Then a voice called out, “Starboard!” I turned to see eight more torpedo bombers approaching from the other side. But there were three Zeros already in hot pursuit, and the bombers were shot down in rapid succession before they could come within range. The last two dumped their torpedoes and soared, attempting to flee, but these too were downed by the Zeros.
All the pilots of the attack force standing by on the carrier deck cheered the Zeros’ bravura performance.
The torpedo bombers that attacked Kaga to our rear suffered the same fate. The CAP of Zeros swatted them down.
I was impressed anew by the Zero’s prowess. Or rather, I was impressed by the incredible skill of the men piloting the planes. “Each a match for a thousand,” as the expression goes.
The battle continued intermittently for nearly two hours. Over forty torpedo bombers attacked us, but nearly every one of them was downed by the Zeros. Not a single torpedo struck us.
The frantic reloading of the torpedoes continued inside the carrier the whole while. It was then that I heard a lookout scream. I’ll never forget the sound of that cry for as long as I live.
I looked skyward to see four dive bombers descending upon us like demons. I stared up, engrossed by the demons, and thought despairingly, Oh hell, we’re done for. I saw the bombers release their ordnance. It was a mere moment, yet it unfolded as though in slow motion. Four bombs fell leisurely, laughing. The shrill sounds they gave off as they glided through the air sounded like demonic laughter. They must have been laughing at our carelessness and arrogance.
The bombs exploded on the carrier deck with a thunderous roar. I was blown backwards into the bridge. Had it not been there I would have ended up in the sea.
Half-unconscious, I stared at the burning deck. Aircraft were catching fire one after the other. Aircrew leapt out of the crafts covered in flames. Planes whose propellers were already spinning went out of control, spontaneously lurching forward, some crashing, others falling into the ocean. The deck was in chaos. Further explosions came one after another from the hangar, the torpedoes and bombs triggering thanks to the fire. Each blast rocked the massive ship. I looked starboard to see the Kaga aflame as well. Another aircraft carrier far astern was also burning. Three of our carriers had been taken out in a flash.
I went down onto the afterdeck to escape the burning flight deck. A group of attack force crew was already there. Everyone’s faces were drawn. There were many who were injured. A large number had lost limbs. The floor was stained with vast amounts of blood. It was hellish pandemonium.
Intermittent explosions echoed from the hangar. We ferried buckets of water to put out the fire, but it was like pouring water on a hot stone. Eventually we ran out of water and there was nothing left to be done.
The flames on the ship blazed dozens of meters high and the smoke billowed hundreds of meters into the air. The entire ship was scorching hot. The metal ladders were hot enough to burn the soles of our boots. If you touched the handrail without thinking, you ended up with a serious burn. We found ourselves trapped on the afterdeck at a loss for what to do.
It was then that we caught sight of the headquarters staff abandoning the ship from the carrier’s bow. Vice Admiral Nagumo and many of his officers were fleeing in launch boats. Seeing them left us crestfallen. Command had abandoned ship. The Akagi was done for.
After a while a destroyer’s cutter drew close and came to our rescue. We boarded and left the Akagi behind. Once on board the cutter I turned back to gaze at the carrier. She was enveloped in a sea of flames so massive, it seemed like that was all the fire there could be in the world. The blaze was so intense that even at a distance of over a hundred meters I could still feel the heat waves.
But the Akagi did not sink. Because she had been bombed, not torpedoed, the ship had burst into flames but wasn’t going down. But this merely prolonged her death throes, creating a hellish spectacle. Her steel went red and turned molten. Black smoke extended a full kilometer into the sky.
Two other streams of black smoke rose upward. A total of three carriers were destroyed.
I wept. The many other crewmembers aboard the cutter were crying, too.
Above us Zeros flew in vain, having lost their homes. Miyabe must have been among them.
That was the Battle of Midway as I experienced it. After the war, it gained infamy as the “five fateful minutes”: had we just five more minutes, they said, our entire attack force would have been launched, re-equipped; even if the carriers had been dive bombed, they’d not have sunk since no bombs on deck would have gone up in secondary explosions; our attack forces would have dealt the enemy a knockout and turned their carriers into fish food. Luck was simply not with us, the argument went.
But that’s a lie. When the Americans’ dive bombers attacked, in actuality the reloading was still a long way off from being finished. I don’t know how much more time it would have taken, but it certainly wasn’t “five minutes.”
There are no “ifs” or “buts” in history. The outcome of that battle was not due to bad luck. We could have launched our aircraft sooner if we’d wanted. We should have struck the enemy’s carriers first, be it with land bombs. It was our arrogance that prevented us from doing so.
Also, the Americans’ torpedo bombers had arrived without any fighter planes. Bombers attacking without escort is sheer suicide, and our Zeros took all of them out. But in effect, they served as a decoy. Our CAP was distracted by the torpedo bombers and neglected to keep an eye on the skies. The dive bombers that came later broke through that gap and devastated us.
Sure, you could call that bad luck, but I don’t believe that’s true. I learned this after the fact, but apparently, once the U.S. forces discovered our aircraft carriers, they sent out their attack planes as soon as each flight was ready even though the fighters couldn’t be deployed in time, just in order to strike us straightaway.
When I imagine how the American torpedo bomber pilots must have felt, my chest swells with emotion. They surely understood what it meant to sortie without a fighter escort. They must have been well aware of the terror of confronting a Zero. There’s no doubt that they were prepared for the possibility that they would not come back alive. Yet they bravely departed all the same. They swooped down on our carriers and were gunned down in rapid succession by the Zeros. Their risky attack drew our carriers’ CAP into lower altitudes and prepared for the successful attack by the dive bombers.
I think the true champions of the Battle of Midway may very well have been the U.S. torpedo bombers. Just as our recon plane crew, knowing they’d run out of fuel, led their comrades to the location of the enemy on the Coral Sea, the American torpedo pilots sacrificed themselves for the sake of winning the war.
The Japanese weren’t the only ones who could give their lives to the nation. We had our justification, which was to serve the Emperor. Surely the Americans didn’t have the same sense of duty to their president. Then what were they fighting for? Purely for their country, I’d say.
In fact, we Japanese weren’t risking our lives for the Emperor, either. For us, too, it was patriotism, the love of country.
In that battle, Japan lost four irreplaceable carriers. The U.S. lost only one, the Yorktown, which had received major damage in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Admiral Nimitz had ordered emergency measures and had the carrier, wounded as she was, participate in the battle at Midway. She dealt a severe blow to our carrier force and then sank. Yankee Spirit.