Burial in the Clouds Read online

  Bending and stretching exercises. Jogging. Then rowing drills in the cutter.

  “Make it snappy! Go!” Petty Officer Yoshimi barked out his commands, banging on the broadside. But that was just while we were boarding the boat, and with the division officer overseeing the exercise. Once we were out in the offing, he ordered us to cross oars, and then he gave us a little talk. We snuggled up together to get warm, like a group of chicks, and rubbed our hands as we listened. Itsuku-shima Island, which before had always looked blackish-blue, lay powdered in the snowy inland sea. A thin layer of snow covered the cutter, too. I could make out two German submarines in port.

  Petty Officer Yoshimi told us the story of how his warship, the So-ryu, went down at Midway Island. That battle was a watershed defeat for Japan, and we have now lost nearly all our big carriers: the Akagi, the Kaga, the Ryu-jo, the So-ryu, the Hi-ryu, and the Sho-ho. The auxiliary aircraft carrier Chu-yo was also sunk recently. According to the officer, the Chu-yo used to be a Japanese mail-boat called the Nitta-maru, but it was converted into a warship. Only two vessels, the Shokaku and the Zuikaku, remain in service as purpose-built aircraft carriers. From now on, he explained, the war will be an extremely difficult affair for Japan. He doesn’t think our prospects are necessarily as bright as the radio reports from Imperial Headquarters suggest. The men who have taken part in actual combat know this better than anybody else. of us, he added, should understand that our lives will likely end sometime next spring; we must prepare. Officer Yoshimi spoke with feeling, and his words absorbed us utterly. We forgot even to rub our hands. Before long, he also said, we will join operational units as officers, and our sense of responsibility might well lead us to impose severe discipline on our subordinates. The more earnest and dedicated we are, he suggested, the more we will be prone to do that, but the fact is that there are many occasions when neither the character nor the degree of the discipline we enforce has any bearing at all on the wider situation. It is perfectly all right to tighten the reins, to push the men, or even to beat them if necessary. However, Officer Yoshimi said that he wants us all to take care to discern when to come down hard, and also to slacken up a little bit, occasionally turning a blind eye to the men. How gratifying that is for deprived young soldiers! He urged us never to forget how we felt during our brief period as seaman recruits at the naval barracks.

  Later, a man in my outfit criticized Petty Officer Yoshimi. He claimed this little speech was done from calculation, that Officer Yoshimi says we’ll all be dead next spring, but all the while is just shrewdly looking out for his own hide in a way perfectly characteristic of petty officers. Well, I can’t agree, and it is impertinent of that fellow to say such a thing, pulling a rank he doesn’t even have yet. If we indulge ourselves in needless conceit and lose our humility, we surely invite needless troubles.

  It’s so cold that my fingers are almost numb, but I’m getting the hang of rowing the cutter. Also we are learning light signals, semaphore, and rope work. Rope work involves the half hitch, two half hitch, bowline knot, bowline on the bight, sheet bend, log hitch, and so on, and is all rather complicated. We learn to clean the toilet and do the laundry, how to wash socks as well. It seems I’m gradually assimilating myself to navy life. They say we’ll leave this barracks on the 25th of this month at the latest.

  We had hot tofu miso soup and a sardine for dinner. The fish, complete with its head and tail, had plenty of fat, and the saltiness penetrated it. Quite good. I saw a guy slip a second sardine into his bowl of rice, taking advantage of its being his turn to serve the meal. He hid the fish well, but inevitably it poked its head out as he ate. Still he kept at it, cool as a cucumber. Is this what we should expect of someone from the law college at Kyoto University? His conduct is beneath contempt, but all the same I clearly envy him that one sardine—intensely. Why do I get so hungry?

  Quite unexpectedly, we will be allowed to have visitors on the 14th. I sent out a mimeographed invitation today, and asked for A Trip to Manyo by Bunmei Tsuchiya, The Complete Works of Sakutaro Hagiwara, matches, mentholatum, and medicine for stomachaches.

  Another secret gift of sweets tonight: an-mochi. As I munched mine in the hammock, I thought of seeing my parents, and I was thrilled.

  January 10

  A cluster of letters has arrived from Professors O. and E. at Kyoto University, from my old high school teacher Mr. N., and so on. Kashima, Sakai, Fujikura, and I sat around the cigarette tray during the break, exchanging postcards. It has been quite a while since we had so lively a discussion of the Manyoshu and the scenery and customs of Yamato (the very heart of the anthology). But as we talked I noticed a certain look on the face of a fellow from another division, and it struck me that we should take care lest our most innocent conversation sound strangely pedantic. This is the case even in a company of seamen with an academic background, and soon enough we’ll be assigned to operational units, where we must mingle with career officers and enlisted men. We really can’t indulge this pointless nostalgia for university life. We should tuck it away deep in our hearts until the world is again at peace—that is, if we survive the war.

  All the same, I enjoyed the conversation. What a consolation it was to chat about the three mountains of Yamato, about Mt. Futakami, the Yamanobe Pass, the streaming Furukawa River, and about all the places we visited during our Manyo trip last winter! In the town of Nabari, we played the card game karuta at an inn, warming ourselves in a kotatsu built into the floor, while out back brown-eared bulbuls swooped down from the hill to eat the red berries of the oleaster. I also remember sitting up through the night once, at the inner temple of Nigatsu-do, for the water-drawing ceremony spoken of in Basho’s poem.

  The water-drawing ceremony:

  Footsteps of the priest

  Who confines himself in the temple for prayer.

  When midwinter ends, the water-drawing season will come again to Nara. I distinctly remember how my feet felt as I tread on the thin ice, and as muddy water seeped into my worn-out shoes. After all, we entrusted our very lives to these “things of Yamato” and to the Manyoshu. But I have to remember: All that is just a fine memory now, a lovely bit of atmosphere, and this isn’t the time to dwell on an atmosphere. War is about to teach me firsthand what the poet Otomo no Tabito felt when he was sent to fill a government post at Dazaifu, that remote land where “incessantly the light snow falls,” as he once put it. So I will set aside my studies for the moment and devote myself utterly to the navy. This can only deepen my understanding of the Manyo poems anyway, should I be fortunate enough to outlive the war. I really have to believe that.

  Mr. N. reports in his letter that he will be participating in “rites of purification” and other such things at the Training Center for Doctrine in Koganei-cho, Kita-tama, Tokyo, through February 9. I hardly know what to think about that. He says each high school is to send one teacher to study these rites, but I have to wonder: Could this sort of thing possibly help usher in a new era? Is it really worth the bother? Or is it just useless folly, like rowing against the current? If you ask me, instead of abandoning their vocation for “rites of purification,” I would much prefer that teachers and students put their hearts into their studies just as they did before the war—no, even more diligently than they did before the war, so as to make up for our absence. I hear that the professors’ offices at the university are all desolate. Letters trail in to them, one by one, from students who joined the army and wound up in some transport unit in Fushimi, in some regiment in Takahata, Nara, or in scattered places such as Kagoshima, Tokyo, or Manchuria.

  January 12

  Well, it happened, exactly as I feared it would. Some student in the 217th Division got off a wisecrack. “You see,” he said to a drill instructor decorated with four good conduct medals—to the guardian spirit of the navy, so to speak—“You see, I’ll take good care of you when I receive my commission. So why don’t we meet each other halfway? You know, give-and-take.” As a result, everyone in the 217th w
as ordered this evening to do push-ups with their feet up on chairs, almost in the position of a handstand. And while they were at it, they got a good “dive-bombing” in the bargain (that’s when an officer gathers all his momentum and thrashes you on the ass). Next, they were doused with cold water from the washtub. Their strength was utterly depleted. Men whose brittle arms could no longer support the weight of their bodies were forced to lick the water off the deck. My heart ached when I heard how severe this correction was, but I’d better not quail at it. They say that in the army much worse punishments (and far more unreasonable ones, too) are a matter of course. I can’t pamper myself or give in to conceit. I must come to grips with the realities of military life. This incident happened in another division, but I have to learn from it nonetheless.

  Smoking alone at night, I gazed up at Sirius, its bright light flaring off the lower left side of Orion.

  January 14

  Today, a series of military reviews.

  Received visitors after that. Father and mother came to see me. My father said the train was so packed that they had to stand all the way from Osaka. Mother had sunken eyes. The two hours given to us, from twelve to fourteen hundred hours, passed all too quickly. I forgot myself, and now I have no clear memory either of what I heard or what I said. It seems I just repeated such commonplaces as “I’m all right,” “I’m trying my best,” or “I don’t find things so difficult,” all the while feeling embarrassed as my mother gazed at me in my sailor suit, half in admiration, half in pity. My parents told me that my brother Bunkichi has been transferred to a newly organized unit that set out from the port of Osaka on the 8th. He is now a corporal. Still, he was allowed to spend some four hours at home before departing. “Today may be the last time I see you in this life,” he told our parents, looking very sad. As he was wearing a summer outfit, my parents speculate that he will be sent to some island in the Pacific. I don’t worry so much about my own situation, but I really am anxious when it comes to my brother. He is timid, has a weak constitution, and was drafted at the age of thirty-four. My mother grumbled that she didn’t know who would inherit the family business. “Don’t bring up an issue like that,” I chided her. “How could I possibly make an answer now?” Nevertheless, I grew quite emotional when I heard that Professor E. said to them, “Please tell him to take good care of himself,” and also when my father said, “We’ll come see you anywhere, whenever they allow us a meeting.”

  The reception room is located to the right of the gate to the naval barracks. It was a lovely day, sunny and warm, and it made me wistful to think that we were forbidden to eat anything. I saw many a regretful face scattered about, gazing at what must have been big bundles of botamochi, or sushi, or red rice. “Father and I can cover for you. No one will see. Why don’t you try some?” said one young mother, almost pleading. Her eyes misted up when her son replied in a whisper, but still maintaining his military bearing, “No, it is not permitted.” Filial devotion is a blessing, but it can also be ticklish, and in our case that devotion might well turn out to be a burden at times.

  Anyway, what ingenuity Fujikura possesses! When the meeting ended, his gaiters were all puffed out and gawky. And after the inspection, two satsuma oranges materialized in my hammock. I felt guilty indulging my appetite when my friend had borne all the risk (I never got my hands dirty). But I accepted the gift with gratitude.

  January 17

  The commander of the naval barracks has changed. Rear admiral Takaaki Kamai just arrived to fill the post. We saw off his predecessor, waving our caps.

  There was a dress inspection this afternoon, followed by the drills in which we sling and fold up our hammocks as quickly as possible. Very tough.

  About a week ago, I wrote in this diary that devoting myself entirely to the navy would only deepen my appreciation of literature, should I survive the war. Then it occurred to me that this way of thinking—that is, treating navy life as a means to a strictly private end—not only contradicts the idea of “devoting myself to the navy,” it also suggests that I am anything but prepared to endure an ordeal that will carry us beyond our physical and mental limits. At the end of the day, when I take a hard, honest look at myself, I see how desperately I wish to live through the war and return to private life. It horrifies me to call to mind what Officer Yoshimi told us in the cutter on that snowy day a while ago. I loved the literary vocation to which I had aspired, loved it completely. Good friends, good professors, tranquil offices, and beautiful poems. No doubt it had its sentimental side, but I studied with all my heart. I sowed and watered the soil, and I have harvested nothing yet. I can’t bear to think that I may close my life of twenty-three years and several months without harvesting a single crop in what I believed to be my true calling. Perhaps I just lack the good grace to give it all up.

  January 25

  Yesterday we ran races in full battle gear, then had a tea party in the afternoon. After the tea, the results of the Student Reserve Officers Examinations were announced, and, as I expected, I have been assigned to the aviation branch, and will be sent to the Tsuchiura Naval Air Station in Ibaraki Prefecture. It never occurred to me a year ago that I would become a navy flyer.

  Law graduates like Yonemura and Yoshizawa will go to the Naval Paymaster’s College in Tukiji, Tokyo. Kashima has been assigned to the seaman branch and will head forTakeyama Naval Barracks in Yokosuka, Kanagawa. My Tsuchiura group is to be the last to depart, so we spent a busy afternoon packing lunches for Kashima and his fellow seamen. The bamboo husks we used to wrap the food in were small, but we had no good alternative. Anyhow, we kept struggling at the task. We took the greatest possible care we could, out of respect.

  At one-forty, in the middle of the night, the Yokosuka group folded their hammocks and left the barracks en masse. Will the day come, I wondered, when we meet again under that blue oak tree, as Kashima said in his poem, given that we can’t assume we shall live even to see tomorrow? Following navy custom, we simply raised our hands in salute and waved our caps, without shaking hands or patting each other on the shoulders. A lump rose in my throat, but with no opportunity to speak to Kashima, I just continuously saw the men off as they marched in their long line across the dark wintry grounds, all in their identical seaman’s uniform. With some of these men, I had kicked a ball about on the field, sung, and debated philosophy, until just two months ago. I will probably never see them again.

  Kashima is rather bohemian. He acquainted himself once with the proprietress of a certain “tea house” in Miyagawa-cho. He hung out there all the time—all but boarded there. On another occasion he simply cut his classes and military drills, sojourning for a month at a hot spring in Aomori. Like Fujikura, he has been either harshly critical of the war, or else indifferent to it. But now I suppose he, too, has but one choice—namely, to bear his fate with courage, and fight battles. I wanted to say a word of farewell to thank him for the dried persimmons, but it was too dark for me to make him out in the long procession.

  Fujikura and Sakai have also been assigned to the aviation branch. That means they will go to Tsuchiura with me. After the Yokosuka group left, the long row of hammocks looked like a set of gums with teeth missing. It was ominous. We were given travel expenses and briefed on the journey in the afternoon. We set forth tomorrow morning.

  Tsuchiura Naval Air Station

  February 20

  It’s Sunday, but it looks like we won’t be allowed to leave the base for a while.

  The chief instructor gave us a sermon after morning assembly. He said the reputation of student reservists like us is absolutely rotten, not merely in each operational unit, but at headquarters too. Our general slipshoddiness, he said, and our deficiencies as to loyalty, have drawn severe fire within the military establishment. Some even ventured to suggest that we student reservists are little better than monkeys dolled up in officers’ uniforms. So he wondered: Had we ever really made up our minds to devote ourselves to the navy? Didn’t some of us still regard
navy life as a kind of interim arrangement? We should never entertain thoughts of visiting home, not even if our parents die. Each one of us shall perish in the decisive engagements of the war by this coming summer. Continue to be off guard, he admonished, and we would sully the tradition of the Imperial Navy. If we should ever find ourselves of two minds, suspended between the possibilities of life and death, we should without hesitation choose death. Etc. etc.

  It’s not that we must prepare ourselves to die by summer. No, he is telling us simply to die. They never miss an opportunity to tell us to die. What, in the name of heaven, is their goal? Is it to carry the war through to completion, or merely to kill us all? If we really can save our country by dying, then by all means let us do precisely that. Since February 1, the day of the ceremony marking the assignment of the 14th Class of student reserves to the aviation branch, we have known that we must confront death. We are trying hard, lame though we may be, to brace ourselves for it, yet I cannot for the life of me believe that dying is itself the goal. It is pointless, no matter how you look at it, to rush headlong and heedless into the grave, and if I follow the chief instructor’s dictates to the letter, wouldn’t it qualify as “disloyalty” even to seek shelter during an air raid? I’m not a rebel like Fujikura, but even I took offense at the chief instructor’s words. After all, who made us give up our academic work? Who rounded up these “monkeys” and put them in uniform?

  Our life at Tsuchiura Naval Air Station is simply inhumane. Cigarettes are strictly rationed. Not because we don’t have a sufficient supply, it is just that we should not in any degree be comfortable. So I seldom smoke, and when I smoke I feel dizzy.