Burial in the Clouds (8 page)

About a month ago, a Mr. Gakushu Ohara from the Association for the Enhancement of Imperial National Prestige visited our base, and gave a fanatical talk, pure gibberish, for two and a half hours, earning the ridicule of everyone present. He was one of those inspired leaders of whom there is an epidemic these days, the same genre of men you often complained about. Yoshino and Sakai were both scornful. But when things reach this point, we can't content ourselves with sneering at Mr. Ohara alone, I think. Besides, fellows like this Mr. Something Ohara reap tidy profits making the rounds of the military training units and the schools, giving their “inspirational” speeches, and performing their “purifications.” And who knows, they may be perfect realists at heart, all the while laughing into their sleeves. But Sakai and Yoshino aren't of a calculating turn of mind, and that makes me more apprehensive about them.

Professor E.

I know I wasn't a very good student. I often put on airs, and now and then I launched into arguments against the theories of all you scholars out of conceit. Consequently, I was never a favorite with the professors. Many a time I wished I could, and thought I
must,
have an open, cheerful, supple mind, just like all the other students, but now I'm determined to stick to this cranky, arrogant disposition of mine. Only extraordinary crankiness can save you from being cajoled into the belief (and this, mind you, while leading the kind of life we lead here) that the war is indeed a great mission given to us by our country, and that our country will be saved by our martyrdom. Things will change someday. Our desperate feelings may not be understood forever, either by the older generation or the younger. Still, whenever I get the chance to see Yoshino and Sakai in private, I tell them, in the strongest terms possible, just how foolish it is to force themselves, and so rapidly, too, to change their way of thinking. Occasionally, after giving the matter some thought, they say, “You are right,” and we all agree in criticizing certain aspects of navy life and the general conduct of the war. But for the most part, they (Yoshino in particular) will not budge an inch, saying, “Still, at this point anyway, Japan must win the war. I take it to heart, as a Japanese citizen, that we must fight it all out, with the fate of our race at stake. It's a supreme duty. You can't quarrel with it. Our country will collapse if each of us starts to express his own particular view and turns his back.” Gazing into Yoshino's earnest face makes me falter somewhat. It is true, the war is “in progress,” however wrong it may be. And though, as I say, I oppose the war and don't want any longer to be a cog in its machinery, I can make no concrete answer if asked what it is I believe I should do. One possible course of action is simply to try to save my own life. Shrewd as I am, however, it would be extremely difficult for me, a navy pilot, alone to escape death. It's not that I'll be killed unless I finish off the enemy first. No, I'll be eliminated whether or not I kill the enemy. It's not that my friends will die unless I do. No,
everybody
must die, my friends, me, one and all. That such total war is our destiny I take for granted. Needless to say, I'm not prepared in the least.

I know I should explain to you why I ever volunteered to be a pilot, given the beliefs I hold. But I don't have the courage to commit my thoughts about that to paper, not, anyway, until I have come to terms with my feelings in some measure. Be that as it may, at least I can say that part of the reason was my more or less irresponsible and apathetic attitude. Whichever course I took, I thought, piloting or reconnaissance, I wouldn't have any control at all over my own life and death. To put it plainly, there was simply no guarantee whatsoever of my safe return, even if I went into reconnaissance.

Professor E.

I fear that you may be deeply disturbed on receiving this sloppily penciled letter. First of all, it must annoy you to read my illegible scrawl, and second, you may well feel that it is dangerous to have such a letter on hand. Please burn it when you are through. I don't really believe, though, that what I say is especially dangerous or immoral, while I
do
concede that my writing is culpably verbose. Anyway, if we must endure such inconveniences, and run such risks, simply to think, say, and record thoughts as innocent as these, I have to wonder: What good can come of the civilization that my generation produces?

Well, now that I have begun, I will go ahead and say it. Lately I am all but convinced that we will lose this war. Don't you agree? We are just a bunch of student reserves, still in training, but simply because we are now under the flag, and are quasi-officers, we regularly hear what appears to be confidential intelligence, of which you teachers are likely unaware. And judging from these scraps of information, it seems perfectly clear that, so far as materiel is concerned, the gap between Japan and America beggars belief. Japan lost most of the main force of her aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway Island. Ninety-nine percent of our ace pilots, who had displayed skills unparalleled in the world at the beginning of the war, were killed in the air battle over the Solomon Sea. Due to changes in the complexion of naval combat, we have already passed the stage at which the super-dreadnoughts
Yamato
and
Musashi
might have demonstrated their capabilities. On the other hand, I hear that America, flush with her technological superiority in ordnance and radar, is steadily completing new armaments of terrifying scale. What is more, our line of defense in the southeastern theater is rapidly losing ground. I find it ironic that the tide of war has turned in this way, given that the U.S. Navy is said to do its utmost to save its crews' lives, while the Japanese Imperial Navy still instructs its men that their entire duty is to die. Unless this war develops into some kind of “romantic” battle, in which a loyal subject emerges out of nowhere to lead our country to victory under his banner, it seems to me that Japan has no choice left but to carry its deteriorating military position forward to defeat. And I don't think the end will be long in coming. This is no “Ten Years' War” or “Hundred Years' War,” as they sometimes say. I suspect that the war will be over within three years or so. And what if we manage to live that long, I sometimes fancy? Then Sakai, Yoshino, and the three hundred thousand odd students conscripted in the emergency call-up shall all be awakened from this hypnosis of war. And we shall find ourselves living in a defeated nation, Japan. The idea is so painful, even to me, that I can't bear to imagine what the country will be like. But somehow we will make our way back to you, and to our old university in Kyoto. Well, I guess that's just a fantasy after all. It will not happen. It's too much, even for me, to assume that we will be alive three years down the road.

Professor E.

Ten days have passed since I started to write this clumsy letter during study sessions, avoiding the eyes of my instructors. We have been to the village of Obata at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba, about thirty kilometers distant, for three days of maneuvers, from the day before yesterday until today. We rose at 4:30 on the morning of the departure, shouldered our rain gear, clipped haversacks and canteens to our waists, took up our #38 rifles, and assembled in front of the drill platform in the darkness of dawn. (“#38” means
old,
by the way. This rifle hasn't been updated since the 38th year of the Meiji era, in 1905.) The chief instructor almost shouted when he addressed us. “You are outfitted exactly as were your comrades who died their warriors' deaths at Makin, at Tarawa, and in the Aleutian Islands. Brace yourselves. Tough it out with fire and spirit during these next three days of maneuvers.” By all appearances many among us
did
gird themselves up at this speech, burning with a
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
sort of intensity. And in point of fact, we all “toughed it out,” without a single man dropping. But even an affair like this seems funny to me. Why should we find it moving rather than depressing, and how can it give us good reason to get all fired up, simply to be outfitted exactly like our hapless “comrades” who were ill-equipped, and, consequently, annihilated by our enemy's overwhelming firepower? I just can't help feeling that everything is standing wrong side up somehow.

Have you visited the country around here, by the way? Paulownia and wisteria were flowering gracefully in the prosperous villages at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba. Milk vetches were also in bloom, and frogs croaked in the rice fields. This is the spot where the poems in volume fourteen of the
Manyoshu
are set. As I lay in ambush under a chestnut tree, I tore off a Japanese pepper leaf and sniffed it, thinking, for no special reason, of the poem that says,

Unlike the waters that thunder

Against the rocks of Mt. Tsukuba,

My heart never wavers.

On our way back, we practiced an intense running engagement. The rifle butt bit into my shoulder, my fatigues were thoroughly mired, and my face broke out in a salty sweat. Now I realize how aptly put the expression “My legs are like lead” really is. So I have no words to describe the euphoria I felt when, after returning to base, after finishing the laundry and cleaning duty, and after taking a bath, I received a parcel of sweets. But then I heard a fellow in my outfit say, while nibbling away at some confection, “It was tough, but it was good experience.” I wanted to turn on him and had to struggle to suppress the urge. Isn't it the luxury of those who look forward to a long life to say that hard times make for “good experience”? As for me, the hard times I have here are just hard times plain and simple, and I cannot by any means imagine they will bear good fruit in the future.

Professor E.

I'm writing the last part of this letter on the train. Today is May 25.
We are supposed to pass through Kyoto around five o'clock tomorrow morning. You will be sleeping peacefully in your Kita Shirakawa residence. At the moment, we are running halfway between Odawara and Atami, with the ocean on our left. I can see Kashima's Miura Peninsula looming low. A little while ago, I spotted a bunch of sorrel, a familiar face from the
Manyo
lectures, flowering along the railroad. The day after tomorrow we finally start our lives as real pilots in Izumi, down in southern Kyushu.

My heart is full, so I hope you will excuse me for writing out my scattered, incoherent thoughts at such length. As for the place where we may receive visitors, after many changes, they decided on Himeji Station, and the time appointed for it is tomorrow morning. My father should be there to see me. He is the kind of man who deeply reveres the Emperor and the Imperial Army and Navy, while he also respects you and Professor 0. It makes me a little anxious, but I think I will ask him to deliver this letter to you. If the instructors watch us so closely that I can't carry out my plan, I will burn it in the toilet on the train. If this letter does happen to reach you, please destroy it after reading it through, as I said earlier.

Together with a few other students in his outfit, Yoshino is playing an old child's game with a handkerchief. Sakai is in another car. I can't see him from where I sit.

Professor, now I must bid you goodbye until I can write again. With best wishes for your good health and happiness.

Izumi Naval Air Station

June 3 (Continued from Yoshino's diary)

Flying is becoming the be-all and end-all of our lives.

Each of us has already received an air log and a flight record. Outfitted with an oil-stained flying suit, aviation cap, half boots, a pair of goggles, and a life jacket, every last one of us is, to all appearances, an imposing “warbird” of the Imperial Navy.

The schedule is exacting. Reveille is at 0530, and we assemble within two minutes after that. Seconds count if you must fold your blanket neatly on your bunk, tie your shoelaces tightly, and line up, all in two minutes flat. We are constantly on the run. Once I saw a newsreel about young trainee pilots. Watching them dash like madmen from one task to another, I thought the scene simply had to have been staged. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are told that pilots must always keep a clear head. Should so much as a wisp of a cloud pass through a pilot's mind, he will inevitably lose control of his plane. They say pilots with fiancees back home have more accidents.

We live on a kind of tangent with death. We have to shout at the top of our lungs whenever we give account of ourselves, and if we let our guard down just a bit, we draw a storm of slaps before we cause an accident. The 13th Class of student reserves, now already commissioned, has stayed on as assistant division officers for the sea-plane units. They are a rough, bloodthirsty lot, and stick it to us the second they find us derelict. “Hold it right there, student of the 14th Class!” they will say, and over they come at a clip with a beating to complement the scolding. “Do you want to disgrace the Student Reserve Corps?!”