Burial in the Clouds

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 lofty 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.

First, on the train to Beppu, Sakai started to crow, with exaggerated confidentiality, about what he claims is the real cause of Petty Officer D.’s suicide back at Izumi Naval Air Station. According to Sakai, the officer had VD. In a nosedive, the rapid acceleration dizzies even a healthy person, but if you are taking sulfa drugs, such as for the treatment of VD, aerobatics training is excruciatingly painful physically. And as a nosedive can leave you giddy for quite a while, it is unbearable mentally, too. The story itself wasn’t much of a revelation. And while on the one hand I thought it could explain the incident, I wasn’t really in the mood to hear that kind of story. Besides, Sakai unfolded his tale with ostentatious confidentiality, saying that he had heard it from the chief surgeon, and that we had better watch out for ourselves. He made such a fuss out of it that I was turned off by his tone. So, saying that I preferred to roam around by myself today, I parted with Sakai at Beppu Station. I also took leave of Fujikura, after we had all arranged to meet at Kajiya Inn in the evening.

I walked along Nagare-gawa Street toward the mountain. An aircraft carrier stood offshore, at anchor, and as I headed back I noticed a sign, “Navy Hour in Progress,” hanging from the door of Senbiki-ya, a restaurant we had come by before. I dropped in, ate a persimmon and a fig, and was about to start in on a lunch of fried fish and pork cooked in soy sauce, when a lieutenant who was drinking at the next table addressed me. When I told him I was a student reserve officer at Usa Naval Air Station, he said, as if he wanted to pick a fight, “So what’s your morale like? You must be depressed, having been dragged into this hopeless navy. Aren’t you? Well, it’s written all over your face.”

“No, sir,” I replied. “Everybody is in high spirits, especially after hearing the splendid results of the aerial engagement over Formosa. We are all itching to capitalize on the victory. We want nothing more than to master our skills as quickly as we can. And then we will set out to have our own duel with an enemy aircraft carrier.”

The lieutenant soured and banged his beer glass on the table.

“Stop it with your big talk,” he growled, glaring at me. I just gazed at his face for some time, startled. “Do you really believe the report that Imperial Headquarters issued?”

“Is it a problem if I do?” I answered back. Again, he burst out with a guffaw. Evidently he is assigned to the Hosho, the carrier anchored offshore. His uniform was soiled and a trench knife dangled over it. He was obviously quite drunk, and also, it appeared, thoroughly desperate.

“Do you want to know the truth?” the lieutenant said, and proceeded to inform me that a vast enemy task force had been steaming into Leyte Gulf since yesterday, accompanied by a number of attack transports that obviously intended to land.

“Do you think that America could endlessly bring out these aircraft carriers,” he continued, “if we had been sinking them one after another? Do you think they are performing some kind of magic trick to produce these carriers?” Then he asserted that reports of the fighting at Formosa were riddled with cases where targets struck in night raids had been misidentified, and that the reports were also marred by wishful thinking.

“The war situation is fifty times worse than you think. The central command should reflect on what it is doing. The Navy Press Bureau ought to be straightened out. And you. Don’t you talk so big, when you can’t even fly like an honest-to-god pilot.” He gulped down his beer, in terrible humor, and then he added, “Shall I dig potatoes? Do you want to see a crewman from a rattletrap carrier dig potatoes?” (“Dig potatoes” is navy slang for “tear this place apart.”)

I wolfed down my lunch and excused myself, but I felt melancholy. It was astonishing that the Naval Academy could have produced, as I can only assume it did, an officer like this, but is there really any truth in what he told me? If, as this lieutenant maintains, we have been diving at oil tankers and landing craft and mistaking them all for aircraft carriers, then there is no reason why the enemy task force should be weakening. According to the lieutenant, the central command, half knowing what it was about, published its figures as an “official” report from Imperial Headquarters. But surely we men haven’t all been mustered simply to embellish the front pages of newspapers with false numbers.

I had been wandering around in agitation, when it occurred to me that I intended to get a haircut, so I dropped into a barbershop along the seafront. A barbershop has a nice folksy smell about it. Tonic, cosmetics, steamed towels, and ear cleaning. I was somewhat able to calm myself at last, as I listened to the soothing sounds of the scissors.

I felt better by the time I left the barber’s, so I decided to peek into a small shop of boxwood crafts. This area is noted for its boxwood.

I remembered poems from the Manyoshu for the first time in quite a while, and I thought I would like to buy a fine, pretty boxwood comb for someone (actually, I had a concrete “someone” in mind from the outset). I debated a good long time before deciding on an elegant, rounded comb, which I arranged to have sent to Miss Fukiko Fukai in Minamata. An hour or so later I joined Fujikura and Sakai at the inn in Kamegawa Hot Springs that we treated rather like a boarding house. The two of them were already drinking orange wine and eating brown chicken sashimi. By that time I had started to regret having done such a thing behind their backs, and I fell into a deep gloom. It would have been different had the three of us sent the gift together. How will Fukiko and her parents take my having done so all on my own account? I rather doubt they will accept it without a second thought. I just wanted to express my gratitude and special affection. It will pain me if they ignore the gesture, and it will present another kind of problem if they accept it. I can’t help feeling tenderness toward Fukiko. That’s one thing. But it is another thing altogether for a man who will most likely die within a year to give voice to that sentiment. This can only disturb her, and also me, and to no good purpose. I decided to cancel the delivery, and tried, without success, to find the comb shop’s telephone number.

What a foolish thing to do! A dull sense of melancholy always sets in after a day of liberty, and the incidents of today make me feel it all the more. I took a bath at Kajiya, emptied the bottle of orange wine, and, having said almost nothing, returned to base before ten.

October 25

An alert was issued this morning: B-29s were flying over Cheju in four squadrons, making their way toward Japan. We sprinted out to field headquarters, and shortly thereafter ducked into the air-raid shelter.

Today’s cloud index was nine. The ceiling was six to seven thousand meters, and the enemy aircraft flew at an altitude of about five thousand meters. As I took a peek out of the shelter, beautiful vapor trails emerged through the rifts in the clouds to the northwest, lengthening as the planes moved eastward. For the first time I heard the roar of American aircraft. I felt carefree, as if I were watching a sporting event.

These days we are constantly forced to forego training flights and my body is rusting away. Fuel supplies are very tight, and our allocation has been cut in half. We consider ourselves lucky if we get to fly every other day. Our training period has been extended accordingly, and now we are to receive our commission on December 25, three months behind schedule. The German army has withdrawn from Aachen. The Allies will penetrate the Rhineland. The defeat of Germany is in sight. What will ever become of Japan?

I happened to be next to the division officer in the shelter, so I asked him candidly about what I heard the other day from that lieutenant attached to the Hosho.

“Misidentification of targets isn’t that unusual during a nighttime attack,” he said, “but the reports issued by Imperial Headquarters are generally considered reliable. Even the enemy trusts them. I wouldn’t expect to find any really significant or factitious errors. Truth be told, the Hosho can’t withstand actual combat. She just hangs around the Seto Inland Sea for use as a training carrier. With her, it’s the same as it is on warships like the Yamashiro. She tends to collect crewmen who fall behind in promotion, due to health problems or some such thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they gripe whenever they get the opportunity out of smoldering frustration.” I was a little relieved. I certainly have my gripes against the navy. But still, I have more faith in it than that lieutenant.

October 29

Flights were canceled again.

News of a decisive sea battle in the Philippines. More magnificent results.

The commander-in-chief of the combined fleet had issued an urgent message: “Trust in divine favor and launch an all-out attack.” And with that began a colossal naval engagement, in which the fleet employed its primary guns, an unusual thing these days. They say, however, that the enemy aircraft carriers swarming around Leyte Gulf number close to a hundred. This means that, even if we did in fact sink nineteen enemy carriers, it would hardly be a devastating blow. The material resources of the enemy astonish me.

“It’s like fighting with King Kong,” G. commented. We all laughed, though tensely.

When I heard that the warship Musashi was cruising along at twenty knots after absorbing six torpedoes, I took heart, thinking that the ship had lived up to its unsinkable reputation. But soon enough came news, strictly confidential, of its sinking. I’m at a loss for words. The greatest warship in the world is gone, the battleship over which I flew while at Izumi (the stunt that landed me in such hot water). I can only hope, desperately, that we are misinformed.

November 1

We were supposed to fly this afternoon, but the ring of a telephone put an end to that. A student in my outfit laughed in despair, bending backward in his chair.

I received a thank-you letter from Fukiko in which she said she really liked the boxwood comb. I hid the letter immediately, embarrassed by my act and conscious of others’ eyes, though, needless to say, I opened it again when I went to bed at night, and read it over and over, three or four times. Apart from what she said in appreciation of the comb, the letter was simple and light, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Afterwards I indulged myself in a daydream for quite some time, concerning which I am too embarrassed to write.

“Please send my best regards to Mr. Fujikura and Mr. Sakai,” she said, but how can I send her best regards to them?

We did some repair work on the airfield this afternoon, draining it and filling it in with earth. In other words, it was hard labor. They are building a new runway on the eastern part of the field, in preparation for the 3rd Air Fleet’s advance to Usa. Our task is to carry the surplus soil in rope baskets all the way back out here and fill in the hollows with it. The airfield is built over clayey soil and drains poorly. Consequently, it lacks the proper grading and is pocked with bumps. At 1630, the time set to stop, we had not yet completed half the task. A number of Korean laborers were assigned to the eastern runway, though only a handful were in fact applying themselves to the work, and the rest, several hundred in number, had no drive at all. They dawdled along for a spell, and then simply stopped altogether, staring about, vacantly. I gained a new idea of the Korean people, quite different from the sympathetic attitude I took when I was thinking about them in the abstract.

Speaking of airfield maintenance, I remember a story that an instructor told us. He said that enemy troops always seemed to land, whether on Guadalcanal, Attu, or elsewhere, just a scant week or so prior to the completion of construction work on our airfields. Our Corps of Engineers works unremittingly, and at great length, to build these airfields with manual labor, only to have them seized just before they are ready to be put in service. The enemy occupies them, easily finishes off the work with heavy equipment, and within a day or two begins using the fields to stage attacks against us.

During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the 1st Air Fleet deployed an extraordinary unit called the Shinpu Special Attack Force (a.k.a., the “Kamikaze”). It seems the fighters were fitted out with special bombs, and the crews hurled themselves, planes and all, into enemy targets. Well, I suppose we won’t get anywhere in this war unless we resort to drastic measures like that. Any man who wants to drop out, let him do it now. For my part, I no longer have any reservations about this kind of tactic. My only worry now is that I can’t get up in the air. Who knows when I will fly the Type-97 solo.

They say the commander of the special attack force, a Lieutenant S., got his training in the carrier-based bomber unit here, and that he left Usa shortly before we arrived. The women at Senbiki-ya in Beppu wept at the news of the kamikaze attacks, remembering what the lieutenant had told them only a few days earlier: “If I die, lay out an offering of shiruko and fruit.” So I’m told anyway.

November 5

Finally, after a long hiatus, we resumed training, starting with formation flights. From 500 meters up, I saw clearly just how bad this airfield is. Basically, it is nothing but a stretch of swamp. “Why don’t we let the Yanks occupy the field for a while?” someone joked.

Flying in formation is hazardous. These aircraft don’t shed their momentum as quickly as the intermediate trainers, and it’s hard get a sense of space. I took three blows to the jaw for landing at seventy-five knots. I was fined one yen and fifty sen as well. M. had to cough up ten fifty-sen silver coins for damaging the tail of his plane as he taxied onto the apron. Failing to erase the blackboard neatly costs you two fifty-sen pieces. They will rack up a considerable sum of money by the time we graduate, so long as we continue to fly. From the previous class they collected two thousand yen.

When we land, we tend to the aircraft. The undersides of the wings and fuselages are liable to be caked with dirt, especially if you glide in over the mud. It’s quite a chore to wipe it all off.

Sunshine soon fanned out through the clouds, revealing a clear autumn sky. Young trainee pilots engaged in dive-bombing drills. Now and again they plunged, with an almighty roar, down over the field headquarters, almost to the point of crashing into it. Their planes dropped headlong, generating clouds at the wingtips. One came in especially low, scattering willy-nilly a flock of birds perched on the roof. If the pilot had pulled out just half a second later, he would have been a goner. When you’re up in the air, you tend to be so preoccupied with precision, lest you get a dressing down, that the danger tends to escape your mind.

“Reading the personal remarks you submit,” the chief flight officer commented, “I often come across such phrases as “I must cultivate my character.’ Indeed, it is important to cultivate your character. But what we want now are men who can win the war. We will welcome any miscreant at all, so long as he can hurt the enemy. Do the very best you can to cultivate your skills.” He makes perfect sense, of course, but it’s not so easy to cultivate our skills when flights are canceled, day after day.

Flight rations were distributed again, all manner of new goodies, like wine, black tea, “energy food,” an instant cinnamon drink.

November 10

As the sumo match set for the 14th approaches, the conflict between the recon students from the Naval Academy and us student reserves has been bursting to the surface. In any naval unit there is always considerable friction between Academy graduates and student reserves. On this particular occasion, however, we have a remarkably powerful lineup, including former collegiate sumo wrestlers, and the recon students have little chance of winning. The situation so frustrates them that they seize every possible occasion to pick at us, and deliver their corrections in the most spiteful of ways.

“Student reserves shall remain after everyone is dismissed,” declared a recon student (a deck officer probationer, to be specific) at morning assembly today. Unfortunately, someone had left a book on military intelligence, strictly confidential material, on a desk during the special gymnastics course yesterday, and the recon students confiscated it. First, we endured a round of blows. These men aren’t experienced at the business, but they certainly throw themselves into it, pounding away heavily. It is awfully painful.

“There is a reason why you are so careless with confidential material,” said this deck officer probationer. “Namely, your spirit is more degraded than that of a common conscript, and you will receive a correction commensurate with that fact.” He then proceeded to place conscripts’ caps on each of us (they’d gathered them up from the barracks), ordering us all to “hold a push-up” for twenty straight minutes. It was mortifying. The eyes of some among us brimmed with tears. These Academy men are happy precisely insofar as they manage to bully us in the most humiliating way they can devise. It has nothing whatsoever to do with maintaining military discipline, or with “guiding” their junior comrades. Only six or seven of the ensigns among the recon students ever initiate this sort of conduct, with ten or so more chiming in. Many others adopt a courteous attitude toward us, but it is always the ruder fellows who take the lead on occasions like this. And we can’t defy them head-on because a wall of rank stands between us.

When the second half of the 13th Class (our immediate predecessors) arrived at this base with their commissions, the recon students were still uncommissioned midshipmen. The reserve students actually outranked them. Even so, there was endless trouble, or so I hear. One day a recon student failed to salute a student reserve officer who happened to be an ensign, and the ensign struck him. That night the entire 13th Class was summoned to the lecture hall. “Student reserve officers are strictly subsidiary to men from the Naval Academy,” they were informed. “It is absolutely outrageous for a student reserve to strike a graduate of the Naval Academy. You have sullied our illustrious tradition.” At that absurd declaration, a bunch of lieu-tenants and lieutenants junior grade (instructors assigned to the recon students) ganged up to pommel the 13th Class. No doubt pent-up anger toward our predecessors is making the situation all the more difficult for us.

Let yourself be seen folding your arms, or whistling, or simply placing your hands in your pockets—not to mention inadvertently failing to salute—and a recon student will descend on you. However, he will not administer his correction on the spot. “Come see me at eight tonight,” he will say, or “Come by after the special course,” leaving you to spend hours in fear. And when you finally report to his quarters, he and his fellows all fall in just for the fun of a good thrashing. Sometimes they beat you right in the middle of the airfield so all the enlisted men can see. But for the moment we student reserves hold back our emotions, finding consolation in a sort of motto: “Exercise caution each day, and get satisfaction in the sumo match.” The wrestlers’ countenances change when they set in to practice. They look touchingly heroic.

The guidelines for the sumo match were announced yesterday. Each side is to field two teams of seven wrestlers, who will compete in a tournament. However, the recon students have been observing our practice sessions, and obviously they have concluded that they won’t fare well against us. This afternoon they made a proposal: “Let’s make it nine wrestlers each.” When we declined, they came back with yet another proposal: “Then let’s make it a round robin of fifteen wrestlers from each side.” We asked why, but their reasoning was obscure. They are brewing something up, some way to pull rank on us so as to change the guidelines to their advantage. We once competed intercollegiately, in the catch-as-catch-can world of university students, but never once did we resort to such dirty tricks as these, no matter how desperately we wanted to win.

The recon students are all aged nineteen or twenty. They smoke and drink, some are already whoring around, and yet they are regarded by the public as the noblest of our warriors, as the very salt of the earth. The student reserves, “undermined by liberal education,” are nothing more than an annoying, impure, and perfectly tiresome lot in the eyes of these recon students. How distorted and peculiar their pride is!

My mother has a younger brother in Kobe and years ago his second son Sadayuki got it into his head to attend a military prep school. His parents opposed the idea, but he persevered. The boy wasn’t at home when my mother and I visited the family to congratulate them on his graduation, and I remember my uncle saying, with a wry grin, “Don’t know, but it seems we’ve got something of a freak on our hands.”

Only four days remain until the match. It appears that our instructors, Lieutenants Junior Grade S. and N. (both from the Naval Academy), are harboring mixed feelings.

November 13

Fujikura landed us in hot water again. Fine, let him stick to that defeatist attitude of his. The problem is that sometimes he goes too far. So long as he thinks and talks seriously, we give him an honest hearing, even when we disagree with him. But what he did today is inexcusable, as it entailed a good deal of trouble for others.

Seated beside the cigarette tray after lunch, Sakai was reading from the Hagakure when Fujikura stuck his nose into it. Written on the page were the four pledges of the samurai:

Fujikura turned it all into a joke, rewording each entry:

A recon student, Ensign Y., happened to be nearby making arrangements for tomorrow’s sumo match, and he overheard Fujikura. Bloodthirsty as the atmosphere was, the recon students called him in at once. Fujikura returned some thirty minutes later, his face swollen up like a rock. The matter seems to have been referred first to the division officer, and then to the executive officer. Word soon spread that the blows might not fall on Fujikura alone, that the rest of us might be in for a correction, too, or else that Fujikura would take the blows and the rest of us be confined to barracks. Some reproached Fujikura, and others comforted him, but we were all apprehensive. However, toward evening, and rather more easily than we had expected, the affair was brought to a resolution. Only Fujikura and one other senior student were brought up before the executive officer.

“You’ve all got big mouths,” the XO told Fujikura. “An officer has to learn how to rein in his tongue. And by the way, never confuse the Hagakure with ‘Imperial Instructions to the Military.’ The two things have nothing in common. There will be no need to pursue the matter any further. The recon students exceeded their authority. They overreached themselves, and I intend to admonish them. So don’t worry, just put it out of your mind.” That was an uncommonly fair decision. It turns out that the XO plays a pretty nice game. One fellow advanced a theory that he is a descendant of the masterless samurai who was expelled, during the so-called “cat-monster disturbance,” from the Nabeshima clan and was later to produce the Hagakure.

Mr. Wang Ching-wei[4] has died in a hospital in Nagoya.

November 14

The day of the sumo match.

Purple curtains stretched around two sumo rings out behind the drill hall, and navy blankets, emblazoned with anchors, covered the four pillars. Facing the rings, seats were set up for the commander, the wardroom officers, and the officers of the first and the second gun rooms. To the left and right of these were seats for the recon students and the student reserves. Petty officers and enlisted men filled the seats further down.

The match was conducted as a tournament, according to the initial plans. From 1300 hours, the seamen divisions had their match. Once they had completed their semi-final bout, it was our turn to hold preliminaries. The bustle that had surrounded the rings gave way at once to complete silence, suffused with a kind of mute truculence. To a man, the wrestlers’ adopted a fair-and-square attitude. Team 1 on our side won its match by a single point, but Team 2 lost, also by a point. This meant that Team 1 of the student reserves would compete with the recon students’ Team 2 in the finals. Before that, however, the seamen had their final match, and the victory went to the carrier-based bomber trainees. But we took hardly any interest in anyone else’s competition.

Finally, our spearhead wrestler, Cadet Murase, faced off against Ensign K. The instant they rose from their crouches, they threw themselves into it, heaving against one another fiercely. Presently they moved into belt grips. First, Murase was pushed outward, his body arching back. My heart pounded, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I thought he was done for. But not for nothing had Murase earned his reputation in sumo back at Waseda University. With a wrapping maneuver, he freed himself, and, in a flash, he pushed his opponent out of the ring. A loud cheer went up. Our second wrestler brought us another win. We lost the third and the fourth bouts, won the fifth, and then lost the sixth. In the end, the contest came down to a match between the two team captains. Never have I witnessed a more exciting fight. Deafening cheers rang out from both sides. Our captain was Shirozaki, a Ritsumei-kan graduate weighing in at seventy-three kilograms. We had firm faith in him, but nonetheless our faces flushed, and all of us, without being aware of it, leaned forward in anticipation. Shirozaki himself, however, approached the ring with an air of perfect composure, stood up, and, without a hint of shakiness, easily dispatched his opponent with an overarm throw. For a moment we were struck dumb, but then came the applause. At last we had won, and our fortnight-long grudge was satisfied. It was a load off my mind. I felt as if I myself had been in the ring.

We returned to the barracks in triumph, in the excitement rapping each other on the shoulders for no good reason at all. “Hey, buddy!” “Hey yourself!” We talked of nothing but the sumo match. At dinner, our instructor, Lt.jg S., stopped by to eat with us. I was curious as to how he would behave, but he seems to be genuinely happy for us in our victory. In due course, our prize was brought in: a case of beer and two bottles of sake. A couple of ensigns from the 13th Class came over to thank the wrestlers. Also present were Lt. O. of the Aviation Maintenance Branch, Surgeon Lt.jg A., and Paymaster Lt.jg J. Next, yet another ensign from the 13th Class, a carrier-based bomber pilot who was good and soused, staggered over to congratulate us. They all looked immensely pleased. Clearly, the Naval Engineering College graduates, the surgeons and the paymasters—not to mention the students of the 13th Class—really had it in for the Naval Academy men. Practically everybody came by, except for the junior officers of the first gun room, all of whom graduated from the Academy.

We had agreed among ourselves to drink no more than half a bottle of beer each, but our visitors wouldn’t leave it at that. Again and again they cried out, “Cheers!” “Bring more sake!” Aviation Maintenance Lt. O. reeled away, singing “Bring me sake, my true love,” and back he came with a half-gallon jug. Paymaster Lt.jg J. sent his dog robber out to fetch his own personal ration of a dozen beers. And so the whole company went off on a mad drinking spree, singing military songs and overturning the dishes on the tables.

“Is our real enemy America or the Naval Academy?” someone asked. “We dedicate ourselves to Japan, but we don’t intend to die for the Imperial Navy,” declared someone else. At which a drunken Fujikura yelled out, “I don’t intend to die for anybody!” I kicked him in the shin. Fortunately, in all the chaos his voice didn’t carry.

The party finally ended when the command to “Prepare for the rounds” was issued. By that time, we had emptied one hundred eighty bottles of beer, seven half-gallon jugs of sake, and a considerable quantity of alcoholic beverages of a dubious nature. Each of us downed eleven apples and four oranges. Hard to believe how much we consumed. After the rounds I stood duty, my head spinning.

November 19

We had a spell of lndian summer days, with on-again/off-again training flights. But today at 2140, for the first time in a long while, Lt.jg S. ordered us all out on deck. We drew up, wondering what could be the matter. There seemed to be no call for a reprimand, now that the frenzy over the sumo match had subsided. The lieutenant showed up on the dot with a strained look on his face. He stared at us for some time.

“As of tomorrow, your training flights will cease.” This was unexpected. “And there is no prospect of resuming them in the foreseeable future. No fuel is available. Japan staked the fate of the nation on Operation SHO-1 in the Philippines, and the results are anything but welcome.” His emotions overcame him as he spoke, but he pressed on as if talking to himself, choking up from time to time. “We spoke of life and death, we talked about breaking through, but now we have nothing. Nothing at all is left us.”

My mind went blank. I couldn’t take it all in. In the month and a half since we arrived at Usa, we have had twelve days of flight training—in all, a mere ten hours and a smattering of minutes in the air. Now it looks as if the final battles may go on without us, that they may be lost to us forever.

As he wound things up, the lieutenant gave us a kind of placebo. “Surely you will be able to fly again, just as soon as we find a solution to the fuel problem. So don’t let it get you down.” As I climbed into my hammock, a flood of tears streamed down my face. I have finally shaken off my attachments to the things I once loved—to the campus, to the beauty of Kyoto and Yamato, and also to the Manyoshu. I have at last directed my mind into a single channel, and now they are telling me yet again to abandon what has become my sole purpose in life. We are absolutely forbidden to live freely. Will we now be denied the chance to die gracefully?

November 22

Sunday schedule. Liberty.

My father phoned unexpectedly last night, saying that he was in Beppu and wanted to see me. I went directly to the Hinago Inn, diverting myself along the way with speculations as to the occasion for the visit, but what I heard on entering the room was that my brother Bunkichi is dead.

My dad says he presumably died with honor, together with his outfit on Tinian Island, toward the end of September. I had feared something like this would happen. My father couldn’t bring himself to break the news in a letter, and what with the unbearable loneliness, he decided to arrange the family business so as to find time to see me personally. My mother had totally broken down when she heard. I thought about how she will feel when I’m killed, too.

Placed on one of the staggered shelves in the room was my brother’s photograph, as a senior private in the Japanese Army. He looked melancholy. There was a glassiness about his eyes, and his uniform was a bit too big. He differed from me in personality, educational background, and circumstances. Above all, he wasn’t young anymore. I imagine he lacked the youthful momentum that allows me and my comrades to coast along in military life. To him, everything must have been downright torture. In what way could his death possibly have helped arrest the decline of the Japanese forces? He must have died in perfect sadness, seeing himself as a weak soldier, and probably of little use for anything. I wish we could have let him live quietly, tucked away in some home unit in inland Japan.

I bathed alone. Unlike the inn at Kamegawa, this one is equipped with a fine bath. Pure, sweet water springs up abundantly from below. I can’t believe that people who depart this world dwell in some kind of a “heaven,” with bodies like our own. But I have no difficulty imagining that they are, body and soul, resolved into the natural universe, that they are translated back into water, into mist, into the leaves of the mountain trees. Two months have passed. My brother must already have returned to the tidal currents of the ocean, to the autumn clouds, and to the wells of this hot spring. I stirred the smooth waters for a long time.

When I came out of the bath, the meal was already laid out. My father had asked the maid to serve the sake he brought with him, a brand called “Sakura Masamune.” There he sat, sipping sake and eating prawn tempura, in front of my brother’s photograph. I changed into a padded kimono and took a seat opposite him. The people at the inn called me “young master,” which made me feel a bit iffy. But our maid very much resembled Fukiko, in features and in carriage, and as I mellowed, I felt like dropping a few hints about Fukiko, in the way a schoolboy might. But I dissuaded myself. I would certainly have told my father about her if the war were over, and he might have taken pleasure in listening to the story.

He gave me an heirloom dagger, which had been made by Kenroku, a pupil of Seki-no Magoroku. There was a scratch on the blade, probably made by a whetter, but it had a superb metallic smell. After the meal, we walked toward the shore of Shonin-ga-hama. The wooden clogs felt pleasant on my bare feet. The mountains in Beppu were ablaze with autumn colors. White plumes of steam rose up from the springs among the trees with their elegant lines. The ocean was bright, blue and clear. Waves lapped gently at the rocks, and then ebbed. Along the shore, hot water bubbled up here and there and streamed into the sea, leaving yellowish tracks among the stones.

“Before you were born, I came to Beppu with your mother and brother,” my father said. “And he sat down right there, along Nagare-gawa Street, and refused to budge an inch until I bought him a toy.” He smiled sorrowfully.

We returned to the inn around three o’clock, bathed again, and had dinner. My father returns home by boat tomorrow morning, so I took my leave and headed for the base.

The moon is five days old, so it was dark in the train. Still, Sakai, Fujikura, Murase, and a few others were all on board, and they consoled me for the loss of my brother.

November 25

Two carrier-based attack bombers, called the “Tenzan,” were brought in by air transport. The men put them through their paces, gunning the motors full throttle. The propellers made a tremendous roar. Several mechanics clung to the tail of each plane to keep it grounded, but even so, the planes bore down hard on the chocks with their wheels, making creaking noises. I felt envious. A torpedo was clasped to the fuselage of each Tenzan with two cables. I always thought torpedoes were slung directly underneath the body, but these were fastened a little to the right of center to allow, as I understand it, for the propeller wash and the gunsights.

Now that flights have been suspended, we do formation training on bicycles. Military discipline, including our reports to field headquarters, is as strict as it ever was during regular flight training, but otherwise, we just ride around the apron on bicycles, with model aircraft in tow. In other words, any practice we get is utterly useless.

No report on the status of the war. We have no information as to how our forces in the Philippines are being supplied, nor any idea whether effective measures have been taken to cut off the enemy’s lines. Nothing but ominous silence. I hear we can now count our regular aircraft carriers on the fingers of one hand, and that we can count our remaining cruisers on the fingers of two. The carriers Zuikaku and Zuibo are both gone. According to Lt.jg S., the enemy’s raid on Omura the other day destroyed a number of the new “Ryusei” carrier-based attack bombers, together with all the other aircraft that had just come off the line at the Aeronautical Arsenal. The planes were awaiting assignment when two hundred of them were destroyed in eight successive strikes. I wonder why they didn’t take to the air and flee. Furthermore, Omura Air Station is a fighter base, so why didn’t the fighters scramble when they learned enemy planes were over Cheju? Also, I hear that one hundred fighters en route to the Philippines were picked off by a mere four enemy aircraft. Most were shot down. The excuse is that our fighters were unarmed at the time, as they were to be armed when they reached their destination. But their destination was a battlefield! It’s totally ridiculous. Word came in, too, that we produced three new four-engine long-range heavy bombers called the “Renzan,” and that two of them crashed during test flights. Some wag dubbed it “Self-Defeating Aerial Battle.” I can’t shake off the feeling that we are dancing to the enemy’s tune.

Tonight we watched a movie titled The Twenty Thousand Kilometer Front, which was not much more than parts of old newsreels cobbled together. Watching these images, most of which date from around the time we captured Singapore, I was overcome by the conviction that we are living in a completely different era.

November 30

No flights.

Time passes drowsily. We eat, do “formation flights” on bicycles to ease our minds, eat yet again, read novels, and sleep, and that’s about all we do. Recently, all maki-zushi has vanished from the canteen, leaving buns with azuki-bean paste standing alone on the shelf. However, rations of roasted seaweed are plentiful, so breakfast is quite good. Turnips show up every day as pickles. The pickles have a faint preservative odor, but I enjoy their radishy bite.

To possess a robust body, with a healthy appetite for food and sex; to employ the mind well and often; to bequeath to the next generation superior offspring and a real intellectual inheritance: that is the ideal life for a man. However, the national crisis compels us to curb certain aspects of our character, both physical and spiritual, and to develop certain other aspects to unnatural extremes. We have accepted the situation, and have done our best to accommodate ourselves to it. But now we find ourselves thrown into a life where we just stuff our bellies, engage in pointless physical labor, and then sleep it all off. I can’t imagine a more miserable situation for any man who wishes to get a sense of what he really is. Some indulge themselves in pleasure, precisely as if they didn’t want to “fall behind in the Realm of Famished Ghosts,” using their status as navy warbirds for cover. These men I used secretly to regard as “fighting pigs,” but now it seems we are all “non-fighting pigs.”

Exams. An epidemic of fraud. And no wonder the epidemic spreads, because why on earth should “pigs” learn the theory of celestial navigation? I don’t peek at others’ exam papers myself, but I let my neighbors sneak a look at mine. And if I don’t cheat, it’s not because I hate the fraud, but because I don’t give a damn about my grades.

I grow terribly forgetful. Not being able to recollect what I was thinking only the night before is getting to be an everyday affair. The English word for “kawa” slipped out of my memory, and I couldn’t find it again for the life of me. I asked Sakai, but he said he didn’t know, either.

“Wouldn’t ‘river’ do?” said a fellow who’d overheard us, making a face.

“Yes, that’s it. It’s ‘river.”’ We laughed.

December 4

Still no flights.

A certain Lt.jg Tanaka came on deck toward evening to have a little talk with us. He is a stout man and holds a fifth rank in judo. He had been making a sortie to the Philippine Islands when bad visibility forced him to make a landing at Oita; that’s how he ended up here. He described to us how the aircraft carrier Ryu-jo went down just east of Bougainville Island in August 1942. On board the sinking ship, he almost suffocated from the smoke and had to sustain himself on the air trapped in desk drawers. “Just look at you,” his superior officer had said, “what are you sucking at when you’re about to die anyway?” And yet, he managed to survive. Now he is attached to a special attack force of carrier-based “Suisei” bombers. He will head for the Philippines as soon as the weather clears. Once there, he will take to the air outfitted lightly, with neither a reconnaissance crew nor machine guns—in fact, carrying nothing but a No. 80 (800 kg) bomb, lashed to the plane with straw rope. He will make his charge at 350 knots.

“I’ll receive a special promotion,” he said, “jumping two ranks at once. Soon I be a lieutenant commander.” He smiled. Obviously you can give up your life, but not your honor. Whatever the case, this lieutenant has only ten days or so left to live.

He had more news, too, about the so-called “human torpedoes,” or “Kaiten,” and also about the German V-1. The V-1 is said to be smaller than a Link trainer, with wings less than two meters long. The Germans bomb the city of London with it, using radio-control. We don’t have the technology to control a plane by radio. So instead we place a man into a small, rocket-propelled craft similar to the V-1. It flies at 600 kilometers per hour for two minutes, with a range of thirty-five miles. After that the thing just glides until it crashes into the target. A Type-1 or Type-96 land-based attack bomber hugs this flying bomb to its belly until the target is within range. The device is so small that, once the pilot is on board, it can carry only one No.25 (250 kg) bomb at most. Consequently, even if it hits the target directly, it does little damage. It seems the “human torpedo” is a little more effective.

I can honestly say that I need no double promotion, and that I have no wish to be a war hero, but I have to wonder: Am I really content to crash headlong into an enemy ship knowing all the while that my sacrifice cannot possibly destroy it?

December 9

A fourth December 8th has come and gone, with no good results to show for it. The “divine winds,” the “kamikaze,” seem to be blowing in the wrong direction. Anyway, today the wind comes in strong from the west, and I can see, through the windowpanes of the ordnance classroom, the occasional flurry of snow. It’s pretty cold for Kyushu at the beginning of December.

An inquiry from the OD’s room arrived this afternoon. “We’re putting on a show. Do any of you student reserves want to join in?” We agreed to do it. After all, we still want to feel the breeze of the free world.

“Look. Some broad is headed for the drill hall,” a fellow said.

“She’s wearing silk stockings,” said another.

For all the fuss we made, the show turned out to be a bore. The singing and dancing were low camp, teasing our sexual desire to no good purpose, grimly rekindling old dormant dreams. And then came a speech from the city hall clerk in charge of the event. “We devote ourselves to our modest art. Blah-blah-blah.” It disgusted me. What we need is fuel, or, failing that, to be allowed to return to campus as free men. Nothing else will console us. I haven’t heard anything from Kyoto lately.

They say, “Nothing can wait in the air.” Failure always means the end. Airmen are meant to live life to the absolute fullest, every single day, but our lives at this base are empty and dull, every single day. What should I do?

December 14

“Battle stations! Battle stations!” The warning came in yesterday around half past one. A large formation of enemy bombers was moving north over Chichi-jima Island. And today the morning papers report that some eighty B-29s raided Tokyo, Shizuoka, and Aichi. It looks like Saipan and Tinian are rapidly taking shape as major enemy bases for strategic bombing. My brother’s body must be cast off somewhere in the corner of an airfield, his bones laid bare to the rains. According to the papers, damage from the B-29s wasn’t severe, but I worry that the raids might have aggravated the damage already done by the earthquake that struck the Tokai district just the other day.

We had a visitor from Tokyo. He says they suffered successive raids on November 24, 25, 26, 29, and 30. Gotanda Station is completely destroyed. And the used-bookstore district around Kanda is a stretch of wasteland.

“Does that mean such-and-such place now has an unobstructed view ofX?”

“So that store is gone now, too, huh?”

Whinnying like horses, the Tokyo men in our outfit cajoled one another.

“It’s no laughing matter,” they conceded, amid guffaws, “but what else can you do?”

A mood of defeat pervades the metropolis, our visitor says, and conditions at the aircraft factories, etc., are not so rosy as the newspapers and the radio would have us believe. Recently, the workers have been staging ever more serious slowdowns. I cannot approve of such behavior, but I can imagine how easily these men fall apart, once they’ve been stripped of hope and pride. Even at this air station we had an incident. An unidentified man called headquarters repeatedly, until he was good and satisfied that the commander himself was on the line. Then he let the curses fly. “You blockheaded murderer! You should be the first to die!” It was determined that the call came from inside the base, but those in charge decided not to pursue the matter. Well, it’s okay by me if they don’t, but the constant internal squabbling, the rumors, the general collapse of discipline—it is all the sign of a nation in decline. For my part, I attend more closely to military discipline, and if at times I have to correct the enlisted men, so be it.

According to the newspaper, the U.S. Navy has now developed a prototype for a new fighter plane whose payload exceeds that of our dive-bombers, and whose top airspeed is 1,020 kilometers per hour, which is just shy of the speed of sound (1,200 kph). It translates into 680 knots, or twice the speed of our standard 300 knots. The Americans have produced a real menace. They say the enemy lost eighty-eight aircraft carriers during the past year, but I don’t know if I can blindly trust that figure. All I know for sure is that we have only three or four carriers left on our side.

Training flights are supposed to resume in mid-January, but for the time being we are completely shut out of the sky. Everything is in a slump. We enjoy an abundance of oranges (as a matter of fact, we each received ten today), but that’s only because this region produces a lot of oranges and they can’t ship them out due to reductions in carrying capacity.

Today’s lecture was on radio homing, direction-finding, and the protocols for carrier-based takeoff and landing. I’m no good at theory, and when I don’t follow the lecture, I get sleepy, and when I fall asleep, I get a chill. Anyway, what’s the use of learning how to take off and land on carriers that we no longer possess? Forty-five men from the Army Air Corps are bunking at the drill hall these days to attend the navy lectures. They even hauled in a huge navigation drawing board for the purpose. I guess the Army finally sees the need to master modern scientific methods of navigation. But I have to say, they are, as always, a few steps behind, and it is getting late in the day.

December 18

Cadet S.’s father died of a rare disease in which blood clots block up the capillaries. He traveled to Tokyo to attend the funeral and returned to base last night.

According to the information S. brought back, the damage Tokyo suffered in the raids isn’t quite as bad as we imagined. The fire brigades did a tremendous job, managing to contain most of the damage from the incendiary bombs. He could see the B-29s flying in at 8,000 meters, mere dots in the sky. And though he couldn’t make out the fighters, he knew they were there because they gleamed as they rolled over. We fire our high-angle guns relentlessly, but the enemy bombers evade them. The student service units are really pitching in, devoting themselves body and soul. Apparently, it’s the regular factory hands who generally lack discipline. As for the ordinary people: They still have the heart to browse around the Ginza, outfitted in gaiters, gas masks, and tin hats. They even staged a concert in Hibiya. Unmistakably there are fewer men around. On the other hand, the earthquake damage all along the Sea of Enshu is worse than we thought. The railroad bridge over the Oh-i River collapsed, totally disrupting transportation and distribution networks. Recovery along the Tokaido Line simply isn’t a prospect this year. It was amusing to see how curious we were to hear S.’s report. We were all ears, as if he had been to Persia or Egypt.

On Saturday morning, somewhere out behind the lavatory and the barracks, someone struck a seaman for failing to salute, and at around 11 o’clock today the culprit was ordered to reveal himself. The seaman suffered a broken cheekbone, and according to the chief surgeon’s examination, the injury might permanently impair his ability to chew. He claims a student reserve officer corrected him. Well, the incident has already surfaced, and unless the perpetrator comes forward, they say the case be referred to a court martial. So, after lunch, every student reserve who punched a seaman on Saturday went to the sick bay to meet the boy, one by one. But he didn’t finger any of us. I went, too, having corrected a petty officer for failing to salute me out by the swimming pool Saturday morning. I wasn’t in any danger, since my set-to obviously involved a different man at a different place, but the whole event set me to brooding again. Just a few days back I resolved to strike enlisted men if I thought it would help maintain discipline, but in truth, the impulse to strike doesn’t necessarily spring from high-minded deliberation. More often than not, “maintaining discipline” is just the excuse we use to blow off steam.

The seaman with the broken cheekbone will probably be sent back out into the free world. He certainly has my deepest sympathy. He returns to his parents a cripple, and not because of a battlefield injury, but because of a blow he took for failing to salute. What will the villagers say? What will his parents think of the navy? And how will he make a living for the rest of his life? I have decided not to raise my hand against anyone after all.

Fujikura saw me go off to sick bay, and when I got back, he said, “If you really think you can save Japan by dying, go ahead and die. I won’t stop you. But even you don’t really believe you can save the country by beating up a seaman, now, do you? If you engage in this sort of behavior to vent your indignation over blows you took from recon students or instructors, why don’t you strike back at them instead? Think about the feelings of those seamen recruits, men who can’t vent their anger on anybody. Maybe skipping the occasional salute is the only way they have to relieve their frustration. I don’t care if they don’t salute me. And if what you call ‘military spirit’ continues to manifest itself like this, well, I may really lose my patience with you.”

I had already thought better of my earlier resolution when Fujikura let loose on me, and his words got on my nerves. “It’s none of your business,” I retorted, “who do you think you are anyway? You flatter yourself with your great humanity and civility, but you’re nothing but an egotist.” I continued in that vein for a spell. Lately, Fujikura has drifted away from the other men in our division. I have little contact with Sakai, as he is in the bomber division, and I miss Kashima immensely, probably because we are so far apart.

But as for that injured seaman, his story gradually changed as the day wore on, and the details are now obscure. The account differs according to whom he tells it to. Now it’s not even certain that the perpetrator was a student reserve. Judging from all the information, he was likely punched either by an assistant division officer (a special services officer), or else by one of the veteran petty officers, the men seamen fear the most. But this seaman couldn’t bring himself to name the offender, and when he was questioned he laid the blame on the student reserves, the men with whom he has the least contact anyway. It was all a first-rate nuisance for us student reserves, but I felt for his situation.

As night fell, the top brass sent down a message: “If all student reserves swear they have not harmed this seaman, we accept your word and consider the case closed.” They are adopting an air of great magnanimity. It’s strange, though, that they should so easily settle a matter that might well have merited a court martial. It makes me suspicious. From the point of view of the men at the top, the perpetrator must be very inconveniently situated.

December 20

Last night there was a titanic storm. Gales gathered from the four corners of the universe to smash us, and I felt the rumbling in my gut. After that, a blizzard set in, and it has been snowing all day long. At first, the soft cottony flakes vanished when they touched the ground, precisely as if they had been sucked into it, but soon enough they started to pile up, and when the sun finally peeked out, the snow in front of the motor pool glittered. It really was lovely.

Flights are still suspended. The enemy has landed on Mindoro. Three oil tankers are said to have made port at Kure, under an imposing escort, but from the looks of it our fuel won’t arrive for a while yet. Beginning on the 26th, the carrier-based bomber group will fly Type-99s. The prospect sends them into raptures, as they are to graduate to the Type-99 before they’ve even completed the regular course in the Type-96. The Type-99, it seems, can burn alcohol fuel without much retrofitting. There was talk of our resuming flights, too, once we obtain the fuel. But our Type-97 attack bombers can’t tolerate alcohol fuel without a thorough refitting of both tank and carburetor, so the plan has been scratched.

Lieutenant Commander F. lectured this afternoon on the art of signal communication. Then he gave us a lesson in combat based on the Battle of Leyte Gulf, focusing particularly on the special attack force. Incidentally, he also described, in detail, the destruction of our airfield at Tainan (in Formosa). That field is now totally unusable, with the result that the Tainan Air Corps has been disbanded, its crews and aircraft dispersed to various bases. Many came to Usa, Lt. Cdr. F. among them.

His account of the decimation of Tainan is as follows.

Thirty or so Grumman fighters came in first, gaining command of the skies around the airfield, and here is how they did it: The enemy fighters approached in a stacked formation, the lower squadron flying in at 300 meters with a “rising sun” emblem painted on their wings (that was a base tactic). Some claim that the emblems actually changed, in accord with special beams of light emitted from their sister-planes: the rising sun one minute, U.S. insignia the next. But however that may be, our men were led to believe, all the way up to the bitter end, that these fighters had come to assist them. Our twenty Zeroes were shot down the second they took to the air. Next, Grumman carrier-based bombers flew in to attack. Their bombsights are very precise, and most of our hangars and other facilities were destroyed by direct hits on dive-bombing runs. I should say in passing that America’s bombsights (could they be radar-assisted?) have recently attained a formidable degree of accuracy: a margin of thirty meters from an altitude of 8000 meters. Also, there are a number of female pilots among the U.S. Navy. One of them went down in a parachute, and a native Formosan chased her, wooden stick in hand. When she was captured, she purportedly insisted that somebody “Show me the guy who shot me down!”

An account on the special attack force followed.

At that time, the 1st Air Fleet, commanded by Vice Admirals Teraoka and Onishi, had a scant total of forty aircraft, damaged but viable. Our surface force managed to inflict some damage on the enemy, but they were soon slaughtered by a new relay of U.S. carriers, and the surviving vessels had precious little chance to make an escape. This was when the Musashi went down. Some two hundred fifty fighters came in from the 2nd Air Fleet. Of these, a little more than a dozen suffered damage without even fighting, owing to adverse conditions at the base. When the balance of the fighters launched their attack a swarm of Grummans descended on them, and half of our planes were shot down before ever reaching a target. And the story goes that, as a last resort, and hoping to recover from the assault, the 1st Air Fleet ordered out the Kamikaze force. Lieutenant S. had been down with diarrhea, but he folded up his bedding and went out to lead the attack. Many objected to the decision to use such a tactic, despite the fact that the lieutenant deeply wished to make the sortie. But as things stand now, this “human bullet” tactic has been systematically and permanently adopted by Imperial Headquarters. In point of fact, all the instructors at Tainan had already been organized into “special attack forces,” even before the base was wiped out.

When I heard this, I said to myself, “I will die, too.” Suddenly I felt the bottom drop out. It was as if something had been torn from inside my body. Ostensibly, I had long been prepared to die, had long been ready to become a “human bullet,” or whatever. But even so, I was hollowed out, and I groaned aloud before I knew it. Then the next moment my attitude wheeled about, and I said to myself, “Damn it all to hell! Let’s just knock them off!” It’s odd. Obviously I had wanted to survive, and had been fooling myself all along, believing that I was really prepared to die. And now that my death is a near certainty, I feel as if I’m living in a dream.

Next year’s call-up will be for six thousand new recon men and six thousand new pilots, a total of twelve thousand men. No doubt these rosy-faced youths will be organized into “special attack forces,” just like the young warriors of Byakko-tai mustered to fight during the Boshin war. But how on earth will the navy come up with the aircraft and the fuel to make it all possible?

December 25

We are commissioned. At nine o’clock we hoisted the navy flag and bowed in the direction of the Imperial Palace, with the “cherry blossom” pins of ensigns on our collars. Technically we were inducted last night, the moment we were officially relieved of the title “Student Reserve.” As of today we begin our duty under instruction.

I don’t feel particularly emotional. When graduates of the Naval Academy receive their commission they celebrate with a big bash, a whole forest of sake and beer, but no special event marks the occasion for us. We were supposed to be granted an outing immediately after the ceremony, but instead found ourselves placed on Defense Condition 2, as the report came in that an enemy plane was approaching Omura, and a whole formation was over Cheju. When the alert was called off at 1005, we were free to go. We stopped in at the Brotherhood of Enlisted Men to buy gaiters and a pair of slippers, which made me feel like a full-fledged something anyway. Then we headed for Beppu on the 1116 semi-express.

The weather was mild, which seemed a waste on a day of liberty. I ordered a simple lunch of yam-and-rice porridge at our usual spot, the Kajiya Inn in Kamegawa. With a huff and a puff, I slurped down the boiling hot bowl of thick, sweet soup. It was good.

I wrote to my father, to Professors O. and E., to Kashima, and also to several others, with news of our commission. I also wrote to Fukiko. This I did under the joint names of Sakai, Fujikura, and myself, although I felt a little twinge, like the prickle you get in your chest as you drink sparkling water.

At night, to celebrate, the proprietress at Kajiya served us a half-gallon of sake on the house. Thanks to her, we had plenty to drink with our blowfish stew. The octopus tempura was tasty, but the testis of the blowfish is an indescribable delicacy. We had a little debate as to whether you feel pain when you die from blowfish poisoning. Some people say yes, some say no. And from there the conversation shifted to a debate as to whether or not you suffer when crashing into an enemy ship on one of those “special attack” missions. I expect I will lose consciousness before sensing any pain, and anyway my body will be scattered to the winds on impact. So, all things considered, I voted for the “no-pain” theory. Sakai believes that he will suffer excruciating pain for the second or so it takes for his life to be extinguished. But this is doomed to be a barren controversy because nobody has ever returned from such a mission to tell the tale. Fujikura just listened in silence, his knees drawn up.

We met a pretty little girl on the train back. I gave her two “eyeballs”—vitamin-rich snacks used for high-altitude and duration flying. I always carry a few in my pocket. Her mother was so gratified that she offered me a parcel in return. I declined the gift, but Fujikura barged in with a “Thank you, ma’am’ and snatched up the package. He was quite but he was a bastard nonetheless. When we disembarked at Yanagiga-ura, we opened the package to find six rice cakes, and with azuki bean-paste no less. I felt much obliged to see two vitamin supplements metamorphosed into six an-mochi. The mother and the daughter were bound for Monji.

Incidentally, it seems children these days are brought up precocious, a whole pack of junior scientists and junior nationalists. Well, adults have to stop building an artificial world for their children. Kids should never be deprived of the chance to wallow in the mud and climb trees. They need their butterflies, their mountains and rivers. Let our generation die off, and let the coming generation enjoy a new and auspicious era, an era of real liberty and prosperity.

January 1, Showa 20 (1945)

Sunny. Reveille at four. Departed at 0430 in military uniform to worship at Usa Shrine. Returned at seven. Hoisted the naval ensign at eight, followed by a bow in the direction of the Imperial Palace. At 1000 all at the rank of warrant officer or above drank in celebration in the drill hall. No lunch together. Immediately went out for an excursion.

It was festive on the train, as might be expected. Women in their best kimonos, red-faced drunken peasants—everything contributed to the rustic New Year’s atmosphere. But my mind was preoccupied with thoughts of my family and of the Fukais of Minamata. I wonder how they are faring. This year will probably see the end of my life. This New Year’s holiday will be my last. On one of the three hundred sixty-five days of Showa 20 my obituary will be written. My brother Bunkichi is already dead, and when I consider how hollow my parents’ lives will be after I, too, die, I regret that they didn’t have more sons. I hope they will seriously consider adopting a child.

I had quite a few rice cakes today, as though I were trying to mark the New Year by eating them. However, in these parts zoni isn’t very good, as they don’t use any miso (the same goes for the Tokyo area). I crave the Kyoto-Osaka version of this traditional New Year’s soup, with its rich base of white miso.

January 7, Feast of the Seven Herbs of Health

I pulled second shift as probational assistant officer of the day, half past eleven to half past five. All manner of business flows in, but in spurts. I don’t really understand any of it, so I just keep a straight face and say “Roger,” no matter what comes my way, and then the clerks and the sentries handle it. The trainees are pouring back in from their holiday excursions, faces flushed by the cold winds, but still in the warm embrace of the family hearth.

“So-and-so of the Xth Division has just returned, sir.”

“Roger that.”

“Thank you for the time back home, sir.”

“Roger.” That’s the way it works.

At about 1530, a Type 99 Carrier Bomber crashed. I thought we had yet another martyr, but the pilot came out all right. It was Ensign K., my 14th Class comrade. He was grinning. He knew he wouldn’t be reprimanded, as he remembered well what Lt.jg E. said some time ago: “I’ve already wrecked six airplanes. Any man who’s scared to bang up a plane or crack a fart is good for nothing. Don’t let it get to you.”

Ensigns Tsubota, Nakame, and Tsukamoto have left this air station. Please meet with a death that shall be a model for us all, I prayed.

A while ago, a Lt.jg Tanaka briefly sojourned here after making an emergency landing in Oita, and he told us all about the Kaiten and the German V-1 rocket. Word comes in now that he made his sortie to the Philippines as planned, perishing gracefully in a Suisei carrier bomber attached to the special attack force.

They keep a monkey named Hanako in the medical ward, and at around 1710 notice came in that a petty officer had made her eat three cigarettes. Of course, I was busy enough as it was, without having to file a report because a monkey ate three cigarettes. I went over and told that petty officer off. Hanako looked perfectly fine, though, behaving as if nothing had happened.

It was not until my watch ended and I had some dinner that I felt any relief

My memory is really going these days. It’s not just peoples’ names or foreign words that I forget. I’m uncertain, for example, even about the total number of poems in the Manyoshu. All kinds of things just slip out of my head, and apparently the problem is chronic. I peeked into my diary to help myself remember what I did during the New Year’s holiday last year, and found that we made our first excursion from Otake Naval Barracks, and also that I had grown a trifle sentimental gazing at the waters of the Iwakuni River. Yes, I remember now: We were wearing our sailor’s caps. The memory materializes like an old, old dream.

I’ve read quite a few books since we stopped flying, but these, too, are swept from my mind, one after another. Partly this is because I just don’t come across any really good books. Mostly I read novels, not poetry, but unless it is a truly great work, a novel will only do you harm.

January 11

U.S. troops finally landed at Lingayen Gulf. Pouring down a storm of shells and bombs, they climbed onshore with their tanks in the lead. According to reports, even our reconnaissance planes launched desperate attacks, but there is no word about the result. The enemy is said to have a tremendous number of Grumman fighters for cover. Our special attack forces can hardly even make it to their targets. This is especially true in the case of carrier-based attack bombers. If they make a sortie in the daytime, hugging their torpedoes, they are wiped out before they ever reach the enemy. As for the army’s Hayabusa fighters, these are reputedly helpless against the B-29s. They are unable to approach them, let alone crash into them. Given this state of affairs, what difference would it make even if we had thousands of aircraft? Apparently, the war has progressed to the last stage in this cycle of our nation’s rise and fall.

This morning a Type-96 carrier bomber crashed. Later, this afternoon, a Type-99 bomber touched down only to catch fire on the runway and promptly go up in smoke. Only the tail remained. This happened when we were about to commence the special course. As black smoke plumed up from the airfield, we dashed out. The loudspeakers sounded off: “First Rescue Unit, deploy!” and there was the Type-99, gliding along in flames. When we arrived, it was ablaze at the end of the apron, its duralumin alloy emitting intense white light, only the tail and engine still recognizable. Red flame in a fat column of black smoke, a blinding incandescent blaze at the core: transfixed by the sight, I thought that these will be the colors under which we depart this world. Mysterious, solemn colors. There must be something wrong with the alcohol fuel, as crash landings of carrier bombers are now a daily routine. Fuel and flight tests were completed today for the carrier attack bombers, too, and before long our training flights should finally resume. If we are to burn alcohol fuel, though, we must be extra careful. They say that when the temperature inside the cylinders drops to 150 degrees Celsius, the propellers will stop. The last thing I want to do is die in an accident, but inevitably some among us will.

A cat has been meowing for days now, somewhere in the barracks. Who knows, maybe it gave birth to a litter of kittens in the attic. But whatever the cause, it keeps meowing uncannily, day-in and day-out, gradually shifting its location. They tell us to catch the cat and zap it, but we don’t know where it is. I can’t help regarding it as an evil omen in light of the recent chain of accidents.

January 15

Yet anotherType-99 crash-landed today. Also, when one of our Type-96 bombers pulled into the approach path and closed its throttle, the propellers seized and the plane almost crashed into the ground. Still, the two crewmen were OK. Everyone thought they were done for, but they emerged with only a few minor injuries to the head and face. And though they griped about the pain, their lives didn’t seem to be in any danger. Day after day, we watch planes crash or flip over, with the 1st and 2nd Rescue Units deployed. Considering the frequency of accidents, though, there have been relatively few casualties, thanks entirely to the shoulder straps. If we suffer the same sort of accident in a carrier attack bomber, which is not equipped with shoulder straps, we surely die on the spot, our skulls shattered. No matter what the cost, we simply must equip our Type-97 carrier attack bombers with shoulder straps before resuming flights. Reportedly, they are having a fair number of accidents of unknown cause at Hyakuri-hara Air Station, too, using alcohol fuel.

A recon student called before lights out and summoned us.

“Before today’s lesson, one of you guys was wearing a shirt during calisthenics. Everyone assemble in the officers’ lounge.” Now, just the other day a senior officer said it was all right for us to wear shirts, so we went to the lounge and pleaded, explaining what the officer had told us. But it was all in vain. Some of us got the maximum of seven blows, some got the minimum of two, and I got five. Afterwards, we were made to run, double time, two circles around the apron, or about four kilometers. We were drenched in sweat on a cold winter night. We thought we would certainly be dismissed after that. Wrong. They hauled us out to the grounds (it had started to rain) and ordered us to do knee-bends combined with an exercise where we throw our arms up at an angle: four hundred fifty repetitions. We endured it well. Then, our backs and legs quaking, we crawled back to the barracks, hunched forward as if with an acute bellyache, and barely able to support our bodies. On my shaky legs, it’s dangerous to walk down a staircase. I have to say this is a lunatic way of correcting us.

And how do the recon students perform at calisthenics? On cold, snowy days, after turning up for form’s sake, they vanish into thin air. They wear jackets while doing double time, and when they fly, these reconnaissance men burn octane #87 fuel simply because they graduated from the Naval Academy, while we pilots make do with alcohol fuel. That’s the navy.

January 19

The hazard light on the radio pole was on all through the night. I just looked at it, saying to myself that red beacon lights have a certain atmosphere about them, whether it’s the running light on a ship or the rear lamp of an express train, not giving the matter a second thought. But it turns out that the commander went missing on his way back from an official trip to Tokyo, and he still hadn’t returned, even though it was well past nine. And that was why the light was on all night. The report came in this morning, however, that he made an emergency landing at Suzuka Air Station.

One more carrier bomber crash-landed yesterday, which finally brought their training flights to a halt. Strange to say, the cat stopped meowing, as if in reply. Made me a little superstitious.

Today, a recon student was hit by the propeller of a plane as it taxied onto the apron. He was killed instantly, and as his body was flung away it struck another man who was seriously wounded and presently died in the medical ward. One of them was the ensign who really put us through the wringer because someone wore a shirt during calisthenics. For the most part, we think it was sweet, sweet justice, though we certainly don’t say so aloud. There was no denying the general mood: Take that, you bastard. The accident was attributed to carelessness, an aftereffect of the liberty the recon students were granted yesterday. So an instructor lectured us, “Never let your guard down during liberty. When you are out on an excursion, always remember its purpose. You are getting the rest and relaxation you need in order to fly your aircraft into battle. Don’t lapse into intemperance simply because you feel free.”

“We’re always to blame!” someone said afterwards, in a sulk. “It’s our fault that mailboxes are red. And if the utility poles are tall, well, that’s our fault too. Everything’s our fault. Shit!” Indeed, we reserve officers are blamed for everything. Well, do with us as you please.

We have devised a piece of equipment we call the “W.C. band.”

“Hey, give me your band,” someone said. I didn’t get it at first, but he meant the belt from my judo outfit. And here’s why: On top of the four hundred fifty “knee-bends with arm lifts” we did, we run some eight kilometers a day at double time. This only compounds the pain in our muscles. Our legs ache even when we are standing, and we can’t squat down in the toilet. So this fellow lashed my judo belt to a steel pipe in the john, and used it to hold his body in position while emptying his bowels. What a brilliant idea! And in short, this is the story of the “W.C. band.”

One enemy tank division and two infantry divisions have landed on Luzon. Two more divisions are said to be on standby.

The temperature dropped to six below zero Celsius this morning.

Fujikura’s letter

Professor E.

K. sent me a letter that fills me with envy. He says that, on the spur of the moment, he visited your house in Kyoto wearing his sergeant’s uniform, and that you treated him to beer over reminiscences and rumors. He also told me that your family has evacuated to the countryside in Tottori Prefecture. You prepare your own meals now, and you ventured to say that, if it were only the old days come again, you would bring together under your roof all the members of the usual Manyo circle—K., Yoshino, Sakai, Kashima, and myself. I felt a catch in my throat as I thought back on those good old days. How did K. look as a sergeant?

It has been eight months since I wrote you. When we moved from Tsuchiura to Izumi last May, I sent you what ought properly be termed a lengthy disclosure of my heart, in reply to which I received only the briefest of notes. To be honest, I concluded that, after all, even you are doing nothing more, with respect to this war, than comporting yourself respectably, and consequently, that I am totally forsaken. Disappointed and jaundiced, I have long neglected to write you again, until reading K.’s letter, which gave me the impulse to put pen to paper.

I learned from K. that you said, “I suspect Mr. Fujikura might be agonizing the most. I hope he will manage somehow.” I was genuinely grateful. To put it the old-fashioned way, I thought: Your regard alone is enough for me. Maybe I’m interpreting your feelings to suit my own wishes, but anyway I will not be upset if I don’t receive a reply from you.

To tell you the truth, I am thinking of “managing somehow.” As I see it, Japan has already lost every asset that might have allowed for victory in this war. Saipan fell, the Philippines collapsed. Millions of Japanese remain behind, checkmated, in the southwestern and southeastern theaters, where the enemy has them completely beleaguered and stands poised to launch a counteroffensive. From the enemy’s point of view, it must simply be a matter of methodically drawing in the net. As for what it will be like to lose the war, I still can’t begin to imagine. The country dismembered, any number of people starving to death, riots erupting one after another, the occupation forces tyrannizing, Kyoto and Yamato in ruins. In the face of all this, any hope of returning to campus might well be shattered, might well prove nothing but a lunatic dream. Still, it’s one thing to say it will be a disaster if we lose this war, and quite another to say that, ergo, we will win it. Everybody seems innocently to put these two ideas together, bringing forth, in sum, a kind of awful optimism. But however disastrous it may be, Japan has no choice left but to lose. I just wish we could at least lose with the nation intact, though it looks like I cannot hope for even that.

Professor E.

Our training flights have been on hold for quite some time due to the fuel shortage. For a moment, I hoped against hope that if things go on like this, who knows but that the war might suddenly end while we just mill around, digging holes in the ground or some such thing, with no further worry on my part. I fancied putting on airs and giving Yoshino a smack on the jaw, saying, “Wake up! We’re going back to Kyoto!” However, the reality is not so easy, as I just found out. The other day, we were finally compelled to volunteer for the special attack force. We resume flights the day after tomorrow. We will be burning alcohol fuel, a low-grade, dangerous type of fuel that fails to ignite if the temperature inside the cylinders drops a little, causing the propellers to stop in midair.

The general public seems to think that only the bravest men, the men who have unswerving loyalty, ever volunteer for the special attack force, but that was only at the earliest stage. Now that headquarters has fully adopted the tactic, they use our superior officers to recruit volunteers. “Will you step forward?” the officers ask, or “Will you raise your hand?” And at last even a man like me feels compelled to raise his hand, heavy as lead. Ostensibly the decision is voluntary, but psychologically speaking, it’s downright coercion. And with that, we give them free rein to choose whomever they want to choose. I will have very little chance of survival if I simply continue to drift along. So I am contemplating some extreme measure to save my life, and my life alone. It is all I ever think about, night and day. Professor, please do not reproach me for being selfish, unless you really do want me to crash into the enemy alongside my comrades. I shall be content if you only consider me an impossible fellow. I have no power to save Sakai and Yoshino. We are already too far apart in our thinking. All I could ever do is make them angry; I could never make them listen. Even Kashima, the man we all would have thought furthest from being a fighter, routinely sends in from the torpedo boat camp in Kawatana (though never, of course, to me) lines like: “You guys come in from the air, I will come in on the water,” or “Be that as it may, we must set about preparing for our journey to the other world.”

I have thought of various methods. One option is to get myself badly injured in an “accident,” to the extent that I won’t be able to fly again. But as I observed the results of the accidents on our base, I had to conclude that this plan simply offers too little chance of survival. My second idea supposes that enemy troops land on Formosa or in southern China and build a base. When it is time to make my sortie, I will fly to that base and desert, giving myself up as a prisoner. If I succeed, my survival will be all but guaranteed, and I assume I would be able to return safely to Japan once the war ends. The problem is that unless I have some way to inform the other side of my plan in advance, I will naturally be shot down by their fighters or antiaircraft guns before I ever reach the base. This plan, therefore, has little chance of success. So, I started to give shape to what has been vaguely on my mind ever since I dared choose to be a pilot back at Tsuchiura Naval Air Station. Namely, I am thinking of crash-landing on some island while engaged in a special attack mission. From now on, our sorties should be directed mainly at the Ryukyu Islands or the area around Formosa. As you know, there are a lot of handy little islands along the way, islands with few inhabitants, small garrisons, and poor communications. Or, I started to think, maybe a desert island would do, depending on the circumstances. So I have been collecting maps of the Ryukyu Islands and reading “castaway” stories like Robinson Crusoe, studying all the parts that may prove helpful. I will take off, proceeding as usual until we near the island I have chosen, at which point I will feign engine trouble or something like that. First, I will stray from my formation and release the bomb. Then I’ll take the thick cushion from the seat and apply it to the instrument panel so as to protect my head on impact. Finally, my belt securely fastened, I will close the throttle and ditch the plane tail first into the water, with landing gear pulled in. Needless to say, the aircraft will go to pieces, and it might end up nose down in the water. But in any case, it will not sink immediately, giving me enough time to unfasten the belt and escape. After that, I should be able to swim to the island. Judging from the present situation, they won’t be in any hurry to rescue me (!), even if they do learn about the accident, and nobody will ever know whether or not my plane really had trouble in the air.

I still have some problems to solve, food, for example. But my plan is taking shape quite sensibly along the lines laid out above, and about ninety percent of it is now in place. However, one thing is strange. As the blueprint of my escape plan comes into focus, a certain indefinable emptiness sweeps through my mind. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but suppose I somehow manage to survive on the island. There I am, spending my days fishing or whatever, when all of sudden I spot a detachment of the special attack force overhead—my comrades, roaring atop the clouds and heading south. And after they are gone there remains only the sky, absurdly bright and tranquil, and that hollow tint of it vividly strikes my eyes. So far as I can tell, it’s not that my conscience is bothering me because what I intend to do is cowardly, and it’s not exactly a fear of solitude, either. I fully intend to dodge the pointless death marked out for me here, but when I picture the color of that sky, the prospect of survival also begins to seem dreary. I can do nothing with this strange, empty, enervating void, so I will simply have to root out this feeling.

Actually, we occasionally hear that among the many who make their “Will Die, Will Kill” sorties, there are some who ditch their planes more or less in the way I have in mind, and they survive, marooned on an island somewhere. These men didn’t follow a deliberate course of action, or so it seems anyway. They just fell into a funk along the way, and desperately ditched their planes on an impulse. But mine is a calculated move, planned far in advance, and this is doubtless what makes me feel so hollowed out. And now I’m thinking: Setting off in such a frame of mind, I might be impelled by the opposite kind of impulse, an impulse that says, “Maybe it’s actually easier just to go ahead and die.” And thus I may end up meeting Fate with all my comrades, which is not impossible. I expect I will have to suppress that impulse by sheer willpower. I used to be a diffident student. I had my doubts about the value of studying the Manyoshu as it was, and now I can’t possibly make it my mission to survive in order to work on it further for my comrades. Maybe that partly accounts for the emptiness I feel. I close my eyes, I strain my ears, but from nowhere do I hear a voice saying: “You must live. Don’t think about the others. It’s all right. You deserve to survive.” Needless to say, I am certainly not trying to coax any such words out of you. When you cannot accept this war, when you are poised to take a different path and watch your friends die before your very eyes, it is agony.

However, Professor, I intend to sustain myself and to endure the ordeal of this strange void, and if I am to suffer unspoken accusations, then I will endure them, too. When Japan stages its next big operation, and you hear that I made a sortie and am missing, please conclude that I’m probably alive on some southern island where I ditched my plane. I will wait for the war to end, and surely I will return to Kyoto. Would you welcome me? And if my attempt fails, and you get news that I “died in the line of duty” (?!), then please remember, from time to time, that there was one naval ensign among the men who came under your tutelage who just could not approve of this war, and that he died, rejecting it to the end.

When I write, I always end up producing a long, incoherent letter. I’m sorry about that. But setting aside our struggles, you yourself must be leading a terribly hard life. This might be the last letter I send you till the very day I make my sortie, but please take good care of yourself. And finally, I have a favor to ask of you. When we were stationed in Izumi, we visited, on every outing, a family in Minamata by the name of Fukai. They were very kind to us. The head of the household is Mr. Nobunori Fukai, and he has a daughter called Fukiko. I have already explained my plans, but in our situation nobody knows what the future holds, and if I die and Yoshino survives, I would like you to act as a go-between for Yoshino and this girl.

Miss Fukai appeared to like each of us, though in different ways. In other words, she was vaguely attracted to these brave naval aviation officers with a scholarly air about them. Rationally speaking, I don’t want any woman to like me based on an overestimation of my character, and emotionally speaking, she is not exactly my type anyway, though she is certainly beautiful and sweet. So I feigned ignorance of her affections throughout our acquaintance. Yoshino, however, still pines for her, even four months after our leaving Izumi. I know this perfectly well, as I have watched him closely ever since I became convinced of his feelings while we were still at Izumi. He would never admit it, because he believes he is going to crash into the enemy and die, but he broods over Miss Fukai most unhandsomely, whenever he is alone. In any case, it’s not as if I were giving away to a friend a woman I really love. Instead, I’m just a backseat driver, I suppose. Anyway, I wanted somebody else to know about this, in case the roll of the dice leaves Yoshino alive and me dead. And if the match should be made through the good offices of Professor E., that would be highly desirable. Indeed, perfect. And if there really is another world beneath the sod, I shall be watching the couple from there, with satisfaction. That is why I’m asking you to keep this in mind.

With best wishes. I will post this letter tomorrow, the 24th, in Beppu, during our excursion.