenage cadets. The slightest infraction could lead to the severest beating. In fact, to teach responsibility to the group, the entire class would be punished for one man’s transgression, real or imagined. The recruits became a herd of cattle, never daring to question orders, to doubt authority, to do anything except instantly carry out all commands mindlessly. It was at this critical moment in Taku’s life that the strict code of the Hagakure came to his aid, providing fatalism and the ability to absorb punishment without flinching.
Then he met the American pig, Yoshi Matsuhara. There was instant hatred between them — revulsion that led to a physical challenge. On the verge of killing the Nisei like a dog, a petty officer intervened, saving Matsuhara.
After a threat from the squadron commander to throw them both out, the pair carefully avoided each other. Then, after a month of arduous ground school, the class began its primary training. The brutality never ended. Swimming was taught by tying a rope to a recruit and throwing him into the ocean. Taku was the strongest swimmer in the class, slashing through the water like a hungry shark and swimming underwater for an astonishing three minutes. Acrobatics and balance were at a premium. Hours were spent diving and somersaulting into the sea, and then, onto hard ground. Many were injured. Taku learned to walk on his hands and balance on his head for as long as twenty minutes, demonstrating an amazing sense of balance and coordination which would save his life time and again in later years. Superior peripheral vision was sharpened by identifying aircraft of all the world’s powers, silhouetted in black on white cards and flashed by instructors for a split second.
Finally, eleven months after entering training, eighteen survivors of the original seventy graduated. Awarded the Emperor’s gold bracelet as the outstanding member of his class, Taku Ishikawa proudly sewed his naval aviator’s patch over his breast pocket. “Naval Aviator Third Class, Taku Ishikawa,” he said to himself over and over, alternately fondling the bracelet and caressing the patch. Yoshi Matsuhara, boasting a college background, was commissioned an ensign.
Taku’s first service was in China in 1940. Assigned to Konku Kantai — the First Air Fleet — he reported to the Second Fighter Squadron based at Tiangang, a small air base in Southeast China. The first squadron equipped with the Zero-sen, Second Fighter scythed
Russian Ilyushin 16s and American Curtis F40s from the sky in a rain of flaming wreckage. Within eight months, Taku had three kills and was promoted to NAP First Class. In a full year of operations only two Zeros were lost to anti-aircraft fire; not one fell to enemy fighters.
Just before the Greater East Asia War broke out, Yoshi Matsuhara was transferred to a rumored secret operation while Taku accompanied the Second to a new base at Tainan on the island of Formosa. Escorting twenty-seven Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 medium bombers on December 9, 1941, Taku’s squadron strafed Clark Field on Luzon. That day Taku added another P40 to his score. Then the Second Fighter was assigned to the great carrier Kaga. Sweeps through the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean produced three more victories; a British Fulmar over Ceylon and two Dutch Brewster F2A Buffaloes over Balikpapan. The Brewsters were target practice. Then assembled with the three other carriers of Kido Butai, the First Carrier Division, and the Second Fighter Squadron moved against Midway Island.
Steaming with the greatest armada ever assembled, Taku, now an ensign and s
ection leader, was confident of victory. On the first strike on Midway, the Zero-sens swept all twenty-one intercepting Ami fighters from the sky; Taku scoring with a Grumman F4F Wildcat and another helpless Buffalo. Cruelly, the sweet nectar of victory turned to acid on his lips when, while the Second was refueling and rearming, ambushing American Douglas dive bombers smashed carriers Soryu, Hiryu, Akagi and Kaga. Over 5,000 sailors and airmen died. Clinging to the blasted wing of a Zero, Taku was picked up by the destroyer Takakaze after three hours in the cold Pacific. Incredibly, his wingmen, NAP Second Class Shintaro Miyazawa and Ensign Kiichi Abe also survived. The fourteen other pilots of the Second Fighter Squadron died, most burned to death while sipping tea in their briefing room.
With a shortage of carriers, Ishikawa, Miyazawa and Abe were assigned to the Lae Fighter Group on the east coast of New Guinea. Here Taku joined Japan’s finest: Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Toshio Ota, Saburo Sakai, Yasuhiro Uehara, and Shigura Tanimoto. All ran up incredible scores, shooting down P-40s, Bell P-39 Airacobras and the hapless Buffalo with a casualness that approached indifference. North American B-25 Mitchells and Martin B-26 Marauders were tougher, more durable opponents, but they, too, fell before the Lae Air Group’s guns.
On January 3, 1943, Lieutenant Taku Ishikawa was shot down. Making a head-on pass on the air group’s toughest opponent, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, his fighter was ripped by a burst of 50 caliber slugs that smashed his landing gear, shattered his canopy, and exploded his instrument panel in his face in a shower of splinters and shards of glass. His parachute was chopped neatly in half. Blinded by blood streaming from a slashed forehead and doubled over by the pain of two broken ribs and a lung collapsed by a ricochet that drove the hilt of his sword into his chest, Taku, protected by his wingmen, limped back to Lae.
His landing was an unbelievable feat of airmanship that would be spoken about in awe for years. Only able to lower his left wheel, the weak, pain-wracked pilot still managed to ease his right rudder and bring the stick to the left, crossing his controls and actually landing on one wheel. Eventually, loss in speed brought the Zero down into a 90 mile-per-hour spinning, screeching slide that left three hundred meters of smoking, ripped aluminum littering the runway. Frantically, emergency crews pulled the unconscious pilot from the wreck just seconds before it exploded.
Flown back to the Sasebo Naval Hospital, recovery was slow, his left lung filling and requiring continuous aspiration. His mother and father visited often and then, one day, he met Mikiko Takashita. A first cousin to Kiichi Abe, she accompanied the young ensign who was on leave from Lae.
Mikiko was stunning, with long hair that tumbled and folded about her shoulders like black silk, shining with the blackness and sheen of layered lacquer. Her skin was ivory and her features as delicate as fine Heian calligraphy. Soft black pools that never left him, her eyes were those of a sorceress, enveloping him from the first with an amalgam of compassion and desire. Her tight-fitting western dress clung to her slender yet curvaceous body, her walk was sinuous, and her breasts and buttocks large and rounded like a western woman. Taku caught his breath whenever she moved about the room.
After his first meeting with Mikiko, the flyer recovered quickly. The young woman, a student at the Tokyo University for Women, where she lived in a dormitory, was the daughter of Sadao Takashita, a respected industrialist and steel magnate and one of the owners of the Nippon Steel Works near Nagasaki. Because Mikiko was descended from a family of great wealth, Taku realized her social position would have placed her completely out of his reach if he had remained a simple fisherman. On the other hand, he was famous now, the killer of two score of the enemies of the Mikado, a renowned samurai for the Emperor.
She visited him often, bringing books, sweets and news of great Japanese victories in the Solomons, New Guinea and China. “And,” she added shyly, one day, staring at the floor, “my parents approve of you — yes, indeed, they respect you.” She blushed.
His strength returned quickly. The tubes were disconnected and he was discharged to a recuperation leave of indefinite duration. After a week with his parents on Kobata Shima, he took a small apartment in the Shimbashi, a district of modest homes south of the Imperial Palace, less than a kilometer from the harbor.
To his delight, Mikiko seemed hungry for his company. As his strength surged, they dined together at least twice a week and visited the gardens at Ryon-ji, the shrines at Yasakuni and Ise Shima, the Great Buddha at Todaiji and enjoyed Kabuki at the Imperial Theatre. Their most exciting adventure was their visit to Izu. Sixty miles southwest of Tokyo, in a bay swept by a combination of temperate and tropical currents, Taku found awesome sights in the underwater gardens. But the most spectacular sight was Mikiko in her bathing suit — firm and athletic, yet immensely feminine. He actually felt a physical jolt as he watched her swimming ahead of him like a mermaid.
That evening in his apartment they fell into each other’s arms with the hunger of two people ending a long fast. Burned in his mind’s eye for a lifetime, and to torture him later in lonely billets, was the stunning girl with ivory skin writhing beneath him whimpering and shouting his name over and over.
Within two months they were married. Taku took a small house in the more fashionable Bunkyo-Ku district of Tokyo — a tiny four room dwelling that overlooked the sylvan Koishikawa Botanical Gardens. Here, Taku’s cup was filled with joy and fulfillment beyond his wildest dreams.
The idyll ended late in August of 1943 when Ensign Kiichi Abe returned from his own recuperation leave after suffering a leg wound which left him with a pronounced limp. He had grim news. Toshio Ota, Shiguira Tanimoto, Yosuhiro Uehara and Shintaro
Miyazawa were all dead, victims of new, enemy Grumman Hellcat and Vought Corsair fighters. Lae, itself, was threatened by the infamous American 41st Division — “McArthur’s Butchers” In fact, there were rumors the air base would be abandoned.
Immediately, Taku requested a physical examination despite Mikiko’s protests. After hearing Taku plead and even threaten physical force, a bemused and slightly frightened doctor certified the young pilot fit for duty.
In the next 18 months, Taku flew from two carriers, Taiho and Zuikaku and survived the sinkings of both. On October 26, 1944, the day after Zuikaku's destruction, Taku’s son Sadao was born in Nagasaki where Mikiko had moved to be near her family. While Taku was flying with the Fourth Interceptor Wing based at Kashigo, a field one hundred kilometers northwest of Tokyo, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Then, three days later on August 9, Nagasaki was obliterated. Makiko and Sadao were vaporized. Mindless with grief and rage, Taku Ishikawa ended the war as a commander with fifty-five victories.
For almost a year Taku wandered through the wreckage of his nation as purposeless as a ronin, drinking, wenching, remaining unbathed for weeks at a time. Finally, demented by memories of Mikiko which thrashed in his mind like a butterfly caught in the web of his soul, he returned to Kobata Shima. His mother was dead. His father was bent overnight by age and grief like a windblown pine high atop Mount Amakusa.
But, now, Taku had a purpose. His father needed him desperately. Again, he and Oto-san followed the octopus lines, the sea breeze filling the young man’s lungs like spiced sake, his flabby muscles hardening with long-neglected labor. Suddenly, one gray afternoon, after wrestling the pots from a stormy sea, Oto-san clutched his chest and pitched across the thwarts, dead.
Alone, and carrying an impossible burden of grief, Taku sat for weeks in the empty house, drinking and staring idly at the paper walls. Then, Kiichi Abe limped in one day, splendid in the blue commander’s uniform of an aviator in the newly formed Self-Defense Force. “Minoru Genda is organizing an air group for the Self-Defense Force. You are Japan’s leading ace and you are young. Japan needs you — the Emperor needs you,” his old wingman said, staring across the low table from his zabuton.
“No, I am finished with that.”
“Where is your Yamato damashii, Taku?”
The m
ention of Japanese spirit stiffened Taku’s back. “Dead,” he answered, his voice like cold steam rising from dry ice.
Kiichi studied him, eyes smouldering coals in black hollows. “Defeat did not — could not destroy the Mikado’s kami. Kocutai — his divine essence is everywhere; is here.” He waved a hand. “Charged everywhere about us. You, a samurai, know better than anyone — cannot deny this. Your honor, you cannot betray it or the memory of Mikiko — my cousin, your wife, who lived in the glow of your glory.”
The men drank and argued for hours. Finally, early the next morning, Taku Ishikawa yielded to Mikiko’s memory, loyalty to Hirohito, and a chance to return to the sky, impossible to deny. After his commissioning as lieutenant commander, he led a squadron of young men equipped with American Grumman F8F Bearcats. Then, the thrilling translation to the F9F Panther jet. Exhilarated, with his heart pounding, he was free again, streaking silently through the heavens where the gods, Mikiko and his son, Sadao, dwelled. He never remarried, finding his release in wild flings with koshos (licensed prostitutes).
Then, in December of 1983, only four months before retirement, the storied Admiral Hiroshi Fujita, commanding the great carrier, Yonaga, stormed down from the Arctic like a tsunami. Immediately, Commander Taki Ishikawa — he refused captain and a possible rear-admiral’s flag because high-ranking officers sat at desks, not fighters’ controls — volunteered to serve on board Yonaga as a replacement. Admiral Fujita personally cut the orders transferring Taku to the great warship.
A sudden shear dropped the Zero-sen and Taku’s head was jarred by the headrest. Instantly, the past was gone and the restless eyes scanned Tokyo Bay below, the dark, thickening clouds above and the burgeoning thunderhead to the south. Good cover for Arabs. Although the nearest reported threat was a strip at Sergeyeoka, an old airdrome seventy kilometers north of Vladivostok in Russian Manchuria, he was still not at ease. Certainly, fanatical followers of Hasan-ibn-al-Sabbah — Shi’ite madmen who called themselves Sabbah and died with insane pleasure — could and would attack from anywhere and anyplace with the determination of old kamikaze pilots. Anyone with a chart and a pair of dividers could see that one-way suicide missions were possible from Sergeyeoka and, indeed, given the aircraft with the range, conventional bombing missions were conceivable. Admiral Fujita, himself, warning of the threat had pounded his desk for emphasis at the last briefing.