Burial in the Clouds (12 page)

August 26

Insects sing constantly, and it's quite cool, morning and evening. The tadpoles that once swarmed in the gutters at the barracks vanished before I noticed. My heart sinks deep, deep as it ever has. I received a severe reprimand from the division officer.

The fledgling sparrows, now barely able to fly, leap in flurries from the gutters to the eaves of the panoptic auditorium. The lecture on the science of war fades from view as I watch them, vacantly. Timidly the siblings launch desperately into flight. Nevertheless, they fly in order to live.

We are allowed considerable freedom now during solo flights, so I flew over Minamata the other day, where I could easily make out the Fukais' place. The lines of the earthen wall enclosing it to the southwest looked lovely from the air. I dove twice in salutation. Neither Fukiko nor anybody else came out, though I flew so close to the ground that the roar of the plane shook the pine tree in the garden. It was a disappointment. In a field, children threw up their arms at me. I replied with a waggle of the wings and headed back. I wasn't upbraided for any of this, as they didn't find out about it, but today I flew out to sea and spotted a fleet of ships steaming along some twelve nautical miles south-southwest of Ushibuka, a town on the main island of Amakusa. The fleet consisted of an enormous battleship, escorted by two destroyers and two heavy cruisers. The ships dominated the seascape, leaving behind them five snowy wakes as they cruised over rough blue waters ruffled with whitecaps. Stirred by a tender pride, I set a course for the battleship, and, at an altitude 700 meters, whizzed by. No sooner had I passed over the ship, however, than her antiaircraft machine guns and high-angle canon opened up on me simultaneously, emitting sharp flashes of light. I was stunned and wheeled about in haste. At first I thought they mistook me for an enemy aircraft, but then I realized that they had in fact been firing blanks. I couldn't figure out why they opened fire, though, and could only conclude that I had inadvertently served as a target for antiaircraft fire training. As soon as I landed at Izumi, I was called in by the division officer.

“Where in the hell did you fly!?” he thundered, glaring at me. The battleship had been none other than the
Musashi,
as it happened, and he had already received a dispatch from its LC: “At 1025 a training aircraft from your base overflew this ship without permission, turned, and headed back. I request that you attend to the matter.” I was fairly boiled in oil. I felt pathetic. This is precisely why you should never doze off during lectures on navy rules and regulations. I hadn't known we are forbidden to pass over a fleet of ships without permission.

September 1

We conducted a mutual flight in formation.

I flew plane #2. Only the lead plane was piloted by an instructor. At one point I recklessly pulled in so close to him that my wing might easily have touched his. I held the position for several minutes. If we crash, I thought, then so be it. The lead plane would surely have gone down had we collided, as its tail assembly would have been damaged. We, however, would have likely survived, if it were just a matter of our plowing the propeller into the other plane. The crew in the lead plane was evidently anxious, as they glanced back at us constantly. But I didn't expect a scolding, because our instructions had been to “follow with a vengeance.” Cowardly Sakai, in plane #3, fell off to the rear left, now and then, marring the formation. Perceiving this, the instructor lowered his altitude and banked left at a steep angle. As the umbrella formation suddenly inclined, Sakai, had he remained where he was, would have had no choice but to plunge into the sea. So he scrambled to catch up. It's a brutal, unforgiving tactic.

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

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

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

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

September 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 17, Memorial Day for the
Battle of the Yellow Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 20

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