A Thousand Stitches (12 page)

And we learned the Navy's famous “five-minutes before” rule. “Five-minutes before Reveille” blaring from the PA system was the first thing we heard every morning, at five minutes to six. It woke us all up, but we were forbidden to move until we heard “Reveille.” The junior lieutenants stood observing us to make sure we stayed in our bunks, perfectly still, but poised to jump up and put on our work clothes as soon as the second announcement came. The “five-minutes before” gave us time to get ready to jump to meet the thirty-second deadline, time to think about the day ahead, time to push thoughts of home out of our heads, time to prepare for the future.

After a week, one of the junior lieutenants said, “Good, you're down to twenty-eight seconds.” We were dressed, our beds were made, we were lined up. On his order we ran to the parade ground, joined the other divisions, saluted the Commander, bowed toward the east, the rising sun, Tokyo, and the residence of the Emperor, and went through the morning calisthenics regime. Then back to the barracks for breakfast, which we ate very quickly. No one had to tell us that was part of our training for combat.

Classes
began at eight. Four fifty-minute sessions in the morning: maritime navigation, aerodynamics, astronomy, and Morse code. At the end of the first week, we were thrilled when the aeronautics instructor took us to a hanger to study various aircraft and their engines up close. We were outdoors every afternoon, our studies practical and very intense: gunnery, sailing, rowing, and hands-on navigation. There were also lots of organized sports and many raucous, hard-fought baseball games, or
yakyu
as we had learned to call it, the foreign term
besuboru
banished along with so many of the other phrases of everyday life before the war. After dinner at six, we had two more classes, finishing up at nine.

This was our routine six days a week. Even though we had Sundays free, we weren't allowed off the base. We still had no uniforms, and Naval cadets could not be seen in public in work suits. Finally, after three Sundays had passed, we got our uniforms and our government-issued daggers. Oh, we looked smart! The insignia on both sides of the front collar of the navy blue uniform had a golden stripe, indicating our status as officers. The daggers had gold-trimmed hafts and sheaths, but the blades were so dull that they couldn't even peel apples. We didn't care; they looked impressive, and we were sure we did too.

The
next Sunday we were finally allowed out. We walked the three kilo­meters to the station. I joined a group taking a train north to Tsu, the opposite direction from Matsuzaka, which I had seen with Father. Our principal goal was food. The Navy fed us well, but we were yearning for a change from the monotony of the mess hall. We found a restaurant, and I ate two huge helpings of noodles for lunch. Afterwards we strolled down the main street window shopping and turned into some of the side streets, trying to restore our fading memories of civilian life. Children pointed and said, “Look, Navy officers!” A group of boys gathered around us admiring our daggers.

We were due back at the NAS at six. On our way back to Tsu Station, we passed a photographer's studio. On a whim, we went in to have our pictures taken. I still have the group photo, as well as a single shot of just me in my uniform, looking stern, proud, and unbearably young. I suspect that some of the other photos taken that day sat for many years on family altar shelves. I wonder what became of them when the heartbroken mothers finally died themselves. Old faded sepia, lives now completely unremembered.…

At
the end of November, Mie NAS held a “Family Day” and allowed visitors on the base for four hours. I was surprised to find Father in the crowd at the gate. His tired face lit up when he saw me. I led him to the grassy area that surrounded the parade ground. We sat and talked and talked. Mother was about to be released from her duties at Zentsuji. The neighbors were all well. Life in Matsuyama sounded fine, but very, very far away. At noontime, Father began unpacking the knapsack he had brought with him. Four wooden boxes wrapped neatly in newspaper emerged. He opened the first two, which were full of rice, way too much for the two of us. The third had home-cooked fish and vegetables. He lifted the last box and slowly removed the lid—fried chicken. My ­favorite! With a smile he said he had cooked it late Saturday afternoon before he took the overnight ferry and then the train to get to Mie just in time to meet me. Just as I was admiring the chicken, my friend Kobayashi walked by. No one from his family had made it all the way from Tokyo. I called him over, and he joined Father and me in our feast. With the three of us, none of the food went to waste. Kobayashi heard the story of the fried chicken as he had his first taste of this treat. He ate with his fingers as we told him he must to really enjoy it, then licked his fingers and joked about what a well-traveled meal he was enjoying.

After our lunch, Kobayashi and I walked Father to the station. As the train pulled away, I thought, with pleasure, that I
had
seen Father again. I doubted I would be lucky enough to have another chance. Kobayashi walked next to me back to the base in silence.

Routine
resumed. Kobayashi still joked about the fried chicken, asked about my parents, and told me about his mother and sister, but I knew that for him, just as for me, civilian life was becoming harder and harder to remember. Matsuyama was fading, fading and I grew more certain with each passing week that I had seen my last Seto Inland Sea sunset.

Our briefings were giving us a better idea of military operations. Listening to them, we began to understand how dire things must really be at the front, and realized how the bad news was cloaked in special euphemisms. For example, troop “transfer” meant defeat and retreat. We all knew in our bones that Japan's dominance of Asia was drawing to an end, and that the fate that awaited us, the fate of a glorious battle death that many of us had dreamed and hoped for, would, in fact, be nothing but a waste. But what still came out of our mouths was, “Wait till we get there. We'll take care of it!” It was just that our hearts flopped about as we said it.

At the end of January, Division Commander Lieutenant Yamamoto assembled us in the hallway of our barracks. After a little more than four months, our basic training was coming to an end; he had orders for each of us. Mine read “Flight training at Izumi Naval Air Corps.” I had no idea where Izumi was, but I didn't care. I was to be trained as a pilot.

Izumi, 1944

We arrived late,
after marching, one hundred strong, from the train station. Lieutenant Senior Grade Takeuchi appeared as we ate a special dinner in the barracks. He was tall, lanky, and didn't seem tough, but I believed him when he said, “When I'm finished training you, no one will be able to tell the difference between you reserve cadets and regular Navy.” He announced that formal orientation would begin first thing in the morning. There was only enough time for a quick bath before lights out.

And now that we were assembled in the sunshine, the Lieutenant began by explaining where we were. “You've probably noticed how warm it is for early February,” he said, and went on to explain that Izumi ­Naval Air Corps was not only one of the newest in the nation but also the southern-most base in Kyushu. “The prevailing winds,” he told us, “are from the north, so the runway was built on a north-south axis.” I could hear planes landing and taking off as he spoke.
Finally, I'm on an airbase.

“As you may know, Kagoshima Prefecture is famous for its beautiful women, rugged mountains, volcanoes both dormant and active, outlandishly oversized radishes, and the good nature of its people. The locals are fond of us, have been generous to our young flight cadets like you, and especially kind to the
yokaren
. And there's another thing the people of Izumi are fond of: cranes.”

I thought, what craziness is this,
cranes?
But Lieutenant Takeuchi went on to explain, “Thousands of cranes migrate annually from Siberia's Lake Baikal and the Amur River regions, via China and Korea. They nest in this area from October to February. Most of them are
kurozuru,
common cranes, or
manazuru,
white-naped cranes, but there are also many other species. All of them are treasured by the local people, who are quite proud they come here every year. There are still almost a thousand of them here now. They are likely to be gone by the end of the month, but be careful when you're flying. We don't want to harm these exquisite creatures, these symbols of our country.”

And then his voice changed and his whole demeanor shifted. He didn't seem to be focused on us anymore or even aware of what he was saying.
“Yu no hara ni / naku ashitazu wa / a ga gotoku / imo ni koure ya / toki wakazu naku. Near these hot springs / cranes are crying in a field / and I wonder if like myself / they long for love / and weep unmindful of time.”

He changed again and was back with us. “Time,” he said. “Cadets, time is passing and is calling you to come along with it. We start flight training tomorrow. Be ready.” His official demeanor couldn't hide his sincerity, his passion, or his kind nature; he reminded me of Yamamura-sensei.

We spent the afternoon learning our way around the base. After a good meal that evening, we were sorting ourselves and our belongings in the barracks, before getting ready for bed, when talk turned from the promised thrill of learning to fly to Lieutenant Takeuchi's odd speech.

“What,”
said Saito, a country boy from Yamaguchi, “was that talk about the cranes? Did I really hear him say something about cranes crying and then something about crying himself for love? I couldn't understand that old literary language. What the heck is going on with the Lieutenant?”

A number of others joined Saito in laughing, but as the laughter faded, a cadet I didn't know said, “Actually he was quoting the
Manyoshu,
you know,
The Thousand Leaves.
Lieutenant Takeuchi is very well educated. He was a Kyodai student and a literature major. He was reciting a poem by Otomo Tabito that was written about thirteen hundred years ago. After Otomo had served at court for many years, the Emperor sent him here to Kyushu as Governor General. Maybe the Lieutenant wanted to illustrate how, like Otomo, all of us from all parts of the country can learn to appreciate the cranes as the Izumi locals do.”

“You're way over my head, Iwanami,” said Saito. “They really stuffed your head full of weird stuff at Todai.”

Iwanami laughed good-naturedly with Saito and his buddies and then said, “Well, here's some more for you from the
Manyoshu.
This one was written about a century later by Monobe Akimochi, who served the Emperor as a border guard:
Kashikoki ya / mikoto kagafuri / asu yuri ya / kae ga muta nemu / imu nashi no shite. We have received / our Imperial Orders / and from tomorrow / we will sleep among the reeds / while our wives remain behind.
As the Lieutenant said, we have our orders. From tomorrow we start learning to fly. And once we know how to fly, I'm sure there will be new orders.”

That was the end of the laughter. We finished stowing our gear in silence. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought I was too young to even have a wife. As I lay in my bunk, I thought of Yamamura-sensei and the birds in the fields at Ishii Village. My thoughts then drifted to Principal Tomihisa and my first day at Bancho, and then I found myself remembering a Raymond Weill class excursion. I was running, running through a wide field on the Marin headlands. A stiff wind carried the tang of the ocean to mix with the sharp smell of the mélange of grasses. I was careening downhill so fast I felt like I would take off and fly into the beautifully blue water before me, the vast and pitilessly calm Pacific.

I heard those around me falling into sleep, and one of the last things my memory presented me before I joined them was a
haiku
that Basho wrote when he visited the far north town of Takadachi five centuries after a famous battle there:
Natsukusa ya / tsuwamono-domo ga / yume no ato. Summer grasses / where soldiers / once dreamed.
Iwanami, the tall, bright scion of a prestigious family and an honors graduate of Japan's best university, perished on a mission less than a year later.

I can't remember now what I dreamed that night, and I find myself now wondering if poetry was what Iwanami held in his mind and his heart when he took off from the Philippines for his mission. In the little bit of reading that I've done to spur my memories for this memoir, I learned that eighty percent of all those who perished as Navy special attack aviators were university student officers, like myself and Iwanami. When student deferments ended about the time I arrived at Mie, the military was flooded with even more students. In a matter of days in December 1943, more than 5,000 students were drafted, with 500 of them from Todai alone.

The
next morning, after a hearty breakfast, we assembled at the eastern edge of the airfield at eight. We were suited up and eager to get started, having practiced putting on our flight uniforms the night before. We weren't wearing full winter uniforms, but we had been shown them—fur-lined pants and jackets wired with their own electrical heating systems—a triumph of both form and function. The supply sergeant had even shown us the electrically heated socks that we would use for cold weather missions.

With the usual Navy attention to detail, we had practiced and practiced. The brown pants first over our underwear. Large pockets above each knee. I was still wondering what flight equipment would go in those pockets—maybe maps? Beautiful brown leather boots, fleece lined. Next, the matching brown jacket, and over the jacket, the brown life vest, covered with pockets full of kapok. The life vests were worn at all times with the flight suit. The fur collar of the jacket flipped down over the vest. Our parachutes went on our backs, with the ties looped through the life vests. The life vests also had a clip for carrying oxygen masks. Last was the leather helmet. A beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Fur-lined ear flaps. Snaps to secure our goggles and oxygen masks. We were issued goggles, but not oxygen masks—not yet.

We stood in formation in the bright morning sun, the breeze on our faces. We know we looked good, but were nervous because we were about to begin learning what we needed to make the image a reality. To become pilots.

Lieutenant Takeuchi split us into groups of ten. We were told to sit on the grass, cross-legged, and listen. One non-com instructor was assigned to each group. He went over the gears and the instruments. Again and again. I forced myself to concentrate. We had learned all of this at Mie. Finally, two by two, the instructor took us out on the tarmac to a plane. He pointed to each of the gears, each instrument, and each gauge. The bi-wing planes, Model 93 Intermediate Trainers, had cloth-covered wooden frames. On the tarmac, they sat back on their tail wheels at steep angles, perched high over their landing gears. Their big engines were in front of two open cockpits, one behind the other. The non-com explained that the trainee would sit in the front, with the instructor in the rear. He pointed out the voice tube and how the throttles, the control sticks, and the steering sticks in the two cockpits were linked together, to allow the instructors to correct the mistakes of the trainees.

“You
can't see hardly anything, can you?” came the voice through the tube.

“No, Sir.”

“Crank the seat forward.” I struggled with gravity, pulling uphill, and only managed to shift it a bit.

“But be careful not to go too far. Your feet still have to be able to push the steering stick the full length, left and right. That's probably better, isn't it?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I know you still can't see much over the engine cowling. That's because our nose is up and our tail is down. Let's get going and see if we can change that.”

The ground crew finished cranking the propellers and shouted “Inertia all right.” That was the cue for the pilot to yell, “Switch on,” as he turned the ignition key. The pilot.
That's me!

The engine was running. We were ready to go.

“Taxi?” I asked.

“Taxi,” came the answer.

“Chocks away,” I shouted to the ground crew. We were off down the runway.

“Streamer,” I heard through the tube. The instructor was reminding me to check the wind. The red-and-white windsock indicated north wind. We were aimed toward the south end of the runway. No, not we. My hands were clutching the rims of the cockpit, where they were supposed to be for the first flight. I was forbidden to touch anything. My job was simply to observe everything happening in the cockpit.

As we taxied down the runway, panic seized me. I wondered if the instructor was incompetent, or insane. He swung the plane to the left and then to the right. What was he doing? How would we ever get off the ground?
Calm down and think, calm down and think. He's swinging the plane so we can see where we're going, since we still can't see over the engine.
We swooshed our way to the south end of the runway and slowly turned north to face the wind. “Check the runway,” he ordered.

The flagman a few hundred yards in front of us put away his red flag and held up a white one. When he signaled by swinging it down, I yelled, “Takeoff!”

I watched the throttle move slowly, slowly, and then a little faster until it was fully forward. The tail rose, the plane leveled out. Now I could see everything. And we were in the air. I was flying.
Flying!

The control stick moved back a bit, and we nosed up, at about a thirty-degree angle. The throttle also moved back. From takeoff to climbing speed, I told myself. When we had gone about 1,000 meters north, the control stick and the steering stick showed that we were going to turn right. The instructor turned us ninety degrees, due east. By then we had reached the takeoff and landing practice altitude of 300 meters. After we traveled 500 meters east, we again turned ninety degrees to the right, and headed south, parallel to the runway. I was reciting these details to myself, knowing I would have to be able to report and describe them accurately, but I was besotted by the view, by the scenery.

The Izumi Plain lay below us, bisected by the airfield, which was now to the west. Several flocks of cranes were scattered about below, feeding in the fields. We were a little closer to mountains to the east, and I could see Mt. Shibi, the tallest in the range. The ocean bays of the Yatsushiro Sea lay to the west. How beautiful it all was. Islands scattered in the sea. I thought of the innumerable islands of the Inland Sea and my ferry trips to and from Matsuyama. And remembered standing at the top of the Castle grounds with Michiko, gazing out at the floating islands of Seto.

Another ninety-degree turn, a slight throttle down. The instructor began a gentle descent. As the runway came clearly into view, we made another right turn to face it squarely. The throttle moved further back. As we neared the ground, the instructor called out, “Thirty meters, twenty-five meters, twenty meters, fifteen meters.…” At five meters, he pulled the throttle and the control stick all the way back for a perfect three-point landing. I knew I would have to learn a lot to match this perfection and meet the Navy's standards. And I knew that I'd have to learn more about the wind—about its velocity and direction—in order to be able to be a good pilot.