Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze (61 page)

Provisions for recreation were more generous at Hikari Naval Arsenal in Yamaguchi Prefecture, site of the second major Kaiten installation and the base where Harumi Kawasaki spent six of the last eight months of the war. Facilities were available for baseball and basketball, as
well as a small martial arts hall for the usual kendō and judo. As security procedures loosened up and settled into a routine, there were occasional visits to the bases by road show troupes of professional performers. On occasion, when such high-caliber entertainment was not available, some of the more theatrically gifted personnel on base were not averse to sharing their talents with their comrades. At Hikari, a group of motivated thespians even organized a drama contest replete with costumed productions and a jug band orchestra.

But despite the best efforts of professional and amateur alike, anyone involved in the Kaiten program who is still alive today would have to agree that the most impressive dramatic productions they saw during their time in the service were the send-off ceremonies.

O
n September 20, 1944, American forces took possession of Ulithi, the world’s fourth largest lagoon. Ringed by palm-dotted coral reefs and sandbars, this relatively shallow body of water was spacious enough to accommodate thousands of ships at a time. Its location about one-third of the way between Guam and Leyte Gulf also made it ideally situated as a staging area and supply point for the Philippine invasion campaign about to kickoff.

From the American perspective, the only eventful things about the “invasion” of the atoll were the accidental death of an Ulithian princess after a beach prep Hellcat strafing
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and the infinitely happier discovery that the local womenfolk went about topless. Happier still was the fact that the landings went completely unopposed. The previous non-native occupants of this ring of skinny sandbars – a Japanese observation station and naval seaplane unit – were already several weeks gone when the first G.I. boot hit the coral.

Within days of taking the real estate, the Americans had a working installation up and running, and within the span of the next few weeks, while the attention of the rest of a world at war was focused elsewhere, Navy Seabees and stevedores transformed this forgotten backwater in the Southwest Pacific into the busiest temporary military harbor in history. By late October, Ulithi was so thick with fleet carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and merchantmen ferrying to and from the new Leyte Gulf beachheads that an observer in an overhead plane would have to be forgiven for thinking he was looking down at some gray metropolis mysteriously plunked down in the middle of a turquoise lagoon. 

Whether the residents of this floating city knew it or not, they were being observed in just this manner on a fairly regular basis. IJN planners – no doubt ruing their decision to give up Ulithi without a fight when they ordered its abandonment three months earlier – were by now fully aware of the lagoon’s sudden and crucial importance, and were kept posted of comings and goings at the new anchorage by sub patrols and high-altitude photo recon flyovers out of the IJN base at Truk. Everyone at Combined Fleet HQ agreed that Ulithi made a most tempting target, and with the still top secret Kaiten now coming on line, they had what they thought was just the right weapon to juke the anchorage’s now formidable defenses, send some serious tonnage to the bottom of the lagoon, and just as importantly, strike a blow against American morale with another psychological shock to follow up on the Shikishima Flight tokkō successes at Leyte on October 25. By the first week of November, three submarines –
I-36
,
I-37
and
I-47
– had been modified to carry Kaitens and detailed attack plans were ready for the mission.

*****

On the morning of November 7, 1944, Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Miwa, commander of the 6th Fleet,
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arrived at Ōtsushima with an entourage of adjutants, aides-de-camp, a small brass band, and a few closely escorted navy PR types in tow. That afternoon, under snapping pennants and flags, the admiral addressed the assembled base personnel. Lined up front and center were Sekio Nishina and the eleven other Kaiten pilots of the newly formed and named Kikusui Unit. These were the men – all commissioned officers – who would be the first to ride the Kaiten into battle. After the speech, the band struck up a medley of martial tunes as the admiral handed out shortswords
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and white headbands to the twelve pilots standing tall in the new human torpedo uniforms – smart khaki zipper-up coveralls with a green-on-black embroidered shoulder patch featuring Masashige Kusunoki’s Kikusui floating chrysanthemum emblem.

Newly promoted and Kaiten-qualified Lieutenant (j.g.) Toshiharu Konada was in attendance as a spectator at the shortsword ceremony that afternoon, and also at the high-spirited and emotionally charged send-off party held for the pilots later that evening at the officers’ liaison room, the crude but adequately spacious structure that also served as the base officer’s club. Songs were sung and short, informal speeches were made throughout the party, as guests and guests-of-honor alike supped on sumptuous fare and drank liberal amounts of saké.

Naval etiquette dictated that subordinates could not leave a party before their commanding officer did, so the admiral – conscious that the boys needed their sleep for the big day tomorrow – stood up to leave at a decent hour. The evening ended with a series of banzai cheers for the soon-to-be-departed, and the men filtered back to the billets in pairs or small groups, with some of the more sentimental individuals in tears.

On the morn, under a cold and partly cloudy sky, the base personnel formed up in two long parallel lines leading from the HQ building down to the water, where three IJN submarines –
I-36
,
I-37
and
I-47
– were moored at the quay, their crews lined up along the handrails at a rigid position of attention. Bolted to the deck of each sub were four glossy, coal black Kaitens with white Kikusui emblems painted on their conning towers. Trampoline-sized Hinomaru flags painted on canvas sheets were lashed to the conning towers of the mother subs, and Rising Sun battle jacks, almost as large, flew from the periscope masts.

On a signal, Nishina and the other Kikusui pilots – resplendent in gleaming white headbands and crisp uniforms – emerged from the HQ building and filed down to the water through the lines of officers and sailors amidst a rolling chorus of cheers as the banners waved and Admiral Miwa’s little band thumped a patriotic march. Nishina, at the head of the file, carried a white ossuary box containing the sacred reliquary of Kuroki’s ashes. Behind him, another man carried the mortal dust of Lieutenant Higuchi. The dead officers would be making the sortie with their comrades.  

When the pilots reached the quay, they stopped for deep bows and a quick prayer at the base Shinto shrine, then split up into three groups of four men each to board their respective subs. Once aboard, they clambered atop their Kaitens to brandish their
katana
swords over their heads as the subs cast off and pulled away into the lagoon, the Ōtsushima personnel now thronging the water’s edge, crying and shouting themselves hoarse as the subs faded away into the morning mist, their top-secret destination known only to their captains.

*****

After carrying her volatile cargo of diesel oil and aviation gas from the United States across most of the Pacific Ocean, the twenty-five-thousand-ton USS
Mississinewa
(AO-59) – a fleet oiler supporting Rear Admiral Frederick Sherman’s Task Group 38.3 – spent the afternoon of November 19, 1944 at Ulithi Berth 131 shifting aviation-grade gasoline from two of her huge storage tanks to tanks on the other side of the ship. This balancing operation was being undertaken to right the noticeable list the ship had taken after pumping operations earlier in the day.

Handling fuel in this kind of volume was by nature an extremely hazardous procedure, and the danger did not go away after the pumps were done with their work. Drained of their contents, the tanks were actually at a higher risk of explosion empty than they were full. Thoroughly saturated with aerated fuel fumes, the interior of a recently emptied tank was not unlike a fueled cylinder head in a car engine just before it is ignited by a spark plug. In order to prevent the kind of cataclysm that could result if an errant spark somehow found its way into such a volatile environment, Navy SOP called for “purging” the tanks with seawater immediately after unloading operations. This was done without fail while at sea, and usually – but not always – done while at port.

As the sailors on
Mississinewa
’s pump detail were unloading the last of the day’s order and preparing to purge tanks, the rest of the crew was assembling in the raised cargo deck aft of the bridge
to watch a movie someone had been able wangle while ashore. The film was called
Black Parachute
,
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a B-grade spy thriller about a brave OSS agent, played by Larry Parks, fighting to liberate Eastern Europe from the yoke of Nazi tyranny. Ostensibly, the title referred to the hero’s method of entry behind enemy lines – a night drop to take care of the evil German general played by John Carradine (who
else
could it have in a 1940s B-film?) and liberate the country before sweeping Resistance fighter Jeanne Bates off her feet in the last reel.
Citizen Kane
it was not, but it would nevertheless be a welcome break from the monotony of pumping gas and sitting at anchor at Ulithi.

What happened next is something of a mystery – but among Mississinewa’s survivors still with us today, there are two basic theories. The more popular version holds that the ship’s skipper, Captain Philip G. Beck, may have been appreciative of the outstanding job the pump men had done this afternoon and aware that they were getting edgy about missing the movie. Thinking there could be little harm in letting them go early to join their shipmates for the film, he decided to forego the usual tank purge after the fuel pumping operation. After all, it was not like the
Mississinewa
– or any other oiler in the fleet, for that matter – had never missed a tank purge or two while at anchor. The captain had every right to expect that the ship would be perfectly safe and sound here at Ulithi, with anti-submarine nets guarding the entrances to the lagoon and combat air patrols from Sherman’s carriers overhead twenty-four hours a day. And as long as nobody on board did something stupid like tossing a lit cigarette where they shouldn’t, there was no reason to think anything untoward would happen.

The second version holds that the captain was not the sort of commander who would give much of a damn about his men missing a movie, and that there must have been some other reason – perhaps mere expediency – to explain the decision not to purge.

In either case, what is known with certainty is that after the pumping operations, Captain Beck belayed the SOP purge order for the empty tanks, and the pump men were now free to go aft to watch their movie.
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*****

Some twelve hours later, Ulithi lagoon was waking up to the business of another workday in fits and starts. Here and there packet boats and patrol craft plied the powder blue water between mammoth warships and freighters hulking in the morning mist. Galleys on the ships had been up and running for several hours now, going through the major production of preparing breakfasts for hundreds (or in the case of the big warships, thousands) of men, but elsewhere, most of those sailors lucky enough not to be on watch still slumbered peacefully.

At Ulithi Berth 131, the
Mississinewa
was quietly riding at anchor, bathed on one side in pale orange light from the eastern horizon. Most of her complement of 278 sailors and twenty officers were still asleep, perhaps a few of them dreaming about sweeping Jeanne Bates off her feet, probably more than a few of them dreaming about home, and certainly all of them blissfully unaware that at this very moment, they were being stalked.

The ship still carried hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in her forward tanks, and this is where one of
I-47
’s Kaitens hit at 0545
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, instantly killing fifteen crewmen asleep on the cargo deck over the tanks, killing dozens more amidships and ripping a 25-meter long hole in the ship’s hull. A split-second later, the fumes in the
Mississinewa
’s empty centerline tank ignited in an even larger explosion, cracking the ship’s keel and blowing yet another gaping hole in the hull. A series of secondary explosions now rocked the vessel as flaming fuel oil raced across her decks, cooking off the ammo for her anti-aircraft batteries in the searing heat. 

Amidships, the carnage was indescribable. As the anchorage was jolted into frenzied activity, the sirens of ships going to General Quarters yelped and whooped across the waters of the lagoon, drowning out the screams of men being burned alive aboard the
Mississinewa
or in the flaming oil slicks now ringing the ship. Above the conflagration, a column of impenetrable black smoke rose kilometers high straight up into the blue sky like some Old Testament fire and brimstone display. 

While the inferno raged, it was increasingly obvious that the
Mississinewa
could not be saved. Captain Beck, naked after stripping off his burning pajamas, gave the order to abandon ship, and everyone who still could either jumped or was thrown overboard. As destroyers charged about searching for mystery intruders and depth charging the entrance of the lagoon, other boats raced in from around the anchorage to rescue the
Mississinewa
’s survivors. At one point, even an old Kingfisher seaplane got into the action, throwing towlines to men in the water and using its prop blast to clear the area of burning oil slicks.
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Miraculously, 218 of the ship’s crew and seventeen of her officers were rescued. Sixty sailors and three officers were not so fortunate.
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