Burial in the Clouds Read online

  I know I should explain to you why I ever volunteered to be a pilot, given the beliefs I hold. But I don’t have the courage to commit my thoughts about that to paper, not, anyway, until I have come to terms with my feelings in some measure. Be that as it may, at least I can say that part of the reason was my more or less irresponsible and apathetic attitude. Whichever course I took, I thought, piloting or reconnaissance, I wouldn’t have any control at all over my own life and death. To put it plainly, there was simply no guarantee whatsoever of my safe return, even if I went into reconnaissance.

  Professor E.

  I fear that you may be deeply disturbed on receiving this sloppily penciled letter. First of all, it must annoy you to read my illegible scrawl, and second, you may well feel that it is dangerous to have such a letter on hand. Please burn it when you are through. I don’t really believe, though, that what I say is especially dangerous or immoral, while I do concede that my writing is culpably verbose. Anyway, if we must endure such inconveniences, and run such risks, simply to think, say, and record thoughts as innocent as these, I have to wonder: What good can come of the civilization that my generation produces?

  Well, now that I have begun, I will go ahead and say it. Lately I am all but convinced that we will lose this war. Don’t you agree? We are just a bunch of student reserves, still in training, but simply because we are now under the flag, and are quasi-officers, we regularly hear what appears to be confidential intelligence, of which you teachers are likely unaware. And judging from these scraps of information, it seems perfectly clear that, so far as materiel is concerned, the gap between Japan and America beggars belief. Japan lost most of the main force of her aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway Island. Ninety-nine percent of our ace pilots, who had displayed skills unparalleled in the world at the beginning of the war, were killed in the air battle over the Solomon Sea. Due to changes in the complexion of naval combat, we have already passed the stage at which the super-dreadnoughts Yamato and Musashi might have demonstrated their capabilities. On the other hand, I hear that America, flush with her technological superiority in ordnance and radar, is steadily completing new armaments of terrifying scale. What is more, our line of defense in the southeastern theater is rapidly losing ground. I find it ironic that the tide of war has turned in this way, given that the U.S. Navy is said to do its utmost to save its crews’ lives, while the Japanese Imperial Navy still instructs its men that their entire duty is to die. Unless this war develops into some kind of “romantic” battle, in which a loyal subject emerges out of nowhere to lead our country to victory under his banner, it seems to me that Japan has no choice left but to carry its deteriorating military position forward to defeat. And I don’t think the end will be long in coming. This is no “Ten Years’ War” or “Hundred Years’ War,” as they sometimes say. I suspect that the war will be over within three years or so. And what if we manage to live that long, I sometimes fancy? Then Sakai, Yoshino, and the three hundred thousand odd students conscripted in the emergency call-up shall all be awakened from this hypnosis of war. And we shall find ourselves living in a defeated nation, Japan. The idea is so painful, even to me, that I can’t bear to imagine what the country will be like. But somehow we will make our way back to you, and to our old university in Kyoto. Well, I guess that’s just a fantasy after all. It will not happen. It’s too much, even for me, to assume that we will be alive three years down the road.

  Professor E.

  Ten days have passed since I started to write this clumsy letter during study sessions, avoiding the eyes of my instructors. We have been to the village of Obata at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba, about thirty kilometers distant, for three days of maneuvers, from the day before yesterday until today. We rose at 4:30 on the morning of the departure, shouldered our rain gear, clipped haversacks and canteens to our waists, took up our #38 rifles, and assembled in front of the drill platform in the darkness of dawn. (“#38” means old, by the way. This rifle hasn’t been updated since the 38th year of the Meiji era, in 1905.) The chief instructor almost shouted when he addressed us. “You are outfitted exactly as were your comrades who died their warriors’ deaths at Makin, at Tarawa, and in the Aleutian Islands. Brace yourselves. Tough it out with fire and spirit during these next three days of maneuvers.” By all appearances many among us did gird themselves up at this speech, burning with a Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! sort of intensity. And in point of fact, we all “toughed it out,” without a single man dropping. But even an affair like this seems funny to me. Why should we find it moving rather than depressing, and how can it give us good reason to get all fired up, simply to be outfitted exactly like our hapless “comrades” who were ill-equipped, and, consequently, annihilated by our enemy’s overwhelming firepower? I just can’t help feeling that everything is standing wrong side up somehow.

  Have you visited the country around here, by the way? Paulownia and wisteria were flowering gracefully in the prosperous villages at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba. Milk vetches were also in bloom, and frogs croaked in the rice fields. This is the spot where the poems in volume fourteen of the Manyoshu are set. As I lay in ambush under a chestnut tree, I tore off a Japanese pepper leaf and sniffed it, thinking, for no special reason, of the poem that says,

  Unlike the waters that thunder

  Against the rocks of Mt. Tsukuba,

  My heart never wavers.

  On our way back, we practiced an intense running engagement. The rifle butt bit into my shoulder, my fatigues were thoroughly mired, and my face broke out in a salty sweat. Now I realize how aptly put the expression “My legs are like lead” really is. So I have no words to describe the euphoria I felt when, after returning to base, after finishing the laundry and cleaning duty, and after taking a bath, I received a parcel of sweets. But then I heard a fellow in my outfit say, while nibbling away at some confection, “It was tough, but it was good experience.” I wanted to turn on him and had to struggle to suppress the urge. Isn’t it the luxury of those who look forward to a long life to say that hard times make for “good experience”? As for me, the hard times I have here are just hard times plain and simple, and I cannot by any means imagine they will bear good fruit in the future.

  Professor E.

  I’m writing the last part of this letter on the train. Today is May 25. We are supposed to pass through Kyoto around five o’clock tomorrow morning. You will be sleeping peacefully in your Kita Shirakawa residence. At the moment, we are running halfway between Odawara and Atami, with the ocean on our left. I can see Kashima’s Miura Peninsula looming low. A little while ago, I spotted a bunch of sorrel, a familiar face from the Manyo lectures, flowering along the railroad. The day after tomorrow we finally start our lives as real pilots in Izumi, down in southern Kyushu.

  My heart is full, so I hope you will excuse me for writing out my scattered, incoherent thoughts at such length. As for the place where we may receive visitors, after many changes, they decided on Himeji Station, and the time appointed for it is tomorrow morning. My father should be there to see me. He is the kind of man who deeply reveres the Emperor and the Imperial Army and Navy, while he also respects you and Professor 0. It makes me a little anxious, but I think I will ask him to deliver this letter to you. If the instructors watch us so closely that I can’t carry out my plan, I will burn it in the toilet on the train. If this letter does happen to reach you, please destroy it after reading it through, as I said earlier.

  Together with a few other students in his outfit, Yoshino is playing an old child’s game with a handkerchief. Sakai is in another car. I can’t see him from where I sit.

  Professor, now I must bid you goodbye until I can write again. With best wishes for your good health and happiness.

  Izumi Naval Air Station

  June 3 (Continued from Yoshino’s diary)

  Flying is becoming the be-all and end-all of our lives.

  Each of us has already received an air log and a flight record. Outfitted with an oil-stain
ed flying suit, aviation cap, half boots, a pair of goggles, and a life jacket, every last one of us is, to all appearances, an imposing “warbird” of the Imperial Navy.

  The schedule is exacting. Reveille is at 0530, and we assemble within two minutes after that. Seconds count if you must fold your blanket neatly on your bunk, tie your shoelaces tightly, and line up, all in two minutes flat. We are constantly on the run. Once I saw a newsreel about young trainee pilots. Watching them dash like madmen from one task to another, I thought the scene simply had to have been staged. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  We are told that pilots must always keep a clear head. Should so much as a wisp of a cloud pass through a pilot’s mind, he will inevitably lose control of his plane. They say pilots with fiancees back home have more accidents.

  We live on a kind of tangent with death. We have to shout at the top of our lungs whenever we give account of ourselves, and if we let our guard down just a bit, we draw a storm of slaps before we cause an accident. The 13th Class of student reserves, now already commissioned, has stayed on as assistant division officers for the sea-plane units. They are a rough, bloodthirsty lot, and stick it to us the second they find us derelict. “Hold it right there, student of the 14th Class!” they will say, and over they come at a clip with a beating to complement the scolding. “Do you want to disgrace the Student Reserve Corps?!”

  We were separated into boarding groups. I was assigned to group ten and took my first orientation flight today with Instructor Yamaguchi. The command to “Commence!” came at 1045, and off I sprinted to the aircraft. I thought I acted with composure and celerity, but obviously I lost my calm, since it wasn’t until we were up in the air that I realized I wasn’t wearing gloves. We flew at an altitude of 200 meters. That’s about eight times the height of the Marubutsu Department Store in front of Shichijo Station, but it didn’t feel particularly high, it just felt as if my body were suspended in air. There was something gratifying about the experience, making me wish very much to congratulate myself. Ahead of us was Instructor Ejiri’s plane, floating along with Sakai aboard. I was pretty much disoriented as to our bearings, but as I steadied myself and took a close look, I noticed our position gradually shifting against the green background of the mountains. Beneath us ran streams. A grid lay over the land, with its roadways and airplane hangars, and that clear geometric pattern was dotted with men who looked like black beans. The barley in that lower world is ripe for harvest. We soon reached the turning point and changed direction, flying out over the sea, where I saw the islands of Amakusa, and their shorelines. The islands are exquisite, hemmed in by thin white ribbons of surf. The wide expanse of blue water swelled out, and the horizon seemed to recede as we moved on.

  It was clear and sunny all day today. I felt not the slightest anxiety from takeoff to landing. It was exhilarating. We cut into the wind as we descended, and all of a sudden, each solitary blade of grass came into clear view, as when a camera snaps into focus. Next I saw the grass pressed down by the wind, and in a split second my feet were on the ground. Who would believe that just five or ten meters of lovely green grass during a landing, or a variation of just three to five degrees in inclination, can mark the difference between life and death?

  I felt fairly well accustomed to flying my second and third times up, but during the third flight the wind shifted abruptly from east to west, somewhere around the fourth turning point, just before we started our descent. Without warning I lurched 180 degrees into a vertical turn. Before I knew it, the sky and the earth were at my sides and the horizon slipped at a right angle before my eyes. I didn’t know up from down or right from left. A thrill of horror shot through me, but of course we landed safely all the same. I flew three times, for a total of twenty-two minutes in the air. This duration is recorded in a log, and once our accumulated flight time reaches three or four hundred hours, we should be full-fledged pilots, capable of manipulating the plane as if it were an extension of the body.

  Attaining for the first time a bird’s-eye view of the sea, and of the mountains of southern Kyushu, I know what Nagata-no-Okimi felt when he sang (in volume three of the Manyoshu),

  The narrows of Satsuma,

  The home of the Hayahito folk

  Far beyond the clouds:

  All of this I saw today.

  Izumi is some two and a half hours by express train from Kagoshima, via Ijuin, Sendai, and Akune, and it is a place of utter scenic beauty. Izumi looks across the Shiranui Sea to Amakusa, and the Koshiki-jima Islands lie off to the southwest. Beyond the sprawling airstrip of green grass you can see the silvery waves, even when you are standing on the ground. A lark has built a nest in the grass, and it sings as it flies, soaring as high as the planes.

  Discipline is severe, the flying suits are stifling, and it’s no easy trick to sprint with the contents of your leg pockets kicking around. But we are all in high spirits. I clean forgot my birthday on May 30. I didn’t notice the day had passed until I was ordered to fill out a statement giving my personal history and background last night, and I’m actually pleased about this. I am twenty-four years old now.

  The Hagakure, a book on bushido, says, “To conquer your enemy, first conquer your friends. To conquer your friends, first conquer yourself To conquer yourself, first conquer your body with your mind.” Whenever I caught even the slightest cold, I used to burrow under the covers, giving myself up to sloth, and I haven’t entirely vanquished the more indolent aspects of my character. But I really must rid myself of them soon, if I am ever to die a worthwhile death for my country, or if I am to discipline myself into maturity as a pilot in time.

  June ii

  Excursion from 0800. Generally, Kyushu is very well supplied, and our outings will be far more enjoyable than those we made in Tsuchiura. I wish mother could try one of the steamed yam-paste buns they make at the Brotherhood of Enlisted Men.

  I had five bowls of sweet shiruko, drank four glasses of Calpis, and ate a parcel of snacks, a bowl of udon, and ten manju with yam-paste. Then I met Fujikura and Sakai, as we had earlier arranged, and walked with them from the Brotherhood out to Komenotsu, breaking a sweat under the early summer sun. Along the way we saw fields of ripe barley, the sprightly children of Kyushu, all tanned and barefoot, and then the bright sea beyond.

  They say Komenotsu used to prosper as the point of export for rice produced all over these plains, but now it is a little fishing port renowned for its fine tiger prawns. We decided to leave the prawns for a later date and catch a train to Minamata. I heard that to the east of Komenotsu lies the site of the barrier of Noma, which runs along the northern border of the old Satsuma Clan, but we decided to save that for another day, too. Incidentally, as we walked from Izumi to Komenotsu, Fujikura started in with his constant complaint, claiming that Sakai and I had changed, and disagreeably, too.

  “You say Japan will rally once we toe the line,” Fujikura said. “You say you will die honorably. Is this really, honestly, what you both think?” Who wouldn’t feel antagonized when challenged like this? So we fell to arguing. Essentially, all Fujikura wants to convey is his general opposition to the war, or at any rate his extremely pessimistic outlook as to its progress. He maintains that there is no good reason why we, having been drawn into this conflict through no choice of our own, should believe we must die for our country. His attitude also seems rather irresponsible and apathetic, and he basically says that nothing good will happen to Japan anyway, whether we die honorably or not.

  “You despise fanaticism. You hate the foolish opportunism of all the scholars,” Fujikura continued. “But you fail to recognize that you are losing your own minds.” He does go on and is devious in the way he expresses his estimable opinions, though, and he didn’t used to be like this. Fujikura, too, may be losing his mind.

  “But we can carry the war through,” I argued, “precisely because we are all just a little bit mad. That’s what the circumstances require.” Fujikura shot me a contemptuous look, but wha
t does he believe we ought to do? This conversation makes me want to know, for once and for all, just how he thinks we should live—just how he thinks we should conduct ourselves, given our present situation.

  “If you can figure out a way to save your own life,” he says, “then you can make it through. Don’t lose your head. Hold to your beliefs, and if there really is no way out of this mess, at least never give up your consciousness and your pride. When I say ‘consciousness,’ I have something rather different in mind from what you mean by the word.” I understand that Fujikura can really let loose only when he is alone with the three of us. We mustn’t cut him off, only to end up completely at odds with one another. But still, I feel a little angry.