Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (31 page)

As in the air forces of other countries, the great fighters-versus-bombers controversy over which branch had tactical primacy in the skies had yet to be resolved in Japanese army aviation. And although the almost exclusively defensive posture of Japanese air power in the last eighteen months of the war would render the argument moot and relegate most of the nation’s multi-engined medium and heavy bombers to transport duties, the bomber branch was nevertheless still considered the best career path for a young professional with his eyes on general’s stars someday.

Fukagawa weighed his own choice carefully, but in the end, his not often indulged romantic side got the better of him, and he opted for fighters. After his graduation on March 20, he received a three-day pass and travel orders for the Army Fighter School at Akeno, Mie Prefecture, Kita Ise Annex Air Base, where he would undergo the roughly half-year Fighter Basic Course
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. Like most other cadets who chose this path, he had done so because he thought a fighter plane would afford him the best chance to strike a blow against the enemy that was threatening his country. Some fourteen months later, IGHQ would concur with Fukagawa’s opinion, but the methodology they would suggest was something this young pilot could never have imagined in the spring of 1944.

*****

Fighter Basic began with a few weeks of diagnostic shakedown flights on the Akatonbo as the first step in evaluating individual trainee abilities. Remedial training was assigned as needed, and the students moved up to stick time on actual combat aircraft when they were deemed up to the task by the Akeno cadre. Fukagawa’s first experience flying a fighter plane was at the controls of a Nakajima
Ki
-27, an all-metal, late Thirties monoplane design that had been effective against the Chinese and Soviets in Manchuria seven years earlier but was suitable only for training – and barely, at that – by 1944.
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But to Fukagawa and his classmates, the type’s obsolescence did not diminish in the least their thrill and pride in being able to solo in a fighter, and it was not long before most of the trainees – Fukagawa included – were walking around Kita Ise in expensive aviator sunglasses with all the swagger and aplomb of veteran aces.

Personal kit was a matter of pride for the cadets. Unlike enlisted men, whose gear was almost entirely Government Issue, officers – and officers-to-be – were responsible for buying their own uniforms, and there were subtle individual differences in taste and quality for these items. In Fukagawa’s case, his proud father had splurged on him during his last home leave before IMA graduation during New Years ’43-’44, buying him a pair of high riding boots (which only comm
issioned officers could wear), a tailor-made dress uniform and, as the piece de resistance, an officer’s katana handcrafted by one of the most famous swordsmiths in Kyūshū. Fukagawa was too afraid to ask how much the sword had cost, and the blade soon became the envy of his classmates.

When Fukagawa flew down to Chita Peninsula in southern Aichi Prefecture for two weeks of live-fire gunnery range training at the end of June, he brought along the new dress uniform and sword he would need for his July 1 commissioning ceremony and formal commemorative photograph. Intensive training continued throughout the summer, but there was considerable free time between flights and technical seminars, and as lieutenants, the trainees were free to do as they pleased after
instruction every day. All of this freedom of movement was a bit of a culture shock for the IMA graduates, and this was especially true for Yōnen Gakkō products like Fukagawa, who had only recently emerged into the daylight of reality and hormones after a total of six years in the monastic He-man Woman-haters Club of army cadet life. Perhaps wishing to insure that this newfound freedom did not go to the trainees’ heads, the Akeno administrators were careful to make sure there were plenty of wholesome, stress-releasing outlets for their charges’ excess energies. Group trips to the seaside – usually nearby Yokkaichi Beach in Aichi Prefecture – were one form of activity organized for this purpose. Other amenities included excellent chow, a well-stocked PX and other concessions on the base.

Officers’ privileges meant that the lieutenants – if not on duty – were able to venture off post each weekend from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening. One such excursion that is particularly fresh in Fukagawa-san’s memory was a late summer day trip he made with several classmates to Kameyama, Mie Prefecture, a nearby town famous for its pleasant weather and beautiful scenery. Stepping off the wood-burning bus at their destination, the lieutenants were intrigued to see two beautiful and well-dressed young women standing ankle-deep in a small river running past the bus stop. Judging from their clothing and light complexions, they appeared to be from the city – Fukagawa guessed Nagoya. In any case it was clearly evident that they were not local farm girls, and were thus eligible candidates, under army social conventions, for some harmless flirtation with dashing young officers. Excitedly expecting some rare female conversation and at least a nice leg show for their troubles, Fukagawa and his buddies walked over to investigate and make their move, then were stunned into silence to see that rather than bathing their tootsies in the water, the girls were washing yams they had just pulled out of a field somewhere and were eating them raw, on the spot. As for the obviously famished girls, they were either too busy gnawing away at their rude morsels to realize that they were being watched, or they were merely ignoring their audience out of shame for their own less-than-elegant situation. Whatever the case, the young officers walked away without saying a word, although the encounter was the subject of concerned conversation on the bus back to Kita Ise that night.

“That was a real eye-opener. We didn’t realize things on the outside had gotten that bad,” Fukagawa-san remembers. “We had always gotten plenty of food at the academy and at Akeno, and the farmers around the base seemed to have enough for themselves, but we were completely clueless about the food shortages that were beginning to hit the cities by then. We all said to each other ‘We can’t let things get any worse than this’.

B
y September 1944, the Akeno Fighter School administrators – under pressure from higher-ups to deliver new pilots to the front as soon as possible – were beginning to screen talented trainees for accelerated graduation and immediate posting to the elite 200
th
Fighter Regiment in the Philippines, where combat was expected to be imminent. Fukagawa and his classmates were by then learning to fly the army’s mainstay Nakajima
Ki
-43 Hayabusa fighter and were well aware of the evaluation process underway. Everyone knew that the number of students selected would be small, and competition was as fierce as spirits were high. The pilots’ motivation was also stoked by knowledge that a posting to the 200
th
FR would mean stick time on the
Ki
-84 Hayate, the hot new next-generation Nakajima design. All of the pilots dreamed about flying the machine, so there were a lot of long faces at Kita Ise when the very short list of
senbatsu
(“final cut roster”) pilots to be sent into combat ahead of schedule was posted on the Flight Ops bulletin board.

“I was crushed when orders didn’t come through for me,” Fukagawa-san recalls. “And extremely envious of the boys who got picked. I would have given anything to have gotten to go with them, and still regret to this day that I didn’t.”

Sentimental regrets aside, Fukagawa-san, after a long career in business management and personnel administration, is a sharp judge of character and thus able to be objective about his disappointment. Regarding his elite
senbatsu
classmates, he remembers them as a breed apart in terms of flying ability, and also distinctly separated into two general personality types. One group – probably the numerically dominant of the two – were of the rather standoffish, athletically talented, narrow-eyed killer Chuck Yeager type most people have in mind when they conjure up imagery of hotshot fighter jocks. The other group, interestingly enough, were of what might be called a “performing artist” temperament – good-natured, extreme extroverts who were clearly in their element in the air and eager to show off their breathtaking flying talents at any and all opportunities.     

Fukagawa-san’s close friend “Shin-chan” Ishiyama was of the latter type, but his natural talents at the stick were not enough to keep him alive for long once the bullets started flying in the Philippines. Out of nineteen pilots in the senbatsu group, seventeen others were to share Shin-chan’s fate before the Leyte campaign was finished.

“Experience is as important for a fighter pilot as natural ability,” Fukagawa-san reasons, “because it makes you cagey. If you go into combat with just ability alone, like the situation the
senbatsu
pilots were thrown into, you are made quick work of by experienced enemy pilots. And the Americans the 200
th
FR faced in the Philippines were the best in the world. They knew all the tricks.” 

After the
senbatsu
send-off at the end of September, the remaining trainees spent their last month of Fighter Basic on TDY at Miyakonojo Airbase in southeastern Kyūshū, where there would be a final round of evaluations by the Akeno cadre. The training itself concentrated on technical points such as formation flying and combat tactics, and when it was over, the trainees were assigned wherever and however the army felt their individual talents could best be applied. For most of the 338 IMA ’44 pilot trainees, this meant a front line unit assignment. Nearly half of them would die by war’s end.
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In Fukagawa’s case, however, his evident leadership abilities had been recognized early on in the program and were evidently considered more important than the contribution his piloting skills could make to the war effort. Instead of being sent to front line units with other classmates, he and a select group of similarly evaluated graduates were given slots for enrollment in the next three-month Flight Leader School cycle at Akeno, which would start at the beginning of December. Normally, postings to this program were reserved for captains with several year of line – and preferably combat – experience, but such personnel were in woefully short supply in IJA aviation by the fall of ’44. Combat losses at the captain and major levels meant that in coming months, green second lieutenants would be leading flights and even squadrons into battle. The army had no other choice but to let lambs lead other lambs to the slaughter.

Given this crisis in junior leadership, the least the army could do was give the Akeno pilots as much stick time as possible before sending them into the fray. During the month long lull before the beginning of Flight Leader School, Fukagawa and his classmates were put to work as ferry pilots while they waited for their training cycle to begin. This duty consisted of flying fighters that had passed final army evaluation at Akeno to front line units around the country and in forward areas like Taiwan and the Philippines. From a training perspective, the flights had the side benefits of providing the pilots with valuable experience in long-range/over-water navigation and formation flying.

By late November, Fukagawa had several successful domestic overland shuttle hops under his belt, and was deemed rea
dy to participate in an over-water mission to ferry a large formation of Hayabusas to the Philippines. The flight plan called for rest and refueling stopovers at Miyakonojo, Yontan Airbase at Okinawa and Taichū, Taiwan before reaching the final destination at Clark Airfield complex. The flight itself was tiring but uneventful until the planes were taxiing to begin the hop for the last leg from Taiwan to Clark. Fukagawa’s engine started spewing oil, and was soon putting out so much smoke that it completely obliterated all forward and lateral vision. Correctly judging that the best course of action was to get his stricken plane out of the way as quickly as possible, Fukagawa nonetheless failed to notice the proximity of another aircraft to his port wingtip. When he swung his Hayabusa around to pull it off the runway, he put his port wingtip directly into the spinning prop of another aircraft. Both planes were total write-offs.

To the pilots’ surprise and immeasurable relief, no one got particularly angry with them for pranging their kites. After a mild dressing-down and some resigned head-shaking, they were told to find their own transport back to Akeno and sent on their way. They ended up hopping a
Ki-
67 heavy bomber back to Japan a few days later, laden down with souvenirs of Taiwan bananas and brown sugar rock candy that were much appreciated by their comrades at Akeno.

Although Fukagawa-san still blushes a bit whenever he recalls the accident, he has also taken some comfort over the years in thinking that the mishap may have saved the lives of two pilots waiting to make attack sorties in the Philippines. Moreover, Fukagawa’s life was probably saved as well – the Leyte campaign was raging unabated at the time, and many of the other pilots on the ferry flight to Clark were ordered to stay on with fighter units in-theater as replacements, only to die in combat. Others were killed when their transport plane back to Japan was jumped by Hellcats and sent into the South China Sea.

In the final days of November 1944, Akeno was abuzz with the latest news and rumors from the Philippine front. Not surprisingly, most of the scuttlebutt was troubling, and although the press was trumpeting Leyte as a stunning Japanese victory,
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Fukagawa and his classmates were given fairly accurate accounts of the swan song of Japan’s surface fleet in the October 25-26 battles. The news was enough to convince all but the most unhinged optimists that any chance of winning the war was gone, and that “winning the peace” – i.e., fighting the Americans to an honorable stalemate – was the best that could now be hoped for.