Burial in the Clouds (20 page)

A cat has been meowing for days now, somewhere in the barracks. Who knows, maybe it gave birth to a litter of kittens in the attic. But whatever the cause, it keeps meowing uncannily, day-in and day-out, gradually shifting its location. They tell us to catch the cat and zap it, but we don't know where it is. I can't help regarding it as an evil omen in light of the recent chain of accidents.

January 15

Yet anotherType-99 crash-landed today. Also, when one of our Type-96 bombers pulled into the approach path and closed its throttle, the propellers seized and the plane almost crashed into the ground. Still, the two crewmen were OK. Everyone thought they were done for, but they emerged with only a few minor injuries to the head and face. And though they griped about the pain, their lives didn't seem to be in any danger. Day after day, we watch planes crash or flip over, with the 1st and 2nd Rescue Units deployed. Considering the frequency of accidents, though, there have been relatively few casualties, thanks entirely to the shoulder straps. If we suffer the same sort of accident in a carrier
attack
bomber, which is not equipped with shoulder straps, we surely die on the spot, our skulls shattered. No matter what the cost, we simply must equip our Type-97 carrier attack bombers with shoulder straps before resuming flights. Reportedly, they are having a fair number of accidents of unknown cause at Hyakuri-hara Air Station, too, using alcohol fuel.

A recon student called before lights out and summoned us.

“Before today's lesson, one of you guys was wearing a shirt during calisthenics. Everyone assemble in the officers' lounge.” Now, just the other day a senior officer said it was all right for us to wear shirts, so we went to the lounge and pleaded, explaining what the officer had told us. But it was all in vain. Some of us got the maximum of seven blows, some got the minimum of two, and I got five. Afterwards, we were made to run, double time, two circles around the apron, or about four kilometers. We were drenched in sweat on a cold winter night. We thought we would certainly be dismissed after that. Wrong. They hauled us out to the grounds (it had started to rain) and ordered us to do knee-bends combined with an exercise where we throw our arms up at an angle: four hundred fifty repetitions. We endured it well. Then, our backs and legs quaking, we crawled back to the barracks, hunched forward as if with an acute bellyache, and barely able to support our bodies. On my shaky legs, it's dangerous to walk down a staircase. I have to say this is a lunatic way of correcting us.

And how do the recon students perform at calisthenics? On cold, snowy days, after turning up for form's sake, they vanish into thin air. They wear jackets while doing double time, and when they fly, these
reconnaissance
men burn octane #87 fuel simply because they graduated from the Naval Academy, while we
pilots
make do with alcohol fuel. That's the navy.

January 19

The hazard light on the radio pole was on all through the night. I just looked at it, saying to myself that red beacon lights have a certain atmosphere about them, whether it's the running light on a ship or the rear lamp of an express train, not giving the matter a second thought. But it turns out that the commander went missing on his way back from an official trip to Tokyo, and he still hadn't returned, even though it was well past nine. And that was why the light was on all night. The report came in this morning, however, that he made an emergency landing at Suzuka Air Station.

One more carrier bomber crash-landed yesterday, which finally brought their training flights to a halt. Strange to say, the cat stopped meowing, as if in reply. Made me a little superstitious.

Today, a recon student was hit by the propeller of a plane as it taxied onto the apron. He was killed instantly, and as his body was flung away it struck another man who was seriously wounded and presently died in the medical ward. One of them was the ensign who really put us through the wringer because someone wore a shirt during calisthenics. For the most part, we think it was sweet, sweet justice, though we certainly don't say so aloud. There was no denying the general mood:
Take that, you bastard.
The accident was attributed to carelessness, an aftereffect of the liberty the recon students were granted yesterday. So an instructor lectured us, “Never let your guard down during liberty. When you are out on an excursion, always remember its purpose. You are getting the rest and relaxation you need in order to fly your aircraft into battle. Don't lapse into intemperance simply because you feel free.”

“We're always to blame!” someone said afterwards, in a sulk. “It's our fault that mailboxes are red. And if the utility poles are tall, well, that's our fault too. Everything's our fault. Shit!” Indeed, we reserve officers are blamed for everything. Well, do with us as you please.

We have devised a piece of equipment we call the “W.C. band.”

“Hey, give me your band,” someone said. I didn't get it at first, but he meant the belt from my judo outfit. And here's why: On top of the four hundred fifty “knee-bends with arm lifts” we did, we run some eight kilometers a day at double time. This only compounds the pain in our muscles. Our legs ache even when we are standing, and we can't squat down in the toilet. So this fellow lashed my judo belt to a steel pipe in the john, and used it to hold his body in position while emptying his bowels. What a brilliant idea! And in short, this is the story of the “W.C. band.”

One enemy tank division and two infantry divisions have landed on Luzon. Two more divisions are said to be on standby.

The temperature dropped to six below zero Celsius this morning.

Fujikura's letter
Usa Naval Air Station, Oita Prefecture
January 23, Showa 20 (1.945)
Professor E.
Kita-Shirakawa, Kyoto

Professor E.

K. sent me a letter that fills me with envy. He says that, on the spur of the moment, he visited your house in Kyoto wearing his sergeant's uniform, and that you treated him to beer over reminiscences and rumors. He also told me that your family has evacuated to the countryside in Tottori Prefecture. You prepare your own meals now, and you ventured to say that, if it were only the old days come again, you would bring together under your roof all the members of the usual
Manyo
circle—K., Yoshino, Sakai, Kashima, and myself. I felt a catch in my throat as I thought back on those good old days. How did K. look as a sergeant?

It has been eight months since I wrote you. When we moved from Tsuchiura to Izumi last May, I sent you what ought properly be termed a lengthy disclosure of my heart, in reply to which I received only the briefest of notes. To be honest, I concluded that, after all, even
you
are doing nothing more, with respect to this war, than comporting yourself respectably, and consequently, that I am totally forsaken. Disappointed and jaundiced, I have long neglected to write you again, until reading K.'s letter, which gave me the impulse to put pen to paper.

I learned from K. that you said, “I suspect Mr. Fujikura might be agonizing the most. I hope he will manage somehow.” I was genuinely grateful. To put it the old-fashioned way, I thought: Your regard alone is enough for me. Maybe I'm interpreting your feelings to suit my own wishes, but anyway I will not be upset if I don't receive a reply from you.

To tell you the truth, I
am
thinking of “managing somehow.” As I see it, Japan has already lost every asset that might have allowed for victory in this war. Saipan fell, the Philippines collapsed. Millions of Japanese remain behind, checkmated, in the southwestern and southeastern theaters, where the enemy has them completely beleaguered and stands poised to launch a counteroffensive. From the enemy's point of view, it must simply be a matter of methodically drawing in the net. As for what it will be like to lose the war, I still can't begin to imagine. The country dismembered, any number of people starving to death, riots erupting one after another, the occupation forces tyrannizing, Kyoto and Yamato in ruins. In the face of all this, any hope of returning to campus might well be shattered, might well prove nothing but a lunatic dream. Still, it's one thing to say it will be a disaster if we lose this war, and quite another to say that, ergo, we will win it. Everybody seems innocently to put these two ideas together, bringing forth, in sum, a kind of awful optimism. But however disastrous it may be, Japan has no choice left but to lose. I just wish we could at least lose with the nation intact, though it looks like I cannot hope for even that.

Professor E.

Our training flights have been on hold for quite some time due to the fuel shortage. For a moment, I hoped against hope that if things go on like this, who knows but that the war might suddenly end while we just mill around, digging holes in the ground or some such thing, with no further worry on my part. I fancied putting on airs and giving Yoshino a smack on the jaw, saying, “Wake up! We're going back to Kyoto!” However, the reality is not so easy, as I just found out. The other day, we were finally compelled to volunteer for the special attack force. We resume flights the day after tomorrow. We will be burning alcohol fuel, a low-grade, dangerous type of fuel that fails to ignite if the temperature inside the cylinders drops a little, causing the propellers to stop in midair.

The general public seems to think that only the bravest men, the men who have unswerving loyalty, ever volunteer for the special attack force, but that was only at the earliest stage. Now that headquarters has fully adopted the tactic, they use our superior officers to recruit volunteers. “Will you step forward?” the officers ask, or “Will you raise your hand?” And at last even a man like me feels compelled to raise his hand, heavy as lead. Ostensibly the decision is voluntary, but psychologically speaking, it's downright coercion. And with that, we give them free rein to choose whomever they want to choose. I will have very little chance of survival if I simply continue to drift along. So I am contemplating some extreme measure to save my life, and my life alone. It is all I ever think about, night and day. Professor, please do not reproach me for being selfish, unless you really do want me to crash into the enemy alongside my comrades. I shall be content if you only consider me an impossible fellow. I have no power to save Sakai and Yoshino. We are already too far apart in our thinking. All I could ever do is make them angry; I could never make them listen. Even Kashima, the man we all would have thought furthest from being a fighter, routinely sends in from the torpedo boat camp in Kawatana (though never, of course, to me) lines like: “You guys come in from the air, I will come in on the water,” or “Be that as it may, we must set about preparing for our journey to the other world.”

I have thought of various methods. One option is to get myself badly injured in an “accident,” to the extent that I won't be able to fly again. But as I observed the results of the accidents on our base, I had to conclude that this plan simply offers too little chance of survival. My second idea supposes that enemy troops land on Formosa or in southern China and build a base. When it is time to make my sortie, I will fly to that base and desert, giving myself up as a prisoner. If I succeed, my survival will be all but guaranteed, and I assume I would be able to return safely to Japan once the war ends. The problem is that unless I have some way to inform the other side of my plan in advance, I will naturally be shot down by their fighters or antiaircraft guns before I ever reach the base. This plan, therefore, has little chance of success. So, I started to give shape to what has been vaguely on my mind ever since I dared choose to be a pilot back at Tsuchiura Naval Air Station. Namely, I am thinking of crash-landing on some island while engaged in a special attack mission. From now on, our sorties should be directed mainly at the Ryukyu Islands or the area around Formosa. As you know, there are a lot of handy little islands along the way, islands with few inhabitants, small garrisons, and poor communications. Or, I started to think, maybe a desert island would do, depending on the circumstances. So I have been collecting maps of the Ryukyu Islands and reading “castaway” stories like
Robinson Crusoe,
studying all the parts that may prove helpful. I will take off, proceeding as usual until we near the island I have chosen, at which point I will feign engine trouble or something like that. First, I will stray from my formation and release the bomb. Then I'll take the thick cushion from the seat and apply it to the instrument panel so as to protect my head on impact. Finally, my belt securely fastened, I will close the throttle and ditch the plane tail first into the water, with landing gear pulled in. Needless to say, the aircraft will go to pieces, and it might end up nose down in the water. But in any case, it will not sink immediately, giving me enough time to unfasten the belt and escape. After that, I should be able to swim to the island. Judging from the present situation, they won't be in any hurry to rescue me (!), even if they do learn about the accident, and nobody will ever know whether or not my plane really had trouble in the air.