“Which means that the manufacturing’s only going to get worse from here on out?”
“It’s possible, sir. But what scares me more is—” I broke off, instantly regretting what I had started to say.
“Tell me, Nagai.”
“The engines, sir,” I confessed.
“The engines also require skilled craftsmen, yes?”
“That’s true, but I’m concerned about the attrition of the machine tools used to make the engines.”
“The machine tools?”
“An engine is precision machinery, so you need machine tools that can accurately cut metal to a hundredth of a millimeter. Without them you can’t make a good engine. If the tools wear out, our quality level will undoubtedly decline.”
“The equipment isn’t made in Japan, I take it.”
I nodded in silence. This was something I had learned from an instructor while I was with a maintenance training unit. The instructor had previously worked in a factory that made aircraft engines, and he had high praise for the American-made equipment used there. He would often say, “Japan just doesn’t have machine tools quite that good.”
Miyabe-san sighed deeply in response. “So we’re up against such a country in this war.”
“The Sakae engines that power the Zeros are made in Japan, though. We use American equipment, but the people who created the outstanding engine are Japanese. And the Zero that carries the Sakae engine was also built by Japanese hands.”
“But I’m sure the Americans will create an even better fighter eventually. If we want to make fighters that can stand up to them, we’ll need engines even finer than the Sakaes, won’t we?”
“Perhaps, sir. But I don’t think even the Americans can readily make such an excellent fighter.”
“I hope you’re right, Nagai,” Miyabe-san said uneasily.
Unfortunately, his fears came true. The Grumman F6F, a fighter that surpassed the Zero, first appeared in the skies over Rabaul in late ’43. Oh, you want to hear about Miyabe-san apart from the fighting? Hmm, well, there wasn’t really much at Rabaul aside from the war.
Ah, I know. I just remembered something. He loved to play go. How did I ever forget?
We mechanics used to occupy ourselves during down time by playing hanafuda cards, shoji chess, and go. The ground crew’s work was busiest immediately before and after sorties. Aside from then, however, we had a fair amount of free time. After lunch, during the afternoon nap time, troops from various crews who fancied shogi and go would come to play in the shade cast by the eaves of the mechanics’ barracks. By ’43, though, we would no longer have the time to spare for games.
But this was in the fall of ’42. As usual, a number of mechanics were hanging out in front of the barracks playing park go when Lieutenant Commander Tsukino of Fleet HQ dropped by. In addition to the aviation units, Rabaul had a naval port that was home to many warships. There was also an Army garrison, so there were quite a lot of infantrymen around.
To us rank-and-file servicemen, a Fleet HQ lieutenant commander was like a deity, so his sudden presence made everyone freeze stiff with tension. But Lt. Cdr. Tsukino ordered us to be at ease, plopped down on a bit of grass, and began to watch the go players. After a few rounds, he picked out Chief Petty Officer Hashida, the strongest player amongst the maintenance crew, and asked him, “Mind if I challenge you to a round?”
Hashida was floored. The rest of us were stunned, too. Lower-ranking troops usually didn’t even dare to speak to a lieutenant commander. Playing a game of go with one was unheard of. I remember Hashida looking around at the rest of us, his face ready to burst into tears.
We all found ourselves holding our breath. We couldn’t joke around like we normally did, what with the lieutenant commander right there. We stood at attention even as we watched the games of go. Once more he told us to stand at ease.
“Rank doesn’t matter when we’re playing go. But, of course, that only lasts until the air-raid siren sounds.”
Everyone laughed at that. In those days, we got occasional air raids from Port Moresby. As soon as there was a report of incoming enemy aircraft, we ground crew started the engines of the Zeros so they could scramble. If our fighters couldn’t launch in time to intercept the enemy, we had to hide them in bunkers, and the same went for any planes that weren’t going up.
But just because the lieutenant commander told us to be at ease didn’t mean we could bring ourselves to relax. “Well then,” he said, looking around at us, “I order all of you to be at ease.” And finally everyone sat down on stools or the bare earth.
After all this, you might expect that Tsukino was just a casual player. But that wasn’t so. He was extremely strong and dealt a crushing defeat to CPO Hashida, the strongest player among the mechanics.
“Against the real pros, I take a handicap of two stones,” the lieutenant commander said. Back then I didn’t know just how advanced that meant he was, but after seeing him handily put the screws to Hashida, I could tell he was incredibly skilled.
After that day, the lieutenant commander would occasionally drop by to watch our park go. He would always bring steamed buns and such, which delighted us. On most occasions, he would simply watch, a smile on his face.
He was a go lover through and through and seemed to hold it in greater esteem than shogi chess.
On one occasion he said, “Apparently Admiral Yamamoto likes shogi a great deal, but knows nothing of go. If he knew how to play go, I think this war would’ve been fought very differently.”
This was a very hazardous thing to say. It could easily be assumed that his comparison of shoji and go was meant as criticism of Admiral Yamamoto.
“If I may inquire, sir, how are shoji and go different?” someone asked.
“In chess, if you take the king, the game’s over. No matter how weak your force is, no matter how badly you’re losing, if you cut off the enemy boss’s head, you win.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s similar to Nobunaga Oda’s tiny force of 2,000 troops crushing Yoshimoto Imagawa’s 25,000-strong army. Under normal circumstances, 2,000 soldiers could never defeat a force of 25,000. But take Imagawa’s head and it’s over. Chess is the same.”
“And go is different, sir?”
He gave a small nod. “Go originated in ancient China. Since a go board has 361 points, the Chinese must have used it to augur the coming year, or something of the sort, before it became a war simulation. Surrounding a larger area of the board with one’s stones than the opponent—it became a game where you tried to dominate the vast Chinese landmass, so to speak. Go is about countries seizing territory from one another.”
“Is it also like fighting with the Americans over control of the Pacific?”
“Yes, you could say that. In the Russo-Japanese War, our Combined Fleet destroyed the Baltic Fleet and won the war. Ever since, the Combined Fleet has worked on the assumption that defeating the enemy’s king—the main fleet—amounts to victory. But this current war isn’t one that can be won by simply taking the enemy’s king like in chess.”
The unexpected weightiness of the lieutenant commander’s words reverberated in our hearts. We were indeed fighting over the Pacific against the Americans and their formidable waves of materiel. It was apparent to all of us that winning would be no easy feat.