Burial in the Clouds Read online

  We visited the Fukais the day before yesterday, to bid our farewell. They cooked red rice while awaiting our arrival. Even the carp in the pond wished us good luck on our departure, by becoming miso soup. I shall never forget the kindness of this family. We agreed that each of us would do one parlor trick. Sakai performed a card trick. Fujikura sang a silly song titled “Draw the Lamp and Catch the Lice,” augmenting it with gestures. I did a vocal mimicry of a Bunraku puppet show called “East and West, East and West.” Then all three of us sang “The Song of Trainee Pilots.” Fukiko rose and disappeared, tears welling up in her eyes. But tears for whom? Well, it won’t do to wonder. I must part gracefully.

  It is ten forty-five now. “Those who are leaving this air station fall in in five minutes,” comes the announcement from the loudspeaker. the rest of the students assemble for the send-off.” So I take up my cap and go to see off the men bound for Matsushima.

  Letter from Fujikura

  Usa Naval Air Station, Oita Prefecture

  October5, Showa 19 (1944)

  Yoshihiko Kashima

  Provisional Torpedo Boat Training Camp,

  Kawatana-machi, Nagasaki Prefecture

  We moved here at the end of September. The station sits in the middle of a field near Usa Hachiman-gu Shrine, about an hour and a half train ride from Beppu. A river, which bears the odd name of Yakkan, runs nearby. So-called “military rules” and “moral orders” are stringently enforced. When we disembarked at Yanagiga-ura station, on the Nippo Main Line, three officers were there to meet us, oak bludgeons in their hands. “We’re going to put you through the wringer. Prepare yourselves.” That was their greeting. For a moment I thought we were here to join a gang. Since then, all slowpokes, and all who forget their salute, get beaten, one and all, every morning. It would appear that hits to the jaw fall under the rubric of “routine maintenance,” and I get my maintenance at least three times a day. At night, I can hear, quite distinctly, the moans of the young trainees as those bullies put the screws to them. Do they actually believe they can arrest the fall of Japan with stunts like these?

  Kashima, I know I haven’t written you for a very long time. Still, I’ve been reading the cards you send to Yoshino and Sakai from time to time as they come in, and when was it that I noticed, since parting with you at Otake, that you had begun to deliver yourself of such brave sentiments so often in your letters?

  “Let your Manyoshu pay tribute to me,” you wrote. Now, did that really come from the bottom of your heart? I’m not being sarcastic, mind you. But I really would love to ask you how you could achieve such grace as that. The blunt fact of the matter is that I am immensely sad to see that even you have changed in this way.

  Aren’t these strange days? Politicians, military men, scholars, poets—all of them exhort us, ad infinitum, to eat potatoes and die with a smile. But not a word do they have about how we can survive to reconstruct Japan. Who on earth is giving any thought to the matter? I guess the Manyoshu wasn’t quite the right subject to study, if we are aiming to face the world’s political and economical developments with a level head, standing in the midst of these turbulent currents. I don’t possess that order of confidence and ability. I simply object to this war because my instincts tell me to.

  Before joining the navy at Otake, I sounded a number of people out for their opinions as to the outcome of this war. Only two predicted Japan would fail. One was a relative on my mother’s side, a rear admiral back from the southern theater, and the other was a consumptive old upperclassman from my junior high school days who had been engaged in underground leftist activities. According to the rear admiral, an attempt to overthrow British and American hegemony in Asia, with Japan taking the lead, was inevitable, a historical necessity. But what did Japan do to accomplish that end? She misjudged the timing, indulged in all manner of self-righteous foolishness, and now it’s indisputable: our defeat is a mathematical certainty. For his part, my junior high school buddy said his conviction that Japan would fall was rooted not in emotionalism and defeatism, but in scientific fact. And it was at that point that I became interested in both the navy and the Communist Party, odd though the combination may be. What these two men said is etched on my mind. Since joining the navy, however, I have grown weary of it. Nothing indicates to me now, in the present state of naval affairs, that the minority view can have any influence. Also, we were born a few years too late to take in any of the old leftist atmosphere in our campus life. Consequently we are anything but expert when it comes to Marxism. Had we been acquainted with the theory, even if we didn’t accept it wholesale, I wonder whether or not we might have been able to adopt a more scientific perspective.

  However, let’s not split hairs. Maybe I’m just in a funk, but I simply can’t see any reason why I should bottle it up. I don’t want to die. I have no wish to sacrifice my life in this war. Kashima, why don’t we do the best we can to survive? Each time he reads your manly letters, Yoshino swells up with martial spirit and fresh courage. Don’t let’s be too gallant.

  What’s your daily training like? The absolute minimum requirement for our survival is that we avoid accidents during our routine flight training. Since coming here, we have lost two men during orientation flights in the navy Type-97 carrier-based attack bomber. I think you remember 0. (from Doshisha Univ.) and H. (from Hakodate Fisheries College), with whom we have been together since Otake. The instructor aboard the plane survived, though with serious injuries, but the two students perished. When we lower the flaps, the nose drops, and we must correct the bias with the trim tabs. It appears, however, that the pilot inadvertently reversed the tabs, and he couldn’t pull out at an altitude of 200 meters. So the plane plunged into the sea, in a flash. I heard that the main wing was blown off when it hit the water. I was only two names away from this debacle on the flight roster. In the coffins, the men were adorned with the cherry-blossom insignia of ensign. It was a sad commission. Two students from Ryukoku University put vestments on over their military uniforms and read from the sutras. We held a wake for them all through the night, each member of the outfit taking a one-hour turn. They say the navy dislikes a quiet, solemn vigil, and that if the deceased loved to drink in life, well, then it should be “Bottoms up!” for a tribute. That’s all well and good, but when it turned out that we needed to fetch another funeral wreath, in addition to what we already had on base, the deck petty officer said, keeping a straight face, “No problem. And why don’t I get one more while I’m at it? We’ll need it for the next time anyway.” I was dumbfounded. We bore the dead off to a crematorium in Nakatsu today. We didn’t let the bereaved families see them, as the bodies were quite discolored. The stoker at the crematorium was feeble from malnutrition, and he moved about listlessly; his heart wasn’t in it. Very evidently he simply wished to be done with this task of setting the coffins ablaze. I was disgusted. But the parents, who had hurried all the way here, were too absentminded even to shed tears, and, in their apathy, they stood there looking like a regular bunch of stupid grown-ups. Maybe they couldn’t believe the coffins actually contained their sons. And what did the instructor say when we returned to base? “Don’t let one or two deaths dismay you. We’ll put you through the wringer twice as hard, starting tomorrow.”

  Kashima, let’s take the utmost care to make it through our training. Let’s not earn the insignia of ensigns, or whatever, by dying. We can muddle along for the next several months, but then what will we do when we receive our commission, when we go into battle, when we make our sorties? No logic and no complaints will avail us then. I have known for quite some time that I will have to take measures, extreme measures, if I am to survive. I’m not yet at a point where I can say exactly how I am going to do this, not even to you. A thousand times the word “Coward!” crosses my mind, but I intend to banish it every time.

  What I miss is the time I spent in Kyoto, as you might expect. I once expressed my gloomy feelings, and my nostalgia for Kyoto, in a long letter to Professor E., an
d received in return just another postcard of encouragement. I guess he had his reasons, but I had hardly written a letter of any kind before that, and since then I have been too discouraged to write to anyone again. I don’t wish to place you under any obligation, or to make any demands. But I am wondering if you might reply to this letter. I’m going to post it from Beppu on our next day of liberty. If you reply, address the letter to me “c/o Kajiya Inn, Kamegawa Hot Springs, Beppu.” Let me know the address you use on your outings, too.

  So long, Kashima. Take care.

  Footnotes

  * Kisama, ore, and omae mean, respectively, “you,” “I,” and, again “you.” They have a rugged, masculine sound in Japanese and would be more commonly used among soldiers, sailors, and so on. (In Japanese there are a number of equivalents for any given English personal pronoun; their usage can vary according to gender, degree of formality, and so on.)

  * The China Incident is a reference to the fighting between Japanese forces and nationalist Chinese forces in July of 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge (near Beijing), which sparked the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45).

  † These words all have either slightly feminine or informal connotations, hence their disuse in military contexts. Boku is a first-person pronoun (“I”); kimi, a second-person pronoun (“you”); ne is in this context roughly equivalent to “to be”; tono, a suffix sometimes applied to names as an honorific.

  Usa Naval Air Station

  October 13 (Continued from Yoshino’s diary)

  The strict, taut atmosphere of this base is having a beneficial effect on my constitution, as before, what with all my backsliding, I had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

  We rise five minutes prior to reveille, dash off to the airfield, and, in the predawn darkness, throw open the doors to the hangars. There, Type-97 carrier-based attack bombers—the same model that saw action in the Battle of Hawaii—await us, with their noses in alignment. Morning assembly follows, then naval calisthenics, then we’re back to take the planes out, running every step of the way. It’s bracing to see enlisted men salute us with such insistent rigor. We haul the planes out and extend the wings, consult the flight schedules, equip our seats with parachute, cushion, and voice tube, inspect the fuel, the oil, and the surface of the plane. this accomplished, we feed our bodies on rice and hot miso soup, having worked up a pleasant hunger. Afterwards, we put on flight suits and sprint to the field.

  Since arriving here, I am flush with a sense of wellbeing. I never sneeze. I think I have at last begun to internalize a spirit of enterprise, and it exhilarates me. Clearly this has a bearing on my physical health. Positive and negative aren’t far apart; they are not the two extremes. And my complaints about the navy, my anxieties as to the war situation, my self-doubts—somehow I must integrate these into something forward-looking, into something redemptive.

  The newspaper reports that carrier-based enemy aircraft raided Formosa from a mobile force consisting of almost the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. If we are to recover, it will require no ordinary effort. Now is not the occasion to indulge ourselves in pointless grief over the martyrdom of O. and H. When we five thousand pilots of the 13th and 14th Student Reserves fly into the jaws of death, with some twenty thousand trainee pilots backing us up, for the first time there will be a decisive turn in the progress of this war.

  I was reading a novel titled Naval Battle when I encountered the author’s confession: along I have been searching for what might prepare me,” he says, “as if it were a solid object.” Exactly. But on the contrary, only what flows into your mind naturally, filling it up by accretion, can truly prepare you. Something in me rises like the tide, overwhelming my inner conflicts. I feel that now, and it is gratifying.

  Today I made my fourth dual flight, practicing takeoffs and landings in a Type-97. Altitude: 800 meters. As I sat in the back seat, turning round on the lookout, I got a sense of our speed. Much faster than the intermediate trainers we flew at Izumi. The propellers are metal, and the sound of the engine differs. The Type-97 is a low-wing monoplane with a high rate of climb. It gains altitude in an instant, making me realize that I’m in a truly first-class aircraft, an aircraft that has performed in battle. They say that in a fast plane you are already in your turn the instant you even think of turning. Indeed, the plane does respond to even the slightest shift of the control stick. Consequently, it’s hard to get the hang of things. I’ll have to learn how to get my bearings using the Type-97’s sensitive altimeter, variometer, and longitudinal inclination indicator. The pullout at seven meters is easier to make in the Type-97 than in our intermediate trainers. Two out of three of our landings were just about picture perfect, which was satisfying. The trick, it would appear, is to pull the bar all the way in at the end.

  Flights ceased at 1400. Afterwards, they issued each of us a ten-day supply of flight rations: one bottle of soda, six packets of cod liver oil, two parcels of high-altitude flight food, one parcel of chocolate, and a large can of pineapple. In addition, to each outfit of twelve pilots they distributed a gallon of orange wine, two bottles of tonic, two of orange syrup, two of lemon juice, one of coffee, and one of amazake. Laid out all together, it was quite a bounty. Everyone beamed. Still more, our meals are augmented with in-flight food at breakfast every morning, milk or an egg at lunch, one ohagi, hardtack, a glass of orange juice at dinner, and, every other night, a plate of maki-zushi. Who eats like this in the outside world these days? Well, why shouldn’t I bestir myself?

  October 17

  News of the results of the aerial battle over Formosa comes rolling in. Quite impressive. We sank eleven aircraft carriers and disabled three more. Two battleships went down, along with three cruisers and one destroyer. In total, we sent forty-odd ships to the bottom of the sea. The newspaper calls it the work of the gods, which I let stand without a murmur. Excellent work.

  There is a story behind these remarkable results, though. No fewer than three hundred twelve of our warplanes failed to return from their sorties. Add to this those planes that were destroyed on the ground, and those that crash-landed, and you have a total of some seven or eight hundred aircraft lost. The estimate is that we also lost nearly a thousand aircrews. It would appear that our 2nd Air Fleet was essentially annihilated in exchange for our brilliant results. Most of the Gingas from the Todoroki Unit, the unit we spent some time with back at Izumi, must have been lost. Someday we will fight just as they did. My only wish is for a wise move now on the part of the operations section.

  While the results of the battle were being announced this morning, two damaged carrier-based bombers emerged from the fog, buzzing the radio tower and making an emergency landing. On board were senior aviation petty officers who had taken part in the attacks of yesterday. They were flying inland from Formosa to retrieve fresh aircraft, but bad weather compelled them to land on our base.

  According to these men, the enemy fleet is, at present, on the lam at five knots, and what’s more, it has no fighter cover at all. If only we had the strength, they say, we could sweep the fleet away, but there are no planes left for the pursuit. Five knots is the speed of an ordinary boat. I couldn’t be more exasperated. But these men didn’t appear to be wired, and they mumbled when they spoke. Their eyes, however, smoldered with an uncanny menace.

  October 19

  In the evening, I picked up a postcard from Kashima in Kawatana. It had arrived with the afternoon mail.

  “We haven’t written each other in some time,” it read. “Whenever I see an airplane I think of you all. And I had been longing for some word from you, even if only about pampas grass swaying in the breeze or a sparrow singing, when a long letter came in yesterday from none other than Fujikura. He is the same old Fujikura, tough as ever. I’ll write him back sometime. But he reproved me for having said, when I wrote you a while ago, “Let your Manyoshu pay tribute to me, in place of a sprig from the sacred tree,” and at the moment I just can’t explain my aspirations. Looks like you guys have a lot of lof
ty metaphysical conversations. Do you really have so much downtime in the Air Corps?

  “Since the beginning of autumn, the sea grows rougher by the day where I am. I live in the waves and whistling winds, doused by the spray as I glide over the water. I study late into the night, with nautical almanac, tide tables, and pilots at hand. I don’t have time to compose a poem or tanka. I am alone here. But you three Manyo scholars are still together, and you get along well. Don’t alienate Fujikura. What he says is mostly true. And yet, granting all that ... well, be that as it may, I just think we must set about preparing for our journey to the other world. That’s the fate we shoulder.”

  I went to see Fujikura after dinner and asked, “What did you write to Kashima?” He didn’t answer.

  Kashima’s postcard bore a red seal: “No Visitors.” Evidently the torpedo boat crews endure a regime even stricter than ours.

  October 21

  We were granted liberty today in exchange for tomorrow’s Sunday liberty, as a long spell of rain has rendered the airfield unusable. But nothing went my way today, and it was a very unpleasant excursion.