Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (16 page)

Late typhoon season torrential rain moved in early the next morning and fell virtually non-stop for the next seventy-two hours, completely shutting down all flight operations at Bacolod. While the precipitation certainly did not help with anyone’s boredom issues, it was not entirely unwelcome. If the Japanese could not fly, it meant the Americans could not, either. Work on Yoshitake’s engine could continue apace.

*****

An orderly came around
to the junior officers’ rooms after mess on the evening of the eleventh. Orders had just come in from Bacolod: more American convoys were expected to be headed for Ormoc in the morning, and a tokkō mission would be thrown together and sent up, weather allowing, the moment anything was sighted. Yoshitake, Adachi and Itoi from Sekichō Unit and two
Ki
-43 Hayabusa
[67]
fighter pilots, one each from Hakkō and Enshin units, respectively, were to report to Bacolod Flight Ops at 0600 as flight line standby pilots. A truck would be waiting in front of the billets at 0530 to take them to the airfield.

The Sekichō Unit pilots spent the rest of the evening sharing a little saké before turning in around midnight. The rice wine did not help Yoshitake get much better than a m
iserable hour or two worth of restless sleep interspersed with visions of home, nocturnal visitations from dead men and anxious glances at the glowing dial of his aviator’s watch as the final hours of his life slipped away. Creaks throughout the night from the other pilots’ cots told him that he was not the only insomniac in the room.

*****

Yoshitake is groggy but tense on the shuttle truck to Bacolod this morning. The faces of the other passengers are drawn and tight in the blue-gray light, their eyes bloodshot. No words are exchanged on the way to the field.

The downpour of the past three days has tapered off to a light drizzle by the time the truck pulls up in front of the flight ops shack. Visibility is still lousy, but the horizon is going orange in the east and the dark blue ridges of Panay are emerging from the morning mist across the Guimaras Strait. The field is by no means socked in. When the sun comes up in another hour or so, it will no doubt burn the clouds away. After that, there is bound to be a mission.

Yoshitake is surprised to find that he feels relieved by this prospect. He is too heartbroken to fear death anymore. Most of his friends are dead, Japan has as good as lost the war, and he is sick and tired of being sick and tired about that. Death will be a release to be welcomed, not a mortal end to be dreaded. And if by dying like this he will be able to take down a few hundred of the enemies who have humiliated his country, then all the better. If he feels any fear or nerves right now, it is only a fear of failure, of letting down his comrades, or of having to return to base in shame again for some stupid reason or another, like engine problems or a fuel leak. That is just not an option this time. He’ll ditch in the sea and ride his plane down to a watery grave before going back to those lousy billets alone again.

An operations officer is waiting on the porch of the shack as the pilots hop off the shuttle truck. Recon planes have spotted another American convoy heading for Ormoc. Assuming a takeoff time of 0700, the convoy can be intercepted in the Camotes Sea after threading the Canigao Channel. A mission will be on as soon as the weather clears, and corrected headings for the mission will be provided at that time. The pilots are ordered to aim for large troop ships to maximize American casualties. Warships – trickier targets – are to be left for the navy planes to deal with.

There is a short send-off speech and a subdued saké toast in the drizzle with Lieutenant General Terada (which the army public affairs officers and Nichiei folks obviously do not consider enough of a photo op to show up for), after which the pilots file off to their standby area under a row of palm trees by the flight line. The planes have already been gassed up and loaded out. There is nothing to do now but wait for the order to go.

The pilots take advantage of the downtime to be alone with their thoughts. The drizzle sizzles through the palm fronds. Bugs sing in the trees and grass. Yoshitake is struck by the feeling of being pinned like a collector’s butterfly to this surreal and frozen Zen moment while time races on tirelessly toward conclusions everywhere but here. He shrugs off a weird déjà vu sensation, writing it off to nerves and fatigue. His thoughts turn to loved ones.

The somber flight line reverie is snapped when the attack order comes down from the flight ops shack a little before seven: takeoff immediately, assume heading of 095 to avoid lingering cloud cover over Cebu, then take heading of 085 until the American convoy is spotted. Just follow the headings and you will not miss the target, they are told. The Camotes Sea is so full of American ships this morning you can walk across to Leyte without getting your feet wet.

The pilots jog the short distance to their planes. Ground crews already have the engines warmed up and running. Yoshitake is amazed by the serendipity that the officer in charge of the flight line is Lieutenant Masuda, an old squadmate from academy days. There is a handshake and a brief conversational exchange over the engine noise, but neither schedule nor circumstances allow for any more than that. The men exchange a salute and shoulder slaps before Yoshitake climbs into the cockpit of his plane and guns the engine. Black smoke belches from the exhaust pipes.

Masuda jumps up on the wing of Yoshitake’s plane and pops his head in the cockpit.

“Everything okay? You sure you can take this up today?”

“Okay. Ready to go,” Yoshitake answers, after a barely perceptible delay. He is lying. The engine is low on rpms and giving only about 80% power. There is a lot of bomb under the plane and not nearly enough runway or engine power to get it up into the air with, but he is not about to punk out behind a bad engine again. There have been enough sendoff speeches and forced smiles for the benefit of farewell party guests. Today is the day, and that’s that.

Masuda understands without having to be told anything more, gives his old roommate a final slap on the shoulder, and hops off the plane to pull the chocks away.

Itoi, as the ranking pilot here, is in the lead of the planes taxiing for the runway. He goes into max revs and his
Ki-
51 seems to take forever to get off the ground. He just clears the trees at the end of the runway as Yoshitake, with a prayer on his lips, pulls a red knob on the instrument panel to put the engine into emergency overboost.

The engine wheezes and coughs. The plane begins to roll over the bumpy, muddy ground, but not nearly quickly enough. A hundred meters of runway goes by. Two hundred. The airspeed needle creeps across the indicator dial while the trees at the far end of the field get big way too quickly for comfort.

There is now more foliage than sky in the windscreen glass. Speed is still too low, but it’s now or never. Yoshitake drops a few degrees of flap and swallows hard as he begins to ease the control stick back, bracing for a stall-out or, more likely, an impact with the trees. The plane bounds once. Twice. Once more and it is aloft, yawing to the right with overboosted engine torque.

Trees!

There is a loud
thwack
as the
Ki-
51 takes about half of the top of a palm tree off. The plane shudders under the impact, yawing even more and on the verge of stall-out, but somehow it stays up. The engine is none too happy about any of this, and is vociferous in its protest, but it is doing its job.

The flight forms up over the field and gets some altitude before assuming the heading for the first leg. Still only a few minutes out, Yoshitake’s wheezing plane is streaming a thin band of smoke and already falling way behind the formation. Itoi and the others are pulling away. Their planes are rapidly shrinking into black dots in the windscreen.

There is no use getting too worked up about falling behind. Although in an unexpected way it helps keep his mind occupied. The dominant emotions of the moment are impatience and determination.

Twenty minutes out, the formation is skirting a cloud bank over Cebu at about five thousand meters and turning into their attack heading. It is still somewhat overcast here, but the sky in the direction of the target area is sunny. Yoshitake, now at least two or three kilometers back from the formation, can still make out the other planes, but just barely. Black blossoms of smoke soon darken the horizon to the east. The Americans are putting up anti-aircraft barrages. From the looks of it, there must be hundreds of ships out there. Yoshitake feels his pulse quicken.

Just fly for the smoke puffs. That’s where the ships are. They’ll lead you right in.

He zones everything else out and focuses on the smoke. His entire being is pulled forward toward the battle as the plane clears the coast of Cebu and heads out over a bright aquamarine sea shimmering in the overcast sunlight.

Every synapse in Yoshitake’s nervous system fires instantaneously as a huge, shiny blue-black bat with white stars on its wings suddenly looms up from out of nowhere directly in front of him, almost completely filling his field of vision.

The trigger button! Press the trigger button!

Yoshitake can hear the little voice echoing up from his cerebellum but his hands are glued to the stick. He can’t move a muscle.

The Hellcat levels off to the side and slightly in front of Yoshitake’s plane in a leisurely maneuver almost close enough to touch wingtips. The pilot – a big, red-faced man who looks uncomfortably cramped in his cockpit – fixes Yoshitake with an expression clearly readable as a mixture of disdain and pity before pulling straight up and away into a rocketing zoom climb. Yoshitake is just beginning to take it personally when fist-sized, fluorescent pink fireballs start streaming by either side of the canopy.

For the first time in the encounter, Yoshitake’s reflexes kick in on cue. He yanks the drop tank release lever to lose the bomb and the plane is suddenly as light as a biplane trainer. He puts some of the
Ki-
51’s fabled low-speed maneuvering to the test to jink his attacker off his tail and bring the fight down to the deck. By dropping his altitude to the wave tops, he has lost his vertical options and most valuable spatial dimension in terms of escape, but the faster bad guy, a second American fighter that Yoshitake can make out as another Hellcat, is put at a disadvantage as well. An experienced fighter pilot will give up a limb or two before willingly surrendering speed at low altitude in a combat situation. Therefore, if the American knows what he’s doing, dropping speed to pump lead into Yoshitake’s tail at will is the last thing he is going to want to do. His attacks will be limited to boom-and-zoom runs with a firing window of only a few seconds at a time before he has to pull up to avoid augering into the water. If Yoshitake can jink around enough during these short attack runs and avoid stalling out, maybe he can buy time to try to think of some way out of this mess.

The
Ki-
51 is scooting over wave tops and within sight of a tree-lined island when its American tormentor comes in for another run. Yoshitake braces for hits and a split-second later the cockpit is filled with shattered instrument panel glass, flying dust and debris and the acrid smell of smoke and aviation fuel. The engine sputters and dies. The
Ki-
51 is now a powerless glider losing speed fast.

Something in Yoshitake’s mind registers a black clearing in the palm trees past his starboard wingtip and he instinctively yanks the sluggish control stick to head for it. Spread out before him in splendor and glory is an asphalt airstrip cleanly splitting the jungle overgrowth in half. It is a heavenly choir moment, but way too early to join in the singing. He is rapidly running out of speed and altitude but still a good clip from the end of the runway.

He is too low to bail out, and ditching in a fixed-landing gear aircraft is not recommended if he wants to keep his spinal column intact. His only chance is to make it to the runway. The water is changing color – going tan and shallow – but the end of the runway is creeping over the top of the engine cowling. Pulling back on the stick to try to get some altitude will just cause a stall.

The wheels hit hard a few meters from the end of the runway, on sand already sloping down toward the water.

There is a huge boom and suddenly Yoshitake is watching himself floating in a wooden boat in an upside-down black void. The sensation is not entirely unpleasant, nor is the smell of aviation fuel that fills the air. He does not register any pain or fear other than a vague loneliness and a desire for some light. He pulls at his harness buckle to reach for a patch of blue sand hovering somewhere over his shoulder, and the world falls on his head.

*****

“Hitting my head like that snapped me out of it,” Mr. Yoshitake says. “When I came to, I realized that I was hanging upside down in my plane.”

I must have made a humorous expression of surprise here, because Mr. Yoshitake unexpectedly flashes big old man teeth in a high-wattage grin I realize is identical to the one on the face of a beaming young man in wartime photos I have just finished thumbing through.

“I started digging around an open space on one edge of the cockpit,” he writes in his wartime memoirs
Nagai Hibi
(“Long Days”). “I heard voices, and then I clearly remember people actually jumping back in horror for a second when my head popped out from under the plane and into view… About half of my scalp from just below the hairline had been lifted up and off my head.”