The half-year Guadalcanal Campaign’s casualties were atrocious. Five thousand troops had died in land battles. Fifteen thousand had died of starvation.
The IJN had also spilled great quantities of blood. Twenty-four warships sunk, 839 aircraft lost, and 2,362 crewmen killed in action. What a massive loss of life for a battle we ultimately lost. And by the time the campaign ended, the seasoned pilots, the jewels of the IJN, had mostly perished.
Looking back now, it was clear at that point that Japan would lose the war. Yet the fight against America would drag on for more than two years.
Even though we had lost Guadalcanal, the Solomon Islands proved to be an important battlefront where American and Japanese forces clashed.
That April, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto announced Operation I-Go, a counteroffensive intended to destroy the enemy’s air fleet. The plan was to send what little carrier-based aircraft and aircrew we had left to land bases around Rabaul in order to knock out the enemy’s air power in an all-out attack.
Admiral Yamamoto came to Rabaul to helm the operation himself. The Combined Fleet’s commander-in-chief deigned to speak directly to those of us on the front lines, raising our spirits.
Operation I-Go was successful, and we managed to complete our objectives in thirteen days instead of the projected fifteen. In exchange for our gains, we lost many more aircraft and crewmen.
But tragedy struck afterwards. The Type 1 land-based attack bomber transporting Admiral Yamamoto was shot down by enemy forces as he traveled from Rabaul to the forward base in Buin. Having broken all of the Japanese military codes they had intercepted, the Americans ambushed the admiral’s plane. He had flown with a fighter escort, but the six Zeros were unable to foil the surprise attack launched by the enemy, which had lurked in the clouds.
The death of Admiral Yamamoto dealt an immeasurable blow to the Imperial Navy.
I also want you to know the tragedy that befell the six Zero pilots who’d failed to protect the admiral’s aircraft. They were ordered to sortie daily much like they were being punished. In just four months, four of them died in combat, and a fifth lost his right hand. Only one, Flight Chief Petty Officer Shoichi Sugita, survived, having fought like a lion, leaving an impressive record of over a hundred kills. They say his fights were bloodcurdling, as if he were seeking vengeance for Admiral Yamamoto.
But in the final year of the war, he passed away at Kanoya Base in Kyushu. I was told about his last battle after the war had ended. That day, CPO Sugita went to board his fighter in order to ambush incoming fighters, but the enemy was already right on top of them. Ensign Sakai yelled, “It’s too late! Get back!” Yes, the very same FPO1 Sakai who had made that miraculous return journey back from Guadalcanal was now an ensign with the 343rd Naval Air Group. Despite Ensign Sakai’s attempt to hold him in check, Sugita bravely climbed into his Kawanishi N1K2 fighter and raced down the runway. Just as he took off, though, he was fired on by the enemy aircraft overhead and crashed into the runway.
I was assigned to the aircraft carrier Shokaku as part of an attempt to replenish its aircrew after devastating losses sustained from Operation I-Go. The Shokaku was a storied vessel that had fought since the attack on Pearl Harbor. She and her sister ship, the Zuikaku, were designated as part of the First Carrier Division, the core of the Mobile Task Force. Yet the force had lost its former might and faced a hopeless battle against its increasingly powerful American counterpart.
Flight Leader Miyabe remained at Rabaul. They had renamed the ranks for NCOs on down in November of the previous year, so Flight Petty Officer 1st Class Miyabe was now Flight Chief Petty Officer. Meanwhile, Flight Seaman 1st Class, my rank, became Flight Leading Seaman. At the same time, I was promoted to Flight Petty Officer 2nd Class, that is to say, from a sailor to a non-comm.
Even after the failed campaign to recapture Guadalcanal, Rabaul remained a strategic point in the South Pacific. In fact, it was our most important base, the focus of the enemy’s counterstrike. By that time, American attack forces taking off from bases around New Guinea conducted raids on a near-daily basis. As the saying goes, it was hell to leave and hell to stay.
When I received orders to depart from Rabaul and join the crew of the Shokaku, I spoke with CPO Miyabe as we gazed out at Mt. Tavurvur.
“Izaki, don’t die,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“Even if the carrier sinks, don’t just go and blow yourself up.”
“As if I would. I’ve survived Rabaul for over a year. I won’t die so soon. Besides, you’ve saved my life twice now, sir. If I were to give up too easily, that would be an insult to you.”
CPO Miyabe laughed.
Just then Tavurvur belched up a great deal of volcanic smoke.
“It’s pretty active today,” he said.
“Today might be the last time I ever see that volcano.”
CPO Miyabe didn’t reply. I had always stared at that volcano until I got bored with it, but that day I realized I’d never see it again. So I stared hard, trying to burn its image into my head.
Even now I can close my eyes and see the shape of that mountain. This is getting off-topic a bit, but about fifty years after the war, it erupted, burying the nearby town and the airport in ash. Everything that served as a reminder of those years vanished. It’s as if the volcano was trying to tell us to forget the war.
Ever since its conclusion, I’ve wanted to go back to Rabaul just once, but here I find myself never having had the chance. And, actually, I don’t really regret it that much.
“My grandfather was a vassal of the Tokugawa shogunate,” CPO Miyabe muttered all of a sudden. “When I was little, he often spoke of the olden days. Whenever he took me to Ueno, he always told me about the Battle of Ueno between the Shogitai defectors and the government forces. And his tales weren’t limited to just Ueno. My grandfather told me all kinds of stories about the history of various places around Tokyo. It’s so strange to think about. The Edo period feels like the world of raconteurs and plays, but back then my grandfather fought with the likes of Saigo Takamori.” CPO Miyabe laughed as though bemused. “To my young mind, those tales sounded terrifying. My grandfather bore a scar from a bullet wound he’d received. ‘Still have the bullet inside me,’ he’d say.”
“Oh, wow.”
“He’d sure be surprised to learn that now his grandson is fighting the Americans,” he laughed. “I wonder if I’ll ever see the day where I’ll tell stories about this war to my own grandchild. Basking in the sun on the porch, maybe I’d say, ‘Your granddad once flew a fighter and fought the Americans’…”
Hearing him say this gave me an odd feeling. I couldn’t picture the decades-far future he spoke of. But when I realized that such a day would someday come to pass, I was seized with a strange sensation.
“I wonder what sort of country Japan will be then,” I said.
CPO Miyabe got a faraway look in his eyes. “Perhaps they, too, will feel like they’re hearing fairytales, just as I did when my grandfather told me about the Edo period.”
I tried to imagine it. Sitting on the porch in the early-afternoon sunlight. My grandchild coming up and begging for a story—and me turning to say, A long time ago, Grandpa fought in a war on a tropical island…