Burial in the Clouds

May 21

On May 11, as the “all clear” was issued, we left Usa Naval Air Station in the rain and took the northbound train that leaves Yanagiga-ura at 1400. Romance and his friend stayed behind in the hands of the remaining force and should be sent to some camp or other before long. Our seats were in a second-class car. It was pleasant, not at all like a troop train. Each man received a bottle of wine, three bags of crackers, and a ration of flight food. I saved mine for later, as I wanted to eat it at my home in Osaka. The train was seven hours late by the time it arrived in Osaka. I got a close look at the bombed-out sites there and at Kobe. It was horrible. All of a sudden, images of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York came to mind—those self-satisfied American cities, secure in their stone-built prosperity and without so much as a scratch to mar them. And I thought, never again can I persuade myself that we might win this war. We simply have to fight and fight and fight, all the way down until we meet our end.

Nobody was at the station for me. I later learned that my father and uncle had waited from nine in the morning till five in the afternoon, until they finally got tired and went home, just before the train pulled in.

I left the station and found the city of Osaka rough and unkind, overcome with war-weariness. Wherever I went, I met cold looks and sulking faces. Not that I want them to show any special courtesy just because I’m a navy pilot, but I didn’t see even the slightest sign of a willingness to bear a part. What a change since I left here in my school uniform one and a half years ago in a rain of hurrahs! On the tram, I came across an old bird in a workman’s waistcoat and puttees, dangling a duffel bag.

“What the hell do they think they’ll do now?” he said, addressing me point-blank. “Damn stupid of them to start such a hopeless war!” I struggled so hard to resist the temptation to turn on him that I couldn’t enjoy the old familiar Osaka dialect.

The pain, however, didn’t last long. Once I made my way to our old home, which had escaped the fires, it was good to be with my father, good to be with my mother. The place was suffused with the nostalgic scent of home, and I found it hard to leave again. That night, I chatted over drinks amid the familiar faces of my father’s three brothers, and of K. and M., who are staying with my family, until half past two in the morning.

On the 13th, I dropped in on a few neighbors and then left home at eleven. My mother hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, and neither, by the looks of it, had my father. I was the only one who had had a good, sound sleep. At Otake Naval Barracks, at Himeji Station, and in Beppu—so often have I parted with my father, each time supposing it would be the last I ever saw of him, and yet today I again had the good fortune to be escorted to Osaka Station by him. Looking at the devastated landscape along the Yodo River as the train sped across it made me feel broken-hearted. Tears rose in my eyes.

I broke my journey at Kyoto and headed straight for Kyoto University. It was very careless of me, though, to have forgotten that it was Sunday. I couldn’t find anyone, and I didn’t have time to make it out to Professor E.’s house. I left Kyoto in haste on the 1645 train. What a shame.

It was past five the next morning by the time I arrived in Tokyo. At Ueno Station, I boarded the 1403 train on the Joban Line to go to Ishioka, and there I changed to a light railway that took me to Ogawa. I arrived at Hyakuri-hara at close to seven in the evening. The base is eight kilometers from Ogawa, and there is no public transportation between the town and the base. Since I arrived here, I have been living like a drone, day after day. Training flights start tomorrow. Twenty-eight pilots have been chosen.

May 26

Tokyo has suffered an extensive raid again last night. Some two hundred fifty B-29s carried out indiscriminate attacks against the urban districts from ten thirty to two thirty. The uptown area seems particularly to have suffered.

Standing outside at Hyakuri-hara, I could see balls of fire floating in the skies over Tokyo. These were B-29s that had been shot. They don’t go down easily, even when engulfed in flame. They seemed to be sucking up the red, yellow, and green tracer bullets coming at them from every direction. Plunging down in flames, and drawing a straight line, like a meteor, was a Japanese fighter. It was all a gorgeous feast of celestial fire. Our side reportedly shot down twenty-seven B-29s during the raid the night before last, and forty-seven more last night. It might be the usual over-reporting, but it doesn’t seem incredible, either.

I decided to go to Tokyo and got dressed at three o’clock instead of going to bed. I walked the eight kilometers to Ogawa, and took the first light railway train to Ishioka. I managed to reach Ueno Station only to find that, for the most part, transportation was at a standstill in Tokyo. I had intended to drop in at K.’s place, but there were no trains running to Meguro. I had no choice but to turn back. I got off at Tsuchiura and spent the night at the Officers’ Mess. Tsuchiura made me a little nostalgic, but I was too exhausted to drop in anywhere.

When I reamed to base, I learned that the Army’s Giretsu Airborne Unit had landed at the north and central airfields on Okinawa. They went on a rampage, achieving significant military results. Still, I have a vague feeling that Okinawa is nearing its last stage. Evidently, Operation Kikusui came to nothing in the end.

May 30

It’s my twenty-fifth birthday.

Training flights keep us occupied every day. Around here, when the cold, damp northeastern winds start to blow in the evening, a thick fog streams in from the sea. If I look at the broad ocean from the air, I can watch as the dense fog bank creeps in over the surface of the water, moving to the southwest, in handfuls. The altitude of the fog is less than one hundred fifty meters, and eventually it engulfs the airfield, reducing visibility to ten meters or less. And then abruptly, it starts to clear away in places, as if a curtain were being raised. But the evening sun shines full on my plane, fog or no fog, and as I fly freely over the drifting clouds, or over the banks of fog, I always experience anew the strange fascination of riding through the sky. It delights me. Still, I guess it’s inevitable now that the decisive battle will be fought on mainland Japan. Assuming that the nearby Kashima Sea and Kuju-kuri Beach are among the most imperiled sites (these are certainly not “somebody else’s affair”), I look carefully down at the shoreline, hoping to spot some new defense works, each time I fly. But I see nothing of the sort. What do they intend to do?

The raids against the Tokyo-Yokohama district have rapidly intensified. Five hundred B-29s and one hundred P-51s flew over at around nine o’clock yesterday morning, for the most part concentrating their attack on Yokohama. This was the first time that their fighters and bombers flew over together in droves, and in broad daylight, too. Even the skies over Hyakuri-hara darkened during the attack, as if blanketed in thick clouds, so that some of the men said, “Is it going to rain?”

We had a ration of strawberries in the evening. Red, glossy, and sweet. Each time I see a rabbit-ear iris or eat strawberries, I appreciate the occasion deeply. I take it as the last blessing of the season.

June 9

Hyakuri-hara Air Station is responsible for patrolling a fan-shaped area of the sea to the east of Inubo-zaki and the Onahama line. Every day, reconnaissance crews set out to scour this zone. Each plane departs from the pivot of the fan, proceeds along its individually designated line (constituting, say, one rib of the fan), and then traces a path back down the adjacent line in a route that forms a long isosceles triangle. Along some of these lines, however, one cannot fly without being shot down, or so it’s believed, anyway, almost like myth. There might be a logical reason behind this, such as that the regular incursions of enemy fighters cross our patrol lines there at a slight angle, but whatever the case, we simply can’t avoid patrolling these routes. And they are always assigned to former student reservists, never to an officer from the Naval Academy.

I don’t know what will ultimately be written about the Imperial Navy, or about the education men receive at the Naval Academy, with its (supposed) spirit of patriotic self-sacrifice. I have no idea what the future will say about any of this. But how often the precept “A superior officer’s order is implicitly the order of the Emperor himself” is used, conveniently, to provide cover for essentially selfish acts! And the problem is not confined to naval air stations like Hyakuri, I should think.

June 14

According to the commanding officer, we have lost radio contact with Okinawa. It’s raining again today. The rainy season seems to have arrived.

In the afternoon, we had a lecture on special attack maneuvers. I’m constantly sleepy. Nowadays, enemy planes might be flying in overhead all day long, but still, I’m simply sleepy.

While our bodies are overcome with fatigue, our minds are somehow eager, and a pseudo-elegant aestheticism is now in fashion at this base. Poetry readings, flower arranging, what have you. The buckwheat is in bloom, the peony also. As have many others, I arranged, free-style, a large bouquet of Chinese peonies, together with sprigs of azalea, in a basin I had on hand. Complacently, I flatter myself that the result looks pretty good. In a farmer’s house I saw some silkworms feeding on mulberry leaves, making their faint noises, and it brought back distant, sweet memories of my boyhood, when I myself raised a few silkworms in a box, with holes pierced in it. It feels as if I were looking back at my life in its closing years.

June 20

The pseudo-elegance continues. I look out for various flowers, and learn the names of them. Buckwheat, tomato, thistle, coreopsis, asthmaweed, red smartweed, wild rose, water lily, sago palm, Reeve’s meadowsweet, gladiola, pomegranate (I remember seeing this in Minamata last year, a red, stiff-looking flower), zinnia, marguerite (white petals with a yellow center), cornflower (the German national flower), fringed pink, pink, sacred bamboo, kabotcha, cucumber, eggplant, dahlia, evening primrose, chestnut, and rose moss.

And there are more. Some off-season flowers, too. Common dayflower, bindweed, dokudami, hydrangea, garden balsam, stone leek, tiger lily, daikon, garden stonecrop, castor-bean, and Indian strawberry.

We flew in formation over Lake Kasumiga-ura. I saw a thin cloud drifting two hundred meters above the surface of the lake, in a strip some thirty meters wide.

I hear that various kinds of “special attack” aircraft are now being tested. The “Kikka” is said to be particularly promising. This is a jet-propelled, twin-engine aircraft that boasts a cruising speed of three hundred knots. But then again, I remember that Germany was herself hardly lacking in prototype weapons, and she was defeated just before any of them went into use.

June 29

A new special attack force has been organized. I’m first on the list. I feel suddenly awake. I move at once to Kisarazu, in Chiba Prefecture. Looks like it’s my turn to make a sortie.

They held a send-off party for me. No sake. We sang together and made believe we were drunk. I leave here tomorrow. I will know all once I arrive.

Farewell note 1. To my parents.

I haven’t written you for a while. I moved to this area hastily at the end of June. The enemy task force left Saipan, and its whereabouts have been unknown for the last two or three days. We think it’s highly probable that they will invade the mainland this morning, so we have been on standby since four o’clock. I’m writing this note beside my plane. As soon as we locate the task force, I will set out as part of a special attack force.

I am immensely grateful for the twenty-five years of care and love that you have given me. I appreciate what you must be feeling, but I truly hope that you are assured I go in peace and am content with my mission; and also that you will not grieve too much about my fate.

Various things have set me to brooding, but last night I had a good dinner and slept deeply. When the time comes, I believe I really can embark with a light heart, just as so many of my friends have, so please don’t be troubled about me.

May you be in good health whatever comes, that is all I earnestly pray for.

There is nothing I must ask you to take care of after I’m gone. No financial problems, no relationships that might need sorting out. Tend to my books as you see fit. There is this person, by the way: Miss Fukiko Fukai, of Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture. She was very kind to us when we were in training at Izumi. I might have mentioned her to you if I had lived. It is not necessary, though, for you to contact the Fukais, since Fukiko knows nothing of my feelings for her, and since we have not corresponded with each other. I just wanted to tell you about her, as she might come to my mind, together with images of you two, as I crash into my target.

It is now half past eight. Excuse my scribbled note. So long.

Farewell note 2. To Kashima.

My dear old friend, how are you faring? Remember our time in Kyoto, when we studied and had such fun together. We hashed it all out over cups of sake. Those were the good hours, the precious hours. Oh—Otsu, Yamashina, the seaweed offshore at the town of Nabari, the shallows of the Furukawa River. Even after we joined the navy, fate saw to it that we lived under the same roof, never failing to accompany each other. My friend, have you ever thought about that? Close as we were, we seldom had a quiet, heart-to-heart talk. There may be no end to regret, once I am gone, but I hope this letter will do, anyway, as a reminder of something.

My friend, keep yourself well.

Letter by Kashima

I can only imagine how lonely and inconvenient life must be at your evacuation camp. Already two months have passed since we lost the war, and obscure feelings have me utterly in their grip. After being demobilized, I left my hometown and set out on an aimless, wandering journey with the help of a small sum of money, and of some friends and acquaintances. I do intend to return to the campus in Kyoto, but I don’t feel like doing it just yet. I lost every one of the three friends who joined the navy with me in the middle of our academic pursuits. The shock is too great for me.

As for the final hours of your son’s life, I do not know the from the stories of his comrades who were stationed at the same base, once the world calms down. So far, I have checked closely the back-issues of newspapers, and the like, from the period, but I find no articles that appear to concern your son’s mission. I noticed, however, that on the morning of July 10, a U.S. task force approached mainland Japan, and that a total of more than eight hundred planes raided airfields in the Kanto district in several waves. Judging from the date of the farewell note I received from your son, I would say that he probably embarked on a special attack mission that day, and that he dived into a U.S. aircraft carrier at sea to the east of Japan. I do not know why you have not received an official report from the navy. Possibly it was mislaid in the confusion of defeat. At any rate, it is utterly inexcusable, and I am very sorry for that.

I am staying in a town called Ubara, on the eastern coast of Chiba Prefecture. In any case, I believe your son’s body rests somewhere far from this shore. I am certain that he reposes in peace at the horizon, where ocean and sky meet, with the sea for his grave, and his epitaph written in the clouds. It is a beautiful shoreline, with its many twists and turns, and its sheer cliff rising. Japanese silverleaves grow thick on the cliffside, producing their yellow flowers. The coastline here probably touches on the arc of the great circling route to America, as I often see what look like large American steamers sail by offshore. A storm seems to be at hand. The clouds are disturbed and the water is troubled, though the sun occasionally appears.

I enclose a clumsy poem that I wrote along this shore, to be placed by his picture. I will certainly visit you when I get back to Kyoto, sometime in the future, and talk with you at length.

With kindest personal regards.