Burial in the Clouds Read online

  All goes like clockwork if I position my plane by keeping my body exactly between the rising sun painted on the fuselage of the lead plane and its main wing joint. When I’m flying over the ocean in tight formation, my hands and feet work fluidly, as if without any effort, and it feels good. The landing went off flawlessly, and as I pulled on to the apron, the command came to cease and return to the hangars. We taxied our airplanes in, gunning the throttles.

  An armada of Ginga bombers attached to the Todoroki Unit advanced to this air station today. I have seen the Ginga before, at Tsuchiura. A top-secret prototype of this land-based bomber had been in development for years under the name “Y20,” and I assume they finally managed to put it into mass production. Anyhow, I have never before seen a whole fleet of Gingas, and so close up, as well. The navy threw all its aeronautical science and technology into this plane. They say that the men who saw the first working prototype cried out in wonder at the sight of its elegant form. And it is indeed a refined, smart-looking aircraft. Its all-up weight is ten tons, which is heavier than the Type-1 land-based attack bombers, but in the air it is nimble.

  The Todoroki crews took their lunch behind the array of Gingas, and, without so much as setting foot in the barracks, began training in the evening. They kept up their torpedo drills, and their navigation, communication, and dive-bombing drills, until about eleven o’clock at night. The roar was so deafening we could hardly hear what the duty officer said as he made his rounds. An ensign, from the 13th Student Reserves, strutted in with news of our advanced new aircraft—the carrier-based reconnaissance plane Saiun, the land-based patrol plane Tokai, the night fighter Gekko, and so on. All of which appears to have eased my nervous breakdown a little. As we listened, mightily impressed, this ensign of the 13th Student Reserves swelled with pride, carrying on for all the world as if he had himself built the Ginga, the Saiun, and everything else.

  I heard from my mother. She said our figs are already ripe. That very day she had laid the first of them out in meals set for me and my brother Bunkichi, but where on earth is Bunkichi now? He might possibly have been killed on Saipan or some other such place, I vaguely thought.

  September 8

  Red Dragonflies sank down onto the vast sward of green grass, one after another. Off behind a hazy island mountain, over across the sea of Shiranui, the sun was setting. I sat down and caught a whiff of the thick grass, now better than a foot in height. Insects sang riotously.

  I gazed at the landscape, my legs in my arms. Once the sun slipped over the horizon, the mountain peaks of Amakusa showed their stark blackish silhouettes in the afterglow. The landing-light arrays burned in clear flames on the grass of the airfield. The weeds stand at eye level now, and they swayed in the breeze, intermittently obscuring the red flares from view. “If his father or his son falls in the battle, a warrior gallop over the corpse and press the fight.” So says The Tale of the Heike of the eastern samurai. I mustn’t waver. I have no alternative but to become a gear in the machine, and I cannot yield to self-pity, but even as I say this, wayward feelings arise. I don’t know what to do with them.

  This morning a Ginga crashed right after taking off. Engine failure brought it down. I was attending a lecture on instrument flight, when, all of a sudden, black smoke plumed up in the direction of the administration building. I ran from the classroom and saw it: the Ginga burning like fury, blazing in black-red flames, just off to the front of the gate. I simply gazed at it, struck dumb by such an astounding sight. A real warplane is spectacular even in ruins. Through the smoke, I caught glimpses of the charred wing. I knew full well that three men were being immolated in that plane, but to my surprise, I felt almost nothing. As for the Todoroki Unit, nonchalant about it all, they lost no time in resuming operations, even as black smoke scorched the sky. We, too, returned to our classroom in fairly short order to continue our lecture on instrument flight.

  I am told that the area around Izumi, particularly the islands of Katsura-jima and Nagashima, off Komenotsu, bears a strong resemblance to Pearl Harbor, both in its geographic features and its ocean currents. It may be just a local boast, but they say that, before the war started, the combined fleet conducted secret training exercises here for its surprise maneuver, and, therefore, that we owe our one-sided victory at Oahu to this place. But it now appears that our very success at Pearl Harbor did Japan a disservice. For one thing, it united the whole of America with a slogan: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” For another, it encouraged a tendency in the navy to throw its weight around without really knowing its abilities. So much for the so-called “silent navy.” The newspapers rave, frothing with shopworn phrases like “Mow them down!” “Search and destroy!” “British and American devils!” and so forth, all of which, lo and behold, the navy’s central command incites. I suppose we had best replace the epithet “silent navy” with “chattering navy.” In point of fact, we are subject now to a rough and risky regime in our training, due largely to the deteriorating quality of the fuel, with its interfusion of alcohol, and now even that fuel is scarce. They say we will have to temporarily discontinue flying the intermediate trainers. Who can understand how a flier feels, held in such agonizing suspension?

  The solid navy tradition is now a hollow shell. It holds to all the old patterns, but the spirit is gone. Is it any wonder if I criticize the Imperial Navy in its current incarnation? For example, we are specifically instructed to learn all necessary skills from the drill instructors, but never to associate with them in a personal way. Now, let’s say that the deck officers from the Naval Academy are white men. Well, they treat the enlisted ranks just like black slaves, and as for the student reserves and reserve officers—they regard us with the diffident suspicion that white men reserve for the “yellow” race. It is all so conventional, so aristocratic. There were times when I thought we must ourselves become infected with this attitude if we were to succeed as naval officers. But now I can’t help but consider it a bad case of Anglophilia. What could we possibly gain by deliberately opening up such chasms between the men? Anyway, in times like these we simply don’t have the luxury to go out sporting pure white collars.

  A man from Kyoto visited today, with reports that they are suffering severe shortages of supplies. A student had gone out to meet him, expecting a gift of sweets or something, but as it turned out, he ended up offering food to the man from Kyoto. What a disappointment! He watched as the man wolfed it all down, saying, “It sure would be swell to be in the navy. Surely it would be.” Professor O. must be having a hard time getting his hands on his favorite Japanese confections.

  September 17, Memorial Day for the

  Battle of the Yellow Sea

  A typhoon has been approaching Kyushu since yesterday. With it come occasional bursts of rain. The barracks sprang a leak in the middle of the night, and we had to shift things around. Consequently, I didn’t get enough sleep.

  A ceremony was held from 0745 on the first floor of the barracks, after which we sang martial songs written for the Battle of the Yellow Sea: “The Brave Fight of the Akagi,” “Audacious Sailors,” and so on. Afterwards, we were granted liberty.

  We heard that the Kagoshima Main Line was blocked off around Hinagu, but the usual three of us managed our excursion to Minamata anyway. However, the train schedule made for a hectic visit. We arrived at the Fukais’ house at eleven and had to leave at half past one. It was as if we went there solely to eat lunch. Mrs. Fukai and Fukiko had to hustle to prepare a meal in time. Fukiko donned her rain gear and went out into the downpour to fetch something they needed, ignoring our pleas.

  Today we were served satsuma-imo. As the name indicates, this region is the home of these yams, and they are certainly delicious, fluffy in texture, rather like chestnuts in taste, and not at all stringy. A package had arrived from Sakai’s family in care of the Fukais, and it contained dried chestnuts and pancakes. To our regret, the pancakes were moldy, but, after carefully wiping them off, we savored them nonetheless. They weren
’t at all bad.

  I told Fukiko about how, a while back, I paid my respects to the family during a training flight.

  Fujikura broke in. “You did? So did I. I flew by during solo exercises just the other day. I could make out the stripes on Fukiko’s clothes quite clearly.” He seemed to take it for granted that Fukiko had turned out when I flew over. My heart sank.

  “What time did you come?’ Fukiko asked me, casting her eyes up in an effort to remember. “It’s a wonder I didn’t notice. Had I gone off shopping? But if I was out, I should have noticed it all the more. What happened?” Again and again she said she was sorry.

  “You shouldn’t be sorry.” I laughed, but it seemed both accidental and somehow not accidental that she had heard the roar of Fujikura’s plane and not the roar of mine. In any case, I wasn’t really amused.

  We returned to base in a slashing rainstorm. The rain cascaded over the windows of the train, and we couldn’t so much as glimpse the scenery.

  We haven’t flown in more than a week, but at last the fuel has arrived. We should resume operations when the weather cooperates. Once we start flying again, and once our formation drills are complete, they will tell us which type of aircraft each of us is to pilot. Never shall I regret having requested assignment to a carrier-based attack bomber. I shall face the prospect with an open heart. There are only ten days to two weeks left of our life here at Izumi.

  September 20

  Another Ginga crashed yesterday. At about half past seven, the southwestern part of the already-darkened airfield suddenly flushed red, and a number of men from the Todoroki Unit sprinted off. I myself didn’t go out to the site, but I was told that one Ginga, taking off at a speed of 80 knots, had plowed into another that was grounded for repairs. The reconnaissance crew and the signaler in the first plane died on the spot, and the pilot, who tumbled out engulfed in flames, was rushed off to the infirmary, out of which, at around ten o’clock at night, eight coffins emerged.

  These days it is still dark at reveille, and there is a chill in the air. We do calisthenics after morning assembly, and as the alpenglow over Yahazutake Mountain diffuses across the eastern sky, taking on its tint of gold, one by one the black mountains shake off their sleep. And today, in the midst of such beauty, while we were engaged in calisthenics, outfitted all in white, as usual, three more coffins were borne from the infirmary. The toll of last night’s accident is three crew members and eight mechanics, and the cause was carelessness. They say the Ginga is difficult to service. It costs eight hundred thousand yen to build one, and they struggle to produce eighty planes a month.

  The majority of the Todoroki Unit, however, set out for Okinawa at 0930 today, leaving behind them, at this station, the souls of their comrades. They boarded the officers’ bus in front of the administration building for their ride out to the airfield, and there they climbed into their planes, swords in hand, looking just as they do during daily training flights. “If you don’t hear of any significant results in twenty days,” this crew of the 13th Class told us, “then assume we have all been destroyed.” The signaler stood on the airplane waving a stick of some kind, and the Gingas lifted their tails and gallantly took off, one after another. The remaining forces of the Todoroki Unit, the student units, and everybody else drew up in columns along the runway and twirled their caps to see the men off. The Gingas flawlessly arrayed themselves in formation, took a course southward, and shortly disappeared from view.

  As for us, we started instrument flying today. During the suspension of actual flights, we were trained quite well using a mock-up on the ground. This is a kind of aircraft-shaped box, into which we step, pulling down a curtain behind us. Only the control stick and the gauges are really lifelike, and as this motorized “airplane” quakes, we practice holding our position, solely by peering into a gauge. This is called “blind flight.” And today we begin airborne instrument flight training.

  We made a dual flight, instructor in the back, student in the front. A hood, only the back of which opens, is pulled down over the cockpit. The instructor does the takeoff and landing from the rear seat.

  The command “Commence instrument flight” came in through the voice tube, and, with that, the stick was in my hands, at an altitude of one thousand meters exactly. Actually, it is quite difficult to fly blind. The needle on the gauge wiggles neurotically, and we must hold it in the correct and level position. I tend to the left. When the nose is up, the needle rises above the level line, and when the nose drops down, the needle plunges.

  “You’re going down! Watch out!” The scolding rang through the voice tube. I remember the experience well from the “dual” phase of formation flight training. The instructor, an aviation petty officer second class, would say, “What? Do you want to die!?” And availing himself of the elastic rubber voice tube, he would thwack my head from behind with its metal funnel. If that didn’t do the trick, in came the order: “Release your hands and raise them.” Well, it was no fun at all floating along in this banzai posture as a punishment. Thanks to the hood, I didn’t have to do a banzai this time around, but I did have to keep a close eye on all the instruments—speedometer, altimeter, oil pressure indicator, thermometer—even while enduring a good dressing down. The flight lasted about thirty minutes. I gathered that most of the time we had been over the ocean, though, needless to say, I couldn’t see anything at all.

  When we completed our first round of instrument flights, the chief flight officer issued various instructions, and then he fell into a lament. The Army Air Corps, he says, lags far behind present-day aviation standards, and this is a problem. Army pilots know nothing of celestial navigation, and their instrument flight skills are dubious. Those who completed their course at Kagamiga-hara, in Gifu Prefecture, were instructed to make their “graduation” flight to Tokorozawa in Saitama. “Fly with Mt. Fuji on your left,” they were told, “and you’ll never get lost.” And one of the pilots did exactly that. He kept on flying with Mt. Fuji on his left until he made seven circles around the mountain, ran out of fuel, and had to make an emergency landing. I trust we will never find ourselves in so undignified a predicament. Until recently, army pilots hadn’t been capable of making the transoceanic flight from Kyushu to Formosa. Navy pilots had to escort them. Even so, by the time they reached Formosa, a number of army aircraft were missing in action. As the chief flight officer sees it, the Japanese military has served the nation badly, owing particularly to the “spiritualism,” and to the smug disdain for technology, that is rampant in the army.

  I was a bit more confident during the second instrument flight. This is our last course at Izumi. The time to graduate from the Red Dragonfly draws near, though; come to think of it, while flights were suspended during the fuel shortage, the familiar Red Dragonflies were all painted dark green.

  September 27

  This is the last night I will ever sleep in the barracks at Izumi.

  On the 22nd, I was told what type of aircraft I will fly. I have been assigned to carrier-based attack bombers and am to proceed to Usa. Fujikura drew the same assignment and the same posting. As for Sakai, he wavered toward carrier-based bombers after a Suisei, which flew through toward the end of last month, turned his head with its fancy maneuvers. He, too, is bound for Usa, to pilot a carrier-based bomber. The three of us must be linked up by some evil fate. Sixty-seven pilots for carrier-based attack bombers and forty-five for carrier-based bombers all ship out for Usa in the morning.

  A rainbow arced across the evening sky today, but soon disappeared. It’s a clear night with a bright moon. I can see the clouds in the dark sky. The barracks are seething, as the Matsushima-bound men leave tonight. So, it is farewell to Wakatsuki. Each of us knows that we never see one another again, but all we say as we pass through the bustling hallways are things like “Hey, let’s hit the bottle when next we meet.” Everybody has a pleasant air and seems free of qualms. Loaned items have all been returned, and trunks are to be shipped out by truck. The men have li
ttle luggage. We shouldn’t leave behind us too many personal belongings, too much homesickness, too much friendship.

  We had a farewell party in the evening. We set desks out on the moonlit morning assembly ground, and each of us had smelly sashimi made from frozen fish, clear soup, red rice, two ohagi dappled with a little bean paste, and a bottle of beer. Still, we were elated and raised our voices in song—heart and soul. We tossed the chief flight officer, our long-nosed goblin of Kurama, up into the air.

  Yesterday afternoon we made our valedictory flight. Our formation of twenty-seven planes approached Komenotsu from the direction of Aknne. It was overcast and I couldn’t see the mountains in the distance, but nevertheless it’s so long, now, to the familiar sky where, on a clear day, I enjoyed a view of Saknra-jima at an altitude 600 meters, Takachiho at 1000, and Aso at 1500. It’s also goodbye to the chimney of the Japan Nitrogen Company of Minamata, which I always used as a landmark. I flew comfortably in the #2 position in the first element of the first wing.

  As it turned out, we managed to finish our courses here without a single accident. All the same, I myself almost caused two, just before our departure. The mishaps are more frightening to recall than they were to endure, because if I die now, I die absolutely in vain. The first took place on the day we got our assignments, during a “group” instrument flight, with D. manning the front seat. I sat in back and pulled down the hood. All went well in the air. I handed control of the plane over to D., saying, “End instrument flight.” And, taking the hood into consideration as he prepared for landing, D. approached the strip at about sixty knots. But he misjudged our height when executing the “pullout.” This should be done at five meters, but instead it seems D. pulled the control stick at around seven meters in altitude. As if that weren’t enough, the stick was too responsive, and when he pulled it back halfway, we stalled at about four meters. And then we fell. My visibility was zero because of the hood, but I had been thinking we were too high. All of a sudden my body sank, and with a bam! came the impact, the aircraft touching down tail first, and then swirling to the left. We weren’t hurt, but the left undercarriage of the trainer was fractured. The second incident occurred two days later. I was flying over the ocean when, at the horizon of my field of vision, where sea and sky met, I saw enormous billowing clouds sweeping to the side. They looked like a mountain chain rising up, or a massive cataract pouring into the cradle of the deep. I was reveling in the spectacle when, with absolutely no warning, my propeller stalled. Surely this was due to the fuel, adulterated as it is with alcohol. Instantly I broke out in a cold sweat and totally lost my composure. I managed none of the emergency measures we had been taught. Anyhow, I shifted into a nosedive, whereupon the propeller started to crank, as if making sport of me.