Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (6 page)

A seasoned military eye could tell in a single glance that this was a fighting force that, at least physically and logistically, was on its last legs. Running on fumes. Even the functional aircraft looked like scrapheap material, weathered and battleworn, many of the planes with nearly half of their paint finish scoured off by heat, propwash, runway gravel and combat, rectangles of fresh hunter green paint betraying patched-over shell and shrapnel damage. Their engines sounded rough, belching intermittent puffs of sooty black smoke, suffering from the crappy turpentine and alcohol-spiked low-octane fuel the navy was now forced to use. With the surface fleet unable to safeguard the sea lanes from the major oil sources in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies in the wake of the Marianas and Taiwan disasters, Allied subs and bombers had virtually free rein to litter the seabed with hundreds of thousands of tons of Japanese oil tanker and merchant marine shipping each month.
[22]
Loss of the Philippines would completely shut off the fuel spigot. The nation would have to go on what little reserves it had in domestic tank farms, and conservative estimates gave them no more than a few months worth at current consumption rates. After that, the choice would be simple: capitulation to the Allies, or national suicide. 

Even if a tenuous hold on the southwest oil routes could somehow be maintained, it was clear that the fuel situation was only going to get worse from here on in. Reports were endemic of aircraft engines in all commands breaking down due to the new fuel mix, which both naval aviators and army pilots were referring to as “Marianas Gas.” If engine failure occurred in the midst of combat – which was now happening with alarming frequency – at least veteran pilots had a fighting chance of surviving such a calamity. Provided, of course, that they could survive the numberless swarms of expertly piloted Hellcats and Corsairs. But rookies – who now made up the greater portion of the flyers in both services – had little or no training for such contingencies, and were usually made quick work of by the Americans.

Quality control on the manufacturing end was suffering, too, both in engines and airframes. But with the best of the nation’s mechanics and skilled labor now being squandered in combat duties, stranded on remote island outposts behind enemy lines or already dead, and strategic materiel quickly running out, it was unreasonable to expect anything better than what they were getting. The industry was doing the best it could with what it had on hand, and doing a commendable job of it, at that, given the circumstances. Monthly production numbers were now at record levels.

But now, even women and children were being pressed into service. The nation’s aircraft plants now largely relied on mobilized teenage schoolgirls to toil away on the assembly lines, working brutally long hours with no pay. Dressed in dowdy gray padded pajamas with Rising Sun headbands over their uniformly pigtailed black hair, they left their little wooden
geta
clogs in neat rows on the factory floor and scurried barefoot over the airplanes that would carry their young war gods into battle, the wings of Zero fighters as sacred for them as the inner sanctum of a Shinto shrine. Riveting airframes with undying love, devotion, and hope, they cheered electrifying reports from the front (“American forces in full retreat on all fronts! Our forces victorious!”) and sang along with strident military marches played around the clock over tinny loudspeaker systems as they worked. Mechanics in frontline units told of often finding brightly colored origami cranes tucked away into recesses of the airframes for good luck, and exhortations to “Fight to the end!” or “Exterminate the white swine for us” grease-penciled in a childish, feminine hand on the insides of inspection access hatches or landing gear wells. The girls were the best the Japanese race had ever produced, enduring atrocious conditions and great physical danger without complaint, ever cheerful, with hearts as pure and brave as that of any fabled samurai. They were resourceful under duress, beautiful in adversity, proud and undefeated in body and mind.

The admiral shifted his gaze to the ground crews. They looked as rough and ramshackle as the planes they were servicing. Their uniforms were threadbare and patched, some bleached off-white from years of wear and tropical sunlight. Their faces showed the strain of months of sleep deprivation, combat fatigue and their miserable diet of mashed taro roots and green bananas. You could count the ribs of the men working bare-chested. And yet there was a spring in their sinewy frames as they performed their tasks. There were smiles on their haggard faces. Their voices were hoarse but cheerful, their speech peppered with laughter and encouragements, still full of fight. Like the girls in the aircraft plants, they would work and fight until they dropped. They, too, were undefeated.

A lifetime of indoctrination and thirty years as an officer of His Majesty’s Imperial Navy told the admiral that with such spirit, anything was possible. Military history showed that with the right combination of motivation and courage, even the direst circumstances could be overcome. Miracles could occur. Everyone knew that the Americans were spiritually weak – that one Japanese soldier had the guts and will power of ten of the cursed Yankees. Perhaps a miracle could happen here, too. A divine wind could blow again, like the fabled
kami kaze
that swept away a Mongol armada menacing Japan some seven centuries past. The odds were daunting, but not impossible. It was worth a try.

After nearly ten minutes of silence, the admiral cleared his throat to speak.

“I have come here to discuss with you something of great importance. May we go to your headquarters?”
[23]

The men around the table gathered their maps and gear and prepared to shut down the shack for the night. The admiral was joined in the backseat of his limo by Commander Rikihei Inoguchi
[24]
, a pleasant, self-effacing staff officer from 1st Air Fleet sent down to assess the situation at the 201
st
Air Group some days before, and Commander Asaichi Tamai, the bull-necked but mild-mannered XO of the 201
st
standing in for the absent unit CO, Captain Sakae Yamamoto. The other officers got in a truck and led the way for the entourage to the HQ compound, located in the town of Mabalacat in an old plantation-style house requisitioned from a Filipino fruit company, which had once used it as an executive residence.

The house, which also served as the air group’s officer billets, was a tile-roofed two-story structure with warm cream-colored stucco walls and green trim on the windows and doorways. There were half-rotted wicker chairs on the veranda and makeshift laundry lines in the backyard hung with uniforms, flying suits, long mustard brown gaiter strips and off-white
fundoshi
loincloth underwear. A rusty fifty-five gallon drum was placed at one corner of the house to collect rainwater from the roof gutters. A low stone fence wall enclosing the compound gave it a distinctively Western appearance incongruous with the landscape – a decaying Californian land baron’s mansion plunked down on the outskirts of this dingy old Filipino banana town, slowly succumbing to undergrowth, overrun by chirping lizards and cigar-sized cockroaches.

Inside, with the exception of the CQ desk in the foyer and an orderly room in an old butler’s pantry, most of the space was devoted to billeting. The main living room smelled like sour flying boots and wet canvas, its wide expanse of teak parquet floor filled nearly wall-to-wall with steel-framed folding cots strewn with gear and uniforms, map cases, rabbit fur-lined flying helmets and the occasional comatose aviator sleeping off the day’s combat.

Commander Tamai led the group to the back of the room, where he switched on a naked light bulb over a small conference table. The officers spread out their operations maps and took seats.

The overhead light gave the men around the table a sallow, unhealthy color, deepening shadows under intense eyes looking down at the table or gazing off at some distant, imaginary horizon rather than directly at the senior of
ficer present. Ōnishi looked at the drawn faces one by one, measuring the men behind them, timing the impact of what he was about to say for maximum effect.

“I don’t think anyone at this table needs any big lecture about the war situation right now,” the
admiral started. “That’s not what I came up here for.”

“Everyone is aware, of course, of the official commencement of Operation Shō”
[25]
, Ōnishi continued. “Needless to say, failure of this operation will result in the worst possible consequences. The mission of the 1st Air Fleet will be to provide air support for the main thrust of the operation, which will be made by Admiral Kurita’s battleship squadron sweeping down into Leyte Gulf, catching and destroying the invasion fleet at anchor before the Americans can secure a beachhead on the main island. To accomplish this, we must render the American escort carriers’ flight decks unusable for at least one week.”

Ōnishi paused here not only for emphasis, but to prepare himself for what he had to say next. The words would change history. Once uttered, there would be no retracting them. He would be signing a death warrant not only for thousands of young men, but for
himself as well.

“The only practical way I see of our accomplishing our mission will be to use Special Attack techniques, strapping two-hundred-fifty kilogram bombs to Zeros and crashing them into the carriers. It’s the only method I can come up with that can ensure hits. Now I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.”
[26]

Ōnishi, veteran of thousands upon thousands of hours of naval staff meetings, was not particularly surprised when nobody uttered a peep. A Japanese officer did not go to the mat with a superior over a difference in opinion unless he was absolutely sure tha
t he was right and that what he had to say was going to save an operation from certain disaster. Given the premium placed on respect and loyalty in the Japanese warrior tradition, it was not a move to be taken lightly. In the good old days of topknots and samurai swords, a faulty or less than tactfully presented argument often ended up with the subordinate hosting a somber saké party, writing a farewell haiku and plunging a dagger into his guts. Dissent toward a superior officer required the conviction only thorough mental preparation could provide, but the bombshell the admiral had just dropped on the table pretty much blew away any chance for counterargument, leaving only this stunned silence instead. These twentieth century samurai were well trained in the art of keeping their feelings to themselves.

Of course, from the admiral’s point of view, the silence was not entirely unwelcome. He had not come to Mabalacat to make a proposal. He had come to give an order – the kind of order a man of honor can only gi
ve another man face-to-face. And now that order – albeit ostensibly in the form of a discussion topic – had been given.

The “bad news” now safely out of the way, Ōnishi wanted to get the ball rolling and turn the discussion to maps, names and numbers as s
oon as possible. But first, he had to take care of the responsibility issues so critical in Japanese decision-making before there would be any moving on to operational details. Commander Tamai would no doubt come up with the counterargument that no orders for the formation of a suicide squad could be issued while Captain Yamamoto was away.

If Ōnishi had been in Tamai’s shoes, he probably would have made the same move. It was a natural and understandable reaction in this situation, but seeing the second senior ranking officer at the table pull this administrative trump card successfully, the other officers were sure to fall into line right behind him. Ōnishi could not allow this to happen.

Chain-of-command protocol was far more rigid in the Japanese military than in the armed forces of its Western counterparts, but in many ways it was also far more egalitarian; just as there was no “jumping the chain” by subordinates to make requests of superiors above the level of one’s immediate commander, the reverse was also true. The rules were nearly as strict for orders moving down the chain as well. No one could be left out of the loop, especially under circumstances requiring the issuing of orders as unprecedented as sending men off on suicide missions. The responsibility in this case was simply too onerous for anything to be put into motion without the entire chain in accordance, right down to the men who would crash the American flight decks.

The admiral knew that nothing could be done until this organizational impediment was squared away, but his hand was weak and the clock was ticking. Unsure of his next move, all he could do was wait for Tamai to move first.
Ōnishi stared a hole in him as he waited for a response. The attention of the other officers at the table gradually focused on the XO.

“Begging the admiral’s pardon”, Tamai said, blinking behind his round hornrimmed glasses, his craggy ex-judo wrestler’s
face beginning to gleam with a film of sweat. “But I am only the executive officer. Under the circumstances, I cannot assume authority to issue such orders for the 201
st
Air Group. I believe we must hear the opinion of Captain Yamamoto in this matter before any decision can be made.” 

Earlier in his career, right around the time of the highly publicized “geisha slapping” incident that had almost ended it,
Ōnishi had entered and won the All-Tokyo Mahjongg Championships under an assumed name, going all the way to the National Championships only to lose in the final round. Anyone who had had the singularly humbling experience of gambling with him knew that he was a master of the bluff, possessing a poker face that could turn the wiliest opponent’s nerves to jelly.