Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (33 page)

“I may have been the
taichō
, but Abe was the ‘mother’ of the unit,” Fukagawa says, remembering his subordinate and close friend. “Abe was less demanding of people and more familiar with human nature than I was. He cared for the other pilots’ mental and physical well being, always offering an ear for their problems or a kind word of encouragement when they were feeling down. His presence in the 197
th
was a perfect complement for my leadership style. He added to our unit cohesion immeasurably, and I learned a lot watching him that helped me later in life, in different leadership situations.”

The unit’s performance was also enhanced by the high quality of its three enlisted men – Corporals Shinji Band
ō, Kazuhiro Makiuchi and Tatsuo Yabuta. All were honor graduates of the army’s Shōnen Hikōhei pilot training program, which had been started during the early Thirties, when military aviation mania was sweeping the country in the wake of the Manchurian Incident. Similar in both function and popularity to the navy’s Yokaren system, competition for slots in the three-year program was as stiff as its fifteen-year mandatory post-graduation service commitment.

Schooled at several airbase campuses throughout the country,
Shōnen Hikōhei trainees entered as fifteen or sixteen-year-olds and graduated as highly proficient eighteen and nineteen-year-old corporal pilots. Some flight cadets with proven scholastic and leadership ability were given shots at IMA appointments, but most graduates were sent directly to line units and – in later stages of the war – straight into combat in either conventional or tokkō roles.

The 197
th
’s new corporals lived up to the excellent reputation of the Shōnen Hikōhei program and were, in Fukagawa-san’s words, “real hotshot pilots” who flew like angels. Unlike their commissioned squadmates – who often bounced their Hayates all over the field when coming in for landings – the corporals always touched down on three points at once when they came down. Often, the officers found themselves swallowing their pride and asking for pointers on flying techniques. But as far as Fukagawa was concerned, there was nothing untoward about this at all, and thus no need to worry about bruised egos. In his book, such personal concerns took distant backseats to effective training, and if anybody had any knowledge or experience that would improve unit performance, it did not matter what rank insignia the teacher wore on his collar. Military protocol was always respected, of course, and proper tone was maintained between the unit’s officers and enlisted men, but the camaraderie the squadmates felt for one another as pilots and their dedication both to the 197
th
and to its CO were what really made the unit special, in Fukagawa-san’s opinion.

In
57-ki Kōkūshi
, he describes the effect this kind of rapport had on the morale and performance of the unit:

I trained my men hard, but they never let me down. And when we did formation flying, we were tight. We would take off and form over the field to turn, climb and dive as one, wingtip to wingtip, communicating our thoughts just by the merest glances at each others’ goggled, helmeted faces
[169]
.

As the hard days of training continued, I knew that my men were ready for anything. But around this time, we began to hear rumors that the army was beginning to run short of
tokkō aircraft, and that there was a possibility of our unit having to be parceled out piecemeal for sorties. One of my pilots, Corporal Bandō, addressed me directly about this.

“
Taichō
,” he said. “If my plane can’t fly on the day of our mission, I want you to let me ride in the fuselage of your plane so you can take me along.”

I was touched by Bando’s purity of spirit, sincerity and bravery, especially as I knew that he was battling with the same fears of death that we all were. Knowing that one of these days I would have to order him and the other pilots in the unit on the mission that would seal all of our fates was an emotional burden I could bear but never get used to. As a leader, it was a thankless position to be in.
[170]

While the grim nature of their
impending first and last combat mission was never far from their minds, Fukagawa never once asked his subordinates what they thought about tokkō. To do so would have been bad for morale, and just as critically, it would have reflected poorly on his “moral fiber” and abilities as a leader. If the unit was to function at its best, he could not allow his men to have such doubts, nor could he ever appear to have any himself.  

“My father always told me that if you believe in yourself, you can do anything,” Fukagawa-san says, “and that even if a leader doesn’t know everything, he has to pretend that he does!”

Looking back, Fukagawa-san surmises that without six of the world’s best fighter planes and five excellent pilots under his command, such self-confidence would have been impossible for a 22-year-old who did not even have to shave everyday.

“I was so proud of my men,” Fukagawa-san recalls. “I thought that leading them into battle would be a fine way to go out. I had no regrets about dying if it was going to be like that.”

Like any competent military leader, Fukagawa recognized that unit pride was just as important a factor in maintaining the morale of his men as their confidence in his leadership abilities. Accordingly, when command encouraged the Shinbu units operating out of Kita Ise to come up with distinctive unit names and insignia to paint on the tails of their Hayates, he gave much thought to the matter. The planes, after all, would be carrying the pilots to their deaths, so something tasteless on their rudders just would not do. But while the lieutenant may have had a good handle on the workings of military psychology, his IMA education had not given him much of a foundation in artistic creativity, and he kept coming up with blanks when it came to this particular task. And try as they might, the lieutenants and corporals in the unit were of no help, either. There were a few proposals when the squad discussed the subject, but they were all hackneyed Japanese versions of “mom and apple pie” patriotic kitsch or stock samurai imagery that had already been overplayed to death in government propaganda.

In the midst of the 197
th
’s collective creative conundrum, the Kita Ise tokkō barracks were visited in mid-May for a PR newsreel shoot by a Nichiei cameraman named Takagi Toshirō, who had just been in Chiran a few days before. Fukagawa and the other pilots had read the papers and were generally aware of what was going on at the Kyūshū tokkō base, but they were eager for more information when they heard that the cameraman had just been there. The Nichiei man’s impressions of the base were somewhat at odds with what the newspapers were portraying.

“I’ll tell you this much,” the
cameraman said. “It sure is a relief to be out of there. I couldn’t leave quickly enough.” 

“Why?” Fukagawa asked.

“Because I just didn’t think I could take the atmosphere down there much longer,” the cameraman answered. “There are all these send-offs and speeches. Then they line the boys up, have them face in the direction of their hometowns and sing farewell songs to their mothers before they leave for their missions. It’s too sentimental and maudlin. I like it much better up here in Kita Ise. You guys are cheerful.”

As the cameraman posed his subjects for a series of shots around the barracks, he noticed that, unlike the other Shinbu units on the base, the 197
th
had no unit emblem by the doorway of their day room. When Fukagawa explained the fix they were in, the cameraman smiled.

“Actually, I’m pretty good at this,” he said. “And I’ve helped a lot of tokkō units on other bases with ideas.”

“Looking at such cheerful fellows as yourselves,” he continued, “I think you should have a symbol that fits your mood. Happy, brave, resolute…Hey, how about Momotarō?”

A few of the pilots were at first taken aback by the suggestion that they use a fairy tale character as the unit symbol, but after a short discussion the naysayers were won over. The imagery was perfect. Momotarō – the heroic “Peach Boy” of legend who saved his homeland from marauding demons (long-nosed, blond, kinky-haired demons, it should be added) – was every Japanese kindergartner’s hero. Now Momotarō would be flying a Hayate to vanquish some more blond-haired demons! With Fuka
gawa’s enthusiastic approval, the cameramen whipped out a pencil and paper and drew up a tail emblem design on the spot.

Corporal Yabuta – who had some sign-painting experience – looked at the sketch and was confident that he could render it on the planes with no problems. After Fukagawa gave the final OK, the corporal ran off to scrounge up some paint. Black, white and red would be a rich enough palette for the job, and these colors were readily available in the maintenance shop storeroom. Within a couple of hours, all of the 197
th
aircraft were sporting the tail art, and everyone who saw the cameraman’s (and the corporal’s) handiwork declared it a masterpiece. Everyone – that is – except for the base CO, who came storming out of the Flight Ops shack looking like he was ready to stomp somebody flat.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, painting a woman on your planes like that?” he thundered. “Who do you think you are, Americans?”

Admittedly, the painted faces were pretty and adorable enough to be mistaken by an inartistic and judgmental eye for some form of pinup cheesecake, and had they in fact been so, the CO would have arguably been within his rights to lambaste such flagrant and gaudy effrontery to Japanese martial machismo. But after the imagery was explained, the now rather redfaced officer joined everyone in declaring his wholehearted approval of the artwork. And no one, of course, was happier than the Nichiei man, shooting footage of the scene that would be viewed by millions of people around the country in a few days time. 

Inspired by the tail art and the basic plotline of the Momotarō story, Fukagawa came up with the unit name “Seiki Unit,” which employed the kanji characters for “subdue” and “demon.” Tapping theretofore untapped and unknow
n reserves of literary talent, he even came up with a unit poem
[171]
that cleverly parodied the verse forms used in the classic Japanese fairy tale:

Mukashi, mukashi, sono mukashi

Oni wo taiji shita Momotarō

Umarekawatte, umarekawatte

Yanki wo taiji!

Yaruzo, ossoro!

Seiki-Tai!

A long, long time ago, and even longer ago than that,

Momotarō the Peach Boy

Made quick work of the nasty demons.

But now he is back, oh yes he is back,

To make quick work of the Yankees!

We’ll do it, huzzah!

Seiki Unit!

The poem w
as duly written up in classy calligraphy and posted over the entrance to the 197
th
barracks.

The pilots were also wont to chant alcohol-emboldened renditions of their squad
uta
when they partied with geisha off-post on Saturday nights. The preferred establishment of the 197
th
Shinbu – and also that of their frequent drinking partners in Second Lieutenant Fuji’i’s 198
th
  – was an army-licensed teahouse in the nearby town of Kuwana. Army licensing meant that the teahouse was obliged to give special preference to military personnel, and was in turn exempt from alcoholic beverage and foodstuff rationing. Consumption of either commodity was limited mainly by the amount of money this army clientele wished to spend, and the tokkō pilots were always loaded.

As a tw
enty-two-year-old lieutenant, Fukagawa was earning a flight and hazardous duty pay-boosted monthly salary that was close to three times what most white-collar managerial level workers twice his age made. And with no lodging or food expenses, the pilots’ huge salaries were pretty much all gravy. Some of the flyers sent money home or contributed to patriotic fund-raising drives (unlike American War Bonds, these were actual cash donations to the state), but many – with newfound appetites in wine, women and song no doubt motivated by the Damoclean presence of tokkō orders perpetually hanging over their heads – blew money prodigiously on nightlife.

The 197
th
Shinbu was no exception. And while it would have been difficult for Fukagawa and his men to eat and drink away all of their cash, the teahouse also offered various and tempting non-gastronomic methods of draining one’s wallet. After being shown the ropes by Lieutenant Abe, everyone became an old hand at the necessary protocol. 

*****

During the spring of 1945, the army determined that the monotony of barracks life was having an adverse effect on the morale of tokkō personnel. In an attempt to counter this, it instituted a program of cyclically rotated billeting for its pilots in conjunction with civilian communities and religious institutions near tokkō bases around the country. Under Kita Ise’s version of the new program, each Shinbu unit would spend one week in their regular barracks, and another week billeted in seminar facilities at a nearby Buddhist temple. For the final week of each cycle, the units would spend their nights as guests in local homes.