My heart is full, so I hope you will excuse me for writing out my scattered, incoherent thoughts at such length. As for the place where we may receive visitors, after many changes, they decided on Himeji Station, and the time appointed for it is tomorrow morning. My father should be there to see me. He is the kind of man who deeply reveres the Emperor and the Imperial Army and Navy, while he also respects you and Professor 0. It makes me a little anxious, but I think I will ask him to deliver this letter to you. If the instructors watch us so closely that I can’t carry out my plan, I will burn it in the toilet on the train. If this letter does happen to reach you, please destroy it after reading it through, as I said earlier.
Together with a few other students in his outfit, Yoshino is playing an old child’s game with a handkerchief. Sakai is in another car. I can’t see him from where I sit.
Professor, now I must bid you goodbye until I can write again. With best wishes for your good health and happiness.
Izumi Naval Air Station
June 3 (Continued from Yoshino’s diary)
Flying is becoming the be-all and end-all of our lives.
Each of us has already received an air log and a flight record. Outfitted with an oil-stained flying suit, aviation cap, half boots, a pair of goggles, and a life jacket, every last one of us is, to all appearances, an imposing “warbird” of the Imperial Navy.
The schedule is exacting. Reveille is at 0530, and we assemble within two minutes after that. Seconds count if you must fold your blanket neatly on your bunk, tie your shoelaces tightly, and line up, all in two minutes flat. We are constantly on the run. Once I saw a newsreel about young trainee pilots. Watching them dash like madmen from one task to another, I thought the scene simply had to have been staged. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We are told that pilots must always keep a clear head. Should so much as a wisp of a cloud pass through a pilot’s mind, he will inevitably lose control of his plane. They say pilots with fiancees back home have more accidents.
We live on a kind of tangent with death. We have to shout at the top of our lungs whenever we give account of ourselves, and if we let our guard down just a bit, we draw a storm of slaps before we cause an accident. The 13th Class of student reserves, now already commissioned, has stayed on as assistant division officers for the sea-plane units. They are a rough, bloodthirsty lot, and stick it to us the second they find us derelict. “Hold it right there, student of the 14th Class!” they will say, and over they come at a clip with a beating to complement the scolding. “Do you want to disgrace the Student Reserve Corps?!”
We were separated into boarding groups. I was assigned to group ten and took my first orientation flight today with Instructor Yamaguchi. The command to “Commence!” came at 1045, and off I sprinted to the aircraft. I thought I acted with composure and celerity, but obviously I lost my calm, since it wasn’t until we were up in the air that I realized I wasn’t wearing gloves. We flew at an altitude of 200 meters. That’s about eight times the height of the Marubutsu Department Store in front of Shichijo Station, but it didn’t feel particularly high, it just felt as if my body were suspended in air. There was something gratifying about the experience, making me wish very much to congratulate myself. Ahead of us was Instructor Ejiri’s plane, floating along with Sakai aboard. I was pretty much disoriented as to our bearings, but as I steadied myself and took a close look, I noticed our position gradually shifting against the green background of the mountains. Beneath us ran streams. A grid lay over the land, with its roadways and airplane hangars, and that clear geometric pattern was dotted with men who looked like black beans. The barley in that lower world is ripe for harvest. We soon reached the turning point and changed direction, flying out over the sea, where I saw the islands of Amakusa, and their shorelines. The islands are exquisite, hemmed in by thin white ribbons of surf. The wide expanse of blue water swelled out, and the horizon seemed to recede as we moved on.
It was clear and sunny all day today. I felt not the slightest anxiety from takeoff to landing. It was exhilarating. We cut into the wind as we descended, and all of a sudden, each solitary blade of grass came into clear view, as when a camera snaps into focus. Next I saw the grass pressed down by the wind, and in a split second my feet were on the ground. Who would believe that just five or ten meters of lovely green grass during a landing, or a variation of just three to five degrees in inclination, can mark the difference between life and death?
I felt fairly well accustomed to flying my second and third times up, but during the third flight the wind shifted abruptly from east to west, somewhere around the fourth turning point, just before we started our descent. Without warning I lurched 180 degrees into a vertical turn. Before I knew it, the sky and the earth were at my sides and the horizon slipped at a right angle before my eyes. I didn’t know up from down or right from left. A thrill of horror shot through me, but of course we landed safely all the same. I flew three times, for a total of twenty-two minutes in the air. This duration is recorded in a log, and once our accumulated flight time reaches three or four hundred hours, we should be full-fledged pilots, capable of manipulating the plane as if it were an extension of the body.
Attaining for the first time a bird’s-eye view of the sea, and of the mountains of southern Kyushu, I know what Nagata-no-Okimi felt when he sang (in volume three of the Manyoshu),
Izumi is some two and a half hours by express train from Kagoshima, via Ijuin, Sendai, and Akune, and it is a place of utter scenic beauty. Izumi looks across the Shiranui Sea to Amakusa, and the Koshiki-jima Islands lie off to the southwest. Beyond the sprawling airstrip of green grass you can see the silvery waves, even when you are standing on the ground. A lark has built a nest in the grass, and it sings as it flies, soaring as high as the planes.
Discipline is severe, the flying suits are stifling, and it’s no easy trick to sprint with the contents of your leg pockets kicking around. But we are all in high spirits. I clean forgot my birthday on May 30. I didn’t notice the day had passed until I was ordered to fill out a statement giving my personal history and background last night, and I’m actually pleased about this. I am twenty-four years old now.
The Hagakure, a book on bushido, says, “To conquer your enemy, first conquer your friends. To conquer your friends, first conquer yourself To conquer yourself, first conquer your body with your mind.” Whenever I caught even the slightest cold, I used to burrow under the covers, giving myself up to sloth, and I haven’t entirely vanquished the more indolent aspects of my character. But I really must rid myself of them soon, if I am ever to die a worthwhile death for my country, or if I am to discipline myself into maturity as a pilot in time.
June 11
Excursion from 0800. Generally, Kyushu is very well supplied, and our outings will be far more enjoyable than those we made in Tsuchiura. I wish mother could try one of the steamed yam-paste buns they make at the Brotherhood of Enlisted Men.