Burial in the Clouds (13 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 27

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

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

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

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

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

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

We visited the Fukais the day before yesterday, to bid our farewell. They cooked red rice while awaiting our arrival. Even the carp in the pond wished us good luck on our departure, by becoming miso soup. I shall never forget the kindness of this family. We agreed that each of us would do one parlor trick. Sakai performed a card trick. Fujikura sang a silly song titled “Draw the Lamp and Catch the Lice,” augmenting it with gestures. I did a vocal mimicry of a Bunraku puppet show called “East and West, East and West.” Then all three of us sang “The Song of Trainee Pilots.” Fukiko rose and disappeared, tears welling up in her eyes. But tears for whom? Well, it won't do to wonder. I must part gracefully.

It is ten forty-five now. “Those who are leaving this air station fall in in five minutes,” comes the announcement from the loudspeaker. the rest of the students assemble for the send-off.” So I take up my cap and go to see off the men bound for Matsushima.

Letter from Fujikura
Usa Naval Air Station, Oita Prefecture
October5, Showa 19 (1944)
Yoshihiko Kashima
Provisional Torpedo Boat Training Camp,
Kawatana-machi, Nagasaki Prefecture

We moved here at the end of September. The station sits in the middle of a field near Usa Hachiman-gu Shrine, about an hour and a half train ride from Beppu. A river, which bears the odd name of Yakkan, runs nearby. So-called “military rules” and “moral orders” are stringently enforced. When we disembarked at Yanagiga-ura station, on the Nippo Main Line, three officers were there to meet us, oak bludgeons in their hands. “We're going to put you through the wringer. Prepare yourselves.” That was their greeting. For a moment I thought we were here to join a gang. Since then, all slowpokes, and all who forget their salute, get beaten, one and all, every morning. It would appear that hits to the jaw fall under the rubric of “routine maintenance,” and I get my maintenance at least three times a day. At night, I can hear, quite distinctly, the moans of the young trainees as those bullies put the screws to them. Do they actually believe they can arrest the fall of Japan with stunts like these?

Kashima, I know I haven't written you for a very long time. Still, I've been reading the cards you send to Yoshino and Sakai from time to time as they come in, and when was it that I noticed, since parting with you at Otake, that you had begun to deliver yourself of such brave sentiments so often in your letters?

“Let your
Manyoshu
pay tribute to me,” you wrote. Now, did that really come from the bottom of your heart? I'm not being sarcastic, mind you. But I really would love to ask you how you could achieve such grace as that. The blunt fact of the matter is that I am immensely sad to see that even you have changed in this way.

Aren't these strange days? Politicians, military men, scholars, poets—all of them exhort us, ad
infinitum,
to eat potatoes and die with a smile. But not a word do they have about how we can survive to reconstruct Japan. Who on earth is giving any thought to the matter? I guess the
Manyoshu
wasn't quite the right subject to study, if we are aiming to face the world's political and economical developments with a level head, standing in the midst of these turbulent currents. I don't possess that order of confidence and ability. I simply object to this war because my instincts tell me to.

Before joining the navy at Otake, I sounded a number of people out for their opinions as to the outcome of this war. Only two predicted Japan would fail. One was a relative on my mother's side, a rear admiral back from the southern theater, and the other was a consumptive old upperclassman from my junior high school days who had been engaged in underground leftist activities. According to the rear admiral, an attempt to overthrow British and American hegemony in Asia, with Japan taking the lead, was inevitable, a historical necessity. But what did Japan do to accomplish that end? She misjudged the timing, indulged in all manner of self-righteous foolishness, and now it's indisputable: our defeat is a mathematical certainty. For his part, my junior high school buddy said his conviction that Japan would fall was rooted not in emotionalism and defeatism, but in scientific fact. And it was at that point that I became interested in both the navy and the Communist Party, odd though the combination may be. What these two men said is etched on my mind. Since joining the navy, however, I have grown weary of it. Nothing indicates to me now, in the present state of naval affairs, that the minority view can have any influence. Also, we were born a few years too late to take in any of the old leftist atmosphere in our campus life. Consequently we are anything but expert when it comes to Marxism. Had we been acquainted with the theory, even if we didn't accept it wholesale, I wonder whether or not we might have been able to adopt a more scientific perspective.